Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 4).djvu/67

Rh between the short-sighted assemblies and the short-sighted royal governors. The practical result, so far as Braddock was concerned, was the ignoring, for the greater part, of all the instructions sent from London. This meant that Braddock was abandoned to the fate of carrying out orders wretchedly planned under the most trying circumstances conceivable. Instead of having everything prepared for him, he found almost nothing prepared, and on what had been done he found he could place no dependence. Little wonder the doomed man has been remembered as a "brute" in America! To have shouldered the blame for the lethargy of the Colonies, for the jealousy of their governors, and for the wretchedness of the orders given Braddock, would have made any man brutish in word and action. Pennsylvanians have often accused Washington of speaking like a "brute" when, no doubt in anger, he exclaimed that the officials of that Province should have been flogged for their indifference; they were, God knows,—but by the Indians after Braddock's defeat.

The desperateness of Braddock's situa-