137, _note_.]
[Footnote 334: _Rec. Claude Godefroy Cocquard, S.J., a son Frere, Mars
(?)_, 1757.]
Washington was now in command of the Virginia regiment, consisting of a
thousand men, raised afterwards to fifteen hundred. With these he was to
protect a frontier of three hundred and fifty miles against more
numerous enemies, who could choose their time and place of attack. His
headquarters were at Winchester. His men were an ungovernable crew,
enlisted chiefly on the turbulent border, and resenting every kind of
discipline as levelling them with negroes; while the sympathizing House
of Burgesses hesitated for months to pass any law for enforcing
obedience, lest it should trench on the liberties of free white men. The
service was to the last degree unpopular. "If we talk of obliging men to
serve their country," wrote London Carter, "we are sure to hear a fellow
mumble over the words 'liberty' and 'property' a thousand times."[335]
The people, too, were in mortal fear of a slave insurrection, and
therefore dared not go far from home.[336] Meanwhile a panic reigned
along the border. Captain Waggoner, passing a gap in the Blue Ridge,
could hardly make his way for the crowd of fugitives. "Every day,"
writes Washington, "we have accounts of such cruelties and barbarities
as are shocking to human nature. It is not possible to conceive the
situation and danger of this miserable country. Such numbers of French
and Indians are all around that no road is safe.
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