Time has not dulled the vivid picture of that disaster. The golden sunshine of that July day; the pleasant murmur of the waters of the Monongahela; the silent and sombre forests; the steady tramp, tramp of the British to the inspiriting music of their regimental bands, playing the martial airs of England; the bright uniforms of the advancing columns giving to the background of stream and forest a touch of splendour;--and then the ambush and surprise; the war-whoops of savage foes that could not be seen; the hail of invisible death, no pellet of which went astray; the pathetic volleys which the doomed British troops fired at hidden antagonists; the panic; the rout; the pursuit; the slaughter; the crushing, humiliating defeat! Most of the British officers were killed or wounded, as they vainly tried to halt the stampede. Braddock himself received a mortal hurt. Furious at what he felt was the stupidity and cowardice of the British regulars, the youthful Washington rode among the fear-frenzied Englishmen striving to save the day. Two horses were shot under him. Four bullets rent his uniform. But crazed with fright, the Royal soldiers were beyond human control. Only the Virginia Rangers kept their heads and their courage. Obeying the shouted orders of their young Commander, they threw themselves between the terror-stricken British and the savage victors, and, fighting behind trees and rocks, were an ever-moving rampart of fire that saved the flying remnants of the English troops. But for Washington and his Rangers, Braddock’s whole force would have been annihilated. So everywhere went up the cry, “The British are beaten!” At first, rumour had it, that the whole force was destroyed, and that Washington had been killed in action. But soon another word followed hard upon this error--the word that the boyish Virginia Captain and his Rangers had fought with coolness, skill, and courage; that they alone had prevented the extinction of the British Regulars. Thus it was that the American Colonists suddenly came to think, that they themselves must be their own defenders. It was a revelation, all the more impressive because it was so abrupt, unexpected, and dramatic, that the red-coated professional soldiers were not the unconquerable warriors, the Colonists had been told that they were. From colonial mansion to log cabin, from the provincial capitals to the mean and exposed frontier settlements, Braddock’s defeat sowed the seed of the idea that Americans must depend upon themselves. Close upon the heels of this epoch-making event, John Marshall came into the world. He was born in a little log cabin in what is now a part of Virginia, eleven weeks after Braddock’s defeat. The Marshall cabin stood about a mile and a half from a cluster of a dozen similar log structures, a little settlement practically on the frontier. _Off to the Blue Ridge_