The natural result of the blunder soon followed.The French, finding the whole frontier of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia abandoned, organized the Indians under French officers and swept the whole region with a devastation of massacre, scalping, and burning that has never been equaled.Hurons, Potawatomies, Ojibways, Ottawas, Mingoes, renegades from the Six Nations, together with the old treaty friends of Penn, the Delawares and Shawanoes, began swarming eastward and soon had killed more people than had been lost at Braddock's defeat.The onslaught reached its height in September and October.By that time all the outlying frontier settlers and their families had been killed or sent flying eastward to seek refuge in the settlements.The Indians even followed them to the settlements, reached the Susquehanna, and crossed it.They massacred the people of the village of Gnadenhutten, near Bethlehem on the Lehigh, and established near by a headquarters for prisoners and plunder.Families were scalped within fifty miles of Philadelphia, and in one instance the bodies of a murdered family were brought into the town and exhibited in the streets to show the inhabitants how near the danger was approaching.Nothing could be done to stem the savage tide.Virginia was suffering in the same way: the settlers on her border were slaughtered or were driven back in herds upon the more settled districts, and Washington, with a nominal strength of fifteen hundred who would not obey orders, was forced to stand a helpless spectator of the general flight and misery.There was no adequate force or army anywhere within reach.The British had been put to flight and had gone to the defense of New England and New York.Neither Pennsylvania nor Virginia had a militia that could withstand the French and their red allies.They could only wait till the panic had subsided and then see what could be done.
One thing was accomplished, however, when the Pennsylvania Assembly passed a Quaker militia law which is one of the most curious legal documents of its kind in history.It was most aptly worded, drafted by the master hand of Franklin.It recited the fact that the province had always been ruled by Quakers who were opposed to war, but that now it had become necessary to allow men to become soldiers and to give them every facility for the profession of arms, because the Assembly though containing a Quaker majority nevertheless represented all the people of the province.To prevent those who believed in war from taking part in it would be as much a violation of liberty of conscience as to force enlistments among those who had conscientious scruples against it.Nor would the Quaker majority have any right to compel others to bear arms and at the same time exempt themselves.Therefore a voluntary militia system was established under which a fighting Quaker, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, or anybody, could enlist and have all the military glory he could win.
It was altogether a volunteer system.Two years afterwards, as the necessities of war increased, the Quaker Assembly passed a rather stringent compulsory militia bill; but the governor vetoed it, and the first law with its volunteer system remained in force.Franklin busied himself to encourage enlistments under it and was very successful.Though a philosopher and a man of science, almost as much opposed to war as the Quakers and not even owning a shotgun, he was elected commander and led a force of about five hundred men to protect the Lehigh Valley.His common sense seems to have supplied his lack of military training.He did no worse than some professional soldiers who might be named.The valley was supposed to be in great danger since its village of Gnadenhutten had been burned and its people massacred.The Moravians, like the Quakers, had suddenly found that they were not as much opposed to war as they had supposed.
They had obtained arms and ammunition from New York and had built stockades, and Franklin was glad to find them so well prepared when he arrived.He built small forts in different parts of the valley, acted entirely on the defensive, and no doubt checked the raids of the Indians at that point.They seem to have been watching him from the hilltops all the time, and any rashness on his part would probably have brought disaster upon him.After his force had been withdrawn, the Indians again attacked and burned Gnadenhutten.
