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 CHAPTER II

HERE is no truer picture of the dark days of 1755–56 along the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia than that presented in the correspondence of Washington at this time. A great burden fell upon his young shoulders with the failure of the campaigns of 1755. Though far from being at fault, he suffered greatly through the faults and failures of others. The British army had come and had been routed. Now, after such a victory as the Indians had never dreamed possible, the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontiers, five hundred miles in length, lay helpless before the bands of bold marauders drunk with the blood of Braddock's slain.

The young colonel of the remnant of the Virginia Regiment took up the difficult task of defending the southern frontier as readily as though a quiet, happy life on