When anything went wrong Braddock blamed, not
the ineffective work of his own men, but the supineness of
Virginia. "He looks upon the country," Washington wrote in wrath,
"I believe, as void of honour and honesty." The hour of trial
came in the fight of July, 1755, when Braddock was defeated and
killed on the march to the Ohio. Washington told his mother that
in the fight the Virginian troops stood their ground and were
nearly all killed but the boasted regulars "were struck with such
a panic that they behaved with more cowardice than it is possible
to conceive." In the anger and resentment of this comment is
found the spirit which made Washington a champion of the colonial
cause from the first hour of disagreement.
That was a fatal day in March, 1765, when the British Parliament
voted that it was just and necessary that a revenue be raised in
America. Washington was uncompromising. After the tax on tea he
derided "our lordly masters in Great Britain." No man, he said,
should scruple for a moment to take up arms against the
threatened tyranny. He and his neighbors of Fairfax County,
Virginia, took the trouble to tell the world by formal resolution
on July 18, 1774, that they were descended not from a conquered
but from a conquering people, that they claimed full equality
with the people of Great Britain, and like them would make their
own laws and impose their own taxes.
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