Editorial Note

In the two years between his return from Barbados and the outbreak of the French and Indian War, GW steadily advanced his position in the Virginia community. He already owned some two thousand acres of land in the Shenandoah Valley, with additional holdings at Ferry Farm and Deep Run. His half brother Lawrence’s death in July 1752 brought expectations of more property.1 In Feb. 1753, at the age of twenty-one, he was appointed adjutant of the Southern District of Virginia with the rank of major by Gov. Robert Dinwiddie.2 His military duties were light, leaving him ample time to pursue his flourishing career as a surveyor.

Lawrence Washington’s marriage into the Fairfax family had introduced his young brother to the most influential segment of Virginia society. He was well on his way to becoming a respected member of Virginia’s ruling class, and his attention was turning increasingly to public affairs. It was natural, therefore, that he should offer his services to Gov. Robert Dinwiddie when, in the fall of 1753, it became apparent that French forces from Canada were moving into the Ohio Valley and posing a threat to Virginia’s ambitions in the area.

The Ohio country had attracted both British and French explorers and traders during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The ownership of the region, however, was not seriously contested until the middle years of the eighteenth century. By the 1730s and 1740s the British coastal colonies had discovered the profits to be made from a vigorous trade with the Indians and the area’s potential as a gateway to the West. The expeditions of the baron de Longueuil in 1739 and Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville in 1749 had proved to the French the strategic importance of the Ohio as a link between Canada and the Mississippi. Possession of the Ohio Valley became crucial to both powers. If the British colonies were to expand beyond the eastern seaboard, they must control the gateway to the West. If they did, France was almost certain to lose its control over Louisiana. And both coveted the immensely lucrative fur trade.

Before the early 1750s the contest between England and France in America had been chiefly over control of the Indians in the region. The French claimed the Ohio Valley largely on the basis of La Salle’s explorations in 1669–70. The British contended that the territory had been included in the original Virginia grant of 1609 and that their traders had established a firm foothold in the area. Furthermore, they rested their claims heavily on the concessions wrung from the Iroquois in the Treaty of Lancaster in 1744, when Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania met with the chiefs of the Six Nations at Lancaster, Pa., and signed a treaty in which the Iroquois surrendered much of their land in present-day Virginia and recognized British control in the Ohio country. The Indians almost immediately disputed the treaty, however, claiming they had by no means intended to relinquish claim to so large a portion of their Virginia lands.3

Settlement beyond the mountains would clearly benefit British ambitions in the Ohio country. As a result the Privy Council regarded favorably a petition to the king by the newly organized Ohio Company of Virginia for a grant of more than a half-million acres in the vicinity of the Ohio Valley. The company offered the inducement of providing an impetus to the fur trade and instituting a lucrative trade with the Indians; in return the members petitioned that “two hundred Thousand Acres . . . may be granted immediately without Rights on Condition of Your Petitioners Seating at their proper expence a hundred Familys upon the Land in Seven Years the Lands to be Granted Free of Quit Rent for Ten Years on Condition of their Erecting a Fort and Maintaining a Garrison for protection of the Settlement for that time.”4 In Mar. 1749 the Privy Council recommended that a grant be made on terms most favorable to the company, and Gov. William Gooch was instructed to transfer to the company “Two hundred Thousand Acres of Land lying betwixt Ramanettos and Buffalo’s Creek on the South Side of the River Alligane otherwise the Ohio, and betwixt the two Creeks and the Yellow Creek on the North Side of the River, to the Westward of the great Mountains within the Colony of Virginia.” The grant was made by Gooch on 12 July 1749.5

The Ohio Company moved quickly to fulfill the terms of its grant. Wills Creek, near the present site of Cumberland, Md., was selected as the company’s headquarters on the frontier, and in the winter of 1749–50 a storehouse was built on the Virginia side. In 1750 the company sent out Thomas Cresap, Hugh Parker, and other traders to locate tentative sites for settlement and commissioned Christopher Gist to make a complete survey of the area. On 11 Sept. 1750 Gist signed a contract with the company to arrange for the settlement of some one hundred fifty families on the company’s Ohio lands. Gist made a second survey of the area in 1751–52.6

In 1752 the Ohio Company erected a second store on the right bank of Red Stone Creek, soon known as Red Stone Old Fort. Led by Governor Dinwiddie, the colony of Virginia gave vigorous support to the company’s efforts. From 1 through 13 June 1752 Virginia commissioners held meetings with chiefs from the Ohio tribes at Logstown, and in return for a promise of cheaper trading goods and protection against the French, they obtained Indian consent to construction of a fort at the Forks of the Ohio and the Monongahela rivers.7

The French government in Canada was by no means indifferent to British advances. Since the 1720s judicious observers had been urging the establishment of French settlements on the Ohio frontier as a barrier to British encroachment.8 As a countermove to the Treaty of Lancaster, the French in 1748 held a council with the Iroquois at the Castle of Saint Louis of Quebec, warning them against becoming English “vassals.” The Indians claimed that although “the English had continually solicited them to take up the hatchet against the French, which they constantly refused to do,” they had “not ceded to anyone their lands, which they hold only of Heaven.” On the strength of this assurance the French proceeded to move south into the Ohio country.9

In June 1749 the comte de La Galissonnière, governor of New France, commissioned Céloron de Blainville to undertake an exploratory expedition down the Ohio to the Miami River and thence north to Quebec, warning Indians and English traders along the way that the French would not tolerate further British advances into the Ohio country. Céloron buried at intervals along his route a series of lead plates reiterating the claim of the French to the territory. Within the next few years a trading post was established at Logstown on the Ohio to serve as a center for the increasing number of French traders operating in the area; after the arrival of the marquis Duquesne, the new governor, in the summer of 1752, a vigorous policy of fort building was undertaken.

Early in 1753 Duquesne developed a plan to send a force of some two thousand men under the command of Pierre Paul de La Malgue, sieur de Marin, to establish an effective occupation of the Ohio frontier. An advance party, led by Charles Deschamps de Boishébert, left Montreal 1 Feb. 1753. By early May Boishébert had constructed a fort at Presque Isle portage, and by the end of the month Marin’s force was ready to move south from Niagara. Using Presque Isle as a base, the French constructed a road south to a new post at Le Boeuf. By midsummer of 1753 an effective French army was operating at various sites in the Ohio country.10

The French had thus far been plagued with bad weather, labor troubles with their Indian workmen, lack of supplies, and dissension among the officers. They had not as yet met any opposition from the British or the Indians in the Ohio Valley. As they moved farther south, however, they confronted the pro-English Seneca chief, the Half-King, who warned them at a council at Presque Isle in September that the Iroquois tribes were in treaty with the English, who had agreed not to occupy the valley. “With this belt we . . . ask you to have them cease setting up the establishments you want to make. All the tribes have always called upon us not to allow it. We have told our brothers the English to withdraw. They have done so, too.” Marin dismissed the Half-King’s claims contemptuously, retorting, with some truth, that he was not speaking for all the Iroquois.11 The Indians were clearly impressed by the French advance.

English traders on the frontier had even more reason to be apprehensive. The warning delivered by one Ohio Company trader to Governor Dinwiddie was typical: “The French have already built a Fort on Lake Erie, and another is partly finished. . . . By the last account I can get the French Army consists of about fifteen hundred Souldiers besides Battoe Men. The French told the Indians their Army when collected will make up 15,000 Men, that that Part of their Army which is on their way from Mississippi have built two Forts down the Ohio, that the Country belongs to them & that they will build when they like. Now is our Time, if we manage well all the Indians may be brought to join against the French, otherwise they will join the French against the English.”12

During the winter and spring of 1752–53, Dinwiddie and the other colonial governors were in constant correspondence concerning the French threat. In May 1753 Dinwiddie informed James Glen, governor of South Carolina, that the French from Canada had marched out a large force of regular troops and Indians to the Ohio to prevent British settlement and “to take Possession of these Lands, & to build Forts on that river, a Step not precedented in the Time of confirm’d peace.”13 On 22 May he wrote to James Hamilton, governor of Pennsylvania, concerning “the French Designs to settle the Ohio. I have sometime ago heard of their Robberies & Murders, & if they are allow’d a peaceable Settlemt. on the Ohio, I think the Consequence will be attend’d with the Ruin of our Trade with the Indians & also in Time will be Destruction to all our Settlemts. on the Continent . . . And We further think it wou’d be absolutely necessary, for all the Colonies to join together, in raising a proper Force to prevent the French settling on the Lands of the Ohio.”14

On 16 June 1753 Dinwiddie wrote to the Board of Trade transmitting reports received by the colonial governors of French encroachments on the frontier. “I hope you will think it necessary to prevent the French taking Possession of the Lands on the Ohio, so Contiguous to Our Settlements, or indeed in my private Opinion they ought to be prevented making any Settlements to the Westward of Our present Possessions.”15 Dinwiddie’s letter was received by the Board of Trade 11 Aug. 1753. On 18 Aug. the information was sent to the king, and on 28 Aug. the earl of Holderness, secretary of state, wrote to Dinwiddie, transmitting the crown’s instructions to verify the rumors of the French invasion and, “if You shall find, that any Number of Persons, whether Indians, or Europeans, shall presume to erect any Fort or Forts within the Limits of Our Province of Virginia, . . . You are to require of Them peaceably to depart, and not to persist in such unlawfull Proceedings, & if, notwithstanding Your Admonitions, They do still endeavour to carry on any such unlawfull and unjustifiable Designs, We do herby strictly charge, & command You, to drive them off by Force of Arms.” Dinwiddie received the instructions in mid-November and on 17 Nov. informed the Board of Trade that he had “sent one of the Adjutants of the Militia here, out to the Commander of the French Forces, to know their Intentions, & by what Authority they presume to invade His Majesty’s Dominions in the Time of tranquil Peace; when he returns I shall transmit you an Account of his Proceedings, & the French Commander’s answer.”16

The adjutant sent by Dinwiddie was, of course, GW. An entry for 27 Oct. 1753 in the journals of the council reads: “The Governor acquainted the Board that George Washington Esqr. Adjutant General for the Southern District, had offered himself to go properly commissioned to the Commandant of the French Forces, to learn by what Authority he presumes to make Incroachments on his Majesty’s Lands on the Ohio.” The council approved the appointment, and a committee of the council prepared a letter to be taken to the French commandant.17 The instructions drawn up by the committee and presented to GW by Dinwiddie read:

Dinwiddie also issued the following commission to GW: “I reposing especial Trust & Confidence in the Ability, Conduct, & Fidelity, of You the said George Washington have appointed You my express Messenger; and You are hereby authoriz’d & impowered to proceed hence with all convenient & possible Dispatch, to that Part, or Place, on the River Ohio, where the French have lately erected a Fort, or Forts, or where the Commandant of the French Forces resides, in order to deliver my Letter & Message to Him; & after waiting not exceeding one Week for an Answer, You are to take Your Leave & return immediately back.”19

At the same time the following passport was issued to GW by Dinwiddie:

On 31 Oct. 1753 GW set out for Fredericksburg on the first stage of his journey.

The text for this diary has been taken from a copy in P.R.O., C.O. 5/1328, ff. 51–58.