Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  None of Washington’s contemporaries made the effort, at the end of 1758, to weigh his military virtues against his shortcomings. The only man who might have been interested in doing this was Forbes, and he was close to death. Washington’s own officers did not look on him with the eyes of cold valuation as a soldier but with something of the ardor of young men for a successful leader of their own age. They prepared and, on the last day of the year, signed a paper which, in spite of exuberant rhetoric, was solid proof of the progress he had made in one great essential of leadership, that of arousing the enthusiasm of his subordinates. The twenty-seven company officers who subscribed to this address spoke gratefully of the happiness they had enjoyed with their Colonel, the honor they had won under him, and the affection they felt for him: “Your steady adherence to impartial justice, your quick discernment and invariable regard to merit, wisely intended to inculcate those genuine sentiments of true honor and passion for glory, from which the great military achievements have been derived, first heightened our natural emulation and our desire to excel. How much we improved by those regulations and your own example, with what cheerfulness we have encountered the several toils, especially while under your particular direction, we submit to yourself, and flatter ourselves that we have in a great measure answered your expectations.” Assurance was added: “In you we place the most implicit confidence. Your presence only will cause a steady firmness and vigor to actuate in every breast, despising the greatest dangers and thinking light of toils and hardships, while led on by the man we know and love.”

  Did Washington deserve these words? At the end of 1758, as he approached his twenty-seventh birthday, what manner of man was he?

  The company officers had seen their Colonel in many tests. A few of the ranking Captains had stood resolutely beside him in the flooded trench of feeble Fort Necessity. One or two of his subordinates had been where they could have observed the suppressed pain and perplexity in his honest eyes as he rode through the confused ranks near the bank of the Monongahela. His finely proportioned figure and his flawless horsemanship were the model of his juniors; his physical endurance had become a tradition in his Regiment. He was mature beyond his years, with all the vigor of growth from the good earth of character. To officers who discharged their duties with courage, intelligence and spirit, he always was amiable and attractive and sometimes he was affectionate.

  Slow to praise excellencies, he was equally slow to forget them. If he seldom applauded, he always remembered. He did not cross the gulf that regulations had fixed between officers and men; and he did not feign admiration of the ignorant, common man who was more apt, he thought, to be a coward than a hero. In his dealings with troops, Washington’s reliance was not on human nature but on military discipline. The possibility of promotion for the diligent and refreshment for the faithful was not disregarded; no substitute was offered for the performance of duty as duty. Daily practice exemplified what orders had proclaimed: “Discipline is the soul of an army.”

  Behind the flap of his own tent, the young commander sought the self-discipline he inculcated. This was not easy for a man of complicated emotional character. His ambition burned so steadily that it gave to all his efforts a concentration and a seriousness never relieved by the relaxing balm of humor. Even after he was convinced that high rank in his beloved profession of arms never would be his, he retained all the driving energy and all the instinctive planning required to press towards the goal of wealth, distinction and honor; but he could not laugh at his own relentless pursuit of pounds and epaulettes, and he could not smile at his own defeats. Instead, his consciousness of steadfast, wholehearted adherence to duty made him unhappily sensitive to criticism. He battled with this thinness of skin and, after five years in the field, reached the state of mind in which he could grip his temper and repress his sensitiveness if his resentment of criticism was likely to injure the defence of the Colony in a day of danger. He had achieved that much; he had not conquered a pride that had on occasion the color of self-righteousness.

  His principal weaknesses were superficial or circumstantial. Facility of speech never would be his. It would not be possible for him to move a multitude; but if Washington could not stir emotion he could accomplish something that might be less impermanent: he could win support by sound judgment and disinterested zeal. He had no rock of refuge in religion. Instead of adhering to a creedal religion he held steadfastly, almost ostentatiously, to the principles of conduct he regarded as the code of gentlemen.

  The foundations of that code were not love and mercy, faith and sacrifice, but honesty and duty, truth and justice, justice exact and inclusive, justice that never for an instant overlooked his own interests. Justice demanded that he do his utmost and that, in return, he receive what he had earned, whether it was the public esteem he cherished or the last penny due him by “the country” for the food of every batman the letter of military regulations allowed him.

  What he demanded for himself, he allowed with equal exactness to all his fellow men. Anything that any person deserved at his hands, that person must receive on balanced scales, whether in monetary payment, reward, courtesy, candor or truth-telling. Justice never could walk with Compromise. Nor did adherence to justice require that young Washington be a partisan of individuals. If injustice to any individual came under Washington’s eye in his own command, he would correct it as a matter of course, but there he drew the line. He would do his part to relieve human misery and he might be the champion of public causes. Rarely did he become the advocate of any man, lest support of one be injustice to another.

  Justice was not “the be all and the end all” of Washington’s code of conduct, but it was as basic in that code as the development of patience was in his training. The officer who tapped on the tent-pole to make a report to his Colonel probably would not feel that he was in the presence of a great man, but he knew that Washington would hear him with sure patience and dignified amiability, would reason logically and methodically, would concentrate on whatever duty the report imposed, would display sound judgment and cold, calm courage in the execution, would demand discipline and—always and inflexibly—would measure out exact justice.

  Such was the soldier and the man. Some of his deeper characteristics were not known to the officers who addressed him at the end of 1758; but they wished to pay tribute to him as best they might, and they had now an occasion besides that of the conclusion of the campaign for expressing their affection for him: He had decided to resign—finally and without thought of reconsideration. His officers hoped against hope that he would remain with them, but if he would not, then those young Virginians wished to record that “as you have hitherto been the actuating soul of the whole corps, we shall at all times pay the most invariable regard to your will and pleasure. . . .”

  This was honor of the sort he loved, but there were other ambitions now. A new Fort Pitt was rising on the ruins of DuQuesne; the Virginia frontier would be secure. Washington felt he had done his part for the King’s domain. Let the northern Colonies take Quebec. For himself now, there was Mount Vernon and a seat in the House of Burgesses and Martha and the rich plantations of the Custises and the Parkes on slow-flowing, pleasant rivers!

  CHAPTER / 6

  No regret was in the heart of Col. George Washington as he resigned his commission at the end of 1758 and turned his horse from Williamsburg towards the plantation on the Pamunkey River where Martha Dandridge Custis was waiting for him. Lack of recognition by the British government “at home” had destroyed his military ambition but it had not lessened his conviction that he had done his part, and more, in defending both “the country,” as he termed Virginia, and the other American domain of Great Britain. In the memory of service he was willing to put neglect behind him. Besides, there was no bleakness on the road that led to the estate of the woman of twenty-seven who was to be his bride. Fires would be burning and wedding garments would be ready at the White House. Beyond spread the tobacco plantations and
the prospect of opulent years.

  Every expectation was realized. The marriage ceremony was performed January 6, 1759, after which a happy honeymoon was spent at the well-furnished Custis home on the bank of the Pamunkey. George now found easy and cheerful companionship in a young woman, who, though not brilliant, had her full share of good nature. She had ample common sense, also, except where her two children were involved. The son, John Parke Custis, called “Jackie” by the family, was now four and a healthy, normal boy. His sister “Patsy”—christened Martha Parke Custis—was less vigorous at two, but was an attractive child.

  The bridegroom, as a good man of business, made his first inquiries concerning the details of the new duties he was to assume as fiduciary, and then he had to go to Williamsburg where he began February 22—his twenty-seventh birthday—his service in the House of Burgesses.

  The control and management of the House, as usual, were in the hands of a small number of powerful seniors. In the chair sat John Robinson, Treasurer and Speaker and Washington’s consistent friend during the struggle for the Ohio. With him in the House worked Richard Bland, Edmund Pendleton, the Carters (Landon and three Charleses), and Peyton and John Randolph. These men did not always agree among themselves but whatever a majority of them advocated, the House customarily approved. The leading Burgesses usually worked together in complete understanding, and they carefully apportioned among themselves the chairmanships of the important committees. Not antagonistic to these men but developing steadily in thought and in knowledge of the law were several young members whom Washington probably met for the first time. One of the ablest of these was the Burgess for the College of William and Mary, George Wythe, personal adviser of the resident Governor, Francis Fauquier, whose title was officially that of Lieutenant Governor. Several other young Burgesses scarcely were inferior to Wythe in ability and diligence. From the counties still other youthful Virginians were looking towards Williamsburg and were hoping soon to be sitting among the members.

  If Washington surveyed with polite curiosity those leading Burgesses whom he did not know already, they were interested in him as the most conspicuous of the younger soldiers of America. One of the lawmakers, his old friend and companion-in-arms, George Mercer, said of Washington in a letter written in 1760:

  . . . He may be described as being straight as an Indian, measuring 6 feet 2 inches in his stockings, and weighing 175 lbs when he took his seat in the House of Burgesses in 1759. His frame is padded with well developed muscles, indicating great strength. His bones and joints are large as are his hands and feet. He is wide shouldered but has not a deep or round chest; is neat waisted, but is broad across the hips, and has rather long legs and arms. His head is well shaped, though not large, but is gracefully poised on a superb neck. A large and straight rather than a prominent nose; blue-grey penetrating eyes which are widely separated and overhung by a heavy brow. His face is long rather than broad, with high round cheek bones, and terminates in a good firm chin. He has a clear tho rather colorless pale skin which burns with the sun. A pleasing and benevolent tho a commanding countenance, dark brown hair which he wears in a cue. His mouth is large and generally firmly closed, but which from time to time discloses some defective teeth. His features are regular and placid with all the muscles of his face under perfect control, tho flexible and expressive of deep feeling when moved by emotions. In conversation he looks you full in the face, is deliberate, deferential and engaging. His demeanor at all times composed and dignified. His movements and gestures are graceful, his walk majestic, and he is a splendid horseman.

  The young soldier, thus described, had been in the House only four days, among old friends and new, when on February 26 an admirer rose and offered this resolution: “. . . that the thanks of the House be given to George Washington, Esq; a member of this House, late Colonel of the First Virginia Regiment, for his faithful Services to his Majesty, and this Colony, and for his brave and steady behavior, from the first Encroachments and hostilities of the French and their Indians, to his Resignation, after the happy Reduction of Fort DuQuesne.” The resolution was passed immediately with a roar of “Ayes”; Mr. Speaker leaned forward in his chair to voice the thanks of the House; instinctively Washington arose, listened, blushed and sat down again, amid more applause.

  The new member from Frederick found much that was instructive in the reports of committees and discussion of the subject for which, primarily, the General Assembly had been convened. As Fauquier explained in his address to the two houses on the opening day, General Amherst had written to ask that, for a final offensive on the Great Lakes against the French, Virginia supply him in 1759 with as many troops as the Colony had paid during the campaign of 1758.

  The House responded that if the Colony fell short of Amherst’s expectations in 1759, it would be because of “poverty alone, which has often obstructed many a noble and honest intention.” This was polite notice that troops would not be supplied for an expedition on the Lakes, but it was not final. When the Committee of the Whole began to deliberate on a bill to raise the strength of the Regiment to one thousand men and continue it in service until December 1, 1759, the advocates of a strong war policy proposed that an additional five hundred be raised to guard the frontiers and that the Regiment be placed at the disposal of Amherst for such use as the military situation required.

  In the intervals of the discussion, Washington had his first experience with embarrassing local bills and measures that affected counties in which he had special interest—a plea of Augusta for better protection of the frontiers, petitions for the extension of the bounds of Winchester, various appeals for changes in the tobacco-inspection laws and a measure to remove the Court House of Spotsylvania from Fredericksburg. Definitely in the line of business was an appeal from the merchants of Winchester, influential constituents of Washington’s, for protection against Pennsylvania pedlars in skins and furs. The parliamentary course of these bills was not of a sort to call for great display of the art of government, but, taken together, the enactment of the measures was, for a beginner, an informative lesson in the processes of legislation.

  Committee hearings and participation in the work of the House did not occupy all of Washington’s time. The evenings were free for social affairs, and there always was delight in quiet conversation with Martha. The end of March approached while the Washingtons enjoyed the company of the children, planning for the future and the life of the town. No action had been taken on the bill concerning the supply of the Regiment, but there were indications that even the most prolix orators were exhausting their arguments. Washington was anxious to prepare his farms for spring planting but was not willing to leave the House until the bill to continue his old Regiment had been brought to a vote. He resolved his dilemma in his usual direct fashion: he would remain in Williamsburg for the passage of the measure and then apply for leave of absence for the remainder of the session. On April 2 the bill was passed. The next business of the House was the grant of a leave to Mr. Washington.

  As soon after that as Martha, the children, the servants and luggage were ready, the journey to Mount Vernon began. The plantation to which Washington brought his new wife that April was close to the centre of an interesting neighborhood framed by the Potomac River. The Mount Vernon estate would have been merely a large Virginia plantation had not the Potomac given it a setting of dignity, charm and everchanging color. Eight and a half miles upstream was Alexandria. Southwest at a distance of near a mile and a half was the mouth of Dogue Run. On the south side of this was Belvoir, dear to Washington through a hundred associations. Another mile and a half of the river led to George Mason’s recently completed Gunston Hall.

  Washington had other neighbors back of Belvoir; downstream was Westmoreland County, Washington’s birthplace and the home of the Lees. The largest interest was up the river at Alexandria, but the social boundary now was not that town. In effect, it was the little stream above Alexandria known as Four Mile Creek, not far from the f
alls of the Potomac. A fixed agricultural economy prevailed below the falls. West of them conditions were beginning to change. Ownership might be vested in rich Virginians; development might depend on those Pennsylvania Germans who ten years previously had disgusted young Washington.

  MAP / 5

  WASHINGTON’S “BURGESS ROUTE”

  TO WILLIAMSBURG

  The Colonel and his lady belonged, distinctly, to the society that lived below the falls. While Washington never forgot that more money could be made by patenting and holding land beyond the mountains than in almost any other way, he had at hand a task that would absorb for a long time all his energy and, as he soon discovered, the greater part of the capital he would get from Martha. The unhappy fact—not to be evaded, blinked, minimized or quickly ended—was this: Mount Vernon had been mismanaged during the later years of his service in the army. In the Colonel’s absence, Jack Washington had made an effort to take care of the estate, but the younger brother had not been there all the time, or successful when there. Almost everything needed for good management was worn out or lacking altogether. Washington saw immediately that he had much to do; he was not equally quick to perceive that he lacked part of the experience he needed in order to do it well.