Three North Carolina companies, composed of trained soldiers and hardy frontiersmen, went through this campaign under the command of Major Hugh Waddell, the "Washington of North Carolina." Long of limb and broad of chest, powerful, lithe, and active, Waddell was an ideal leader for this arduous service, being fertile in expedient and skilful in the employment of Indian tactics.

With true provincial pride Governor Dobbs records that Waddell "had great honor done him, being employed in all reconnoitring parties, and dressed and acted as an Indian; and his sergeant, Rogers, took the only Indian prisoner, who gave Mr.Forbes certain intelligence of the forces in Fort Duquesne, upon which they resolved to proceed." This apparently trivial incident is remarkable, in that it proved to be the decisive factor in a campaign that was about to be abandoned.

The information in regard to the state of the garrison at Fort Duquesne, secured from the Indian, for the capture of whom two leading officers had offered a reward of two hundred and fifty pounds, emboldened Forbes to advance rather than to retire.
Upon reaching the fort (November 25th), he found it abandoned by the enemy.

Sergeant Rogers never received the reward promised by General Forbes and the other English officer; but some time afterward he was compensated by a modest sum from the colony of North Carolina.
A series of unfortunate occurrences, chiefly the fault of the whites, soon resulted in the precipitation of a terrible Indian outbreak.

A party of Cherokees, returning home in May, 1758, seized some stray horses on the frontier of Virginia--never dreaming of any wrong, says an old historian, as they saw it frequently done by the whites.