OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, MARYLATs'D.
 

37
 

CHAPTER IV
 

§NE morning in the early part of May, 1755,
a small army descended the western side
of the South Mountain, winding like a
scarlet thread down through T timer's
Gap where now passes the National Pike, down
to the site of Boonsboro and on through the
unsettled plain, across the Antietam at the "Devil's
Back Bone" where "Delemere" Mill afterwards
stood, and on over the broad trail which an
advance detachment had laid out, to the settlement
of Conococheague the piresent town of Williams¬
port. This was the first regularly organized army
ever seen in the Valley of the Antietam. A little
more than a century later the spectacle had grown
sadly familiar.

In 1755 the seven years war had begun and at
first disaster and disgrace had attended the Brit¬
ish upon the right hand and on the left. Under
the leadership of the Great Commoner the war
ended with the British in undisputed possession
of the greater portion of  North America.

In the early part of 1754 every Indian sud¬
denly and mysteriously disappeared from our
valley. But the mystery was soon solved. The
emissaries of France had been among them and
had enlisted their aid in their scheme of taking
possession of the Valley of the Mississippi in addi¬
tion to the whole of the present British Territory
in America and the flourishing settlements on the
lower Mississippi, which they already held. As is
well known, England claimed the whole of North
America by virtue of Cabot's discovery. The
Frencli had established a colony at New Orleans
and their settlements were gradually extending up
the Mississippi river and when the English Gov¬
 

ernment made a grant of certain privileges beyond
the Alleghany Mountains to the Ohio Company,
the French began to establish rapidly a chain of
forts from Canada to their Mississippi settlements.
The olijcct was to confine the English possessions
to the Atlantic slope. Upon the first intelligence
of the construction of Fort Duquesne on the pres-
'ent site of Pittsburg, George Washington, then
a youth, was dispatched through the wilderness
with a remonstrance from the Governor of Vir¬
ginia.

In order to put an effectual end to Frencli
pretensions General Braddock was sent to America
with a thousand British regulars. He enlisted
a number of colonial troops and invited Wash¬
ington to accompany him as his aid. For com¬
mander of such an expedition, no worse selec¬
tion could have been made than that of Braddock.
He was a brave soldier, but was as ignorant of
the people he had to contend with and the face
of the country he had to traverse, as he was super-
silious. He regarded those who wished to inform
him, v\'ith the utmost contempt. He was a marti¬
net and had but slight regard for soldiers who
could not go through with their exercises with
the precision he was accustomed to exact in the
parades of Regent Park. The fate which would
overtake such a man, who knew nothing and re¬
fused instruction, was but too plain to the practical
and experienced mind of Washington, who accom¬
panied him, and who no doubt expected to share
that fate. In conversation with Benjamin Frank¬
lin at Frederick City, Braddock said "after taking
Fort Duquesne I am to proceed to Niagara; and
having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will