George Washington Read online

  Richard Henry Lee—A contemporary of Washington, he was a leader in the House of Burgesses and the Continental Congresses, signing the Declaration of Independence. Lee opposed ratification of the Constitution but then served as a senator from Virginia.

  Betty Washington Lewis—Washington’s next-younger sibling, she married Fielding Lewis, a Fredericksburg merchant, and had eight children who survived to adulthood. Washington employed several of her sons as secretary or farm manager. When her mother, Mary Ball Washington, gave up control of Ferry Farm at the age of sixty-two, Mary moved close to Betty, who cared for her.

  Fielding Lewis—Husband of Betty Washington, Lewis was a Fredericksburg merchant and served as commissary general of munitions for the Continental Army. Washington often stopped with the Lewis family on trips between Mount Vernon and Williamsburg.

  James Madison—Washington’s closest political confidant during the crucial years leading up to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and during the first year of the new government, Madison steered the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights through Congress and sponsored essential early legislation. Troubled by the powers exercised by Washington as president, Madison joined with Jefferson to found the “Republican interest,” which became the Republican Party, which became the Democratic Party. He served as Jefferson’s secretary of state and then as the fourth president.

  George Mason—A neighbor of Mount Vernon, Mason provided much of the intellectual and rhetorical ammunition for Washington’s opposition to British policies from 1769 to 1774, including the Fairfax Resolves. Chronically ill, Mason often declined public service. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, but his refusal to sign the final document opened a rift between him and Washington.

  James McHenry—Born in Ireland and trained as a surgeon in America, McHenry settled in Maryland and served as a secretary to Washington during the war. He was secretary of war for the final year of Washington’s presidency, and then under President Adams.

  Timothy Pickering—Adjutant general and quartermaster general of the Continental Army, Pickering of Massachusetts served in the Washington administration as postmaster general, secretary of war, and then secretary of state (after four others declined the position). He continued as secretary of state in the Adams administration.

  Edmund Randolph—After briefly serving as an aide to Washington in the Continental Army, Randolph rose through Virginia politics to become governor and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where he presented the Virginia Plan at the beginning of the deliberations. Randolph refused to sign the Constitution, then switched to support ratification. He served as attorney general in Washington’s administration and then as secretary of state until his resignation under a cloud in the summer of 1795.

  Adam Stephen—A Scot trained in medicine, Stephen settled in western Virginia. He joined the Virginia forces in the French and Indian War, becoming Washington’s second-in-command in the Virginia Regiment. He unsuccessfully opposed Washington in the 1761 election for the House of Burgesses in Frederick County. His actions as senior officer of the Virginia Regiment were criticized by the House of Burgesses. In the Revolutionary War, Stephen rose to major general, but a court-martial dismissed him from the army after the Battle of Germantown in 1777.

  David Stuart—A physician in Alexandria, in 1783 Stuart married the widow of Washington’s stepson, John Parke Custis, and became a confidant of Washington’s. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia Convention that ratified the Constitution in 1788. Stuart was a leader in the campaign to bring the seat of government to the Potomac region.

  Anne Fairfax Washington—Daughter of Colonel William Fairfax, Anne married Washington’s beloved half-brother, Lawrence, and inherited Mount Vernon from him. When she remarried, she leased the property to Washington, who inherited the property after the deaths of Anne and the daughter she had with Lawrence.

  Augustine (Gus) Washington—Washington’s father moved his young family from Popes Creek in Westmoreland County to the Little Hunting Creek property on the Potomac, which became Mount Vernon. Gus devoted much of his energy to an ironworks. He died at forty-nine, when Washington was eleven years old.

  Augustine (Austin) Washington Jr.—Half-brother to Washington, he inherited the family’s Popes Creek property in Westmoreland County and served in the House of Burgesses for four years. Called Austin within the family, he died at age forty-two.

  Bushrod Washington—Bushrod was the eldest son of Washington’s cherished younger brother John Augustine (“Jack”). As a private attorney, Bushrod served in Virginia’s House of Delegates and that state’s constitutional ratifying convention. John Adams appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court. He served as lead executor of Washington’s will and inherited Mount Vernon.

  Charles Washington—Washington’s youngest brother, Charles settled in western Virginia in 1780 and laid out Charles Town, named for him, which now is in West Virginia.

  Frances (Fanny) Bassett Washington [Lear]—Daughter of Burwell and Anna Maria Bassett, Fanny moved to Mount Vernon after her mother’s death in 1778. She married Washington’s nephew, George Augustine, and after her husband’s early death, married Washington’s secretary, Tobias Lear.

  George Augustine Washington—Son of Washington’s brother Charles, George Augustine served as a major in the Continental Army. After the war, he traveled to the Caribbean seeking a cure for his tuberculosis. Upon his return, he worked as manager of Mount Vernon and married Fanny Bassett, but died in his early thirties.

  John (Jack) Augustine Washington—The fourth child of Mary and Gus Washington, Jack was Washington’s favorite among his younger brothers. Jack served as a member of Westmoreland County’s Committee of Safety during the Revolutionary War and managed their mother’s business affairs for some years.

  Lawrence Washington—Fourteen years older than his half-brother George and educated in England, Lawrence rose swiftly in Virginia society. He led a military unit in a British expedition to the Caribbean, married a daughter of Colonel William Fairfax of Belvoir, served in the House of Burgesses and on the Truro Parish vestry, and was president of the Ohio Company, which aimed to settle western lands. After futilely seeking cures for his tuberculosis, he died at age thirty-four. Lawrence was a surrogate father to Washington after their own father’s death, introducing him to the Fairfaxes and other Virginia leaders. Washington described Lawrence as his best friend and kept Lawrence’s portrait in his office at Mount Vernon.

  Lund Washington—A distant cousin of Washington’s from the Chotank region of Virginia, Lund managed Mount Vernon for more than twenty years. At Lund’s request, his widow freed his slaves after his death in 1796.

  Mary Ball Washington—Washington’s mother, Mary Ball was orphaned at age twelve and lived with her elder sister until marrying Gus Washington, by whom she had five children who lived to adulthood. Mary was thirty-six when she became a widow and single mother. She managed Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg for more than two decades thereafter. Contemporaries thought Washington’s strong character and self-discipline derived from Mary. Mother and son shared chronic anxiety about money.

  Samuel Washington—The second son born to Mary and Gus Washington, Samuel served in the Virginia militia during the early years of the Revolutionary War. He settled in western Virginia but died at age forty-seven, leaving three minor children whom Washington provided for.

  PART I

  Nor during his life has [Washington] ever performed a single action that could entitle him to the least share of merit or praise, much less of glory. But as a politician he has certainly distinguished himself; having by his political maneuvers, and his cautious plausible management, raised himself to a degree of eminence in his own country unrivalled.

  —John F. D. Smyth, former British soldier (1784)

  Chapter 1

  Time for a New Plan

  In
late 1757, a man on horseback rode toward a large house that overlooked the Potomac River, several miles south of Alexandria, Virginia. Draped with a soldier’s cloak, the man’s figure was martial, tall, and lean. His russet hair was tied at the nape of the neck. His face reflected weeks of grinding illness. His fair complexion, usually ruddy from wind and sun, had paled. Though he was particular about the fit of his garments, now they sagged from his long frame.

  Colonel George Washington, the twenty-five-year-old master of Mount Vernon, was home from war on Virginia’s western frontier. Though he was taller and stronger than most men, four years in the wilderness had sapped his health. Some days before, he had left his command of the Virginia Regiment in the Shenandoah valley. Charged with stopping bloody Indian raids with a thousand-man regiment, but often having fewer than half that number, Washington had met with little success. Sick and dispirited, he left for home without permission from his British commander or from the colony’s royal governor.

  Washington’s affliction had lingered for nearly three months, then worsened. A frontier doctor had bled him, but it did not help. When the doctor said that Washington might die unless he had an immediate rest, the young officer left for Mount Vernon, assuming that the Indian attacks would subside in the cold months, when even tough Shawnee warriors stayed near their home fires.1

  Washington had the “bloody flux,” a vivid term for dysentery, which haunted military camps. Often fatal, the bloody flux was a grim ordeal under the best of conditions: cramps, diarrhea, intermittent chills and fever, dehydration, and debilitating fatigue. Its eighteenth-century name reflects the stage when the sufferer expels blood. Through the frosty autumn, commanding too few troops against a skilled enemy, Washington might have felt the disease was part of a curse against him.

  For four years, Washington had ridden thousands of miles through Virginia and Pennsylvania, back to eastern Virginia, and as far as Boston, but few of those journeys could have been as difficult as his ride home to Mount Vernon that November. The bloody flux compelled frequent stops for undignified squats. Remounting the horse would be another trial.

  Washington stopped in Alexandria, not far from Mount Vernon, to see the Reverend Charles Green.2 Like many pastors, Green ministered to bodies as well as souls. He directed the young commander to eat only jellies and the like, avoiding meat. Green also prescribed gum Arabic (gum from African acacia trees) and sweet wine from the Canary Islands.3

  No friend or family member greeted Washington at Mount Vernon, though the estate was far from empty. More than a dozen Black slaves, along with white servants and overseers, cared for the house and worked the fields.4 Jonathan Alton, servant to Washington earlier in the war, likely settled the ailing squire in a warm room.

  Finding the cupboards bare of the items prescribed by Reverend Green, Washington sent to Belvoir, the nearby estate of the aristocratic Fairfaxes. His friend George William Fairfax was away in England, so Washington asked Mrs. Fairfax to lend him Canary wine, green tea from China, and a pound of hartshorn shavings to make jellies. “I am quite out,” he confessed, “and cannot get a supply anywhere in these parts.” He added a bachelor’s plea for “such materials to make jellies as you think I may not just at this time have.”5

  For the next six weeks, no correspondence survives from Washington’s pen. No evidence shows visitors coming to Mount Vernon—not his mother or sister from Fredericksburg, nor any of his four surviving brothers. Through the shortening days, Washington’s disease maintained its grip in a house heated by wood fires. Cramping and sweating and shivering, Washington ate jellies while sipping tea and sweet wine. He had time—nothing but time—to reflect on where he stood in life and what might lie ahead.

  The truth, one that likely gnawed at him, was harsh. After a brilliant beginning, he had stumbled from setback to disappointment.

  At twenty-two, he was acclaimed a hero, his exploits recounted throughout British North America and in England. As commander of the Virginia Regiment, he gave orders to men decades older. Blessed with athletic ability, stern self-discipline, and polished manners, Washington was good at most things he tried. He expected success.

  But his war had taken an ill turn. Washington led his men to an indefensible position and endured a grisly defeat by the French and their Indian allies. His surrender saved lives, but the truce terms proved controversial. Then a British army, with Washington as aide to the commander, marched into the wilderness and was slaughtered, suffering unprecedented casualties. Washington’s reputation survived because he had not been in command and showed signal courage, but the episode was an epic failure.

  Since that disaster, Washington’s Virginia Regiment had flailed ineffectively against raids by France’s Indian allies. The raiders killed or kidnapped nearly at will, looting settlements while easily evading Washington’s men. Settlers fled east, as did Virginia soldiers who deserted in record numbers. Washington’s current situation—eighty miles from his overmatched force, staring into a fire, his world defined by chills and fever and the chamber pot—was far from the soaring trajectory he had imagined for himself.6

  From his earliest days, Washington hungered for distinction, for high reputation that would validate his worth. He never minced words about it: His goal was renown. Two years before, he wrote that “the chief part of my happiness” was “the esteem and notice the country has been pleased to honor me with.” Serving as an unpaid volunteer for part of his military service, he said he wanted only the “regard and esteem” of Virginians.7 Years later, he wrote that his “only ambition is to do my duty in this world as well as I am capable of performing it and to merit the good opinion of all good men.”8 Yet in late 1757, his military career seemed to promise only failure. For a man who ached for recognition, that prospect would be a horror.

  His personal life offered little solace. He had courted women, once proposing marriage before entering military service. That woman’s father rejected him, skeptical that George Washington would be an advantageous match. Service on Virginia’s frontier had offered few opportunities for finding a life partner of the type Washington needed, one with social standing and financial assets.

  Washington’s challenge was to remount the ladder of his high aspirations. The challenge was greater because he could no longer turn to the men who had propelled his early ascent. His father, Augustine (called Gus), died when George was eleven. He left George, his third son, a good name and enough slaves and land to stand above the middling classes, but nowhere near enough to enter Virginia’s elite.

  Two other men played paternal roles for George. Half-brother Lawrence, fourteen years older, hauled his brother up in the world alongside him. And Lawrence presented George to Colonel William Fairfax, who had managed his family’s huge lands from the Belvoir mansion where the colonel’s son George William now lived. A power in the colony’s government, Colonel Fairfax boosted Washington into high military office while dispensing sound advice. But Lawrence had died some years before, Colonel Fairfax only a few months back.

  A fourth sponsor was alive, but no longer a friend. Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie had advanced Washington at Colonel Fairfax’s suggestion. Dinwiddie stuck by the young commander through difficult times, but then disappointment made each man testy and quarrelsome. Now the governor, in poor health himself, was bound for England, embittered by the ingratitude of the young Virginian whose career he had launched.

  Washington still possessed advantages that might help him progress from his station as the third son of a Virginia family of the second rank. His military reputation had survived his many reverses. Some influential friends remained, including the eccentric Lord Fairfax, elder cousin of the departed Colonel Fairfax; the officers from his regiment; and some of the leaders of the House of Burgesses, the elected lower house of the colony’s General Assembly.

  He also occupied a fine home at Mount Vernon, though he did not own it. Built by his father and im
proved by Lawrence, the house offered a commanding view of the river and the lands beyond. On mild days, Washington could venture out the riverside entrance and draw strength from that prospect.

  Washington’s greatest advantage was his ambition and drive, which never rested. He knew he was capable of great things. He could feel it when he entered a room to admiring glances, when he swiftly won the trust of others. That special talent—his ability to inspire trust—would carry him to heights not even he imagined.

  Washington left no record of his musings at Mount Vernon during that difficult winter of 1757–58, when his society consisted mostly of servants and his enslaved workers. In late December, he felt well enough to send carping letters to merchants in Britain. He protested delivery delays, incomplete and misrouted shipments, poorly selected or damaged items, and high prices.9

  By the first week of the New Year, Washington plainly felt better. Colonel John Stanwix, his military superior, wrote to congratulate him on his recovery. Washington’s neighbor George Mason urged him not to return to duty until the weather warmed.10

  Dysentery, however, can wax and wane. When Virginia’s interim governor, John Blair, asked Washington to attend a council with frontier Indians, Washington declined and consulted another doctor. A few weeks later, he headed to Williamsburg to report on the regiment, but found “my fever and pain increase[d] upon me to a high degree.” Doctors again said his life was at risk. Washington retreated to the Mount Vernon fire, once more ailing and solitary, uncertain if he would ever recover.11

  By early March, self-pity seeped into Washington’s letter to Colonel Stanwix. “My constitution,” he wrote, “has received great injury, and . . . nothing can retrieve it but the greatest care, and most circumspect conduct.” Viewing his illness together with his failures on the frontier, Washington added, “I now see no prospect of preferment in military life . . . I have some thoughts of quitting my command and retiring from all public business.” Someone else, he added, “may perhaps have their endeavors crowned with better success.”12