by Ron Chernow
When Washington rode into Williamsburg two weeks later, his exploits were the talk of the capital. At first he attracted criticism for his defeat and the seemingly scandalous admission that Jumonville had been “assassinated.” To protect his own reputation, Dinwiddie alleged that Washington had disobeyed his orders not to engage with the French until “the whole forces were joined in a body.”45 But he couldn’t denounce Washington without raising serious questions about his own judgment, and when he reported to London on the fiasco, he described it as a “small engagement, conducted with judgment by the officers and great bravery by our few forces.”46 Dinwiddie also condemned the “monstrous” failure of other colonies to shore up the Virginia forces—a failure that gave Washington his first powerful proof of the need for continental unity.47
In the coming weeks, condemnation of Washington gradually gave way to widespread acknowledgment that he had confronted terrifying odds at Fort Necessity. So sharp was the reversal of opinion that in early September the House of Burgesses paid special tribute to Washington and Mackay “for their late, gallant, and brave behavior in the defence of their country.”48 Governor Horatio Sharpe of Maryland, who had excoriated Washington for impulsive behavior, wrote to him and explained that, as the true story of Fort Necessity became known, public opinion had shifted in his favor, and he concluded with the reassuring words: “Your reputation again revived.”49 Thus, the ghastly frontier defeat came to be seen as a doomed but heroic defense rather than a military blunder that might have ruined Washington’s budding career.
The aftermath of Washington’s first military campaign was grievously disappointing to him. The Virginia Regiment, it was decided, would be divided into ten independent companies, with captain the top grade in each. For Washington, this would have meant an insulting demotion from his colonel’s rank. Anyone who thought he would accept such a setback, he wrote indignantly, “must entertain a very contemptible opinion of my weakness.”50 Quite predictably, he decided to resign from the army in October rather than tolerate such a blow to his standing. But with his wilderness forays having confirmed his love of a military life, he said his resignation wasn’t meant “to gratify any desire I had to leave the military line. My inclinations are strongly bent to arms.”51 If the whirlwind events had been hard on the tender ego of the ambitious young Washington, the carnage at Fort Necessity hadn’t shattered his courage or altered his resolution to pursue a military career. For a young man without enormous inherited wealth, the military remained a sure path to colonial advancement. Washington must have had a premonition that his military retirement was only temporary, for in late October he ordered from London some costly items for a resplendent uniform: a gold shoulder knot, six yards of gold regimental lace, twenty-four gold embroidered loops, a rich crimson military sash, four dozen gilt coat buttons, and a hat adorned with gold lace.52 The young officer seemed to know that the world had not heard its last of him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Shades of Death
EVER SINCE THE DEATH of Lawrence Washington, George had known he had an outside chance of someday becoming lord of Mount Vernon if Lawrence’s widow, Ann, and daughter, Sarah, predeceased him. Then, in yet another of the improbable transformations that eerily propelled his life ever upward, the occupancy of Mount Vernon came unexpectedly within his grasp. Six months after Lawrence’s death, Ann remarried and moved to Westmoreland County, and two years after that, on December 10, 1754, little Sarah Washington died. A week later Ann rented Mount Vernon to George Washington along with its eighteen resident slaves—a tremendous bonanza for the twenty-two-year-old. By the terms of the lease, he was required every Christmas to ship his sister-in-law fifteen thousand pounds of tobacco, packed in fifteen hogsheads, placing him under considerable pressure to manage the estate profitably.
The Mount Vernon house had not yet attained its later magnificence, so visitors singled out the natural setting for their poetic effusions. “The house is most beautifully situated upon a very high hill on the banks of the Potomac and commands a noble prospect of water, of cliffs, of woods and plantations,” wrote one clergyman.1 Unlike that of its later and more famous incarnation, the entrance stood on the river side, attesting to the extensive commercial traffic then churning along the Potomac down below. In those days, one could also see thousands of wild ducks gathering on the surface of the water.
As Washington had suspected, his respite from military service proved short-lived. On February 20, 1755, Major General Edward Braddock dropped anchor off Hampton Roads, soon to be accompanied by two smartly dressed regiments of British redcoats. To this British Army veteran, an officer of the Coldstream Guards, had been assigned the task of ejecting the French from Fort Duquesne and blunting their thrust into the Ohio Valley. Washington rushed off a politic greeting to the general. After making inquiries, Braddock learned that Washington possessed an unmatched familiarity with the frontier. Whatever his misgivings about Washington’s conduct at Fort Necessity, Braddock wanted him as an aide-de-camp. On March 2 Captain Robert Orme, a slim, dashing aide to the general, sent a letter to Mount Vernon, inviting Washington to join the general’s personal staff. Judging from the latter’s reply, it seems that his bruised feelings of the previous fall were quickly assuaged by the general’s flattering attention. “To explain, sir,” he wrote, “I wish earnestly to attain knowledge of the military profession,” adding that no better chance could arise “than to serve under a gentleman of General Braddock’s abilities and experience.”2
Washington hinted that personal problems might hinder acceptance of the post. In fact, he was overwhelmed by the demands of planting his first spring crop at Mount Vernon and confided that the estate was “in the utmost confusion.”3 Aggravating matters was that he had nobody to whom he could entrust management of the place. As he contemplated service under Braddock, Washington struggled with his special bugaboo, the vexed matter of colonial rank. He still dreamed of a regular army commission, valid for life, but the best Braddock could award him was the temporary rank of brevet captain. Still balking at this demotion, Washington agreed to serve as a volunteer aide to Braddock, and the general, in turn, allowed him to devote time to his private affairs until the army headed west. To brother Jack, Washington explained that under this arrangement, he could “give his orders to all, which must be implicitly obeyed,” while he had to obey only Braddock.4 Already preoccupied with matters of honor and reputation, Washington feared that people might question his motives and suspect him of being a power-hungry opportunist—a recurring leitmotif of his career. Serving without pay would silence such potential naysayers. His sole desire, he told John Robinson, speaker of the House of Burgesses, was to serve his country: “This, I flatter myself, will manifestly appear by my going [as] a volunteer, without expectation of reward or prospect of attaining a command.”5 This theme of disinterested service—honored mostly in the breach when he was young and in the observance when he was older—would be one of the touchstones of his life.
To manage Mount Vernon in his absence, Washington wanted to recruit Jack, which sparked a family feud. Perhaps feeling bereft of family help at Ferry Farm, Mary Ball Washington arrived at Mount Vernon hell-bent upon preventing George from joining Braddock. George was supposed to meet with Captain Orme in Alexandria when Mary, appearing like the wrath of God, insisted upon settling her son’s future plans on the spot. “The arrival of a good deal of company, among whom is my mother, alarmed at the report of my intentions to attend your fortunes, prevents me the pleasure of waiting upon you today as I had intended,” George confessed to Orme.6 This must have come as an extraordinary admission: Washington was canceling a vital military meeting to mollify his overwrought mother. As had happened when her son meditated going to sea, Mary had no qualms about thwarting his career for her own personal benefit. In the end, Jack Washington oversaw Mount Vernon, Ferry Farm, and the Bullskin Plantation for the next three years.
In early May, attended by his body servant, a Welshman name
d John Alton, George joined Braddock’s army at Frederick, Maryland. At first, he didn’t see much likelihood of a military engagement with the French and was there principally for career advancement. As he told Jack, he spotted a good chance “of forming an acquaintance which may be serviceable hereafter, if I shall find it worthwhile to push my fortune in the military line.”7 While Washington saw the cards stacked against him in the British military system, he warmed to the personal respect he received as a member of General Braddock’s “family,” or personal staff. He found a few other things to admire in the small, pudgy general with the long, sharp nose: a lack of pomp and ceremony in dealing with officers and physical courage in battle. “He was brave even to a fault and in regular service would have done honor to his profession,” he was to write.8
At the same time, Braddock provided Washington with an object lesson in mistakes that any general should avoid, teaching him the virtues of patient moderation. Braddock was hotheaded and blustery, was blunt to the point of rudeness, and issued orders without first seeking proper advice. He also talked down to colonial governors “as if they had been infinitely his inferiors,” said one observer, and was irate that the colonies failed to deliver two hundred wagons and 2,500 horses they had pledged.9 Washington listened to Braddock drone on, spouting prejudiced views with a narrow-minded insistence. Once committed to an opinion, he refused to back down, “let it be ever so incompatible with reason or common sense,” Washington noted.10
Schooled in European warfare, Braddock found it hard to adapt to the treacherous terrain of wilderness forests. As his army moved west, he wanted to level every hill and erect a bridge across each brook. Washington tried to impress upon him the improvisational tactics of the French and Indians, but the haughty general wouldn’t deign to accept colonial advice. Benjamin Franklin also experienced first-hand Braddock’s cocksure arrogance. When Franklin urged the general to beware of Indian ambushes, he retorted, “These savages may be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they would make any impression.”11 Braddock was deaf to Washington’s argument that they should travel lightly across the steep mountains and rely on packhorses. Instead he relied upon cumbersome carriages that traversed mountain trails with difficulty, especially when transporting heavy siege guns.
In early May Washington wrote to his mother from the frontier town of Winchester. Probably because she had so hotly opposed his taking the post, he stressed his pleasure in serving on Braddock’s staff: “I am very happy in the general’s family, being treated with a complaisant freedom which is quite agreeable to me, and have no reason to doubt the satisfaction I hoped for in making the campaign.”12 Washington ended his formal note with the words, “I am Honored Madam Your most Dutiful and Obedient Son.”13 Mary Ball Washington had a knack for making unreasonable requests whenever her son went off on military campaigns, and she was known to say, “Ah, George had better have stayed at home and cultivated his farm.”14 The tacit accusation was always that he had deserted her for the military. She replied to George’s letter by asking him to retain a Dutch servant for her and to buy her some butter. To this impossible request, George replied curtly that it wasn’t in his power to get either the servant or the butter, “for we are quite out of that part of the country where either are to be had, there being few or no inhabitants where we now lie encamped and butter cannot be had here to supply the wants of the army.”15
A far more pleasing distraction for Washington was his growing flirtation with Sally Fairfax, wife of his friend George William Fairfax. At the end of April, en route to linking up with Braddock’s troops, Washington stopped by his Bullskin Plantation on the frontier and dashed off a letter to Sally that signaled a startling change in their relationship. Although he addressed the letter “To Mrs Fairfax—Dear Madam . . . ,” he was clearly trying to deepen their intimacy, with nary a mention of George William. Washington promised that he would take “the earliest and every opportunity” of writing to her: “It will be needless to dwell on the pleasures that a correspondence of this kind would afford me.”16 This was an uncharacteristically bold and reckless move for Washington, who was playing with fire in seeking a private correspondence with a married woman, and a member of the toplofty Fairfax clan at that. Washington’s dependence on that family was thrown into relief a week later when he wore out three horses and had to appeal to Lord Fairfax for an emergency loan of forty pounds for the forthcoming campaign.17 The request, among other things, showed just how inappropriate it had been for Washington to volunteer his services, as if he were an independently wealthy man who could rise above petty monetary concerns.
When Braddock dispatched Washington to Williamsburg on an urgent mission to collect four thousand pounds, the latter made a detour to Belvoir to engage in some extemporaneous wooing. From a follow-up letter he sent to her, we can see that Sally was flirting with Washington, albeit within carefully prescribed limits. She told him to alert her to his safe arrival back at camp, but she also stipulated that he should communicate with her through a third party of her acquaintance—a clear sign that, at this point at least, she feared direct communication. To resort to this ruse, she must have regarded Washington’s attention as something more than a mere schoolboy crush. Washington acknowledged her caution: “This I took as a gentle rebuke and polite manner of forbidding my corresponding with you and conceive this opinion is not illy founded when I reflect that I have hitherto found it impracticable to engage one moment of your attention.” He ended by saying that he still hoped Sally would honor him “with a correspondence which you did once partly promise.”18 The coquettish Sally seemed to be feeding his amorous fantasies while simultaneously holding him rigidly at arm’s length.
George Washington clearly had a much more active inner life than his reserved exterior might have suggested. In late May he confided to Jack his interest in obtaining a seat in the House of Burgesses. He said that he probably couldn’t run in his home district because George William Fairfax might stand as a candidate, so he banked his hopes instead on Frederick County. His letter to Jack lays out in remarkable detail his canny political style, which served him well for the rest of his life. He instructed his brother to canvass the opinions of prominent men in the county “with[ou]t disclosing much of mine; as I know your own good sense can furnish you with means enough without letting it proceed immediately from me.” If gentlemen seemed inclined to support him, “you then may declare my intentions and beg their assistance. If, on the contrary, you find them more inclined to favour some other, I w[oul]d have the affair entirely subside.”19 It is a highly revealing letter. Washington believed that ambitious men should hide their true selves, retreat into silence, and not tip people off to their ambition. To sound out people, you had to feign indifference and proceed only when convinced that they were sympathetic and like-minded. The objective was to learn the maximum about other people’s thoughts while revealing the minimum about your own. Always fearful of failure, Washington wanted to push ahead only if he was armed with detailed knowledge and enjoyed a high likelihood of success. This cautious, disciplined political style would persist long after the original insecurity that had prompted it had disappeared.
AS BRADDOCK AND HIS nearly three thousand men straggled toward Fort Cumberland (the former trading post at Wills Creek on the Potomac) in early June, the bullheaded general began to fathom the wisdom of Washington’s advice to travel lightly across the mountainous territory. The pace of forward motion was so glacial, just two miles daily, that it seemed they would never penetrate to the Forks of the Ohio. Braddock had insisted upon bringing along his complete artillery train and thousands of bushels of grain. Men and horses dropped dead from exertion as they crossed steep hills, and the frustrated Braddock, moody at the best of times, became increasingly testy. In this situation, he heeded Washington’s advice and culled a division of eight hundred men to march ahead. With the French hourly strengthening the
ir defenses at Fort Duquesne, time was now working against the British.
As it turned out, Washington could not pause to savor his influence, for he was “seized with violent fevers and pains in my head” in mid-June .20 He proved the latest victim of an epidemic exacting a frightful toll on Braddock’s forces: dysentery. This infection of the digestive system produces violent diarrhea, and Washington suffered cruelly from hemorrhoids. At first the stoic young aide tried to conceal the malady, but he soon found it so debilitating that he had to travel lying down in a covered wagon. On June 23 Braddock ordered him to accompany the slower-moving forces in the rear and gave him a patent medicine, Dr. James’s Powder, which Washington pronounced “the most excellent medicine in the world.”21 (It consisted of phosphate of lime and oxide of antimony.) The young aide was so distraught at being left behind that Braddock solemnly pledged that he would be brought forward before Fort Duquesne was attacked. As Washington’s condition worsened, he found it agonizing to lie in the wagon as it jolted along uneven country roads through impenetrable woods dubbed the “Shades of Death.”22 He told his brother on June 28 that he had barely enough energy to pen the letter and that a doctor had warned him that, if he persisted, he would risk his life.23 Although the medicine helped Washington, his illness and frequent bleeding by doctors left him woefully depleted on the eve of a major battle. Even though he had recuperated sufficiently by July 8 to rejoin Braddock a dozen miles from Fort Duquesne, he was still so weak that when he mounted his horse the next morning, he had to strap on cushions to ease his painful hemorrhoids. He would require all the stamina he could muster for the extraordinary events in the offing.