On June 18, 1754, Dinwiddie wrote, with unusually
full spelling for him:
"I am perswaded had His Majesty's Com'ds to the other Colonies
been duely obey'd, and the necessary Assistance given by them,
the Fr. wou'd have long ago have been oblig'd entirely to have
evacuated their usurp'd Possession of the King's Lands, instead
of w'ch they are daily becoming more formidable, whilst every
Gov't except No. Caro. has amus'd me with Expectations that have
proved fruitless, and at length refuse to give any Supply, unless
in such a manner as must render it ineffectual."
This saddened mood with its deliberate penmanship did not last
long. Presently Dinwiddie was making a Round Robin of himself in
another series of letters to Governors, Councilors, and
Assemblymen, frantically beseeching them for "H. M'y's hono." and
their own, and, if not, for "post'r'ty," to rise against the
cruel French whose Indians were harrying the borders again and
"Basely, like Virmin, stealing and carrying off the helpless
infant"--as nice a simile, by the way, as any Sheridan ever put
into the mouth of Mrs. Malaprop.
Dinwiddie saw his desires thwarted on every hand by the selfish
spirit of localism and jealousy which was more rife in America in
those days than it is today. Though the phrase "capitalistic war"
had not yet been coined, the great issues of English civilization
on this continent were befogged, for the majority in the
colonies, by the trivial fact that the shareholders in the Ohio
Company stood to win by a vigorous prosecution of the war and to
lose if it were not prosecuted at all.
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