The Old Glade (Forbes's) Road (Pennsylvania State Road) — Key Ideas to Explore

Washington was elected commander-in-chief in Virginia on his own dignified terms; the army was increased to sixteen companies and L40,000 were voted for general defense. By October the young commander was at Winchester, where he faced a situation desperate and appalling. The country-side was terror-stricken, and few could be found even for defense; many chose "to die with their wives and families." The few score men who attempted to stem the tide of retreat were almost powerless. "No orders are obeyed," Washington wrote Dinwiddie, "but such as a party of soldiers, or my own drawn sword enforces." Such was the frenzy of the retreat of the frontier population that threats were made "to blow out the brains" of all in authority who opposed them. But the young commander continued undaunted. He impressed men and horses and wagons, and sent them hurrying for flour and musket-balls and flints; he compelled men to erect little fortresses to which the people might flee.

Not the least of his trials--undoubtedly the most discouraging--was the faithlessness of the troops sent out by Governor Dinwiddie upon the reeking frontier. Many of them were themselves panic-stricken and fled back with the rabble. The whole militia regime was inadequate; there was no authority of sufficient weight vested in the commanding officers to enable them to deal even with insolence, much less desertion. "I must assume the freedom," Washington wrote the governor, "to express some surprise, that we alone should be so tenacious of our liberty as not to invest a power, where interest and policy so unanswerably demand it.... Do we not know, that every nation under the sun finds its account therein, and that, without it, no order or regularity can be observed? Why then should it be expected from us, who are all young and inexperienced, to govern and keep up a proper spirit of discipline without laws, when the best and most experienced can scarcely do it with them?"

As the winter of 1755-6 approached, the Indian atrocities ceased and for a few months there was quiet. But by early spring the raids were renewed with merciless regularity. Every day brought a new tale of murder and pillage; and very soon every road was filled with fugitives "bringing to Winchester fresh dismay."

With his few men this first hero of Winchester (who by the way was at his post, not "twenty miles away") was again straining every nerve that Virginia might not lose the great stretch of beautiful country west of the Blue Ridge. "The supplicating tears of women and moving petitions of the men, melt me into such deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease." Perhaps the vacillating Dinwiddie threw this letter down as too ardent a one for a military hand to pen; if so Edward Everett has raised it aloft to show his thrilled audiences "the whole man" Washington. "The inhabitants are removing daily," he again wrote--"... in a short time will leave this country as desolate as Hampshire." To such a degree were the people terrified that secret meetings were held where leaders openly spoke of making terms with the French and Indians by renouncing all claims to the West--no less traitors to the best good of the colonies than those who celebrated over Braddock's defeat.[44]