Jumonville Glen: Washington’s First Campaign, 1754
Alton Ketchum describes the Founding Father's earliest military foray, against the French on the headwaters of the Ohio River.
In the forest hollow of Jumonville Glen, south-western Pennsylvania, twenty-one years before Lexington and Concord, Lieutenant Colonel George Washington set in motion on May 28th, 1754, the train of events that led to the acknowledgement of American independence. Washington’s first adversaries were the French, his future allies. They were led by Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville, who carried a summons requiring the British to withdraw from French territory or be evicted by force of arms.
Jumonville had been instructed by the Sieur de Contrecoeur, his commander, to take two officers, an English interpreter and twenty-eight men, and to proceed from Fort Duquesne toward the new road being built by the British. He was cautioned to be alert for any hostile move, though ostensibly peace still prevailed.
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