Washington: A Life (14 page)

The same day Washington wrote to his mother—one suspects he already knew of his appointment—Governor Dinwiddie offered to make Washington, twenty-three, not only the colonel in charge of the Virginia Regiment but the supreme commander of all military forces in Virginia. In a measure of Washington’s growing self-confidence, he bargained aggressively for a better deal, including the power to name field officers and recruit soldiers, plus an expense account of one hundred pounds yearly. As would be apparent later on, Washington was always reluctant to assume responsibility without the requisite powers to acquit himself honorably. As he put it, “No person who regards his character will undertake a command without the means of preserving it, since his conduct is culpable for all misfortunes and never right but when successful.”
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His hesitation at this moment of meteoric ascent also banished any appearance of an unseemly rush to power. Developing a mature instinct for power, Washington began to appreciate the value of diffidence, cultivating the astute politician’s capacity to be the master of events while seeming to be their humble servant. Two weeks later, on August 31, 1755, a decent interval having elapsed, George Washington agreed to become commander in chief of all forces raised in Virginia. He was to remain extremely proud that the Virginia Regiment was the first to see service during the French and Indian War, a conflict not yet officially declared at the time of Braddock’s defeat.

Determined to look every inch the new commander, Washington opened an account with a London agent to purchase clothing and other luxury goods. He selected a merchant named Richard Washington, mistakenly believing they were related, and told him, “I should be glad to cultivate the most intimate correspondence with you.”
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To defray his expenses, he sent ahead three hogsheads of tobacco. Washington was launching a new role as a country squire, seeking a social standing commensurate with his newfound military renown. He also took his first step to buy on credit, providing a bill of exchange to cover shortfalls in his account.

Among his first purchases, Washington ordered ruffles, silk stockings, and gold and scarlet sword knots to complete his elegant costume as commander. He had already sketched out uniforms for his officers, telling them in vivid terms what they should don: blue coats with scarlet cuffs and facings, scarlet waistcoats trimmed with silver lace, and “every one to provide himself with a silver-laced hat of a fashionable size.”
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From London, Washington also ordered two handsome livery suits, emblazoned with his coat of arms, for his servants. In several details, including the scarlet waistcoats and silver-laced hats, the livery suits matched the officers’ uniforms, making it clear that Washington planned to ride about in high style, accompanied by fancily dressed servants and soldiers.

As chief of the Virginia Regiment, Washington confronted an awesome task, having to police a frontier 350 miles long against “the cruel incursions of a crafty, savage enemy,” as he put it.
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He had to supervise fifty officers and a few hundred men and groused about “indolent” officers and “insolent” soldiers.
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As regimental commander, Washington received a comprehensive education in military skills, running the gamut from building barracks to arbitrating pay disputes. As he supervised every aspect of his operation, his phenomenal capacity for detail became apparent. A young man with a mission, Washington wanted to prove that he could transform colonial recruits into buffed and polished professionals on a par with anything England could muster. As always, he worked assiduously at self-improvement, perusing Humphrey Bland’s
A Treatise of Military Discipline,
a manual popular in the British Army.

As he set up camp at Fort Dinwiddie in Winchester, Virginia, Washington ran into such a chaotic situation that he threatened to resign less than two months after taking the post. He told Dinwiddie that he couldn’t commandeer a single horse in the area without threatening the inhabitants. The House of Burgesses had exempted property owners from the draft, leaving poor men to bear the common burden. Washington had a dreadful time raising troops in this rough, brawling area, where settlers resented coercive recruiting methods. In one letter, he gave a sharp tongue-lashing to a recruiting officer who had resorted to terror to collar men, chiding him for “forcibly taking, confining and torturing those who would not voluntarily enlist” and noting that this “not only cast a slur upon your own character, but reflect[ed] dishonour upon mine.”
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Despite such warnings, Washington inspired considerable fear in the region, although he vowed to Dinwiddie that he would persevere until the inhabitants “execute what they threaten, i.e. ‘to blow out my brains.’”
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When one captain informed Washington that, contrary to regimental rules, his company included two blacks and two mulattoes, the short-handed Washington allowed them to remain in an auxiliary capacity.

Once herded into service, the men deserted in droves, taking clothing and arms with them. Washington responded by clapping deserters into chains, throwing them into a “dark room,” and flogging them vigorously. The only way to avert costly desertions, Washington avowed, was to “terrify the soldiers from such practices.”
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In October 1755 he and Dinwiddie lobbied the Virginia assembly for a bill to permit the death sentence for mutiny, desertion, and willful disobedience. Although Washington wasn’t a martinet, neither was he squeamish about meting out harsh punishment. His policy was to be tough but scrupulously fair, and his inflexible sense of justice didn’t shrink from applying lashes to deserters. In 1756 he decreed the death penalty for one Henry Campbell, whom he labeled “a most atrocious villain” who “richly merits an ignominious death.”
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Campbell had not only deserted but encouraged seven others to do so. Washington made a point of hanging people in public to deter others. His frontier experience only darkened his view of human nature, and he saw people as motivated more by force than by kindness. “Lenity, so far from producing its desired effects, rather emboldens them in these villainous undertakings,” he told Dinwiddie.
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Washington’s methods, seemingly cruel to modern eyes, were standard practice in the British Army of his day.

Washington remained a stickler for discipline, which he identified as “the soul of an army,” and he encouraged military discipline even in private matters.
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Scornful of Virginia’s licentious culture of gambling, whoring, and drinking, which was especially disruptive in an army, he set down strict moral standards for his men, and his use of corporal punishment gradually expanded. Unwilling to tolerate swearing, he warned that offenders would receive twenty-five lashes for uttering an oath, with more severe punishment reserved for second offenses. He was so upset by men “incessantly drunk and unfit for service” that he ordered fifty lashes for any man caught drinking in Winchester gin shops.
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As an antidote to such behavior, Washington lobbied for the appointment of a regimental chaplain. “Common decency, sir, in a camp calls for the services of a divine,” Washington informed the Governor’s Council, stating that such an appointment “ought not to be dispensed with, although the
world
should be so uncharitable as to think us void of religion and incapable of good instructions.”
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With a sovereign faith in leadership by example, Washington believed that courage and cowardice originated from the top of an army. As he wrote during the American Revolution: “This is the true secret … that wherever a regiment is well officered, the men have behaved well—when otherwise, ill—the [misconduct] or cowardly behavior always originating with the officers, who have set the example.”
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Like his mother, Washington tended to stint on praise, reflecting his stoic belief that officers didn’t need encouragement since they were simply doing their duty. When he offered praise, he was careful to direct it not at individuals, but at the regiment as a whole.

In his correspondence at the time, Washington comes across as a young man who couldn’t step back, laugh at himself, or leaven responsibility with humor. Nevertheless he proved popular among his officers, who valued his courage, dignity, and even-handed treatment. “Our colonel is an example of fortitude in either danger or hardships and by his easy, polite behavior has gained not only the regard but affection of both officers and soldiers,” wrote one officer.
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At the same time Washington’s code of leadership stipulated that, for maximum effect, the commander should be cordial but not too familiar, producing respect instead of affection. As one writer later summed up this strategy: “Power required distance, he seems to have reasoned, familiarity and intimacy eroded it.”
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This view of leadership unfortunately had a way of distancing Washington from his subordinates and preventing relaxed camaraderie.

From a strategic standpoint, Washington was frustrated by the wartime role that the assembly had assigned to his regiment. While he advocated an offensive posture to end frontier raids by marching on Fort Duquesne, the assembly opted for a purely defensive stance, creating a string of frontier outposts. This, Washington noted cynically, was done “more with a view to quiet the fears of the inhabitants than from any expectation of giving security on so extensive a line to the settlements.”
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It thrust him into the untenable position of combating raids that never ended. In the meantime, the British shifted the major focus of the war to Canada and points north, leaving the Ohio Valley as a sideshow. This experience of being set up for failure, as he saw it, haunted Washington for the rest of his life.

While Washington was suffering from notoriety caused by tough recruiting methods, he stood for election to the House of Burgesses in Frederick County, which included Winchester. He was qualified to run there because his Bullskin Plantation lay in the region. Later in his career, the word
defeat
never appeared in the Washington lexicon, but he took a sound drubbing in this first election. His friends entered his name at the last minute, which may account for his poor showing. Already interested in running for office, Washington may not have known that his friends had placed him in contention. At the time it was thought unseemly for candidates to engage in electioneering, so they relied on proxies, professing all the while a saintly indifference to power. Luckily for Washington, the age frowned upon direct, backslapping politics, which would never have suited his reticent style.

At the time there were no secret ballots. While an open voting system was thought to prevent corruption, it enhanced the power of landowners who could personally monitor how their tenants voted. Voters stepped forward to announce their votes, which were then recorded by clerks seated at a table. At the election in Winchester on December 10, 1755, Washington was crushed by his two opponents; Hugh West received 271 votes, Thomas Swearingen 270, and Washington a mere 40. His friend and fellow officer Adam Stephen tried to soften the blow by blaming his eleventh-hour entry into the race. “I think your poll was not despicable, as the people were a stranger [to] your purpose until the election began,” he wrote.
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For future use, Washington pocketed a sheet with the voting tally, as if resolved to fare better next time.

As we recall, Washington had refrained from standing for election in Fairfax County because it would have pitted him against George William Fairfax, Sally’s husband. According to legend, Washington attended the Fairfax County election and ended up in a heated exchange about George William with one William Payne, who favored an opposing candidate. Their confrontation grew so angry that Payne struck Washington with a stick, knocking him to the ground. When Washington got to his feet, he had to be restrained from assaulting Payne. In the prevalent honor culture of the day, Washington might have been expected to issue an invitation to a duel. Instead, he sent Payne an apology forthwith. Whether true or apocryphal, the story squares with the fact that Washington never fought a duel and usually tried to harmonize differences after even the most withering arguments.

 

 

FROM HIS LOFTY PERCH atop the Virginia Regiment, Washington kept bucking for a royal commission. His frustration crested in late 1755, when he clashed with a man named John Dagworthy at Fort Cumberland on the Maryland frontier. As a colonial captain from Maryland, Dagworthy held a rank that seemed inferior to Washington’s, but he claimed superior authority based on an old royal commission. Writing to Dinwiddie, Washington threatened to resign if he had to truckle to the hated Dagworthy. Dinwiddie appealed to Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts, a barrister who had succeeded Braddock as supreme commander of British forces in North America. Aiming at deeper institutional change, Washington also wanted Shirley to absorb his regiment into the regular British Army, removing the two-tiered system that had bedeviled him. Governor Dinwiddie granted him permission to travel to Boston so that he could confront Shirley in person. When he set off for Boston in February 1756, Washington was accompanied by two aides and two slaves who sported the fine livery custom-made in London. In Philadelphia the young colonel, very dashing in his blue regimentals, enjoyed his first taste of a northern city and embarked on a shopping spree for clothing, hats, jewelry, and saddles. He was pleased by the clean, well-ordered town, which a friend was to tout to him as the peaceful home “of many nations and religions,” while expressing admiration for “that great man Mr. Penn.”
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Christopher Gist had already notified him that his fame had spread to the city. “Your name is more talked of in Philadelphia than that of any other person in the army,” he had written the previous fall .
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