The French And Indian War Starts

By 1750, the Upper Ohio River Valley was a torch sitting on a powder keg.  Literally.  Attempting to head off hostilities in the wake of the costly War of Austrian Succession, the French and English met in Paris to divide the land, but were unable to come to an agreement.  Already, border skirmishes between the settlers and the Indians were starting to boil over.

In 1752, the French dispatched the Marquis Duquesne (Du-CANE) to take control of the Ohio River valley and expel the British.  Hoping to simply drive the British out rather than provoke a full scale war, Duquesne built two forts at strategic locations along the rivers at Lake Erie and at Waterford on the Allegheny.  The governor of Virginia, on the request of the Ohio Company, sent a young militia colonel named George Washington to deliver a letter to Duquesne requesting the forts be removed.  Duquesne predictably refused, but the mission was not a complete loss.  Washington came upon a parcel of land where the Allegheny meets the Monongahela to form the Ohio (modern day Pittsburgh), and marked its location for a future British response: Fort Prince George.

The British fort was short lived, however, as the French expelled the British in 1754 and built their own fort (Fort Duquesne).  George Washington, on patrol in the west, heard of the surrender of the Prince George garrison and headed to intercept the French army.  He attacked them near Great Meadows Pennsylvania, and killed the general in command of the army, but was forced to withdraw by reinforcements from Fort Duquesne.  Washington dug in among the trees, naming his trench line Fort Necessity.  The Duquesne garrison attacked the trenchworks, and Washington was forced to surrender under generous terms (as England and France were not yet actually at war) on July 4, 1754.  Washington and the survivors of the patrol returned to Virginia, and the French And Indian War had begun.

Jockying For Position In Ohio