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.”

[Footnote 335:  Extract in Writings of Washington, II. 145, note.]

[Footnote 336:  Letters of Dinwiddie, 1755.]

These frontiers had always been at peace.  No forts of refuge had thus far been built, and the scattered settlers had no choice but flight.  Their first impulse was to put wife and children beyond reach of the tomahawk.  As autumn advanced, the invading bands grew more and more audacious.  Braddock had opened a road for them by which they could cross the mountains at their ease; and scouts from Fort Cumberland reported that this road was beaten by as many feet as when the English army passed last summer.  Washington was beset with difficulties.  Men and officers alike were unruly and mutinous.  He was at once blamed for their disorders and refused the means of repressing them.  Envious detractors published slanders against him.  A petty Maryland captain, who had once had a commission from the King, refused to obey his orders, and stirred up factions among his officers.  Dinwiddie gave him cold support.  The temper of the old Scotchman, crabbed at the best, had been soured by disappointment, vexation, weariness, and ill-health.  He had, besides, a friend and countryman, Colonel Innes, whom, had he dared, he would gladly have put in Washington’s place.  He was full of zeal in the common cause, and wanted to direct the defence of the borders from his house at Williamsburg, two hundred miles distant.  Washington never hesitated to obey; but he accompanied his obedience by a statement of his own convictions and his reasons for them, which, though couched in terms the most respectful, galled his irascible chief.  The Governor acknowledged his merit; but bore him no love, and sometimes wrote to him in terms which must have tried his high temper to the utmost.  Sometimes, though rarely, he gave words to his emotion.