Fort Cumberland: Where Washington Learned to Lose

Beneath the grounds of Emanuel Episcopal Church in downtown Cumberland lie the tunnels of an eighteenth-century frontier fort that shaped the military career of George Washington and determined the fate of the western Appalachians.

Fort Cumberland was built in the fall of seventeen fifty-four at the confluence of Wills Creek and the Potomac River, on what was then the far western edge of British-American civilization. Maryland militia troops constructed it under Captain John Dagworthy. It was initially called Fort Mount Pleasant and renamed Fort Cumberland in seventeen fifty-five, in honor of the Duke of Cumberland.

The fort became the launching point for one of the most catastrophic British military defeats in North American history. In May of seventeen fifty-five, General Edward Braddock arrived at Fort Cumberland commanding roughly two thousand British regulars and colonial militia. Among his officers: a twenty-three-year-old Virginia colonel named George Washington, serving as a volunteer aide-de-camp. Also present were a young Daniel Morgan and, by some accounts, a teenage Daniel Boone. Braddock's force marched northwest toward Fort Duquesne, at modern Pittsburgh, intending to drive the French from the Ohio Valley.

They never got there. On July ninth, seventeen fifty-five, French and Native American forces ambushed Braddock's column at the Battle of the Monongahela. Braddock was mortally wounded. Washington, though two horses were shot from under him and his coat was pierced by four musket balls, survived and helped rally the shattered survivors, who fell back toward Fort Cumberland. He was twenty-three years old, and he had just watched a professional British army destroyed by irregular warfare. He would not forget the lesson.

Washington returned to Fort Cumberland later as commander of Virginia's frontier defenses, clashing repeatedly with British officers over questions of rank and authority. It was here, in these mountains, that he first developed the frustrations with British military culture that would eventually feed his revolutionary convictions.

The wooden fort is long gone. But the tunnels remain beneath the church, and a series of engraved markers in the ground trace the corners of the fortification exactly where it stood.