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THE NEW ROAD
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defeat by the Monongahela it had never been used except by small parties on foot and had become well-nigh impassable otherwise. We do not know what Washington wrote in the letter which Forbes so roundly criticised, but it can easily be conceived, without detriment to his character, that he might have spoken in a way Forbes could not understand concerning lethargic Pennsylvania's undeserved good fortune.[1] But Forbes had the present to deal with, not the past, and the shortest route to the Ohio was all too long.
This became alarmingly plain in a very short time after the day, August 1, on
- ↑ Washington's jealousy of Virginia's welfare appeared in 1755 when the question of Braddock's route from Alexandria to Fort Cumberland arose. It would seem to us today that conditions in Virginia must have been pitiable if the marching of an army through the colony could have been considered in any way a boon. Yet such was Washington's attitude in 1755 toward the Governor of Maryland's new road. In a letter to Lord Fairfax dated May 5, 1755, Washington objected to Dunbar's regiment marching to Cumberland by way of Frederick, Maryland; in a letter to Major Carlisle written from Fort Cumberland May 14, 1755, he ridicules the route: "Dunbar had to recross [the Potomac] at Connogagee [Williamsport, Maryland] and come down [into Virginia]—laughable enough."
