The Story - Part 2
• Col. Thomas Gage, who would one day order British forces into the field against colonial militia at Lexington and Concord.
• Capt. Horatio Gates, future general of continental forces and American hero following his victory over British forces at the battle of Saratoga.
• Daniel Morgan, a wagon driver who would become the most feared leader of American sharpshooters in the American Revolution and the key to victory against the British at the battle of Cowpens.
• Daniel Boone, another wagon driver who would gain fame as a frontiersman, explorer, and politician.
• Benjamin Franklin, who didn’t march with the army but who, as Postmaster General of America, met with Braddock and helped to secure funding and supplies for the campaign.
Seven miles short of Fort Duquesne, Braddock’s force was surprised and routed by an allied force of French and Native Americans at the Battle of the Monongahela. Braddock received a mortal wound in battle, and George Washington led the retreat back to the mountaintop camp of the British supply train. Here, at Dunbar’s Camp, the army destroyed supplies too heavy to carry back to Fort Cumberland, and fleeing eastward, chose the roadbed for Braddock’s grave to prevent the general’s body from being defiled by the enemy. The shattered army soon went into winter quarters in Philadelphia--in July.
The French & Indian War ended in this region in 1758 when Gen. John Forbes marched an army westward across Pennsylvania and captured Fort Duquesne. Forbes purposefully avoided Braddock’s Road, which was longer and had fallen to disrepair. But Braddock’s Road was not to be forgotten. It would soon become a major route for settlers heading west to the new town of Pittsburgh and on into the Ohio Country. It would form the basis for the first National Pike, which went on to become U.S. Route 40, and then U.S. 68. The name of Braddock has been remembered with streets, towns, and waterways, and his mastery of the terrain has formed the basis for interstate transportation as we now know it in the mid-Atlantic corridor.
