As the winter of 1755-6 approached, the Indian atrocities ceased and for a few months there was quiet. But by early spring the raids were renewed with merciless regularity. Every day brought a new tale of murder and pillage; and very soon every road was filled with fugitives "bringing to Winchester fresh dismay." With his few men this first hero of Winchester (who by the way was at his post, not "twenty miles away") was again straining every nerve that Virginia might not lose the great stretch of beautiful country west of the Blue Ridge. "The supplicating tears of women and moving petitions of the men, melt me into such deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease." Perhaps the vacillating Dinwiddie threw this letter down as too ardent a one for a military hand to pen; if so Edward Everett has raised it aloft to show his thrilled audiences "the whole man" Washington. "The inhabitants are removing daily," he again wrote--"... in a short time will leave this country as desolate as Hampshire." To such a degree were the people terrified that secret meetings were held where leaders openly spoke of making terms with the French and Indians by renouncing all claims to the West--no less traitors to the best good of the colonies than those who celebrated over Braddock's defeat.[44] The campaign of 1756, as conducted by Shirley, contained no hope of relief for Pennsylvania or Virginia; "so much am I kept in the dark," Washington exclaimed, "that I do not know whether to prepare for the offensive or defensive; yet what might be absolutely necessary in the one, would be quite useless in the other." He well knew a determined stroke at Fort Duquesne, "a floodgate to open ruin and woe," was the only hope of the southern and central colonies. In the meantime he led a desperately exasperating life attempting to hold the frontier with his tatterdemalion army by following Pennsylvania's example of building a line of forts to defend the country. There was no destitution or distress of which he did not know; at times he was begging for blankets to cover his naked soldiers, and again for shoes and shirts; there were few guns in a state of repair and at times in days of danger hundreds flocked to him who could neither be fed nor armed. His life must have been known to Lord Fairfax who wrote in the following strain: "Such a medley of undisciplined militia must create you various troubles, but having Caesar's Commentaries and perhaps Quintus Curtius, you have therein read of greater fatigues, murmurings, mutinies, and defections, than will probably come to your share." The fact is, in these days there was no officer's duty with which Washington was not acquainted. He supervised the building of forts, the transportation of stores and guns and ammunition, here reprimanding a coarse mountaineer for profanity,