The situation of Fort Pitt and its predecessor, Fort Duquesne, was of immense strategic importance in the early days of the American nation, the considerations which gave it value having operated in the field of commerce in late years to make Pittsburgh notable as a manufacturing and distributing centre. It stood at the gateway to the Ohio River and the rich country which the Ohio waters, and since it commanded the Ohio it commanded the key to the West.
These considerations were appreciated by the Colonial Virginians, and in 1754 Captain William Trent was commissioned by Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, to erect a fort at the juncture of the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers at the expense of the Ohio Company. Captain Trent commenced his work in February, 1754, but in April, 1754, surrendered to a detachment of French under Le Mercier.
The French then commenced the erection of a fort of their own on the extreme neck of land between the rivers. They finished their work in the summer of that year and named it Fort Duquesne in honor of Governor-General Duquesne, of Canada.
In the same year a force of English colonists, about 150 strong, made a tentative advance against the work under the leadership of our own George Washington, then a young man. Washington found the post too strong for attack and became himself the object of hostile attention from the French, being forced to fall back to Great Meadows and to erect a temporary triangular earth fortification there which he named Fort Necessity.
In 1755 it was the plan of the British ministry to concentrate its forces in the colonies in three directions of attack against the French. One blow was to be struck at Acadia; a second blow was to be struck at Crown Point, and a third, under General Braddock, an English-born officer of wide Continental experience, at Fort Duquesne.
From a painting in the collection of the Pennsylvania Historical Society
OLD BLOCK-HOUSE, FORT PITT, PITTSBURGH, PA.]
Braddock’s unfortunate march began May 27, 1755, from Fort Cumberland, Maryland (Cumberland, to-day), and of the details of that disastrous journey little need be told in these pages as the story is already familiar. Braddock had the bravery of his calling and the arrogance and presumption of the European brought into contact with provincials. He did not believe that anything very good could come out of the colonies and did not hesitate to show this attitude of mind. On the line of march he scorned to send out scouts ahead as was necessary in fighting Indians. He insisted on sending his Continental troops in solid order against an enemy who fought behind trees and stumps in any kind of order that suited his purpose. He committed all of the stupidities that vanity and overweening self-confidence could dictate, and, when the French in a despairing last-minute effort against overwhelming numbers had found easy victory, gave up his life on the field of battle. He was buried beneath the feet of the retreating troops so that their steps should obliterate from the fiendish enemy the location of his last resting place.