The confrontation with Britain had brought both sides to a rough accommodation that satisfied neither yet eliminated much of the friction between them. The associators had blunted a second attempt by Parliament to impose taxes on Americans, but the British still did not accept the principle that only Americans could tax Americans. That resolution left both sides feeling disgruntled, as though the dispute were not really settled. Presciently, Mason predicted that the associations would have a long-term impact. “Should the oppressive system of taxing us without our consent be continued,” he wrote, “the flame, however smothered now, will break out with redoubled ardor.” If there was a new conflagration, Washington would be fanning those flames.27
Chapter 26
Upheavals at Mount Vernon
In 1772, life for Washington seemed to promise stability, prosperity, and prominence. In the House of Burgesses, Washington served on committees that considered clearing the Potomac for navigation and regulating sales of flour, now Mount Vernon’s major revenue-producer. Washington plunged into Williamsburg’s cultural offerings, attending six plays, a concert, and a ball. A darker development was his chronic dental trouble. Since the only therapy for mouth pain was extraction of an offending tooth, Washington would run out of teeth far too early.1
Back at Mount Vernon in May, he arranged for a portrait of himself by Charles Willson Peale. He predicted that the artist would show the world “what manner of man I am.” He seized control of the answer to that question by wearing his old uniform for the sitting, even though thirteen years had passed since he last commanded soldiers. The portrait shows him in his Virginia Regiment regalia, sword on his hip and crescent-shaped gorget of rank around his neck. Appearing younger than his forty years, his expression is contemplative, with a trace of melancholy. Peale also painted miniatures of Martha, Jacky, and Patsy.2
When the artist was done, matters at Mount Vernon might have seemed as settled as the big river flowing by. Hard changes, however, were coming.
* * *
George William and Sally Fairfax, neighbors and intimate friends, resolved to leave for England to manage an inheritance. Having suffered recent health setbacks, both hoped for better medical care in England.3
With no one else did the Washingtons socialize so regularly and so informally. The two men shared memories reaching back twenty-five years—of frontier surveying, rowdy hunts, glittering balls, and elegant evenings with brother Lawrence and Colonel Fairfax. Belvoir had been Washington’s finishing school, where blessed people knew the secrets of how to behave and how the world worked, secrets that an ambitious colonial youth absorbed eagerly. While Washington served in the Virginia Regiment in 1758, it was George William—not Washington’s brothers—who supervised the rebuilding of Mount Vernon. The two friends supported each other in elections, served as church wardens together, and matured into the twin pillars of Fairfax County. While Washington advanced in the House of Burgesses, George William served on the Executive Council. The prospect of losing such a close friend had to leave an empty place in Washington’s heart.
Like most people, George William trusted Washington. He asked his friend to supervise the management of his property while he was gone. “In this part of the colony,” George William wrote on New Year’s Day 1773, “I have not a friend (yourself excepted) in whom I can repose such confidence.” At a dinner at Mount Vernon the next day, George William pressed the matter, but Washington evidently resisted. Weighed down by his Mount Vernon responsibilities, his public duties, other guardianships, and his western land quest, Washington dreaded another burden. Perhaps, also, his friend’s departure made Washington, the one to be left behind, irritable.
More than two weeks later, in a note on other matters, Washington offered an indirect apology, having recovered both his manners and his feelings toward his oldest friend. He had responded in haste, he wrote. “I might not perhaps have expressed my meaning so clearly as I wished to have done.” If Washington could be useful by supervising Belvoir’s care, “I shall undertake it with cheerfulness.” His initial reaction, he explained, grew from the fear that he could not devote enough attention to Belvoir’s needs. Since George William had retained a manager for the estate, Washington thought he could supervise the manager “with very little difficulty.”4
In truth, many cares crowded in on Washington. A ship captain carrying a cargo of his flour had absconded to Honduras with the goods. On behalf of his brothers, Washington was contesting ownership of a parcel in Lord Fairfax’s domain while also straining to collect rents from his tenants. An effort to build a mill on land in Pennsylvania was floundering. Washington grew furious when the church in Alexandria for the new Fairfax Parish proposed to rescind his purchase of a prominent pew.5
In the public sphere, matters also were growing messy. A counterfeiting ring flooded Virginia with fake bills, forcing an emergency assembly session in March 1773 to approve new currency. From the north came reports of renewed sparring with the British. When Rhode Islanders burned a British customs ship, the British began sending American prisoners to England for trial, a flat denial of colonists’ rights. The House of Burgesses revived Virginia’s committee of correspondence to share information with other colonies.6
In any list of Washington’s troubles, Jacky Custis had his place. His lackadaisical attitude baffled Washington. Jacky’s schoolmaster offered the halfhearted defense that the teenager was “a good man, if not a very learned one,” admitting that he was “exceedingly indolent.” In the fall of 1772, Jacky was smitten with fifteen-year-old Eleanor Calvert, a schoolmate’s sister. Washington and the schoolmaster had been considering sending the young heir to college, hoping that a new setting might improve his habits. In early 1773, their plan ripened for him to attend King’s College in New York (now Columbia University), which caused the youth to reveal his engagement to Miss Calvert (called Nelly).7
The reactions at Mount Vernon were predictable. Martha was delighted. Washington less so.
The stepfather’s concern was not with Nelly, by all accounts both charming and an appropriate match. Her grandfather was the fifth Lord Baltimore, one of the hereditary proprietors of Maryland. Other ancestors included illegitimate descendants of both King Charles II and King George I. Nelly’s branch of the Calverts had modest resources, but Jacky’s fortune was ample without a significant bridal dowry.
Washington’s worry was with the prospective bridegroom. Washington doubted that eighteen-year-old Jack (as he was now called) was prepared to take his place as scion of a wealthy family. Yet Washington also knew that opposing his wife on anything concerning her son was a hazardous business. Martha’s feelings were too strong for direct opposition to succeed. Two years before, when the young man chose to be inoculated against smallpox, Washington had to conceal the procedure from Martha until it was successfully completed, so “she might escape those tortures which suspense would throw her into.”8
Washington played for time. In a careful letter to Nelly’s father, he praised her “amiable qualifications,” adding that “an alliance with your family will be pleasing.” He then noted Jack’s “youth, inexperience, and unripened education.” Young Custis was not, Washington continued in a tortured circumlocution, “capable of bestowing that due attention to the important consequences of a marriage state.” He proposed an engagement of at least two years, so Jack could continue his studies and become “more deserving of the lady and useful to society.” Should their love cool, that “had better precede, than follow after, marriage.” To demonstrate that he proposed only delay, Washington turned to business, recounting Jack’s ownership of 15,000 acres and more than two hundred slaves, on top of more than £8,000 in investments. Adding the hope that Mr. Calvert “would also be willing to do something genteel by your daughter,” he concluded by inviting the Calverts to Mount Vernon.9
Calvert’s ready agreement to the delay included one caution. Since he had ten children, he wrote,
“no very great fortune can be expected,” but Nelly would receive the same share of his estate as the other nine. For the moment, that resolution held. Nelly became a frequent visitor to Mount Vernon, another friend for Patsy. The Calverts, having a large supply of children, sometimes sent one of Nelly’s sisters with her.
In May, Washington delivered Jack to college in New York. He used the journey to renew connections in Philadelphia and New York, introducing Jack to society. They dined with three different royal governors, and with Pennsylvania’s chief justice. Once installed in college, Jack reveled in the privileges his wealth brought him, noting happily that the faculty singled him out “as much . . . as can be expected,” and that he was the only student allowed to eat with the instructors.10
Washington hurried home, eager to confirm a trip west with Governor Dunmore that might bring more land grants.11 Shortly after reaching Mount Vernon, however, tragedy struck. At a family dinner, Patsy Custis died. In a letter to his brother-in-law Burwell Bassett, Washington described the scene:
[Patsy] rose from dinner about four o’clock, in better health and spirits than she appeared to have been in for some time; soon after which she was seized with one of her usual fits, and expired in it, in less than two minutes, without uttering a word, a groan, or scarce a sigh—this sudden and unexpected blow, I scarce need add, has almost reduced my poor wife to the lowest ebb of misery.12
Though the Washingtons had feared always for Patsy, her sudden passing at an everyday moment was a horror. Washington prayed and wept at her side, according to one account. “The distress of this family,” Washington wrote to Bassett, “is an easier matter to conceive, than to describe.” He added the wish that the tragedy “removed the sweet innocent girl into a more happy, and peaceful abode than any she has met with, in the afflicted path she hitherto has trod.”13
They buried Patsy the next day, which Washington recorded as “hot, overcast, thundery.” The only mourners were the Washingtons, brother Jack and his family, the Fairfaxes from Belvoir, and some of Mount Vernon’s slaves.14
Martha Dandridge Washington, 1772
Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (Charles Willson Peale)
Troubled by Martha’s grief, Washington invited her mother to make Mount Vernon “her entire and absolute home.” He canceled his trip west with Lord Dunmore and sent word of Patsy’s death to Jack Custis in New York.15 Two days after the funeral, the Fairfaxes gave dinner to the people from Mount Vernon, though George and Martha did not go. After a few days, Martha managed a visit to Belvoir.
At Mount Vernon, life drifted from its usual patterns. A central figure in the family—the young girl who played the spinet, took dance lessons, huddled with girlfriends, and suffered with epilepsy—was gone. The loss brought on reflection and sadness, especially for Martha, who had been with Patsy always, often wracked with worry. Patsy had been her constant companion as well as her daughter. It would take time for life to find new rhythms.16
Washington changed his routines. He stayed close to home. He did not hunt for the rest of the summer. Nor did he view lands he might purchase. On many days, he did not leave the mansion house. He and Martha went riding sometimes, just the two of them, something they had never done very much. He plainly was concerned for her.17
When the next blow fell, cruelly soon, at least it was expected. Just three weeks after Patsy’s death, it was time for George William and Sally to leave for England. Every parting, especially for an extended and uncertain period, can feel like a small death. That feeling had to weigh heavily as the Washingtons watched their friends leave. Washington and George William would never meet again.18
* * *
Washington continued to keep close to Mount Vernon. He rode with Martha. Neighbors visited. Nelly Calvert returned with a sister, and John Carlyle’s daughters came by. Martha enjoyed the company of young women, especially that summer.19
The somber days began to lighten as autumn neared. In late September, Washington met Jack Custis in Annapolis for that town’s annual week of horse racing and celebration. Shaking off the summer’s gloom, Washington stayed with Maryland’s governor, played cards, bet on the races, and attended the theater. A session with his Williamsburg dentist may have brought mixed results, since he visited another dentist a few months later.20
Jack announced that he wished to marry right away. Martha, wanting him back from far-off New York, consented. Washington could only agree, “contrary to my judgment, and much against my wishes.” As he explained in a letter to the president of King’s College, Washington conceded “to the wishes of his mother . . . as he is the last of the family.” At least the college reported favorably on Jack’s brief time there.21
In February 1774, Jack and Nelly married at the Calverts’ home in Maryland. With Martha remaining at Mount Vernon, Washington attended with his cousin Lund. Technically an employee, Lund might seem an odd choice as a companion, but he also was family and had known the bridegroom for nearly ten years. It would have been a lonesome trip for Washington to make on his own.22
Despite the sorrow surrounding Patsy’s death, her passing conferred financial benefits on her family. By law, Jack and Martha divided Patsy’s third of the Custis legacy. Washington used some of the funds to purchase an estate for Jack and Nelly on the Pamunkey River, near where Martha grew up. Martha’s share gave Washington a fresh injection of Custis money. Once again—as with the deaths of his brother Lawrence, Lawrence’s daughter, and Lawrence’s widow—Washington prospered by outliving those close to him.
Patsy’s money allowed him to pay off debts, close on some land deals, and embark on an even more ambitious overhaul of the mansion house. He resolved to add a new room, the largest of the house, for entertaining, plus a more private master bedroom. In Annapolis and New York he had seen new architectural styles he hoped to apply.23
* * *
With Patsy’s death and Jack’s marriage, the Washingtons’ lives were likely to grow quieter. They were approaching their mid-forties, a respectable middle age, with no children in the house. Washington had settled his mother’s situation, and even had resolved some (though by no means all) of his western land claims. The public world seemed calm, with far less talk of enslavement by the mother country or the transcendent rights of Americans. Tranquility, however, would not be the fate of George and Martha.24
In retrospect, 1773 turned out to be the last quiet year in American political life for the next thirty. Conflicts between Britain and America soon would boil over. In only a few months, Washington’s life would turn upside down, with public duties taking precedence. He would meet that change as a far wiser and more politically adept person than he had been when he led the Virginia Regiment two decades before.
Chapter 27
Seizing the Moment: The Fairfax Resolves
The Boston Tea Party on the evening of December 16, 1773, triggered a chain of events that would catapult Washington to greater prominence in Virginia and across the American colonies.
Many popular notions about that night’s events in Boston Harbor are wrong. The men who dumped three shiploads of tea overboard did not perform their work while Boston slept, nor did they emit war whoops while consigning the offending leaves to the briny waters. The tea tax they challenged was not levied on Americans, but on the British East India Company, which passed it through to consumers. Americans, however, objected to indirect taxes as well as those directly levied. If that tax succeeded, Virginian Arthur Lee muttered, “its success may lead to a thousand other artful ways of enslaving us.”1
The fifty men who boarded the ships in mock Indian garb, faces darkened by lampblack and grease, spoke little while thousands watched from the shore in rapt silence. Across the water came the sound of axes chopping open chests filled with 90,000 pounds of tea, which was heaved overboard. Because the tide was low, tea mounded above the water’s surface. Apprentices waded in
to the water to stamp the tea into the mud. An onshore spectator, lawyer John Adams, enthused that the act was “so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible [that it] must have important consequences.”2
The event’s raw defiance electrified Americans. Torchlit figures wielding axes personified revolution. Inspired, Americans in other port cities turned back tea shipments. Equally important, the tea party goaded George III’s government to send four regiments to Boston under the command of General Thomas Gage to enforce harsh new measures, which became known as the Coercive Acts. Britain closed Boston’s port to shipments of anything other than food or fuel. Gage housed troops in private homes. His instructions stressed the need for stern action in a high-risk situation:
The constitutional authority of this kingdom over its colonies must be vindicated, and its laws obeyed throughout the whole empire. . . . should those ideas of independence . . . once take root, that relation between this kingdom and its colonies . . . will soon cease to exist, and destruction must follow disunion.
Boston’s port was to remain closed until the colonists paid the value of the drowned tea. The harsh response enraged many Americans who had favored reconciliation with Britain. Richard Henry Lee described it as spurring “astonishment, indignation, and concern.”3
After the Washingtons reached Williamsburg for a new assembly session in mid-May, the burgesses privately discussed protest resolutions while House sessions addressed routine matters.4 A younger group—including Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson—developed a plan of escalating protest, beginning with a day of fasting and prayer. Their prayer resolution used strong language, noting “the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights and the evils of civil war.”
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