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Did a Young George Washington Actually Start the French and Indian War?
The answer is not a simple one
Everyone knows that George Washington led the Continental Army in the American Revolution, became the first President of the United States, and ended up on both the quarter and the dollar bill. There are also a lot of longtime myths about Washington, like that he chopped down a cherry tree and once threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River. But have you ever heard that it was a young Lieutenant Colonel George Washington who in 1754, twenty-two years before the American colonies declared independence, actually started the French and Indian War (with the resulting wider European conflict called the Seven Years’ War)?
That’s the view many historians hold about this little-known period of Washington’s military career. The accounts of the pivotal incident are sometimes conflicting, but the story is basically that in May of 1754, the 22-year-old Washington set out with a force of around 100 Virginia militia to enforce Britain’s claim to the Ohio Valley against the encroaching French. On the morning of May 28, Washington and a party of 30 to 40 soldiers came upon a French camp that had been initially spotted by their Iroquois scouts.
Washington said in his report to his superiors that he and his men opened fire when they saw…
