Colonel Washington starts a world war

Which leads to American independence

In the summer of 1754 the governor of the British colony of Virginia learned that French military forces based in Canada were advancing from Lake Erie southward toward the Ohio River. Virginia laid claim to the Ohio country by virtue of its founding charter, acquired from Queen Elizabeth a century and a half earlier. The French government denied any British right to Ohio, instead asserting its own claim, based on discoveries by French explorers in the 17th century. Apparently the French aimed to resolve the dispute by establishing military outposts in the contested region.

The forts would provide strong points of defense. More important, they would bolster the reputation of France among the Indian peoples of Ohio. The tribes of Ohio retained much of the size and strength they had developed before the arrival of Europeans in North America. They battled each other for the best hunting grounds and trade routes. The appearance of the French and British caused the competing tribes to calculate how they could employ the newcomers against their age-old enemies. The Europeans brought weapons the Indians could use themselves. The Europeans might agree to alliances by which European soldiers would engage the tribes’ enemies directly.

The most important spot in all Ohio was the Forks of the Ohio River, where the Allegheny River met the Monongahela River to form the Ohio River. The Virginia governor heard through a grapevine of Indians and frontier traders that a French contingent was advancing toward the Forks, cutting a road through the forest and planting subsidiary posts along the way. He determined to send a column of Virginians to block the move, ideally to beat the French to the Forks and establish a fort of their own.

For the purpose he called upon a young colonel named George Washington, the son of a modestly distinguished plantation owner, and a favorite of the very distinguished Lord Fairfax. Washington had been to the Ohio country before, conducting surveying work for the Fairfax family and transmitting a message from the Virginia governor to the French commandant in Ohio warning against the very action the French were now taking. Washington had shown himself to be energetic and capable, despite his youth. He was twenty-two when he accepted his new assignment.

It suited his career plans. He envisioned a life as a soldier, and command of an important mission would give him a chance to show what he could do. He selected subordinates, including Jacob Van Braam, who would serve as translator to the French.

Off they headed from the settled part of Virginia, across the mountains to where the rivers float away from the Atlantic and toward the Ohio. Washington hired some Indian scouts to probe the territory into which he was advancing.

They reported a French army coming Washington’s way. Taking the view of the British government that Ohio was British, Washington treated the French as illegal invaders. For their part, the French perceived Washington and the British Virginians as the invaders.

On Washington's previous mission to the French in Ohio, he had delivered a letter demanding French withdrawal. The French had rejected the letter, causing Washington to assume that diplomacy had been exhausted and only force remained. The French were the enemy, were on British soil, and therefore were subject to attack without warning.

So he attacked without warning. When his scouts informed him that the French were near, Washington laid an ambush. The French entered the trap and Washington ordered his men to open fire. The damage to the French wasn't great, but it included a mortal wound to the senior French officer present.

The Virginians prevailed but not for long. The larger body of the French arrived and surrounded Washington's position at the hastily erected Fort Necessity. Washington was compelled to capitulate. The surrender agreement was written in French, which Washington didn’t understand. Van Braam read it to him. Washington pronounced the terms acceptable and signed.

Only later did he discover, to his anger and chagrin, that he had confessed to having assassinated the French officer his men had killed. He denied the charge and blamed a bad translation.

The distinction didn't mean much to the dead Frenchman, but it counted in diplomacy between Britain and France. Each side wanted to put the blame for the outbreak of hostilities on the other. The British accused the French of invading British territory. The French charged the British with grossly overreacting to a French reconnaissance.

The fight near the Forks escalated into a larger conflict on the frontier. The French and their Indian allies battled the British Americans and their Indian allies. What in American history would be called the French and Indian War hopped the Atlantic to Europe, where it produced the Seven Years’ War, which in turn spread to South Asia, another prize in the imperial struggle between Britain and France, and to the oceans of the world.

Britain prevailed in this global contest. At the fighting's end, Britain controlled the Ohio country and the rest of what had been French North America. Washington's Virginians and the other British colonists in North America applauded the removal of the French and the threat from them and their Indian allies.

Yet that very removal lessened the dependence of the Americans on Britain. Hardly more than a decade after the end of the war, a new conflict broke out, this time between the Americans and the British.

Leading the fight on the Americans’ part was Washington, promoted from Virginia colonel to commanding general of the American Continental Army. And before the American Revolutionary War ended, Washington and the Americans were allied with the French. The irony culminated when the man who had set the gears of war in motion in Ohio by attacking the French on behalf of Britain led a combined American-French army to victory over the British at Yorktown.