In Virginia, on the other hand, and in the adjoining province of
Maryland, wagons, horses, and forage were scarce. The enemies of the
Administration ascribed this blunder to the influence of the Quaker
merchant, John Hanbury, whom the Duke of Newcastle had consulted as a
person familiar with American affairs. Hanbury, who was a prominent
stockholder in the Ohio Company, and who traded largely in Virginia, saw
it for his interest that the troops should pass that way; and is said to
have brought the Duke to this opinion.[200] A writer of the time thinks
that if they had landed in Pennsylvania, forty thousand pounds would
have been saved in money, and six weeks in time.[201]
[Footnote 200: _Shebbeare's Tracts_, Letter I. Dr. Shebbeare was a
political pamphleteer, pilloried by one ministry, and rewarded by the
next. He certainly speaks of Hanbury, though he does not give his name.
Compare Sargent, 107, 162.]
[Footnote 201: _Gentleman's Magazine, Aug_. 1755.]
Not only were supplies scarce, but the people showed such unwillingness
to furnish them, and such apathy in aiding the expedition, that even
Washington was provoked to declare that "they ought to be
chastised."[202] Many of them thought that the alarm about French
encroachment was a device of designing politicians; and they did not
awake to a full consciousness of the peril till it was forced upon them
by a deluge of calamities, produced by the purblind folly of their own
representatives, who, instead of frankly promoting the expedition,
displayed a perverse and exasperating narrowness which chafed Braddock
to fury.
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