Following an appointment as surveyor general of customs in southern American ports, Dinwiddie became Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, and featured as such in William Makepeace Thackeray's nineteenth-century historical novel The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century.

[4] Dinwiddie's actions as lieutenant governor are cited by one historian as precipitating the French and Indian War, commonly held to have begun in 1754.

This version of history is disputed when one notices that Father Le Loutre's War in Acadia began in 1749 and did not end until the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755.

In fact, Thomas Jefferys, the Royal Geographer of the day, produced a pamphlet out of his Parliamentary testimony that explained the misconduct of the French in what amounted to a Treaty of Utrecht boundary dispute.

Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, commandant at Fort Le Boeuf, a tough veteran of the west, received Washington politely, but rejected his ultimatum.

After having attacked the French at the Battle of Jumonville Glen, Washington retreated and built a small stockade, Fort Necessity, at a spot then called "Great Meadows", by the Youghiogheny River, eleven miles southeast of present-day Uniontown.

Dinwiddie was subsequently active in rallying other colonies in defense against France and ultimately prevailed upon the British to send General Edward Braddock to Virginia with two regiments of regular troops, in part with a letter to Lord Halifax on 25 October 1754 containing these words:[10] The Invas'n and wicked designs of the Fr.

on the River Ohio has given me a Continual Uneasiness, w'ch was increased by the supine and unaccountable Obstinacy of the Assemblies of the different Colonies on this Cont't, y't tho' they were convinced of the Progress they had made, and the threat'g Speeches they gave out, they c'd not be roused from their lethargic Indolence, to grant suitable Supplies for conducting an Expedit'n so necessary for their own Safety.Braddock met his end at the Battle of Monongahela on 9 July 1755; this unexpected reverse prompted much concern and fear in the colony.

Over the next four years, until the defeat of the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec, and Vaudreuil's capitulation before Amherst at Montreal, the fate of the 13 colonies was uncertain and Dinwiddie's administration was marked by frequent disagreements with the Assembly over the financing of the war.