There was ample blame to spread about for the disaster at Great Meadows. Virginia recruited too few troops and did not adequately supply those it did raise. Only meager reinforcements were provided. North Carolina and Maryland promised to augment Washington’s army, but neither honored its pledge; nor did all the Virginia troops make an appearance. Although Washington performed about as well as could be expected of a twenty-two-year-old soldier devoid of military experience, he nevertheless blundered repeatedly. At times he was indecisive, for instance planning first to make his stand at Fort Necessity, then at Gist’s, then again at his fortress. His pallisaded fort, moreover, was inadequate, divulging his lack of martial training. He thought the installation strong enough to withstand an attack by five hundred men, whereas an old hand like the Half King scoffed at it as “that little thing in the meadow.” The Half King additionally characterized Washington as a “good-natured” fool who would have secured more Indian allies had he been more sensitive and dexterous in his dealings with the Native Americans; the sachem’s appraisal must have been at least partially accurate, for even though Washington labored diligently to win over the Indians he was but a neophyte in the world of diplomacy.51 No one could suggest that Washington had not acted bravely. On the other hand, he also had behaved like the ambitious young man that he was, so anxious and impatient for recognition that he sometimes acted injudiciously and recklessly.
Whatever Washington’s errors, his reputation amazingly survived unblemished. Incredibly, official outrage for the debacle was focused not on the regiment’s commander, but on George Muse, Washington’s lieutenant colonel, the number two man in the army. A compatriot of Lawrence Washington in the Cartagena expedition, Muse was a man of some military experience. On the day of the battle at Great Meadows, Muse, together with Mackay’s company, had been posted outside the fort; their task was to lure the French into the open spaces of the meadow, whereupon Washington’s men could gun them down. But seeing that he was outnumbered by a ten-to-one ratio, Muse fell back into the fortress. His action probably saved most of his men, but it garnered only vilification in Williamsburg. Subsequently, he was the only officer not officially thanked for this service by the assembly, and he resigned in disgrace.52
In addition, the “assassination” charge that Washington acknowledged in the surrender document cast the province in a dishonorable light. Yet van Braam, not Washington, was made to take the fall for this error. Responsibility for the mistake cannot now be assigned, but that Washington took three hours to deliberate otherwise exceedingly generous terms hints that the colonel might have been aware of the meaning of the passage. Van Braam was not around to give his side of the story; to guarantee the release of the French prisoners in Williamsburg, he was taken to Quebec as a hostage and he did not return to Virginia for six years, by which time the incident largely was forgotten.53 Whether Washington played a role in the censure of Muse is not clear, but he did assist in belittling van Braam. It would not be the last time that someone else bore responsibility for what could as easily have been seen as Washington’s shortcomings.
The disaster in the Ohio country deterred neither Dinwiddie nor Great Britain. Throughout the remainder of the summer the governor sought funds for a fall campaign against Fort Duquesne, though in the end the assembly demurred and nothing came of the plan. It was just as well, for in October directives from London changed everything. Whitehall made Governor Horatio Sharpe of Maryland a lieutenant colonel and placed him in command of all forces raised for the Ohio theater. Meanwhile, Dinwiddie decided to reshape the Virginia Regiment, to break it into companies with no officer commissioned above the rank of captain.54
Washington was disconsolate. This was tantamount to a demotion. Indeed, most of his former officers now would equal him in rank. He would not even consider such a disreputable offer, though he acknowledged that “My inclinations are strongly bent to arms.”55
Harboring feelings of remorse at the end of his military activities, as well as bitterness toward Dinwiddie for abolishing his command, Washington’s attention returned to planting. Mount Vernon stood available to him. Little Sarah, Lawrence’s daughter, had died while Washington was in the wilderness, and Nancy lived elsewhere with her second husband. Under the terms of Lawrence’s confusing will, George could not formally own Mount Vernon during Nancy’s lifetime, but she could not sell it. Just after Christmas in 1754 she rented the unoccupied estate to her former brother-in-law for an annual fee of fifteen thousand pounds of tobacco. Along with that property Washington also rented eighteen slaves owned by Nancy.56 His military career seemed at an end less than a year after it had begun.
2
The Frontier Warrior
“I have foibles”
Early on August mornings, before the sun climbed high into a pale blue sky, when it had just peeked over the rolling hills to glitter off the dew, Washington was up and riding over his estate—his Mount Vernon. It was the nicest time of the day, still cool, bracing even, a strange time in a way, for the crisp dawn air and the mist that coiled up from the river at the foot of the farm presaged the autumn chill that soon would come, yet the warm sun foretold another morning of parching summer heat. Washington rode about the undulating pastures, examined the overgrown plowlands, leisurely toured the orchards, pondering and planning as countless other farm proprietors were doing.
But for all his yearning during the past decade to become a planter, George Washington’s heart was no longer in that endeavor. Not now at least. No one had ever quit the military more regretfully than this young colonial. The Virginia Regiment was no more than just behind him before he was speaking of his “indispensable duty” to serve his province and expanding with longing upon his “future Conduct in the Service of our Country.”1
There were good reasons why he still preferred the life of the soldier to that of a planter. For one thing, he was hardly in a position to be much of a planter. He had Mount Vernon, but without a sizable labor force that estate would not yield much wealth. In 1754 Washington owned ten slaves and recently had rented another eighteen bondsmen. Those he owned were at Ferry Farm with his mother and three younger brothers; since he evidently preferred that his kinfolk remain on the banks of the Rappahannock, he had little choice but to leave his slaves there too—the labor supply to sustain his relatives. If carefully managed, the slaves he had rented could make him more than comfortable at Mount Vernon, though it was doubtful that they could make a great planter of him. To be a grandee in the Chesapeake was to own three times—or more—as many chattel as Washington had at his disposal. There was another disadvantage to a life at Mount Vernon. Washington still was single, with no prospect of marriage. Mount Vernon would be a terribly isolated, lonely place for a twenty-two-year-old single man. His disinclination to be a farmer just yet also was due to the simple fact that he missed the army life, with its camaraderie, its splendid uniforms, its titles, its attendant risks. His brief service, moreover, had left him with a sense of accomplishment that he had not known previously. He had “opened the way” for Virginia’s eventual conquest of the Ohio country, he believed. Still, there was something else attractive about the military. By enduring the “heat and brunt of the Day,” as he put it, an officer could win laurels, encomiums of the sort that this chivalric society cherished.2 Soldiering was a chance to be someone, to be honored and deferred to, to capture attention, something which a middling aristocrat and planter could hardly have in prospect, especially if that planter were neither well educated nor particularly glib.
Nevertheless, fate seemed to have mustered him out of the army. Whether his heart was in it or not, he assumed his planter’s role with zeal. He began the renovation of Mount Vernon by moving into Belvoir, overseeing his farming enterprises from Colonel Fairfax’s office, which had generously been made available to him. He had next to no furniture for his new house, and, besides, his first project had been to undertake several major repairs on the dwelling, work that was noisy and dusty, and
that made Mount Vernon temporarily uninhabitable. He purchased some slaves and a few head of livestock, and he was redeveloping the tobacco fields for his initial crop when international politics once again touched his remote corner of the world.3
In faraway London the British government, after an agonizing debate, had resolved to dislodge the French from the disputed West. It had agreed to send two infantry regiments and a train of artillery to America, where it was to join an expeditionary force of seven hundred colonials raised by Governor Sharpe. The force was placed under the command of General Edward Braddock. Washington learned all this just as Braddock was landing in Virginia. The news immediately plunged the young planter into a quandary over what was the best course to pursue. There was no doubt that he wished to serve, but he knew he would never accept a demotion. There were other considerations as well. To leave for the front would be to permit Mount Vernon to continue in its state of disrepair. In addition, his mother appeared at the estate—probably her first visit, since Lawrence had never invited her to his farm—and pleaded with him not to reenter the army. He wrestled with his choices for weeks before deciding that he would elect the military, but only if he could land a post on favorable terms. As he later put it, he would “striv[e] to merit ... royal favor, and a better establishment as a reward” for his service.4 In other words, he would return to the military if he could secure a royal commission.
Through intermediaries Washington passed word to Braddock’s headquarters of his willingness to serve. The general was interested in him too, for he had heard of this young soldier who twice had journeyed to the Ohio, and in mid-March he had his aide write Washington, inviting him to join his “family.” Three weeks of negotiating followed. So bound by his sense of honor was Washington that he spurned a commission as a captain, telling an acquaintance that it was not a rank “I wou’d accept of.” But so badly did he wish to soldier that he finally accepted a face-saving position as a volunteer without pay. The deal that was cut permitted Washington to remain at Mount Vernon until Braddock finally was ready to move west, a bargain by which the young farmer could tend to the planting of his first tobacco crop. It was not until mid-May 1755, therefore, that Washington, accompanied by a white servant, rode to Will’s Creek to join Braddock, and to resume his military activities.5
Washington found the general to be an imposing, though friendly man. A soldier for forty-five years, Braddock had surprisingly little combat experience—only one or two slight, unimportant engagements in the last year of the War of the Austrian Succession. For most of his career his world had been the peacetime army camp, an environment of routine and protracted inactivity. And that was the world he had absorbed. Sixty years old now, large and paunchy, he had a reputation for training men, for excelling at paperwork, and, from decades of experience, for storytelling: he liked nothing better than to sit about and spin tales, spicing them with the salty expletives common in the barracks, though he really only felt comfortable doing this in the presence of younger men, chaps who posed no threat to him. He could be brusque and undiplomatic too, traits that led him to be, if not unpopular, certainly not the most beloved leader who ever wore a British uniform. Many of the officers in this army seem to have made an effort to avoid his company. Washington did not, however. Not surprisingly, Braddock seems also to have taken a liking to this young volunteer. Only Washington’s rather braggartly testimony remains as to the degree of intimacy in their friendship, but even if he did overstate the matter, he seems to have been treated kindly by the general. Braddock assigned Washington errands to run and made him responsible for the orderly book. In the evenings, over wine and snacks, the two frequently chatted, and, if Washington is to be believed, they sometimes argued vehemently over strategy, the straightforward young provincial with all of three months’ service under his belt advising the veteran commander to abandon his European ways in this wilderness theater.6
Washington’s duties brought him into contact with numerous British officers. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gage, an older man, grew fond of him. He developed a cordial relationship with Horatio Gates, a chubby, aggressive captain of about his own age; and he must have gotten to know Charles Lee, a tall, skinny, talkative young lieutenant. Gage and several other officers shared their martial knowledge with Washington, and some lent him copies of their military manuals, in all likelihood the first such tracts he had ever read.7
With light duties and considerably more time on his hands than in his days as a colonel, Washington passed his leisure moments reading and listening to the talk about the campfire. he also had plenty of time to think of home. Lonely and faced with the possibility of danger, he not unnaturally dwelt on the pleasant memories of his bucolic estate. He may have been surprised, too, to discover that he could not get Sally Fairfax, the wife of his friend George William, off his mind.
For all his success in inspiring men of power, Washington had been notably ineffectual in his relationships with young women. His interest in girls first had been aroused when he was sixteen. About the time of his initial surveying venture he had become infatuated with Frances Alexander of Fredericksburg, to whom he sometimes spilled out his feelings in awkward, best-forgotten couplets.8 Apparently she was heedless of her suitor. He got over her quickly enough, but soon he was taken by the charms of a “Low Land Beauty,” probably a lass he met either at Chotank or in the Shenandoah. Next came an unidentified Sally, and still later Betsy Fauntleroy, the daughter of a planter-legislator from Naylor’s Hole in Richmond County. She, like all the others, was unimpressed by her taciturn, stilted pursuer, rebuffing his overtures and abjuring him when he wrote pleading for a “revocation” of her “cruel sentence”—which had been to terminate the courtship even before it began.9
But none of these ladies had moved Washington as did Sally Fairfax. He had known her now for seven years, but during the six months before he joined Braddock he had lived close to her for the first time as an adult. He was infatuated by her beauty and elegance, by her coy charms and coquettish glances. An inveterate flirt—she could not even resist trying to tease and charm Braddock, whom she met at a military parade in Alexandria—Sally playfully lured on this shy young man. As a married woman, she represented dangerous territory for Washington. But lonely, bewitched by all that Sally represented, and, as always, craving recognition, he now tried to open a correspondence with her. He had been gone from Belvoir barely twenty-four hours when he wrote to her for the first time, and he followed that with two additional missives in the next six weeks. When she failed to answer he wrote her sister and his brother, asking each to persuade her to write. Sally still refused to be drawn into a correspondence, but George William’s sister got wind of Washington’s epistles and she responded with a stiff message of her own to the young soldier; she rebuked Washington and advised him not to write again, then, more tenderly, she suggested that when he returned home he surely would find waiting for him some “unknown she, that may recompense you for all the Tryals past.” Washington was not easily dismissed, however. On an errand to Williamsburg he stopped at Belvoir to see Sally, only to be gently reproached once again by her. She pleaded with him not to write any further letters. He wrote anyway, telling her that if she only would send him a letter it would “make me happier than the Day is long.” But once again she discreetly declined to be drawn into a correspondence.10
Washington’s sudden infatuation with Sally is not out of character. To this point in his life he had given every indication of being a somewhat insecure person in quest of personal identity. His were the actions of a young man who was ashamed of what he saw in himself and who feared that others also would discover his shortcomings. Since he first had encountered the dazzling worlds of Belvoir and Mount Vernon a decade earlier, his behavior had been that of the parvenu desperate to achieve recognition. Troubled by what he regarded as his brutish, unpolished demeanor, uneasy in social situations, frequently feeling rude and out of place, young Washington had sought through introspection and
through his continual schemes for self-improvement to become what he believed he had witnessed in Lawrence and George William—a glib, urbane, enlightened, genteel, heroic, and, above all, an attention-getting young man.
Although apparently smitten by this young woman, Washington actually turned toward Sally Fairfax more as a source of self-fulfillment than from real love. Whatever his feelings toward her were to become later, this young man was too self-absorbed to have instituted the kind of warm relationship that he believed he wanted. Instead, at this moment in his life he sought an object through which he might cope with and ameliorate his perceived imperfections. Moreover, dangerous as were his entreaties, they were, from an emotional viewpoint, rather safe inasmuch as any failure in this quest would be less painful than the earlier repudiations he had experienced. Sally was married, and she had made it quite clear that she would not risk her position by even the most harmless liaison with this enamored and seemingly guileless young man. Washington was perfectly well aware of this, of course, so that in a sense he was shielded. If—when—she rejected his advances it could not be perceived as a rejection due to any flaws in his makeup; on the other hand, she served as a defense against his feelings of inadequacy, for whatever attention she displayed toward him could only make him feel more worthy.11
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