Braddock's March: How the Man Sent to Seize a Continent Changed American History (review)

The defeat of General Edward Braddock on the banks of the Monongahela River in July of 1755 remains one of the most devastating defeats of Anglo-American arms on the continent of North America. It was also entirely unexpected. So confident had Philadelphians been that the city had already prepared a fireworks display in anticipation of Braddock's certain victory. The unimaginable defeat has proven so mystifying that modern historians have perpetually sought to comprehend what occurred on that hot July day. Thomas E. Crocker's Braddock's March: How the Man Sent to Seize a Continent Changed American History represents a new installment in the franchise. Although the author does tell the story of Braddock's ill-fated endeavor, Crocker's analysis focuses, as the title clearly indicates, on the longer-lasting effects of the campaign.

The story presented in Braddock's March will prove quite familiar to many students of colonial America. The usual names, places, and results of Braddock's expedition fill its pages. The author does well to clearly and thoroughly illuminate the little-discussed nature of the general's military "family" and how it consequently strained his relationship with his next-in-commands, colonels Thomas Dunbar and Francis Halkett. What sets Crocker's work apart from more established treatments of Braddock, such as Lee McCardell's biographical sketch in Ill-Starred General (1986) and Paul E. Kopperman's detailed evaluation of the source material in Braddock at the Monongahela (1973), is the extensive attention paid to the overarching consequences of the defeat. To that end, he identifies major military and political shifts in American history that may be traced back to that fateful day in 1755.

Crocker argues, for example, that among Braddock's army were the junior officers who later developed into the core senior leadership of both America's and Great Britain's Revolutionary War-era armies. The success of men such as George Washington, Thomas Gage, and Arthur St. Clair support his point. Washington, he suggests, managed to redeem his tarnished reputation after his Fort Necessity debacle by serving with distinction in the battle. The author further suggests that the battle represents the birth of special forces and the first use of rifles in combat. Finally, Crocker sees a noticeable shift in American perceptions of warfare. He believes that the defeat both convinced Americans of the superiority of irregular warfare and forced them to question the invincibility of British arms. To the author, these military transformations either directly led to the American Revolution or shaped how armies conducted that conflict.

Crocker also connects the campaign to political developments. It led to the expulsion of the Acadians, the ultimate annihilation of native peoples, and a shift in British policy toward one aimed at seizing the entirety of Canada. For the colonists, the author further claims, the event represented a major turning point in their relationship with Great Britain. It opened up the first major corridor into the interior of the continent leading to a postwar explosion of western settlement. The apparent inability of the British to defend the colonies resulted in the development of American self-reliance. Finally, the campaign forced, if only on a micro-level, the colonists and Great Britain to define their relationship within the empire as they negotiated who was responsible for providing funding, provisions, and troops. Once again, Crocker seems to argue that the expedition's political ramifications helped direct a course toward revolution.

In making his case, Crocker suggests that the Braddock campaign rivals, if not exceeds, the most important events during the Seven Years' War. He notes that "[t]he geopolitical reality of a united British North America—from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico—born on the Plains of Abraham [referring here to General James Wolfe's seminal victory at Quebec in 1759] . . . lasted only seventeen years, whereas...