Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 5).djvu/14

10 receipt of the news of Braddock's defeat.

Braddock made a death-bed prophecy; it was that the British would do better next time. In 1758 Pitt placed Braddock's unfulfilled task on the shoulders of Brigadier-general John Forbes, who marched to Bedford on the new road opened by Morris; thence he opened, along the general alignment of the prehistoric "Trading Path," a new road to the Ohio. It was a desperate undertaking; but Forbes completed his campaign in November, 1758 triumphantly—at the price of his life.

This road, fortified at Carlisle, Shippensburg, Chambersburg, Loudon, Littleton, Bedford, Ligonier, and Pittsburg became the great military route from the Atlantic seaboard to the trans-Allegheny empire. By it Fort Pitt was relieved during Pontiac's rebellion and the Ohio Indians were brought to terms. Throughout the Revolutionary War this road was the main thoroughfare over which the western forts received ammunition and supplies. In the dark days of the last decade of the eighteenth century, when the Kentucky and Ohio pioneers were fighting for the foot-