Forks of the Ohio.

Of all the leaders of the English colonies, Gov. Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia was the most concerned about the way the French and their Indian allies were behaving in the Ohio River valley. He and other Virginians had invested in companies that intended to acquire land in the Ohio valley and were desperate to forestall any French control of the area. Virginia legislators were reluctant to raise and pay for troops, so when he learned that the French were building forts on the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, the best he could do was commission the twenty-two-year-old George Washington as lieutenant colonel in charge of about 150 militiamen and send him in the spring 1754 to build a fort where the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers met. The move was too late. The French had already arrived at the...