George Washington
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9. Freeman 2:326; to Henry Bouquet, 25 July 1758, GWP; Bouquet to Forbes, 31 July 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:291.
10. To Bouquet, 2 August 1758, GWP; to Francis Halkett, 2 August 1758, GWP.
11. To Bouquet, 6, 13, and 28 August 1758, GWP: Forbes to Bouquet, 9 August 1758, in James, Forbes Writings, 171; Forbes to Abercromby, 11 August 1758, in James, Forbes Writings, 173; to Bouquet, 28 August 1758, GWP; Forbes to Bouquet, 23 September 1758, in James, Forbes Writings, 219; John Armstrong to Richard Peters, 3 October 1758, in Pennsylvania Archives, 1st Series, 3:551–52 (Washington “obstinate” in opposing route decision).
12. Stephen to Bouquet, 10 August 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:349; Stephen to Bouquet, 12 August 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:361; Stephen to Bouquet, 18 August 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:386; Bouquet to James Sinclair, 9 September 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:482; Harry Gordon to Bouquet, 9 September 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:487; Bouquet to Forbes, 11 September 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:492; Bouquet to Burd, 12 October 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:551.
13. Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 369–70; Forbes to Bouquet, 23 July 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:265.
14. To Francis Fauquier, 5 August 1758, 2 September 1758, GWP; to John Robinson, 1 September 1758, GWP; to Francis Fauquier, 2 September 1758, GWP; Knollenberg, The Virginia Period, 66. Virginia’s Executive Council specifically approved Washington’s opposition to the Pennsylvania route. Minutes of 17 August 1758, in Hall, Executive Journals 6:108.
15. To Richard, 1749–1750, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 8 September 1756, GWP; to John Augustine Washington, 28 May 1755, GWP; Dorothy Twohig, “The Making of George Washington,” in Hofstra, George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry, 14–15; Philyaw, Virginia’s Western Visions, 43; John C. Crone, George Washington’s Election to the Virginia House of Burgesses, July 24, 1758, Winchester-Frederick County, Virginia, Mount Vernon: Frederick W. Smith Library for the Study of Mount Vernon (2018), 18, 44. Frederick County in 1758 included what are now Clarke, Warren, Shenandoah, and Page Counties in Virginia and Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan Counties in West Virginia. Barton, “The First Election of Washington,” 116.
16. From Gabriel Jones, 6 July 1758, GWP; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 57–59; Freeman 2:318; Hofstra, The Planting of New Virginia, 240; Christopher Hendricks, The Backcountry Towns of Colonial Virginia, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press (2006), 88, 91; Robert D. Mitchell, “‘Over the Hills and Far Away’: George Washington and the Changing Virginia Backcountry,” in Hofstra, George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry, 75.
17. Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders, 68–69; Brown, Virginia Baron, 143; from Gabriel Jones, 6 July 1758, GWP; from John Kirkpatrick, 6 July 1758, GWP; from James Wood, 7 July 1758, GWP; from Robert Rutherford, 20 July 1758, GWP; from Charles Smith, 20 July 1758.
18. To Henry Bouquet, 19 July 1758, GWP; from James Glen, 19 July 1758, GWP; from Adam Stephen, 19 July 1758, GWP; to Henry Bouquet, 21 July 1758, GWP.
19. From Charles Smith, 26 July (with enclosures) and 24 July 1758, GWP; to James Wood, 28 July 1758, GWP. Gabriel Jones lost his own House seat from Augusta County while he was in Winchester supporting Washington. To Gabriel Jones, 29 July 1758, GWP; Enclosure V to letter from Charles Smith, 26 July 1758, GWP; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 60; Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders, 68–69; from Gabriel Jones, 24 July 1758, GWP; from Charles Smith, 26 July 1758, GWP; from John McNeill, 24 July 1758, GWP; from Thomas Walker, 24 July 1758, GWP; from George William Fairfax, 25 July 1758, GWP; from Robert Stewart, 25 July 1758, GWP.
15. THE PUSH TO FORT DUQUESNE
1. Hunter, “Thomas Barton,” 442; Hugh Mercer to Colonel Henry Bouquet, 4 June 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:34; Captain James Shippen to Richard Peters, 16 August 1758, Pennsylvania Archives 3:510, 461–62; Connecticut Gazette, July 22, 1758; New London Summary, September 29, 1758; New York Gazette, October 16, 1758; Newport Mercury, October 17, 1758; Pennsylvania Gazette, November 30, 1758; Boston Gazette, December 11, 1758; Bouquet to Forbes, 31 July 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:292–93; Bouquet to Forbes, 20 October 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:578; Bouquet to Forbes, 7 June 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:47; Forbes to Pitt, 20 October 1758, in James, Forbes Writings, 59.
2. Grant to Forbes, 14 September 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:499; Bouquet to Forbes, 17 September 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:517; Forbes to Bouquet, 23 September 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:535; Forbes to Abercromby, 8 October 1758, in James, Forbes Writings, 225; to George William Fairfax, 25 September 1758, GWP; to Francis Fauquier, 25 September 1758, GWP; Freeman 2:341–47; Anderson, Crucible of War, 272–74.
3. To Francis Fauquier, 5 November 1758, GWP; Forbes to Bouquet, 25 October 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:585; to Bouquet, 6 November 1758, GWP.
4. Council of War, 11 November 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:600.
5. Lengel, General George Washington, 75; Freeman 2:357–58; Anderson, Crucible of War, 282; New York Gazette, December 4, 1758; Boston Gazette, December 11, 1758. Decades later, Washington claimed that he stopped the carnage between the Virginia forces by stepping between the two lines of soldiers and knocking their muskets up. No account corroborates that assertion. Zagarri, Humphreys, 21–22; Cleland, George Washington in the Ohio Valley, 217–18. Another account attributes the heroics to Captain Thomas Bullitt, and appears in a memoir of Bullitt’s nephew, which also was composed much later. Thomas W. Bullitt, My Life at Oxmoor, Louisville: John Morton & Co. (1911), 3. There is little basis for choosing between the accounts. Both men may have intervened to stop the withering cross fire.
6. Forbes to Abercrombie, 17 November 1757, in James, Forbes Writings, 255; Calloway, The Shawnees, 29; Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 131; Lengel, General George Washington, 75–76; Anderson, Crucible of War, 282.
7. To John Forbes, 15 and 17 November 1758, GWP; from Henry Bouquet, 16 November 1758, GWP; Bouquet to William Allen, 25 November 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:610; Orderly Book, 24 November 1758, GWP. On November 16, two weeks before the Virginia enlistments would expire, Washington implausibly suggested to Forbes that they still might consider using Braddock’s road. To John Forbes, 16 November 1758, GWP. If Forbes replied, his reply did not survive.
8. To Francis Fauquier, 28 November 1758, GWP; Forbes to Abercromby and Amherst, November 26, 1758, in James, Forbes Writings, 262; Pennsylvania Gazette, December 14, 1758.
9. Bouquet to Colonel John Stanwix, 25 November 1758, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 2:609; to Francis Fauquier, 2 and 9 December 1758, GWP.
10. Pennsylvania Gazette, December 14, 1758.
11. Robert Munford to Theodorick Bland Jr., 6 July 1758, in Charles Campbell, ed., The Bland Papers, Petersburg, VA: Edmund & Julian Ruffin (1840), 9–10; Address from the Officers of the Virginia Regiment, 31 December 1758, GWP; from George Washington to the Officers of the Virginia Regiment, 10 January 1759, GWP.
12. Orders, 8 January 1756, GWP; William Guthrie Sayen, “A Compleat Gentleman”: The Making of George Washington, 1732–1775, PhD Thesis, University of Connecticut (1998), 127. Sayen notes that Washington’s commitment to merit-based appointments was sorely tried when Colonel Fairfax asked that his two younger sons, Bryan and William, be commissioned as lieutenants in the regiment. Such patronage appointments were contrary to Washington’s principles, but he owed the Fairfaxes so much. After receiving five letters from Colonel Fairfax on behalf of Bryan, Washington finally appointed the young man, passing over others, only to have Bryan resign from the regiment by the end of 1756. Colonel Fairfax then began campaigning for an appointment for his son William. From Colonel Fairfax, 17 July 1757, GWP. Washington delayed responding until Colonel Fairfax’s death, when Washington asked Governor Dinwiddie to make the appointment of William Fairfax. For Washington to make the appointment himself, he explained, “will occasion
great confusion in the corps, and bring censure on me; for the officers will readily conceive, that my friendship and partiality to the family were the cause of it.” To Dinwiddie, 17 September 1757, GWP; Sayen, “A Compleat Gentleman,” 128–29.
13. Freeman 2:377; Higginbotham, American Military Tradition, 34–37. Washington’s paired traits of sensitivity to criticism and yearning for high reputation were by no means unique in his era. As one scholar wrote of Virginia luminary Landon Carter, “Respect and attention sustained him,” but he suffered from an “extreme sensitivity to criticism.” Jack P. Greene, Landon Carter: An Inquiry into the Personal Values and Social Imperatives of the Eighteenth-Century Virginia Gentry, Charlottesville: Dominion Books (1965), 75.
14. Anderson, Crucible of War, 291–92; Zagarri, Humphreys, 21,
15. A recent book takes a contrary view, arguing that Washington in the Continental Army preferred to promote aristocrats (William Alexander, who called himself Lord Stirling, is the example), and passed over talented roughnecks (Daniel Morgan is the example cited). Robert L. O’Connell, Revolutionary: George Washington at War, New York: Random House (2019), xxv. Alexander was a competent general whose heroism arguably prevented a total catastrophe at the Battle of Long Island in 1776. Lengel, General George Washington, 142–47. Washington’s decision not to promote Morgan in 1779, according to Morgan’s biographer, was based on the commander’s policy of promoting strictly on the basis of seniority, not because of disdain for the less wealthy. Albert Louis Zambone, Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life, Yardley, PA: Westholme (2018), 192. Indeed, Washington promoted many officers of humble or modest backgrounds, including Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and Nathanael Greene.
16. To Adam Stephen, 20 July 1776, GWP.
17. James Maury letters, 9 August 1755 and 10 January 1756, in Maury, Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, 382–84, 396.
16. WASHINGTON IN LOVE
1. Cash Accounts, December 1758, January 1759, GWP; 1758–1759 Memorandum, GWP.
2. Morgan, Virginians at Home, 39–40.
3. To Sarah Cary Fairfax, 14 May 1755, GWP; to Sarah Fairfax Carlyle, 7 June 1755, GWP; to Sarah Cary Fairfax, 13 February 1758, and note 1, GWP. In early March, Washington forwarded to Sally a letter from her husband in London; in March, he advised her that he was leaving for Williamsburg and offered to carry to the capital any letters she or others at Belvoir wished to send, or to perform other errands there for them. To Sarah Cary Fairfax, 4 March 1758, GWP.
4. The possibility that Washington was referring to a love for some other woman seems small, in view of the several references to Sally, along with lack of other candidates.
5. Flexner 1:197–204; Chernow, 83–86.
6. To John Augustine Washington, 28 May 1755, GWP; Don Higginbotham, “George Washington and Three Women,” in Harvey and O’Brien, George Washington’s South, 132. A year before his death, Washington wrote again to Sally, who had long lived in England and had been widowed many years before. He told her that he had never “been able to eradicate from my mind, the recollection of those happy moments—the happiest of my life—which I have enjoyed in your company.” To Sarah Cary Fairfax, 16 May 1798, GWP. Though a statement of his great affection for Sally, the letter does not confirm a romantic attachment, but reflected his affection for the entire Fairfax clan and nostalgia for youthful days. Indeed, he used virtually the same words more than a decade before in a letter to Sally’s husband. Having viewed Belvoir in ruins, he then wrote to George William, “When I considered that the happiest moments of my life had been spent there . . . I was obliged to fly from them.” To George William Fairfax, 27 February 1785, GWP.
7. Late in life, advising his step-granddaughter on matters of the heart, Washington acknowledged, “Love is a mighty pretty thing; but like all other delicious things, it is cloying.” To Eleanor Parke Custis, 14 September 1794, GWP. That statement might be construed as one of regret at having indulged the delicious thing with Sally, or satisfaction at not having done so.
8. Twohig, “The Making of George Washington,” in Hofstra, George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry, 8; Higginbotham, “George Washington and Three Women,” 128; to Anna Boudinot Stockton, 2 September 1783, GWP.
9. One ambitious author attempted to gather anecdotes of Washington’s wit into a single volume. The slender production relies heavily on a few unsourced bon mots that emerged at least a half century after Washington’s death. P. M. Zall, George Washington Laughing, Richmond: Archon Books (1989). A few letters have survived in which Washington wrote in a jocular vein—to his brother-in-law upon the birth of a child, to a cabinet officer and former aide in the year of his death. To Burwell Bassett, 8 August 1762, GWP; to James McHenry, 11 August 1799, GWP. His humor in those letters was broad and high-spirited. They have a spontaneity and genuineness that the letters to Sally Fairfax lack entirely.
10. Higginbotham, “Three Women,” 127–28; to Sarah Cary Fairfax, 7 June 1755, GWP.
11. McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 10:55–56, 10:66–67. A story of the House resolution honoring Washington is sometimes told. Supposedly when Washington rose to acknowledge the resolution, he was so tongue-tied that Speaker Robinson leaned forward and said he should resume his seat: “Your modesty is equal to your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language that I possess.” The tale, however, is a hearsay account that passed through several mouths before being written down in 1816, sixty years later. Accordingly, its provenance is doubtful despite frequent repetition. Freeman 3:7 note 11.
12. Mary Washington to Joseph Ball, 26 July 1759, Frank M. Etting collections, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
13. Ruth Wallis, “The Glory of Gravity—Halley’s Comet 1759,” Annals of Science 41:279, 283 (1984); Invoice to Robert Cary & Co., 20 September 1759, GWP.
PART II
1. William S. Baker, ed., Early Sketches of George Washington, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. (1893), 26–27.
17. THE NEW LIFE
1. One leading biographer dismissed Washington’s life between the French and Indian War and the Revolution as the experiences of “a planter whose public service compassed nothing larger than membership in the House of Burgesses. . . . What he was when he concluded his service under Forbes, he was when he began the desperate game against Gage and Howe in front of Boston.” The emergence of Washington’s leadership skills to that writer was “a mystery . . . beyond documentary explanation.” Freeman 1:xv; 3:xiii. The most prominent Washington biography in this century devotes roughly 10 percent of its length to this critical period. Chernow, 97–189. Another biographer has recognized that this period is key to understanding Washington because it brought not only “emotional maturation” but also “increasing political sophistication.” Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 56.
2. Martha Washington to Anna Marie Bassett, 28 August 1762, in Fields, Worthy Partner, 147; Martha Washington to Margaret Green, 29 September 1760, in Fields, Worthy Partner.
3. To Jonathan Boucher, 5 June 1771, GWP.
4. To John Mercer, 20 April 1759, GWP; Knollenberg, George Washington: The Virginia Period, 82.
5. Freeman 3:36; Mary A. Stephenson, “Custis Square Historical Report, Block 4 Lot 1–8,” Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library (1990), 24–28.
6. Jack P. Greene estimated that the gentry were 2 to 5 percent of the white population, with about forty interrelated families at its top. Jack P. Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia (1994), 262. As one historian noted, Virginia showed a “firm attachment to government of the rich, the well-born, and the able.” Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders, 2–3; Griffith, Virginia House of Burgesses, 71.
7. Carl Bridenbaugh, Seat of Empire: The Political Role of Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg, Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg (1958), 24–25; William C
. Ewing, The Sports of Colonial Williamsburg, Richmond: The Dietz Press (1937), 3.
8. “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I,” American Hist. Rev. 26:726, 742 (1921); Zagarri, Humphreys, 60.
9. Fauquier to Board of Trade, 10 April 1759, in George Henkle Reese, ed., The Official Papers of Francis Fauquier, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, 1758–1768, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia (1980) 1:205; Fauquier to Board of Trade, 12 May 1761, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 2:525; Edmund Randolph, History of Virginia, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia (1970), 174.
10. Stanley Pargellis, “The Procedure of the Virginia House of Burgesses,” WMQ 7:73, 86 (1927); Randolph, History of Virginia, 173–74; Jack P. Greene, ed., The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752–1778, Richmond: Virginia Historical Society (1987), 82–85; Jack P. Greene, “The Attempt to Separate the Offices of Speaker and Treasurer in Virginia, 1758–1766,” VMHB 71:11, 16 (1963); Rhys Isaac, Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation, New York: Oxford University Press (2004), 124.
11. Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders, 98; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:57 (23 February 1759); Executive Council minutes, 5 March 1759, in Hall, Executive Journals 6:131–32; Bridenbaugh, Seat of Empire, 34.
12. Pargellis, “The Procedure of the Virginia House of Burgesses,” 7:73, 74–75; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:57 (23 February 1759).
13. Bridenburgh, Seat of Empire, 36–38 (“the most luscious political plums fell to relatives and connections of the Robinson-Randolph interest”); Robert Detweiler, “Political Factionalism and the Geographic Distribution of Standing Committee Assignments in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1730–1776,” VMHB 80:267, 273 (July 1972). One scholar ranked the influence of all members of the House over a fifty-five-year period and found that well over half of the most influential members each owned more than 10,000 acres. Jack P. Greene, “Foundations of Political Power in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1720–1775,” WMQ 15:485, 487 (1959).