Archer Butler Hulbert

“ 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?" ”

“ The shortness of the distance between Raystown and Loyal Hanna is used as an argument against this road, which bears in it something unaccountable to me; for I must beg leave to ask, whether it requires more time, or is more difficult and expensive, to go one hundred and forty-five miles in a good road already made to our hands, than to cut one hundred miles anew, and a great part of the way over impassable mountains. ”

“ Washington was strongly prejudiced in favor of the Virginia route; and no man could have had better reasons for prejudice, as will be shown. He argued conspicuously and vehemently on a subject with which he had no experience. Great and good as he became, and brave and faithful as he was, it is all the easier to confess to a weakness which was due to a lack of experience and to loyal, old-time Virginia pride. ”

“ All the terrifying scenes in Virginia were reproduced in Pennsylvania; the savages poured through the mountain gaps and fell with unparalleled fury upon a hundred defenseless settlements. Pennsylvania had not expanded further at this time than to the Blue Mountains. Her frontier was not, therefore, nearly as broad as Virginia's, and the frontier firing-line was not so far removed from the populated districts. ”

“ Washington had had much experience, such as it was, in the Fort Necessity campaign, with Braddock, and on the Virginia frontier. But the Fort Necessity campaign was conspicuous as a political, not a military event. The force he led west did not number two hundred men. This was, surely, a party, not an army. Now, be it remembered, the great difficulty of leading any body of men, small or great, lay in provisioning them and feeding the horses. The larger the army the greater the difficulty—indeed the difficulty trebled as the number of men and horses was doubled. ”

“ Then, as if to make sport of his antagonist—Loudoun, who had abandoned Shirley's Oswego scheme—Montcalm returned to Montreal, hurried with three thousand soldiers down the St. Lawrence and across to Oswego, which surrendered at once with its twelve hundred defenders. The outwitted Loudoun crawled slowly up to Lake George; the winter of 1756–57 came on, and the two commanders glared at each other across the narrow space of snow and ice that separated them. The two important campaigns planned by Shirley were utter failures, and the westward campaign against Fort Duquesne was not even attempted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But brain and muscle, even genius, cannot make two miles one mile. The shortest route across the continent was, inevitably, to become the important highway. It must be remembered that in the early days Philadelphia was the metropolis of America, and Baltimore its chief rival. As long as these cities held the balance of power and trade, a southerly route to Pittsburg, such as that of Braddock's Road, then the Cumberland Road and, finally, the Baltimore and Ohio Railway would be successful. ”

“ With the digging of the Pennsylvania canal up the valley of the Juniata, the Pennsylvania Road became less important until it became what it is today, a merely local thoroughfare. For the last two decades in the eighteenth century, the Pennsylvania Road held a preëminent position—days when a good road westward meant everything to the West. But the road could never be again what it was in the savage days of '58, '63 and '75–'82, when it was the one fortified route to the Ohio. The need for Forbes's Road passed when Forts Loudoun, Bedford, Ligonier, and Pitt were demolished. ”

“ It is an exceedingly pleasant duty to emphasize the fact that, after his repeated arguments were cast aside by his superiors and a route was chosen in the face of the strongest opposition he could bring to bear on the subject, the young man swallowed his chagrin and the slights under which his fine spirit must have writhed, and worked manfully and heroically for measures which he had heartily opposed. ”

“ If Fort Duquesne was to be captured and fortified and manned and supplied, the shortest route thither would be, as the dark days of 1764 and 1775 and 1791 proved, a desperately long road to travel.
On the other hand the building of Forbes's road in Pennsylvania was a boon which that province far less deserved than Virginia. Virginia men and capital were foremost in the field for securing the Indian trade of the Ohio; they had, nearly ten years before, secured a grant of land between the Monongahela and Kanawha, and sent explorers and a number of pioneers to occupy the land ”

“ WHEN General Edward Braddock landed in Virginia in 1755, one of his first acts in his campaign upon the Ohio was to urge Governor Morris to have a road opened westward through Pennsylvania. His reason for wishing another road, parallel to the one his own army was to cut, was that there might be a shorter route than his own to the northern colonies, over which his expresses might pass speedily, and over which wagons might come more quickly from Pennsylvania—then the "granary of America." ”

“ WHEN, in the middle of the eighteenth century, intelligent white men were beginning to cross the Allegheny Mountains and enter the Ohio basin, one of the most practicable routes was found to be an old trading path which ran almost directly west from Philadelphia to the present site of Pittsburg. According to the Indians it was the easiest route from the Atlantic slope through the dense laurel wildernesses to the Ohio. [1] The course of this path is best described by the route of the old state road of Pennsylvania to Pittsburg built in the first half-decade succeeding the Revolutionary War. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is well known, that, on both routes, the rich valleys between the mountains abound with good forage, and that those, which are stony and bushy, are destitute of it. Colonel Byrd and the engineer, who accompanied him, confirm this fact. Surely the meadows on Braddock's road would greatly overbalance the advantage of having grass to the foot of the ridge, on the Raystown road; and all agree, that a more barren road is nowhere to be found, than that from Raystown to the inhabitants, which is likewise to be considered. ”

“ The controversy as to whether Forbes's route should be through Pennsylvania or Virginia serves to bring into clear perspective one of the most interesting and one of the most important phases of our study—the meaning of the building of a road at that time to either one of those colonies. ”

“ The raids of the savages brought the people to their senses, as the most terrible of tales came in from the frontier. But soon the question arose, "Where is the frontier?" The great track Braddock had opened for the conquest of the Ohio valley became the pathway of his conquerors, and soon Fort Cumberland, the frontier post, was far in the enemies' country. The Indians soon found Burd's road on the summit of the Alleghenies and poured over it by Raystown toward Carlisle and Shippensburg. ”

“ On October 7 he left Washington, and, passing through Fredericktown, Hagerstown, and Chambersburg, met the Pennsylvania Road at McConnellstown, and traveled westward on it to Pittsburg. [8] That Mr. Baily pursued the main route westward there can be no doubt. An entry in his Journal for October 11 reads: "Chambersburg is . . a large and flourishing place, not inferior to Frederick's-town or Hagar's-town; being, like them, on the high road to the western country, it enjoys all the advantages which arise from such a continual body of people as are perpetually emigrating thither." ”

“ They are convinced that a waggon road could be made across Laurell Hill, not so bad as that from Fort Littleton to this place, & that there is water and grass all the way, but little forage between the two mountains. The slope of the Alleghany is the worst, the country between that and Laurell Hill is passable, and this last mountain, (of which they have made a sample—) is very easy to cross: all the guides & officers who were on the Ohio agree that from Lawrell Hill onwards there are no further difficulties; it is a chain of hills easy to cross. ”

“ Old America seems to be breaking up, and moving westward. We are seldom out of sight, as we travel on this grand track, towards the Ohio, of family groups. . . To give an idea of the internal movements of this vast hive, about 12,000 wagons passed between Baltimore and Philadelphia, in the last year, with from four to six, carrying from thirty-five to forty cwt. The cost of carriage is about seven dollars per cwt., from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, and the money paid for the conveyance of goods on this road, exceeds £300,000 sterling. ”

“ Several years ago the Virginians and Pennsylvanians commenced a trade with the Indians settled on the Ohio, and, to obviate the many inconveniencies of a bad road, they, after reiterated and ineffectual efforts to discover where a good one might be made, employed for the purpose several of the most intelligent Indians, who, in the course of many years' hunting, had acquired a perfect knowledge of these mountains. ”

“ I agree with you that you cannot take the Cumberland route untill you are in a position to demonstrate the impossibility of finding another road, or at any rate the impossibility of opening one without risking the expedition by too great an expenditure of time. We are in a cruel position, if you are reduced to a single line of communication. It is 64 miles from Cumberland to Gist, and there are only three places capable of furnishing forage sufficient for the army ”

“ Colonel Chambers was of great assistance to General Forbes in the days of 1758, and, as an aged man, sent his three sons, raised in the lead-roofed fortress with its "Great Guns," to Boston in 1775 to fight again for the land he had helped to conquer from the Indians in the dark days of Braddock and Forbes. Such men as Benjamin Chambers made Forbes's Road a possibility. The state road built westward over the track of Forbes's and Bouquet's armies is well known in eastern Pennsylvania as the "Chambersburg and Pittsburg turnpike." ”

“ The expedition, having been made from lethargic Pennsylvania, had a wholesome effect upon all the other colonies and did much to cement them into the common league which accomplished much before two years had passed. Armstrong, as one of the builders of the new road through Raystown, as efficient officer in the work of fortifying this route, and now as leader of an offensive stroke at once daring and successful, was slowly being fitted for more useful and more important duties when the flower of Pennsylvania's frontier should be thrown across the Alleghenies upon Fort Duquesne. ”

“ Speaking of Raystown he writes: "The place having its name from one Rae, who designed to have made a plantation there several years ago." Speaking of the country he observes: "Being an immense Forest of 240 miles in Extent, intersected by several ranges of mountains, impenetrable almost to any thing human save the Indians (if they be allowed the appelation) who have foot paths or tracks through those desarts, by the help of which, we make our roads. . . I am in hopes of finding a better way over the Alleganey Mountain, than that from fort Cumberland which General Braddock took. ”

“ The Indians called Forbes "The Head of Iron"—and no words can better describe the man. Giving all praise possible to Bouquet for his sturdy and active service throughout the summer, it is still plain that the dying Forbes was the magnetic influence that made others strong. Those were dark days at Raystown when at last the pale general arrived upon the ground; "had not the General come up," wrote an officer on the spot, "the Consequence wou'd have been dangerous." ”

“ Pitt at once displayed a prime qualification for his post of honor by choosing with unfailing discernment men who should lead both fleets and armies from idleness into action. His American campaign of 1758 embraced three decisive movements, an attack on Louisbourg—stepping-stone to Quebec—an invasion upon Montcalm on Lake Champlain, and an expedition to Fort Duquesne. ”

“ In reply to Washington's letter of the twenty-fifth Bouquet wrote: "Nothing can exceed your generous dispositions for the service. I see with the utmost satisfaction, that you are above the influences of prejudice, and ready to go heartily where reason and judgement shall direct. I wish, sincerely, that we may all entertain one and the same opinion ”