Washington, in short, had acquired status as a person. No longer was he compelled to seek his identity through a glamorous older brother or a rich and powerful neighbor. Outwardly Washington was the same person; inwardly, however, he had weathered a kind of late adolescent normative crisis, emerging with an enhanced sense of inner coherence. Now he was able to see both himself and the world more accurately. One change that resulted was in his outlook toward Sally Fairfax. He no longer needed her simply to assist in resolving his sense of inadequacy. Now he wanted her because he was more deeply in love with her than ever before. He had been very close to her recently as she attended him during his desperate sickness, then as she nursed him during his recovery. The experience only solidified his feelings. Yet, it was Martha Custis, not Sally Fairfax, whom he was about to wed. What occurred between George and Sally during those weeks late in 1757 never will be known. What seems likely, however, is that somehow he must have realized finally, unqualifiedly, that it was impossible for the two ever to live together. Somehow that must have been made painfully clear to him, either openly communicated by Sally, or imparted silently in a thousand repressive glances and gestures. However the truth was conveyed, once he confronted reality with regard to Sally, he began to look elsewhere for a wife. By no means did he forget Sally Fairfax. But the tug to marry, to leave the army shortly and at last to become a planter was too strong to resist.
Early in the summer of 1758 Colonel Washington was back in Winchester, writing to a British officer whom he knew, beseeching his assistance in attaining favors from General Forbes. He hoped, he wrote, to be “distinguished from the common run of provincial officers.” When Washington reassumed his command after his five-month absence, he discovered that more Indian allies had arrived. They performed competently, if savagely, and kept the foe so preoccupied that Washington was able to devote most of his energies to courting Forbes. He did slip off to the Pamunkey on one occasion that spring, but otherwise he remained at Winchester, where he now took his orders from the British regular, Colonel Henry Bouquet, a considerate, Swiss-born officer who had joined the British army only three years earlier, after lengthy service in the Dutch, Sardinian, and his native Swiss armies.52
Washington hardly had returned from his sick leave before a nonmilitary matter competed for his attention. A vacancy for a Frederick County seat in the Burgesses was announced. Although he had never lived in that county, and even though he had lost an election bid for that same seat only a year earlier, he decided to run once again for the post. Washington’s principal problem was that he could not get away to campaign, but that proved only a slight annoyance. Several of his officers beat the bushes for him, and so did George William Fairfax. Otherwise, his strategy was simple: outspend his adversary. Washington spent more than £40 plying the electorate with rum, beer, and wine, and throwing bashes that one observer called “dull barbeques and yet duller dances.” His tactics succeeded. He outpolled three rivals, capturing nearly 40 percent of the votes and the legislative seat.53
Meanwhile, week after week Washington waited at Winchester. Early in the spring he had been confident that the year would witness the fall of Fort Duquesne to the British. Forbes had combined over sixteen hundred regular infantrymen with his artillery corps, and the colonists had added their muscle to this force. Virginia created a second regiment, and four other colonies also raised new armies, altogether an American force that exceeded twenty-five hundred men. By the summer, however, Washington’s sanguine expections had vanished as the army sat and sat, relentlessly inert.54
Much of Washington’s energy during these weeks was spent over a protracted flap concerning the most advisable route to follow to the Ohio. The choices were limited. From his base at Raystown, now Bedford, Pennsylvania, Forbes could cut a road to Will’s Creek, then follow the route taken by Braddock. Or, the British could cut a new road almost due west from Raystown. Because Washington was a veteran of two campaigns in this wilderness, his advice was solicited. The episode that resulted was not his finest hour. Washington plumped for the Braddock Road route, but he hardly acted dispassionately or scientifically. To his discredit, he acted like the acquisitive speculator that he was. After all, if the Braddock Road was the only byway carved through the wilderness to the Ohio, a Virginia speculator would have a leg up on his Pennsylvania competitors; besides, the Braddock Road almost touched his Bullskin Creek property. Washington’s arguments in favor of that route were not that candid, of course. Instead, he contended that it was folly to build a new road when one already existed; the route from Raystown, he argued, was only slightly shorter, anadvantage that was offset by the difficult mountains that would have to be surmounted. So much time would be consumed in cutting the road, he maintained, that it was doubtful that an attack could be made that year. He managed to overlook the advantage to the alternate route: from Raystown the army would not have to cross the Youghiogheny. In addition, contrary to what Washington said, the Raystown route would be forty miles shorter than the Braddock route, not eighteen miles as the Virginian claimed. Bouquet asked for Washington’s opinion, and he listened to his importunate suggestions, then he investigated the matter himself. He recommended the Raystown route. Now Washington acted as though he were desperate. He wrote a friend from his Braddock campaign days, a British major with access to Forbes. If the Braddock Road was not used, he advised hysterically, “all is lost! All is lost by Heavens! Our Enterprise Ruin’d. . . .” Forbes heard the recommendations, chewed them over for a few days, then he, too, opted for the Raystown route. “Poor Virginia,” Washington cried to Speaker Robinson when he learned of Forbes’s decision. In fact, Colonel Washington continued to make such a racket that Forbes was moved privately to question his integrity and his suitability to lead an army. He also summoned the Virginian to his headquarters, where in no uncertain terms he made it clear that the matter had been resolved.55
Not only had Washington’s lobbying failed, he must have realized that his reputation had been damaged by his scheming. But if he was morose at this turn of events, his mood surely must have brightened in mid-September when the mail brought a letter from Sally Fairfax, his first contact with her since his engagement to Martha.56 Sally congratulated him on his pending marriage and gently kidded him about his likely anxiety at the prospect of becoming a husband. Washington replied with as much circumspection as he could muster, but there was no mistaking his feelings. He confessed his love for Sally:
’Tis true, I profess myself a votary of love. I acknowledge that a lady is in the case, and further I confess that this lady is known to you. Yes, Madame, as well as she is to one who is too sensible of her charms to deny the Power whose influence he feels and must ever submit to. I feel the force of her amiable beauties in the recollection of a thousand tender passages that I could wish to obliterate, till I am bid to revive them. But experience, alas! sadly reminds me how impossible this is. . . .
You have drawn me, dear Madame, or rather I have drawn myself, into an honest confession of a simple Fact. Misconstrue not my meaning; doubt it not, nor expose it. The world has no business to know the object of my Love, declared in this manner to you, when I want to conceal it. One thing above all things in this world I wish to know, and only one person of your acquaintance can solve me that, or guess my meaning.57
It was not difficult to guess the one thing above all others that Washington wished to know. He awaited her response with a mixture of solicitude and buoyancy. It arrived two weeks later. Though just hearing from her must have delighted George, Sally’s discreet refusal to spell out her feelings left him pensive. He wondered whether he had misunderstood her letter. Or had she misconstrued his? “I would feign hope the contrary as I cannot speak plainer without, But I’ll say no more, and leave you to guess the rest,” he replied. Yet he did add one last note. Sally had mentioned appearing in a production of Addison’s Cato, and George responded that he would be “doubly happy in being the Juba to such a Marcia, as you must make.” Transl
ation: in the play Juba wonders what the man who longs for Marcia’s love must do to win her heart, and Marcia responds that Juba would make “Any of womankind but Marcia, happy,” for “While Cato lives, his daughter has no right/ To love or hate but as his choice directs.”58
Between letters Washington sat idly at Raystown, watching the trees on the surrounding hillsides turn in their autumn splendor. It was a brilliant contrast to the drab and uninspiring army camp. All about, the lush forest had disappeared before the redcoats’ axes, giving way to a muddy plain, from which tents everywhere sprouted like summer weeds. Down the road Forbes’s army was advancing slowly, as fifteen hundred men in a woodsmen brigade wrestled with the almost inpenetrable timberland and hills. Then they were through to Loyal Hannon fifty miles further west, and Washington advanced his Virginians to that post. There he lingered for another three weeks, until, abruptly, he was pushed into action. For days the British had been plagued by French and Indian raids on their livestock and baggage train; when patrols reported the approach of a large French force in mid-November, Washington was ordered to gather a thousand men and to repulse the foe. He divided his force into equal units (one under George Mercer, the other under his command) and headed into the wilderness. Hours of weary and fruitless slogging passed; then just as it appeared that the day had been wasted an enemy party was sighted. A flurry of shots rang out from both sides, but the outgunned French and Indians scattered quickly, leaving one soldier dead and three as prisoners in Washington’s hands. Interrogation followed, then the three-mile trek back to camp. Both the evening light and the swirling dust stirred by so many marching feet made it difficult for men to see. Suddenly someone spotted another force. On reflex a shot was fired, then a volley; immediately cries in English to cease fire pierced the air. To the horror of everyone, Virginians had fired on Virginians. Each force had mistaken the other for a French army. Fourteen men were dead, twenty-six had been wounded.59
Whatever mortification Washington felt at this blunder—and it must have been considerable—he did have the satisfaction of learning that his foray had produced significant intelligence. His prisoners revealed that the Indians had returned home and that many of the French troops had been reassigned. Fort Duquesne, the captives insisted, was poorly defended.
Forbes made the decision to gamble on the veracity of the prisoners. He would dart forward, risking everything. He selected twenty-five hundred men and stripped them of all baggage save their weapons and a light backpack. This was to be as much of a blitz operation as the wilderness would permit. He divided the force into three brigades; one, consisting of the Virginia Regiment and provincials from three other colonies, was assigned to Washington.60
Colonel Washington’s men pushed forward with gusto, throwing up jerry-built bridges and clearing a path six-to-eight miles long each day. With a week left on their enlistments everyone knew they were close to the Ohio. Scuttlebutt had it that only seven or eight miles remained. Near dusk on November 24 an Indian scout galloped into camp. Fort Duquesne had been sighted—in flames. The French had scuttled their fortress and retreated. Miles of hard hiking remained the following day, but that evening, just after darkness fell over the three great rivers that mingled below the stockade, the weary British troops reached their destination. Only a few lonely chimneys still stood. Everything else was a smoldering ruin. The land that Virginians had craved for a decade was at last in the possession of Englishmen.61
Washington did not stay at the point formed by those rivers long enough to reflect on the triumph. Forbes immediately dispatched him to Williamsburg to procure supplies for the provincial troops. The colonel did not require a shove. He rode to Loyal Hannon to collect his possessions, then he turned toward Winchester and, ultimately, Belvoir. Two weeks of customarily miserable winter travel brought him to the Fairfax estate, where, weary and ill with a recurrence of dysentary, he collapsed for a recuperative interlude of several days. Not until the end of the month did he feel well enough to proceed to the capital.62
Often during the past four years Washington had contemplated leaving the army. Now he had made up his mind to resign, though the war was not yet over. The English had gained the Ohio, but France remained a powerful foe, and two more years of hard fighting in America lay ahead before the French would agree to parley. But one of the two objectives that had excited Washington—the acquisition of the point where Fort Pitt now would be constructed atop the ruins of the French citadel—had been realized. His other great aim, that of attaining rank through a royal commission, had been dashed. Unconsciously, at least, the military’s grip on Washington had begun to wane the moment he learned that his aspirations in this regard had been thwarted. After he returned from his abortive trip to entreat with Loudoun, his thoughts increasingly turned to Mount Vernon, and to matrimony. He had decided to stay in the army of Virginia through 1758, and, had Forbes’s army not reached the Ohio that autumn, he might have consented to remain in the service for still another campaign. But now that Fort Duquesne had been taken, he saw no reason—no gain that could accrue—for persisting in this way of life. Thus, sometime around Christmas in 1758, while he was in Williamsburg to wheedle supplies for those men still on the Ohio, he resigned, the end for all time, he must have presumed, of his military activities.63
Washington had served with valor, though with meager success, for five years. Barely twenty-two when he assumed command in 1754, he simply had lacked the experience and maturity to cope with the duties for which he was accountable. One egregious mistake followed another that spring and summer, until the campaign ended ignominiously at Fort Necessity. From the late summer of 1755 until he passed under the command of Forbes and Bouquet two and one-half years later, he was charged with securing Virginia’s outlying frontiers. While he sustained no such mortifying defeat as had befallen Braddock, he enjoyed little success during that thirty-month period. In truth, though, Washington was confronted with an impossible task. Even the best military leader, if furnished with the scant and poorly supplied army that was allotted young Colonel Washington, would have been unlikely to have subdued the formidable adversary that marauded in Virginia’s backcountry. But another leader might have served in a more mature—even a more virtuous—manner than did the youthful commander of Virginia’s forces.
Several very admirable aspects of young Washington’s character were much in evidence during these years, most prominently his considerable personal courage. Indeed, his bravery simply is beyond question. In addition, he possessed a powerful and indefinable personal magnetism that enabled him to win the unabashed loyalty of his officers, a cadre that included men who were far older and far more experienced than the callow young colonel. But there was another side to Washington, a dimension far less laudable. He seemed in the grip of a disturbing and unattractive obsession with his own advancement. No amount of protestation that he soldiered only for patriotic reasons—and he made that claim regularly—is quite convincing. He cannot be blamed for having carefully weighed all the alternatives, then for having opted for this career as the one that offered the most promise. Once in command, however, he seemed unable to harness his ambition, and his lusts led him to excessive absences, to petulant outbursts, to deceitful and irresponsible conduct, to an unsavory manner that vacillated between obsequiousness and a menacing heavy-handedness, and that, at times, verged even on the treacherous.
If Washington was given to reflection during those quiet December days in 1758, even he must have been surprised at his steady ascent. Granted he had failed to win British preferment, yet only eleven years before he had been mired at Ferry Farm without much prospect of escape. Many young men would have found his situation at that time an attractive one. His inheritance of land and labor, though meager by some standards, was more than adequate for a comfortable existence. But, of course, Washington was not contented. He had seen the power and the luxuries that wealth could purchase, and he wished to possess them. And he yearned to escape the irksome restraints im
posed upon him by his mother. Of the three sons born to Gus and Mary Washington, only George seems to have been so driven; it was just as well, for of the three he alone had the enormous will to realize the lofty goals that he had set for himself. Now, with five years of military service behind him, his name was known throughout—and even beyond—his province. Soon, too, by marriage he would acquire vast property holdings that would solidify his status as a planter.
Matrimony aside, what was the secret of Washington’s success? Clearly he was able to move other men, to inspire their confidence. With his native genius Washington had learned a lesson only the most incisive ever grasp: how to identify his natural strengths and adapt his behavior accordingly. He comported himself so as to play on his forceful traits, attempting, meanwhile, to hide and to overcome whatever he believed could be seen as a weakness or a blemish. Those men who trusted Washington were impressed by his grave and resolute manner, by his physical prowess, and by his natural acumen. On the other hand, he was keenly aware of his shortcomings—such as his “defective education,” as he put it—and these he sought to disguise.64 With his innate intuitiveness he had discovered that a mixture of show and substance could produce success. Repeatedly, those men who were moved by him were struck by his combination of easy affability with resolution and courage.65
But Washington was far more than an actor. He was honest in cataloguing his deficiencies, and he set about to correct those within his reach. By a combination of keen observation and diligent study he sought to become polished and urbane. He scrutinized those at Belvoir, he learned from Lawrence, he intently observed the conversations of the powerful in Williamsburg and Barbados, in New York and Philadelphia and Boston, and he carefully studied the mannerisms of the cultivated British officers with whom he served. Eventually, he developed an air of such earnestness and strength that he was able to induce subordinates to follow his command. Likewise, he possessed an uncanny ability to convince the magistrates and the powerful that he could lead, perhaps by impressing upon them that he embodied the very traits that they longed to exhibit: strength, vigor, sobriety, tenacity, virtue, maturity, decisiveness, a steely toughness, an icy remoteness.
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