 Road to the independency of our nation is a long one with many twists and turns. There are many who believe that that road began with Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and those immortal words that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states. Still others would place the beginning of that road with that fateful shot heard at Lexington Green, which in retrospect was called the shot around the world. But the road to American independence is far longer than you may realize, and it is paved with the sacrifice and determination of her sons and daughters. Yet before those sons and daughters could claim their inheritance of independence they had to discover themselves. We were, after all, British colonists, children of mother England, cousins to our countrymen on the other side of the Atlantic. We thought of ourselves as no different from them, just possessed of a rougher country and a wider horizon. There comes a time in the life of every child when that child steps away from the parent's shadow and becomes their own person. It is precisely that discovery that the American colonies needed to make, and we would discover that on the Western frontier. In order to explain how I am connected to this story of American identity, it is necessary for me to explain some of my personal history. I am my father's third son and my mother's first. I have two older brothers that are from my father's first wife, they are twelve and fourteen years my seniors. When I was young they were both at school in England. I did not meet Lawrence until he returned when I was six, and I did not meet Augustine Jr. until I was ten. My father died when I was eleven years old, and he divided his various properties between the three of us. Lawrence got the property on Little Huntington Creek, which he later named Mount Vernon. Augustine got Pope's Creek Farm, where I was born, and I got the home farm near Fredericksburg along with a few other properties and lands. However, being only eleven years of age I had no control over these properties. My responsibility for managing my estate fell upon my mother. Indeed, according to Virginia law, I could do nothing with my property until I reached my majority at the age of one and twenty. My dreams of traveling to England to be educated as my two older brothers had been also died with my father. After all, I was now the man of the house, and my mother had no intention of allowing me to leave my responsibilities. Personally, this left me with few prospects and no money. To put things into the vulgar common parlance, I needed a job. I initially latched upon the idea of military service. After all, my brother Lawrence had been a captain in the British Army and had served in that capacity as a Marine to rear Admiral Edward Vernon, who in his name, Mount Vernon, is named. My brother Lawrence, along with my patron and friend Colonel William Fairfax, conspired to get me a commission in the Royal Navy. Lawrence even sent a letter to my mother with his heartfelt endorsement of the appointment. Though she initially gave her approval, she began to have misgivings and withdrew it. I was once again left without a prospective vocation. In addition to the properties, my father had left me one other thing which I could take immediate possession of, his surveying equipment. Surveying was a skill possessed to a greater or lesser degree by many gentlemen of Virginia. After all, anyone who owns and leases land needs to have a means of measuring it. Though in 1747, I apprenticed myself to learn the craft of surveying. In the meantime, my patron, Colonel Fairfax, had become a member of the King's Council and was in charge of hiring surveyors for the colony of Virginia. So at the age of 16, I found myself on an expedition to the frontier to survey land for the Fairfax family. We were, of course, not the first people to set eyes on the Shenandoah Valley and beyond. Indeed, there were already people living on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In addition to the native tribesmen who lived in the area, there were Virginians who had decided to claim land and settle in the west. There were homesteads and farms and even some small settlements. Still, gazing out from atop Ashby's Gap across this vast untamed wilderness should have been awe-inspiring. But I fear I was looking with the young man's eyes, less intent on breathtaking vistas and more interested in the potential use of the land. I had started keeping a journal of my journey over the mountains and the entry for that day simply reads, Nothing Remarkable Happened. From then on, I found myself as a man astride two worlds. By necessity, surveying was done in the early spring or the late fall, where lines of sight were not unduly obscured by summer foliage. And yet, the land was not rendered impassable by inclement winter. For the next several years, I hired myself out as a surveyor to expeditions to the western country. And the rest of the year, I lived the life of a planter on the Rappahannock just across from Frederickburg. Thus, I walked the line between country gentlemen and frontiersmen. By the time I was 20, I began to again look for a way to increase my prospects. And I once again locked my sights towards military service. At the time, the defense of Virginia fell to the militia and the colony was divided into military districts. Each district was headed by an adjutant general. I pursued such posting, and with the goodwill of Colonel Fairfax and the new Lieutenant Governor, Robert Din Whitty, I secured the post. Thus, it was that just before my 21st birthday, I took the oath and became Major George Washington. The reason the colony of Virginia had established a militia was, of course, for defense. Defense against hostile Indian tribes and that ancient enemy of Great Britain, France. You see, as British colonists in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania were expanding into this territory on the west side of the mountains, so too, the French had extended their influence into this virgin territory coming down from Canada in the north. In order to protect the British claim to this lush new land, it was advocated that a fort be established at the forks of the Ohio River. Meanwhile, the French were already building forts to protect their interest in this new land. In August of 1753, Governor Din Whitty got permission from London to build forts in Ohio. He also received orders to deliver an ultimatum to the French, leave this place or risk military confrontation. Naturally, as soon as I heard of the mission, I rode straight to Williamsburg and volunteered. The Governor chose me for the task and I set off on the same day. In addition to delivering the ultimatum and bringing back intelligence on the French presence in the Ohio territory, I was to evaluate a place for the fort where the Allegheny, Bananga Heela and Ohio Rivers met and make contact with local Indian tribes. I traveled with only a translator and a guide, the better part of 250 miles, to discover the French commander at Fort LeBouff, about 15 miles from Lake Erie. The French commander received us with polite indifference and after reviewing the Governor's letter, he said he felt no need to obey the edict and reserved the right to arrest British trappers. On December the 14th, he gave me a sealed letter for Governor Din Whitty and I departed. I'm not at this time regale you with the story of the perilous trek I made across the mountains in the dead of winter, but one month later, I delivered the French commander's reply to the Governor in Williamsburg. Once it became clear that the French would not be removed except through force of arms, I was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and authorized to raise a regiment of 100 men, which was eventually increased to 160. My orders were to maintain a defensive posture, but I might incite hostilities if the French were to meddle with military works or settlements. This would include the use of deadly force in order to restrain, make prisoner or destroy any foe. I set out with my men in early April. About three weeks into our trek we received word that the French had sent down a large contingent of men from Lake Erie and had captured the men that the Governor had sent to build a fort at the headwaters of the Ohio. I wrote the governors of Virginia and Maryland to ask them for more men. On May the 24th, we received news from an Indian trader at a nearby settlement that a French detachment had been seen a mere 18 miles away from our position. We were in an area called Great Meadows and after quickly surveilling the area, I saw two natural gullies within a few yards of each other that could act as natural trenches. And so I ordered the men to begin clearing brush and trees to create a defensible position with a field of fire. A few nights later our sentries heard movement just outside the camp and fired upon it to no avail. In the morning, a local trapper of my acquaintance rode into camp to tell us that the previous noon a contingent of 50 French soldiers had come to his nearby settlement and made ready to kill his milk cow and break up his belongings. On his way to warn us, he had seen tracks of numerous white men which he took to be of the same party. Scouts were sent out and I formed a hunting party of 40 men and 10 of our Seneca Indian allies. We marched through the pitch black night and the pouring rain as day dawned and the sun came out, we discovered them, camped in a little hollow only seven miles from our position at Great Meadows. We approached them in near silence until we had them completely surrounded. I stepped forward on the right flank to call for their surrender and they immediately flew to arms afterwards. No one could say who had fired the first shot but we fired two volleys into them and then our Indian allies swooped in and the Frenchmen who were still fighting threw down their weapons. The whole affair lasted perhaps 15 minutes. It was not until we were marching the prisoners back to our camp that they protested that they had been sent as emissaries with an ultimatum from the French commander that we vacate land owned by their king. They insisted that they should be treated as attendance of an ambassador and not prisoners of war. They said that they should be treated the way that I was treated by the French when I had delivered the British ultimatum almost six months before. When I had set out to meet the French the year before to deliver the governor's message, I had journeyed not with a large contingent of soldiers but with an interpreter and a local trapper and a few Indian guides. I had come openly and I had presented myself to the first French officer that I met. Conversely, they had brought a large party of soldiers within a few miles of our camp. There was evidence that they had actually come much closer and rather than boldly declare their presence, they had retreated in an attempt to leave us unaware of them. In all likelihood, they had already sent a runner back to the French position at Fort Duquesne. Unfortunately, their commander, Ensign Jumanville, had been killed in the initial volley. Although his personal papers, in his personal papers we did find that there was a letter addressed to the commandant of English troops on the lands of the French king. However, it is my belief that this was a ruse and that they were there to spy out our position and then send for reinforcements so that they could destroy us. After all, the month before, the French had already attacked the British position at the Three Rivers and they were already our enemy. The capture of the French party had been almost perfect with only one man killed on our side. However, we had been unable to completely encompass the camp before the firing began and at least one Frenchman managed to slip through our encirclement and carry away word of the battle. So, we returned to our encampment at Great Meadow and the following day I wrote the governor to tell him of our encounter and once again to ask for reinforcements. I also had the man begin to build a crude palisade which I called Fort Necessity. The French attacked us five weeks later. In the meantime, I had finally received the reinforcements for which I'd been begging. 200 more Virginians helped to bolster my command which had been dwindling due to desertions and disease. Also joining us was an independent command of 100 men from South Carolina. Meanwhile, however, our Indian allies had become more and more apprehensive at the thought of a concentrated French attack. In the weeks of June, the third week, we held a conference with the Seneca chief and he dissolved the alliance between our peoples. The French attacked on July 3rd, 1754. So we drove off their initial assault. The French realized that they could just retreat to the cover of the trees and keep up a hot fire on us from an elevated position. In the late afternoon, a rain began to fall and it turned our little fort into a bowl of mud and made our weapons useless. When it was nearly nightfall, the French commander signaled that he would parlay. I sent my interpreter over to discover the terms of the surrender and he brought back a document. Of course, it was written in French. So by guttering candle in the rain, I had him translate the document to myself and Captain McKay and we signed it. One of the stipulations of the surrender was that we admit to causing the death of Jumanville, the French emissary. At least that is how our interpreter translated it to us that night in the mud and rain. I later found out that a more precise translation rather than cause the death of would have been assassinated. So by signing this document, I unknowingly admitted to assassinating a French diplomat. When word of the surrender became known, I was vilified in France, of course. Thought of as a young rash colonist in London. But I was seen as the unlikely hero of a doomed defense in Virginia. I was also a military officer with unparalleled knowledge of the frontier. So when Major General Edward Braddock arrived the following February, I volunteered to serve as his aide-de-camp. The first thing I did as aide-de-camp to General Braddock was inform him of the dangers of surprise attacks by Indians and the difficulty of the terrain over the mountains. General Braddock would hear none of it. He insisted on bringing his full artillery train and thousands of bushels of grain so that the 3,000 men of his command would not need to forage. We made just two miles a day and both men and horses dropped dead from exhaustion. Finally, the general heeded my advice and took an advance party of 800 men to march ahead, allowing the heavier baggage to come at a slower pace. By the time we reached the Monongahela on July 9th, the advanced force had grown to 1,400 men. We crossed the river, only to find that there were 900 French waiting for us. They would open fire and then fade back into the trees. Unless you've experienced it, I'm not sure you can picture how much smoke is put into the air by so many men firing firelock weapons at once. The French had caught our advance guard on the road, unable to form ranks. They fired a few volleys and retreated only to run into the main body right behind them. All was lost in smoke and confusion. General Braddock sent 30 men to climb a nearby hillside and secure it so that he might have a better idea of the French position. The British troops thought that the men on the hillside were French and they fired upon them, and the British officers thought that they were deserters and did the same. I begged the general to let me form up the provincials and fight the French on their own way. Instead, he ordered me to send another party up the hill and to retrieve two lost cannon. As I rode back and forth, fulfilling General Braddock's orders, four bullets passed through my hat and coat, and two horses were shot from underneath me. Eventually, I just started grabbing the horses of dead men and riding those. Two thirds of the officers were killed, including the other two aides to camp. General Braddock himself had four horses shot from under him until he was finally felled by a bullet. After three hours of intense fighting, we began to withdraw. Although I had no official position in the chain of command, I was able to impose some kind of order, and I formed a rear guard to cover the retreat of the main body. As we marched back into feet from the Western frontier, little did we know, but our feet were traveling along the road to independency. For in the defeat of General Braddock, the sons and daughters of America had come to realize that Mother England could not save them from everything. The tactics employed by our cousins across the Atlantic would not work here on American soil. The greatest army in the world had just been handed a sound defeat from their ancient enemy and had been saved from total destruction by the sacrifice and determination of Americans.