George Washington Lost Here

I have been on my semi-annual summer Hysterical Road Trip, in which I drive madly across the country ferreting out odd historical sites.  I left Chicago Sunday, stopping at an archaeological dig on an island in Lake Erie (more on that later), ending up on the northeastern outskirts of Pittsburg Monday night.  Not quite where I had intended to wind up on, but it’s where I came to roost.  I had decided that afternoon that I would see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Waters Tuesday morning before heading further east to some friends' place near Harrisburg.  I determined to get an early enough start to be able to drive part of the way on the National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road).  So I headed towards Uniontown in order to get on Route 40 towards the Ohiopyle Forest.  It was a lovely day and a lovely drive through wooded, hilly countryside.

The National Road was the first major connection between the developed Eastern Seaboard, and the trans-Appalachian frontier.  None other than George Washington, as a young British Army officer of 22 years, helped carve the road out of the wilderness.  Washington had been west before, in 1753, all the way to the northwestern tip of state to deliver an ultimatum to the French near what is now Erie, Pennsylvania.  The future First President returned to the west a year later as a Lieutenant Colonel of the new Virginia Regiment when he was dispatched from Alexandria Virginia with a small force to deter French incursions into the area of what is now Pittsburg.   He and his small force hacked a narrow road across the mountains, using an old Indian trail.  This was the main positive result of the expedition, which was an otherwise inauspicious start to GW’s military career.  His little army, after a small victory in a skirmish with another tiny combined French and Indian force, was subsequently surrounded at Fort Necessity east of present-day Uniontown and forced to surrender ignominiously and trudge back the way he came. However, in preserving his force intact, he set a pattern for his future military career: that of losing battles, but preserving his army from annihilation by one means or another. 

I say this not to denigrate the Father-of-our-Country, I hasten to add.  GW’s ability to pull off this trick – of getting shellacked in battle, but managing to save his army – was the true key to the American military victory over the Brits back in the War for Independence.  He repeatedly had his, and the Continental Army’s, collective asses whooped by the Redcoats, only to pull of a miraculous retreat in good enough order to save enough of his rag-tag army to regroup, refit, and stay in the game until the French came to save their rear-ends.  It is a little known fact that General George Washington lost almost every single battle he fought in. 

At any rate, in 1754, young Colonel Washington managed to lose his first battle, and in the process to help initiate the first World War in human history:  the Seven Years’ War, known locally as the French and Indian War (and, although surely unintentionally, thereby setting the stage for the confused misery of countless generations of tortured grade school students in Social Studies class).  This war was fought in Europe, India, and the Americas; Britain’s victory, and participation of the Colonists, set the stage for the struggle over Independence. 

The following year, 1755, Washington extended what was to become his nearly unbroken record of military defeat by tagging along as Aide-de-camp to a British heavy hitter, General Braddock, sent along to set things aright on the frontier.  This force of some 2,500 regulars and colonials followed the same road GW had trail-blazed, widening it as they went along to 12’ in order to accommodate the supply train and artillery.  They managed to make an average of about three miles a day, hacking their way through the rugged, densely wooded hills (really, small mountains) of south-western Pennsylvania, on their way to confront the pesky French and their even more pesky Indian allies.  Who, no doubt, had plenty of warning of the British-American force laboring in their direction.  And who, consequently, managed to set up an ambush that nearly wiped out Braddock’s force, resulting in appalling casualties – fully one-third of his force was dead, another third wounded, including Gen’l Braddock himself, and the final third high-tailing it from the scene in complete rout. 

And here is George Washington, on the spot to stem the rout and turn it into a bedraggled but organized retreat back to near the ruins of Fort Necessity, scene of his first defeat.  There the much diminished and bloodied force managed to regroup the following day.  Braddock died of his wounds, which left GW in charge, since most of the other officers had been killed or wounded.  After presiding over what must have been a hasty and improvised funeral service, they buried the general in the middle of his road, and GW marched the army over the grave on their way back to Virginia, thereby eradicating any evidence of the burial to tempt the local savages.  There he lay, forgotten, until 50 years later when the crew constructing the actual National Road rediscovered him and reinterred him to one side of the road, where he remains to this day.

General Braddock's current resting place on left, to one side of the National Road.  Originally, he was buried in the middle of the road he had just enlarged, down a ways at the right.

You would think that these twin debacles would have been more than enough to cure Washington of western wanderlust.  But no.  In 1794, as pesky western settlers chafing at paying an onerous tax on their livelihood – that of turning grain into whisky – were tarring and feathering tax collectors and raising liberty poles, President Washington couldn’t resist the temptation to act literally as Commander-in-Chief.  In order to teach these upstart frontiersmen a lesson, the President rode at the head of his army and once again set out down the road he cut through the primeval forest almost 40 years earlier.  In the end, by the time his force reached the epicenter of the revolt around Pittsburg, most of the miscreants had melted away, so he was denied a chance at a near-certain military victory.  Though not technically defeated, for after all the rebellion did end, he nonetheless must have felt pretty disgusted at having to trudge back east empty handed once again through those damned woods over those infernal hills of western Pennsylvania.

N.B.  If you are interested you can peruse my photo album of this drive, including some quite gorgeous pictures of Falling Water