by Alexis Coe
The French, however, laid the blame squarely at Washington’s feet. De Jumonville would become a martyr—and a persuasive tool for rallying the public against the British. “The Misfortune is, that our People were surprized,” they wrote in an official report.
The English had incircled them, and came upon them unseen. . . . The Indians who were present when the Thing was done, say, that Mr. de Jumonville was killed by a Musket-Shot in the Head, whilst they were reading the Summons; and that the English would afterwards have killed all our Men, had not the Indians who were present, by rushing in between them and the English, prevented their Design.8
The French had dispatched de Jumonville on a diplomatic mission exactly like the kind Dinwiddie had envisioned for Washington: He was there to secure King Louis VI’s claim to the land and demand that the Virginians withdraw. De Jumonville was leading an ambassadorial delegation and never had any intention to fight. Had Washington attempted to engage peacefully, the French claimed, de Jumonville would have made that clear. Instead, a letter stating as much was later found on de Jumonville’s corpse.
Retaliation was all but guaranteed. Washington immediately began fortifying the aptly named Fort Necessity, a feeble wooden structure that stood exposed in an open field. A month later, on another rainy day, his troops were swiftly overwhelmed by a larger French and Indian force led by none other than de Jumonville’s half brother, Louis Coulon de Villiers. Washington agreed to sign Coulon’s terms of surrender, but would later claim that the translator omitted key phrases—which is how he ended up admitting to the assassination of de Jumonville.
“The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire,” British writer Horace Walpole commented at the time. At the age of twenty-two, Washington had committed a political misstep of global consequence. The British and the French were now formally engaged in a battle (known as the French and Indian War) for American land, forcing their allies in Austria, Germany, Prussia, Russia, Spain, and Sweden to take sides. The theater of war quickly spread into far-flung colonial holdings in the Americas, Africa, India, and even the Philippines. If the American Revolution had not taken place, Washington would probably be remembered today as the instigator of humanity’s first world war, one that lasted seven years.
Many of Washington’s men deserted him on the way home to Virginia, and he would soon do the same to Dinwiddie. When he learned that new colonial regulations would forever limit his rank to captain, he quit in a huff. He intended to return to private life—a decision that lasted all of five months.
* * *
Washington’s disastrous performance on the frontier somehow turned out to be a social climber’s dream. Upon his return, he gave Dinwiddie his personal journal, which the governor recognized as a powerful tool for whipping up popular animus against the French; he had it published in newspapers throughout the colonies. It was a hit—a propaganda victory for the cause and a boost to the career of its author. Within months, the British had commissioned a special edition. Few British subjects were willing to leave home for the better part of a year and trudge through a couple thousand miles of wilderness, but almost everyone wanted to read about it from a safe distance.
The diary culminates in a moment of acute misery: On his way back to Dinwiddie, Washington falls off a hastily constructed raft into the ice-clogged, rushing waters of the Allegheny River. He eventually makes his way to a nearby island, where he spends a particularly dismal night. Despite his diminished food supply and his threadbare clothing, the exhausted Washington carries home a letter from the French, who refused to vacate, proving himself loyal to the crown.
But royal recognition didn’t pay the bills. Washington dismissed the fifty pounds Dinwiddie paid him—over $11,000 today—as insufficient recompense for risking life and limb. In a letter to his brother Augustine, he wrote, “and what did I get by it? my expenses borne!”9 He’d basically broken even.
The entire experience had completely failed to live up to the promise of the frontier. Washington was supposed to die a noble death or emerge with great spoils. It was then, after his very first “victory” on behalf of the British, that he learned an important lesson: Colonists looking to make a small fortune off the British military were best off starting out with a large one. He could have made more money had he just stayed home and continued surveying.
And yet, he continued to serve when called upon. When Dinwiddie asked him to train a hundred militia troops with orders to erect a fort in the Ohio country, he agreed—though not without telling Richard Corbin, a Virginian in charge of the government’s finances, that he thought himself “worthy of the post of Lieutenant-colonel.” Channeling the Rules of Civility (“Strive not with your Superiors in argument, but always Submit your Judgement to others with Modesty”), Washington asked Corbin to “mention it at the appointment of officers.”10
Thanks to his widely read journal, Washington received the commission. He was twenty-two. He began studying whatever books and pamphlets on military strategy he could get his hands on. He pressed the colonial governors of Maryland and Pennsylvania to rise “from the lethargy we have fallen into” and display “the heroick spirit of every free-born Englishman to assert the rights and privileges of our king.”11 But Washington’s enthusiasm wasn’t contagious, and his recent celebrity lacked real influence. Maryland sent a paltry number of soldiers, and Pennsylvania provided none at all.
Small victories against the British hierarchy were encouraging, but Washington soon had to face reality. Under the British imperial system, even the most enterprising colonist would remain second class. An Englishman who held a lower rank could order him around, and worse, that Englishman made more money than he did.
Everyone knew it, too, which outraged Washington and made recruiting colonists for the British cause a constant challenge. At one point, an official suggested that he supplement his ranks with men from the county jail. Washington privately complained that he’d have better luck trying “to raize the Dead to Life again.” In a letter to Dinwiddie, he equated the undervalued work of colonial officers with those held in bondage: “to be slaving dangerously for the shadow of pay, through the woods, rocks, mountains,—I would rather prefer the great toil of a daily laborer, and dig for a maintenance . . . than serve upon such ignoble terms.”12
At long last, facing the prospect of an undermanned militia, Dinwiddie promised land grants as compensation to new recruits. But even the latter-day Town Taker wasn’t satisfied. He needed money now, not just to entice men to join but also to supply them with adequate clothing, shoes, and guns. And this time, he refused to take no for an answer. To accept inferior compensation was to admit that he was inferior to the Dinwiddies and Fairfaxes of the world, an idea he couldn’t abide. So he offered to serve the crown on a volunteer basis, without pay, hoping it would send the message that he was their equal. Washington had yet to grasp that any value they saw in merit and loyalty paled beside the importance of birthright.
CHAPTER 4
“Blow Out My Brains”
Dinwiddie didn’t understand how to flatter Washington into another expedition, but British Brigadier General Edward Braddock did. Braddock, sixty, could not offer Washington, twenty-three, the rapid ascent he craved, but he invited him into his “family,” an inner circle of military aides.1 If he could impress Braddock in the Ohios, where the British intended to capture Fort Duquesne and drive out the French once and for all, perhaps Braddock would get Washington a special exemption from the imperial system. (Never mind that that the crown had sent Braddock to the colonies precisely because the Virginians, under Washington, had suffered such a humiliating defeat by the French.) “I am very happy in the Generals Family, being treated with a complaisant Freedom which is quite agreeable to me,” he wrote to his mother on May 6, 1755, adding he had “no reason to doubt the satisfaction I hoped for, in making the Campaigne.”2
But Washington soon fo
und his place wasn’t at all “agreeable.” Braddock had been schooled in European warfare since the age of fifteen, and he wasn’t interested in hearing about how that translated in the colonies. His imperious demands that the royal governors of Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia fund his fortifications seemed unreasonable, especially to the pacifist Quaker population. And he thoroughly botched a meeting with Indian leaders, even rejecting the help of Moses the Son, a Mohawk who had a copy of Fort Duquesne’s layout. Worst of all, he demanded that soldiers build a road as they advanced, which slowed progress and strained supplies.
Washington, who was not half recovered from “a violent illness that had confin’d me to my Bed, and a Waggon, for above 10 Days,” tried to reason with Braddock. But the general refused to abandon his narrow-minded theories of war—and soon paid for his pigheadedness on the battlefield.
The British were just ten miles away from Fort Duquesne when the French and their Indian allies, though outnumbered, attacked from the woods. Braddock had four horses shot out from under him and was felled by musket balls through the shoulder and chest, placed on the back of a wagon, and wheeled off the field while his army was still under attack. Within hours, half of his soldiers, including Braddock’s second in command and several of his aides-de-camp, were killed or wounded.
Sensing an opportunity, Washington, who rode into battle with a pillow on his saddle, stepped up. He assumed command of the remaining half, rapidly issuing orders from horseback—in the general’s ceremonial red sash. “I luckily escapd witht a wound, tho’ I had four Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me,” Washington proudly reported back to his mother on July 18, 1755. Of Braddock’s fate, he wrote only that “The Genl was wounded; of wch he died 3 Days after.”3
* * *
The French triumphed for a second time, cementing their control of the Ohios. Yet Washington returned from the Battle of the Monongahela even more of a star than before. In newly ordered shirt ruffles and silk stockings, he began making demands of Dinwiddie: He would return to the field only if he was able to choose his own officers (including two aides-de-camp) and received a military chest—that is, real money he could spend on them.4
Washington got what he wanted, but he still had to raise an army on his own, a frustrating proposition. The sort of men who were open to recruitment were typically desperate for money. Desertion was constant, and the local townspeople, among whom the war was unpopular, were often willing to shelter fugitives. Those soldiers who made it to the end of their short conscriptions typically didn’t stick around.
Supplies were a problem, too. Britain’s wartime decrees required that farmers hand over food to the troops, but when Washington demanded his cut, angry mobs threatened to “blow out my brains.”5 He had been given an important task—establishing a firm line of defense along the western border, which had been pushed back since Braddock’s defeat—without the resources to do it properly.
CHAPTER 5
The Widow Custis
Great love stories don’t often begin with dysentery. But had George Washington not contracted the disease during his final year of British military service, he would never have met Martha Dandridge Custis. In the spring of 1758, Washington had traveled to Williamsburg, Virginia, to see a doctor; having received a clean bill of health, he decided to stay for a while and check out the social scene. The legislature was in session, which meant that the colony’s capital was abuzz with news, activity, and eligible women. His Majesty’s Army was clearly failing to make Washington rich, but a wealthy widow would.
Washington met Martha at the home of the Chamberlaynes, well-to-do relatives of her late husband. He wasted no time riding out to her plantation, called White House.
Martha was in a unique position for a young woman in the New World. At twenty-seven, the five-foot-tall widow was attractive in appearance, disposition, status, and family. She was petite, buxom, and had already given birth to two children—Jack, age four, and Patsy, age two—which signaled she was capable of bearing more for her future husband. Her father-in-law, half-brother-in-law, and late husband had died, the last without a will, leaving her one of the wealthiest women in Virginia—and free of meddling trustees. Martha was recognized as a so-called feme sole under English common law and had the right to legally conduct business as any man would. There were plenty of suitors milling about, eager to control her estate, which included around 290 enslaved people and almost eighteen thousand acres of land.
Among them was Charles Carter, a widower almost twice Washington’s age. As a wealthy tobacco planter in her social circle, he was a relatively safe choice. In his letters, he seemed genuinely infatuated with her and eager to share his bed with another wife. But he came with his own children—twelve of them, to be exact. Martha declined his advances. If she chose to remarry, she would do so for love, and Washington, whose military renown she had most certainly heard of, was just the man to tempt her. At 6'2", he towered half a foot over any rival.
By all accounts, her marriage to Daniel Parke Custis, her first husband, had been happy. Yet Custis had been twenty years her senior, whereas Washington was seven months her junior. She seemingly took no issue with Washington’s inferior birth and standing, perhaps because, years earlier, Custis’s father had objected to her on the very same grounds. Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that Washington’s father had died and his mother was a decent horse ride away. Martha may also have enjoyed the idea of being the wealthier spouse.
At twenty-seven, Washington was ready to marry. He had been ready for it, as his financial ledgers show. He was expanding his farmhouse at Mount Vernon, ordering hundreds of windowpanes, a marble mantelpiece for the fireplace, a mahogany dining room table and china to lay upon it—just the sort of spread a genteel wife would expect. And not just any genteel wife; before he met Martha, Washington may have fantasized about another woman.
“HEAVING THROBBING ALLURING”
Washington wrote when he was fifty-four that “there is moral certainty of my dying without issue.”1 He left nothing behind to indicate anything to the contrary (possibly because he was sterile), and if he had had premarital (or, later, extramarital) sex, there’s almost nothing in the archives to imply it. A letter from George Mercer, a surveyor and an officer in the Virginia militia, suggests that sex wasn’t something young Washington deigned to discuss. In 1757, Mercer reported that the women in South Carolina had a “bad Shape,” and that “many of Them are crooked & have a very bad Air & not those enticing heaving throbbing alluring Letch exciting plump Breasts common with our Northern Belles.” Yet he acknowledged that this sort of coarse talk was sure to have “tired your Patience.” It seems he was right; Washington did not respond. 2 Another letter, from officer William La Péronie, provides some evidence that Washington did have premarital sex. Four years before he and Martha wed, La Péronie imagined him “plung’d in the midst of dellight heaven can aford & enchanted By Charms even stranger to the Ciprian Dame (+ M’s Nel).”3 “Ciprian Dame” was eighteenth-century-speak for a sex worker, but she may have been a barmaid or a mistress or a slave. It is therefore possible that Washington had a sexual relationship with a woman other than Martha, and that possibility includes nonconsensual sex with an enslaved woman.4
Sally Fairfax, a belle of Virginia society, had married into the same family as Lawrence Washington. Unlike him, however, she came from one of the state’s oldest and wealthiest clans. Her marriage to George William Fairfax was typical of the time, designed to unite families and estates but not necessarily hearts. The union had yet to produce children, and in the end never would. Something, perhaps just a flirtatious friendship, quickly blossomed between Washington and Sally. She taught him to dance the minuet, coached him on conversations with influential men, and trained him to charm their wives and daughters.
But whatever he felt for Sally seemed to have faded when Washington began calling on Martha. It is clear th
e pair felt an instant connection, one that delayed his return to Williamsburg after a stroll around her estate; perhaps he saw how she doted on her children, something his own mother had never done, and made easy play with Jacky and Patsy. Martha must have liked what she saw, because she extended a dinner invitation, with her visiting sister and brother-in-law as chaperones. His notes from the trip show that he tipped her household staff well, perhaps for a full night’s service. Whether he left White House late that night or the next day is less important than the date he came back, which is widely believed to be March 25—less than a week later.
Eighteenth-century courtship moved quickly. Martha and Washington would have spoken frankly about their estates during that visit, right before he was due to head back into the Ohios, where the French and Indian War was still being fought. He would have told her that he had inherited Ferry Farm, but his mother still lived there with his youngest brother, and they used the 260-acre farm to support themselves. He was renting Mount Vernon from Lawrence’s widow; she had remarried and her daughter had died, but according to Lawrence’s will, the property still belonged to her.