USA > Virginia > Tazewell County > Tazewell County > History of Tazewell county and southwest Virginia, 1748-1920 > Part 19
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62
Learning that General De Villiers was marching from Fort Du Quesne with a large force to make an attack upon him, Washington fell back to Fort Necessity. On the 3rd of July, De Villiers invested and made an attack upon the fort. The French army consisted of six hundred men besides a large force of Indian allies ; but Washington with his gallant little band of Virginians success- fully resisted for nine hours the attacking party, though thirty of his men were killed and a number wounded. De Villiers on account of a shortage of ammunition proposed a parley; and Washington, realizing that with his small force he could not hold out much longer, accepted the very honorable terms of surrender which were proposed by the French commander. On the 4th of July, the gar- rison with all their arms, except artillery, and baggage left the fort and withdrew from the country. This left the entire Ohio Valley in possession of France, and caused great alarm among all the Northern colonies as well as in Virginia.
About this time a congress, to which all the American colonies had been requested to send delegates, had assembled at Albany, New York, for the purpose of urging concerted action against the French and to secure more cordial support from the Indian tribes
191
and Southwest Virginia
of New York and Pennsylvania, and, if possible, of the tribes along the Ohio. Benjamin Franklin was the leading and guiding spirit of this convention. Steps were taken to unite all the English colonies into a common government, it being then apparent that their future welfare required the formation of a federated form of government. Franklin drafted a constitution, which, after a mani- festation of considerable opposition thereto, was adopted by the commissioners in attendance. Copies of the proposed constitution were transmitted to each of the colonies for ratification or rejection; but it was received with great disfavor nearly everywhere. The copy sent to England for approval was contemptuously rejected, the British Board of Trade declaring that the Americans were try- ing to establish an independent government of their own. Possibly the Board of Trade was not far wrong in that conclusion, as was shown by the Revolution which came on about two decades later.
In the meantime the French were actively occupied in strength- ening their fortifications at Crown Point, at Niagara, and at all their posts along the lakes and in the Ohio Valley. The British Government was at last awakened to the fact that something had to be done to stop the aggressions of France, or submit to the loss of all English territory west of the Alleghanies. Though there had been no declaration of war, England determined to send a large army to America to protect her colonies against the continued invasions of the French and Indians. General Edward Braddock was sent over with six thousand regulars, and the colonies were requested to furnish as many volunteers as they could to unite with the regular troops for the protection of the frontiers. The ministers of France and Great Britain continued negotiations for a peaceful solution of the controversy; but Louis XV., King of France, sent three thousand splendidly equipped soldiers to Canada for rein- forcing the army he already had in that province, stationed at various forts on the frontier.
On the 14th of April, 1755, General Braddock held a confer- ence at Alexandria, Virginia, for the purpose of forming and out- lining a concerted campaign for checking the advances of the French, and the recovery of the territory already invaded and possessed by the enemy; and it was agreed that there should be no invasion of Canada, but that the French should be driven out of the Ohio Val- ley and the other territory claimed by England. And it was also planned that Lawrence, lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, should
192
History of Tazewell County
complete the conquest of that province according to the boundaries as claimed by Great Britain.
Braddock started out from Alexandria with two thousand Brit- ish veterans to recapture fort Du Quesne. At the mouth of Wills' Creek, a tributary of the Potomac, and where Fort Cumberland was built, he was joined by two companies of volunteers from New York and several companies from Virginia. George Washington also joined the army at Fort Cumberland, and Braddock made the young Virginian his aid-de-camp. The British general's commission con- tained an order which directed that no provincial officer should be given any rank while serving with the British army. This prescrip- tion was so offensive to the colonial authorities that they declined or failed to send the large quotas of troops they could have furnished to assist the English forces. George Washington at first declined to go with Braddock in such an inferior capacity, but from purely patriotic motives joined him at Fort Cumberland. The stubborn and foolhardy British commander refused to accept any advice from Washington, or from any of the colonial officers, as to how the campaign should be conducted against the French and Indians. He persisted in his purpose to fight the Indians according to the rules of military art as it was practiced in Europe, and his stub- bornness was followed by terrible disaster.
On the 9th day of June, 1755, Braddock's army was led into an ambuscade, and was nearly destroyed by the combined forces of the Indians and French. There were six hundred and thirty Indians, most of them Shawnee warriors, and two hundred and thirty French soldiers in the engagement. British tactics proved worse than valueless when matched against the skill and daring of the Shawnee warriors in a battle fought in the wilderness. Con- fusion first came to the trained English veterans, and this was fol- lowed by panie, which turned the battle field into a bloody shambles for the British soldiers. Braddock had five horses shot under him before he received a fatal wound. Of the eighty-two English offi- cers, twenty-six were killed and thirty-seven were wounded. Wash- ington was the only mounted officer who escaped injury; and he had two horses killed under him, and his coat was pierced by four bullets. When Braddock sank to the ground from a bullet wound in his right side, Washington rushed to his assistance. Then the haughty Briton turned to the Virginian and inquired: "What shall we do now Colonel?" Washington promptly replied: "Retreat sir -- retreat by all means." An order for retreat was then given;
193
and Southwest Virginia
and though but about thirty of the Virginians had escaped slaughter, under the command of our Washington, they effectively covered the retreat of the crushed and ruined army. The French and Indians had three officers and thirty men killed and about the same number wounded. Of the English army, seven hundred and fourteen men of the ranks were killed and wounded. A hasty retreat was made by the remnant of Braddock's army to Fort Cumberland, and a few days later that place was abandoned and the army marched to Philadelphia.
At the convention held by the governors of the colonies at Alex- andria on the 14th of April, 1755, it had been ordered that Governor Lawrence should make complete conquest of Nova Scotia, so as to settle the boundaries of that province, which had been ceded by France to England by the treaty of Utretch, made April 11th, 1713. There had been sharp contentions between France and England over the boundaries of the ceded province.
The first permanent settlement made by Frenchmen on the North American Continent was established on the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, at a harbor which had been called Port Royal by the French discoverers. And the whole country thereabout, including the surrounding islands, was called Acadia by the founders of the settlement. After the cession of the province to England, the name of Port Royal was changed to Annapolis, and the name Acadia was changed to Nova Scotia. At the time the province was ceded to Great Britian the population was estimated at about three thousand, and at the outbreak of the French and Indian War their numbers had increased to about sixteen thousand. The French inhabitants outnumbered the English about three to one. Lawrence, the acting British governor, pretended that there was danger of an insurrec- tion, as a very large majority of the inhabitants of the province were French and were dissatisfied with British rule. Bancroft, the great American historian, says of these people:
"Happy in their neutrality, the Acadians formed, as it were, one great family. Their morals were of unaffected purity. Love was sanctified and calmned by the universal custom of early mar- riages. The neighbors of the community would assist the new couple to raise their cottage on fertile land, which the wilderness freely offered."
These excellent people were placed at the mercy of their military masters, and were denied protection in the civil tribunals. Their property was taken without their consent for the public service and T.H .- 13
194
History of Tazewell County
"they were not to be bargained with for the payment." They were required to furnish firewood for their oppressors, with an order from the governor: "If they do not do it in proper time, the soldiers shall absolutely take their houses for fuel." Their fire- arms and boats were taken from them, leaving them without means to escape from their oppressors. Orders were given the English officers to punish Acadians at discretion, if they behaved amiss ; and if the troops were insulted they had authority to assault the nearest person, whether he be the guilty one or not, taking "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."
The British officers and men were taught to believe that the colonies existed for no other purpose than to be exploited for the benefit of the mother country; and they despised the Acadians, even though they were an honest, industrious and virtuous people. So, Lawrence was given full authority to reduce the French popula- tion of Nova Scotia to complete submission; and to assist him in the cruel undertaking a British fleet was sent from Boston.
On the 20th of May, 1755, the fleet, with three thousand troops aboard, under the command of General Monkton, sailed from Boston for the Bay of Fundy. The 2nd of June the British army was landed on the coast of Nova Scotia, and in a campaign of less than a month, with a loss of twenty men, the British had brought into subjection the whole country east of the St. Croix River. The French inhabitants and the garrisons at the two fortified posts that France still held in the isthmus which divides Nova Scotia from New Brunswick, were taken entirely by surprise, as the hos- tile British movement was made before any declaration of war. While this atrocious campaign in Nova Scotia was in progress, Braddock was marching to his doom on the Monongahela.
Acadia, peaceful and helpless, had been easily conquered; but the French inhabitants outnumbered the English three to one. To remove any danger from an insurrection, Governor Lawrence and Admiral Boscawen, upon the advice of the chief justice of the province, determined to deport the French inhabitants. As a pre- liminary to the execution of this great crime, a demand was made that the people should take an oath of allegiance which was so framed that the French, as faithful Catholics, could not subscribe to it. Upon their refusal to take the oath of renunciation, the Eng- lish plotters accused the French of treason and made then surrender all their firearms and boats. The heavy-hearted people were driven from their homes in the villages and hamlets and their houses
195
and Southwest Virginia
destroyed by fire. They were forced to assemble in the larger towns and when a sufficient number were collected, they were driven on shipboard for deportation. Ridpath, writing about this horrible transaction, says :
"The wails of the thousands of bleeding hearts were wafted to heaven with the smoke of burning homes. At the village of Grand Pre four hundred and eighteen unarmed men were called together and shut up in a church. Then came the wives and children, the old men and the mothers, the sick and the infirm, to share the com- mon fate. The whole company numbered more than nineteen hun- dred souls. The poor creatures were driven to the shore, forced into the boats at the point of the bayonet, and carried to the vessels in the bay. As the moaning fugitives cast a last look at their pleasant town, a column of black smoke floating seaward told the story of desolation. More than three thousand of the helpless Acadians were carried away by the British squadron and scattered, helpless, half-starved and dying among the English colonies. The history of civilized nations furnishes no parallel to this wanton and wicked destruction of an inoffensive colony."
At the close of the year 1755 the British armies had nothing to their credit in the way of success, except the disgraceful conquest of Acadia, and a dearly bought victory won by General Johnson over General Dieskau near Fort Edward, New York. The years 1756-57 proved two years of great disaster to the British. In July, 1756, General Montcalm captured the two forts at the mouth of the Oswego River; and the French greatly strengthened their forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga. The only successes won by the English were scored by the colonial volunteers, called provincials. During the summer the Delawares violated their treaty with the colonies, and made vicious attacks upon the settlers in Western Pennsylvania. Colonel John Armstrong, with three hundred Penn- sylvania volunteers, crossed the Alleghany Mountains, and by a twenty days march got to the Indian town called Kittanning, which was situated forty-five miles northeast of Pittsburg. Colonel Arm- strong was one of the Scotch-Irish immigrants who had come from Ulster, and his three hundred men were mostly of the same blood. The Pennsylvanians attacked the village at daybreak. Captain Jacobs, the Delaware chief, raised the war-whoop and cried: "The white men are come, we shall have scalps enough." Jacobs was one of the Indians who laid the ambuscade for Braddock's army,
196
History of Tazewell County
and a hearty participant in the scalping carnival that followed Braddock's defeat. On this occasion there was quite a different scene. Jacobs and his entire family and most of his warriors were killed and scalped by the white men. The town was burned, but the Americans lost sixteen of their good men killed, and a number were wounded. Among the wounded were Colonel Armstrong and Captain Hugh Mercer. The Pennsylvania county which includes the battle field is named Armstrong; and the West Virginia county that adjoins Tazewell bears the name of Mercer.
After the defeat of Braddock, the General Assembly of Virginia made an appropriation of money for Colonel George Washington and the other officers and the privates of the Virginia volunteers, to reward them "for their gallant behavior and losses in the late disastrous battle." Colonel Washington was also given command of all the forces raised or to be enlisted in Virginia. He selected for his field officers, next in rank to himself, Lieutenant Colonel Adam Stephens and Major Andrew Lewis. The latter was from Augusta County, was one of the Trans-Alleghany pioneers, and became eminent as an Indian fighter and officer in the Revolutionary War. Washington established his headquarters at Winchester, as the Indians and their French allies were making hostile incur- sions into the Valley of Virginia, and were spreading consternation among the settlers, many of whom were fleeing with their families for safety across the Blue Ridge Mountain.
Washington made a tour of the outposts, from Fort Cumberland to Fort Dinwiddie, on Jackson's River; and was satisfied that the means he possessed were not sufficient to protect the Valley and the outlying settlements against the Indians. He then determined to go to Williamsburg and urge that more adequate means be fur- nished; but he was recalled after he reached Fredericksburg by an announcement that the Indians had renewed their attacks upon the settlements. Hurrying back to Winchester he gathered his small forces and drove the savages back from the border. In the spring of 1756 he went to Williamsburg and induced the General Assembly, then in session, to increase his force to fifteen hundred men. After accomplishing this, he returned to Winchester and found that scouting parties of Indians were massacreing the unprotected inhabitants on the border, and were attacking the forts and killing some of his best soldiers. Conditions were so deplorable, and the number of troops so inadequate for the protection of the settlers, that Colonel Washington wrote a letter to Governor Dinwiddie in
197
and Southwest Virginia
which he pictured the distressing situation, and declaring that: "The supplicating tears of the women, and moving petitions of the men, melt me with deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering cnemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease." The summer and autumn of 1757 were spent by Washington in repairing the old forts and in building a new one at Winchester, which was named Fort Loudoun.
The year 1757 proved equally as disastrous for the English as had the two preceding years. At the close of the year it looked as if the British would be driven out of America, or, at least, be forced to confine themselves to the regions they had so long occupied east of the Alleghanies. France was in possession of twenty times as much American territory as England, and every English settler had been driven from the Ohio Valley. But a great change in the situation came in 1758. William Pitt, the first Englishman to be called the "Great Commoner," was placed at the head of the min- istry; and the disgraceful mismanagement of English affairs in America was brought to an end. General Ambercrombie superseded the incapable Lord Loudoun as commander-in-chief; and Admiral Boscawen was put in charge of a splendid fleet of twenty-two ships of the line and fifteen frigates. Able generals and a corps of cap- able subordinate officers were given the commander-in-chief. Among these were Generals Amherst, Howe, Forbes, and Wolfe, and Colonel Richard Montgomery. The latter was the favorite officer in the brigade of the gallant General James Wolfe, and was with him when he captured Quebec from the French on the 13th of Sep- tember, 1759, and when he received a mortal wound on the Heights of Abraham. It was a strange decree of fate which placed Colonel Montgomery in command of a Colonial army with which he sought to capture Quebec from the British on December 31st, 1775; and that he should receive a mortal wound, while leading his troops, not far from where Wolfe was killed sixteen years previously.
The war was pressed with vigor during the years 1758 and 1759. Louisburg was captured by General Wolfe on the 28th of July, 1758, and soon thereafter Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island were surrendered to Great Britain. General Ambercrombie made an ineffectual effort to take Ticonderoga on the 6th of July. On the 8th the English army made another assault, a bloody battle ensued, and the carnage was dreadful, the British losing in killed and wounded nineteen hundred and sixteen men. General Mont-
198
History of Tazewell County
calm was in command of the four thousand French, and it was due to his skillful and energetic management that the English lost the bat- tle. A short time after the defeat at Ticonderoga, Colonel Brad- street captured Frontenac after a two days siege, which compen- sated for the failure to capture Ticonderoga.
Later in the summer General Forbes left Philadelphia with an army of nine thousand men and moved slowly and cautiously in the direction of Fort Du Quesne. Washington was in command of the provincials, and Colonel Armstrong, already famous from his victory over the Indians at Kittanning, commanded the Pennsylvanians. On the 24th of November, Washington, who was in charge of the advance troops, arrived within ten miles of Fort Du Quesne. The French garrison, which numbered only about five hundred men, abandoned and destroyed the fort and made their retreat in their canocs and boats down the river. It was on the following day, November 25th, 1758, that the English flag was raised again on the noted spot and the name Pittsburg given thereto in honor of the "Great Commoner," who had restored the prestige of England in America. Thus was wrested from the French what has since been known as "the gateway of the west."
For the campaign of the next year, General Amherst was placed in full command of the American forces, Parliament voted twelve million pounds for its conduct, and the colonies cheerfully joined the British Government to raise an army of fifty thousand men.
On the 25th of July, 1759, the French surrendered Niagara to Sir William Johnson, and communication between Canada and Louisiana was completely broken. The 26th day of July the French garrison abandoned Ticonderoga and retreated to Crown Point; and five days afterward they deserted that place. General Wolfe gave the final blow to the power of France in Canada on the 12th of September, when he successfully attacked Quebec, though he lost his life in that supreme effort. Montcalm, the gallant French com- mander, was also mortally wounded in the battle, and when told that he could live but a few hours, said: "So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." The citadel was surrendered to General Townshend on the 17th of September, 1759.
In the spring of 1760 France made the last great. struggle to regain her power in Canada. A few miles west of Quebec the French and English met in a severe battle and the English were forced to retire into the city; but reinforcements were sent to the British and the French were driven back. On the 8th of September,
199
and Southwest Virginia
1760, Montreal, which was the only strong post still held by France in the St. Lawrence Valley, was surrendered to General Amherst. At the time of the surrender of Montreal it had been stipulated that the number of small posts held by the French in the vast territory bordering on the Great Lakes should be turned over to Great Britain. And in the fall of 1760, General Amherst sent Major Robert Rogers with two hundred provincial rangers to receive these outposts from the several French commanders. In November, Major Rogers reached Detroit, the fort was surrendered to him, and he raised the English flag over the fortress, where it continued to float to the breeze until it was hauled down to make place for our own great emblem of freedom, the Stars and Stripes. Then Fort Miami on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, and Fort Onatanon on the Wabash were surrendered to Major Rogers. It was his purpose to travel on and take possession of the forts at Mackinaw, Green Bay and St. Marie, but severe storms prevented him from doing this; and those remote forts were not garrisoned with English soldiers until the summer of 1761.
The fall of Montreal and the subsequent surrender of the French forts placed Great Britain in complete possession of all the disputed territory which had provoked the French and Indian War. While this war was in progress the French, by very kind and considerate treatment, had won the friendship and confidence of their Indian allies; and the hatred of the red men for the English had been greatly intensified. The Indians still believed that France would reconquer the country and expel the detested English; and, so believing, the native tribes continued to make attacks upon the frontier settlements. In the summer of 1761 the Senecas and Wyandots joined in a conspiracy to capture Detroit and massacre the English garrison; but Colonel Campbell, commander of the post, got information of the conspiracy and thwarted the attack. The following summer a similar plot was formed, but it was defeated by the alert English officers.
In the spring of 1763, Pontiac, who was chief of the Ottowas, and who led his warriors at Braddock's defeat, conceived a plan for uniting all the tribes between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi River, to make concerted attacks upon all the forts in the possession of the English, and overwhelm their garrisons. This noted chief had met Major Robert Rogers, when he was on his way to take
200
History of Tazewell County
possession of Detroit for the British, at the place where Cleveland, Ohio, is now located; and had made objection to further invasion of the territory by the English. But when he was informed that the French had been defeated and had surrendered all their forts in Canada, he consented to the surrender of Detroit, and for a time was disposed to be friendly to the British. Later he was deceived by rumors that France was preparing to make a reconquest of her American possessions, and proceeded to carry out his plans for a general uprising of the Indians and the destruction of the English forts and settlements.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.