Morgan at once enlisted in the Virginia troops, and served one of the companies as a teamster. An incident revealed the stuff of which the young wagoner was made. The captain of his company had trouble with a surly fellow who was a great bully and a skillful boxer. It was agreed, according to the unwritten rules of the time, that the matter should be settled by a fight at the next stopping place; and so when the troops halted for dinner, out strode the captain to meet his foe. {107} "You must not fight this man," said Morgan, stepping to the front. "Why not?" asked the officer. "Because you are our captain," replied the young teamster, "and if the fellow whips you, we shall all be disgraced. Let me fight him, and if he whips me, it will not hurt the name of the company." The captain said it would never do, but at last yielded. Morgan promptly gave the bully a sound thrashing. After the defeat of Braddock, in 1755, the French and the redskins wreaked their vengeance upon the terrified frontier settlements. A regiment of a thousand men was raised, and Washington was made its colonel. With this small force, he was supposed to guard a frontier of two hundred and fifty miles. Morgan enlisted as a teamster. It was his duty to carry supplies to the various military posts on this long frontier. This meant almost daily exposure to all kinds {108} of dangers. It was a rough, hard school for a young man of twenty; but it made him an expert with the rifle and the tomahawk, and a master of Indian warfare, which was so useful to him in after years. During one of these wild campaigns on the frontier, a British captain took offense at something young Morgan had said or done, and struck him with the flat of his sword. This was too much for the high-strung teamster. He straightway knocked the redcoat officer senseless. A drumhead court-martial sentenced the young Virginian to receive one hundred lashes on the bare back. He was at once stripped, tied up, and punished. Morgan said in joke that there was a miscount, and that he actually received only ninety-nine blows. With his wonderful power of endurance, the young fellow stood the punishment like a hero, and came out of it alive and defiant. This act, extreme even in those days of British cruelty, doubtless nerved him to incredible deeds of bravery in fighting the hated redcoats. Shortly after this, he became a private in the militia. He made his mark when the French and Indians attacked a fort near Winchester. The story is that he killed four savages in as many minutes. The young Virginian never drove any more army wagons. From this time, he stood forth as a born fighter and a leader of men. Such was his coolness in danger, his sound judgment, and, more than all else, his great {109} influence over his men, that he was recommended to Governor Dinwiddie for a captain's commission. "What!" exclaimed the governor, "to a camp boxer and a teamster?"