Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 4).djvu/122

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
118
BRADDOCK'S ROAD

with the army in a covered wagon, still weak but ready to move with the army in the morning and sleep in Duquesne that night. The whole army was infused with this hope as the ninth of July dawned.

For no one questioned Braddock's success if he could once throw that army across the mountains. No one knew the situation better than Washington, and early in the campaign he wrote his brother: "As to any danger from the enemy, I look upon it as trifling." In London profane wits cited Scripture (Ezekiel xxxv: 1–10) to justify the conquest of the Ohio valley: "Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Son of man, set thy face against Mount Seir and prophesy against it, and say unto it, thus saith the Lord God: Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee and I will stretch out mine hand against thee and I will make thee most desolate. . . . Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it." Already subscription papers were being passed about in Philadelphia to provide festal fires to illumine the Quaker City