Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader (3 page)

He seems to have realized that little would come easily to him, and he responded, as he grew older, with effort and resolution. Knowledge of surveying was valuable in a land-rich society, and he mastered its requirements well before he entered manhood. But there was much more to be learned if he was to make his way into gentry society. Washington was an awkward youth and aware of the fact. His size had something to do with his self-consciousness about his appearance. He had large hands and feet, encumbrances in the polite company of any society. Everyone has seen adolescents who seem to act only under duress when they are with their elders and betters. Washington, for a time at least, conformed to this type. Not surprisingly, he turned to a book for help, a guide called
Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation
, whose purpose was to advise boys and young men on how to “keep to the usual Customs,” rules instructing readers on, among other things, when and when not to pull off their hats. Besides the specific instances of behavior to avoid or emulate—“bedew no mans face with your Spittle” when you speak, kill no fleas “in the sight of others,” “keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire called Conscience”—the rules conveyed a sense of social status and its importance. The planter class from which Washington
sprang needed no instruction concerning its own importance, but the rules provided it anyway, and Washington transcribed some of this teaching into his copybook.
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A much better teacher began to affect Washington’s life shortly before his father’s death. That “teacher” was Lawrence Washington, his older brother, now a veteran of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, returned from military duty after serving in a major expedition that captured Cartagena, on the northern coast of South America. He was a dashing figure who had held an officer’s commission in the Virginia Regiment that was so important in defeating the Spanish. He arrived back in Virginia in 1742 or early 1743 and almost immediately received appointment as adjutant general of the colony. A few months later he married Ann Fairfax, daughter of Colonel William Fairfax, who had recently built a handsome house at Belvoir, the family estate. Belvoir was about four miles from Lawrence’s plantation, which he had named Mount Vernon, after Admiral Edward Vernon, the commander of the expedition against Cartagena.

Lawrence was fourteen years older than George. As a matter of law and practice, the oldest son, having received the bulk of a planter’s estate, was expected to care for it and all the family living there. Lawrence followed this practice willingly—and without opposition from his brothers or anyone else. He was an excellent model, thoughtful and modest in style, but leaving no doubt who was in charge.

Lawrence had made a brilliant marriage—he had joined one of the greatest landholding families in Virginia. The head of the Fairfax family was Thomas, Lord Fairfax, the proprietor (in rough parlance, the owner) of the Northern Neck Proprietary, some six million acres lying between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers and extending in the West to the Shenandoah Valley. Lord Fairfax did not manage this immense holding; rather, he chose his kinsman Colonel William Fairfax as his agent with full powers to run the business. With this responsibility came Belvoir and informal agreement that the colonel would head the family. William Fairfax thereby became one of the big men in Virginia.

Mount Vernon’s proximity to Belvoir undoubtedly had played a part in bringing Ann Fairfax and Lawrence together, and the marriage changed their lives, but in a sense it did far more for George Washington than for Lawrence and Ann. He, a fatherless boy with little
wealth and limited prospects, was now a part of a great Virginia family. His tie to the Fairfaxes was soon made stronger, when he became the friend of George William Fairfax, the son of the family’s head. Colonel Fairfax clearly approved; indeed, he seems to have taken a liking to Washington almost from their first meeting.

One consequence of these affectionate associations was participation with the colonel and his son in a surveying expedition to locate Fairfax lands in the West. Surveying land was in most respects a simple affair: A survey party mounted its horses and got to work. Washington’s initial experience in such a venture had occurred in March 1748, with George William Fairfax and men chosen by his father. Their trip was made primarily on horseback and carried the Fairfax party over the Blue Ridge and down the Shenandoah Valley. William Fairfax claimed significant amounts of land in the valley, and in order to lease it to settlers he had to have it surveyed, with individual lots laid out. George Washington increased his skill as a surveyor on this trip and, more important, got a feel for landownership.

The expedition itself proved to be demanding, as the distances traversed were great, the weather frequently bad, and the accommodations for travelers sparse or nonexistent. Young Washington’s responses to the roughness that greeted the expedition were high-spirited at best and rueful at worst. On the fourth night of the journey, he stripped off his clothes in going to bed in primitive quarters on straw that, to his surprise, was covered by only one “Thread Bear blanket.” In the middle of the night he discovered why his companions had chosen to sleep under the stars. The blanket proved to house “double its Weight” in fleas and lice.
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Washington’s eyes were opened to more sights than the “game” that had infested his body during that night. Although he did not remark on the beauty of the sugar trees that he encountered more than once, he was clearly taken by them. The “richness” of the land impressed him even more, and he studied it as he and the others laid out lots along the valley. He also found interesting the Indians the party met. He watched one Indian dance around a large fire and recorded the details of the “comicle” running and jumping that constituted the dance, both actions performed while drums were played and gourd rattles shaken.
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The next year, the Fairfaxes lent their weight to a proposal to appoint Washington, their young friend, surveyor for Culpeper County. In this
post he continued to survey Fairfax lands in the Shenandoah Valley. While he was serving the Fairfaxes he was also serving himself. An obvious benefit to surveying lands was an opportunity to buy some for himself, and in 1750 he purchased almost fifteen hundred acres.

During this period Lawrence Washington came to his aid in a different manner: He invited his younger brother to live with him at Mount Vernon. Lawrence in these years was not in good health, perhaps having contracted tuberculosis on the Cartagena expedition. By 1751 his sickness had become so serious that he turned to travel abroad for a cure. Late in that year he took George with him to Barbados in search of better health. He did not find a cure, and his young brother caught smallpox, a disease dreaded by all in the eighteenth century. Contracting smallpox proved to be a fortunate event in his life, for he recovered and was from that time immune to fresh exposures. Lawrence avoided the disease but died about six months later after a second, futile voyage to Bermuda.
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George had loved his brother and felt grief at his death, but in keeping with a gentleman’s code, he kept his feelings to himself. He was one of those people fortunate in his friends, and in Virginia friends may have been important in helping him in his sadness. Years after Lawrence’s death, the Fairfax connection proved useful to Washington, leading to his appointment by the Council of Virginia as adjutant of militia for the southern military district of the colony. The Council bestowed the rank of major on him at the same time. He was twenty years old, young for the rank.

Although Washington was a young man, he was not without qualifications for this military post. He was physically imposing—at least six feet in height—strong, and already a splendid horseman. He had shown that he could handle himself in the surveying expeditions across the Blue Ridge for the Fairfaxes and others. He also knew something about the West, and everyone knew that if war or violence came, the most likely action would occur in the wilderness or in the thinly settled areas of the Piedmont and beyond. There the French made claims to the land that Virginians believed threatened their own. Recognition of his talents came the next year, when Governor Robert Dinwiddie sent
him off to confront the French in the Ohio Valley, territory claimed by Virginia since the colonies’ founding. Governor Dinwiddie did not know Washington well, and chose him for the mission only after talking with William Fairfax. As governor, Dinwiddie had invested heavily in the Ohio Company, recently chartered and granted a half million acres by King George II in the old Northwest. He also carried the responsibilities of protecting the Crown’s interests in Virginia. Fairfax, a member of the colony’s Council, was also an investor and, of course, a friend of the young Washington. Dinwiddie consulted the Council but not the House of Burgesses and undoubtedly received a report from Fairfax and men like him that Washington, with his background of surveying the West, would do very nicely.
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The French presence rested on royal claims first made in the seventeenth century. New France, as Canada was called, had followed a course of development far different from the English colonies to the south, and had attracted few immigrants. While it lacked population and wealth, New France was valued by the French Crown, which nourished hopes of extending its power in North America. Four years before the crisis that led to a great war for empire, the French sought to solidify their claim to the immense area drained by the Ohio River. Explorers sent out by the government in Canada in 1749 made their way on the rivers in the Ohio Country, burying lead plates claiming millions of acres in the valleys and hills. The Indians who had the only legitimate rights to the land were to be shoved aside in treaties that forced them to yield. Indeed, the French and English saw these native peoples as an obstacle except when they could be persuaded to act as allies against the other European power.

When Washington, accompanied by a handful of Virginians and Delawares, arrived in December 1753 at the French headquarters—Fort Le Boeuf, near the south shore of Lake Erie—he presented Dinwiddie’s letter, with its demand that the French evacuate the Ohio Country. Although we do not know exactly what the French commander, Captain Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, thought when he regarded the young officer standing in front of him, we may be certain that it was not fear. He knew that Washington had stopped at Logstown to recruit Indian support for English claims. That only a few Indians joined Washington suggested that the English had little force
behind them. The recent history of Indian-white relations, in which the French received Iroquois support against the British, reassured the French about their own backing in the contest for the Ohio Country.
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Nothing overly unpleasant occurred in this meeting—Legardeur explained his position firmly but courteously. Washington was, as always, a little stiff, but he behaved with tact and according to form. The French force, he was given to understand, would remain where it was. Larger matters of policy, as far as Legardeur was concerned, would be left to his superiors in Canada.

Four days after this meeting, Washington began the ride back to Williamsburg, arriving in mid-January 1754. He had not wasted his time on this expedition. He had gained experience in dealing with the French and the Indians, and he had learned something about the Ohio Country. More than that, he had used his opportunity well at the French post, for example by examining the fort and counting the number of canoes along the river to get a sense of the French force that might sail down against the English in the spring. One other consequence of this meeting with the French was the lift it gave to his reputation as a man of force and energy. Dinwiddie wanted news of the French presence spread as widely as possible and therefore asked Washington to write an account of the affair. Washington complied, with the
Journey to the French Commandant
, which was published in Virginia and reprinted in Maryland and Massachusetts newspapers and shortly afterwards in London as a pamphlet. It was not an essay of distinction either as literature or as analysis, but it served its purpose.

Hardly back home in Virginia, Washington was commissioned lieutenant colonel of militia, made adjutant of the Northern Department, and then was sent off in April to hold the Forks of the Ohio, at what would become the city of Pittsburgh. He could not have had full knowledge of what he had been sent to do. He knew of course that Britain and France were at peace. In the British government there was concern, however, about French intentions in the Ohio Country, with successive secretaries of the Southern Department, which was responsible for relations with France (and France in the New World), increasingly fearful of French expansionism. These fears were not self-generated, though war with the French in the recent past had disposed British officials to think the worst of their old enemy. Such dispositions in London were strengthened by colonial officials in America, especially
the governors of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, who painted the French as aggressors bent on dominating the Ohio Country and threatening their colonies. None was more insistent in conveying such an impression than Governor Dinwiddie. Dinwiddie now dispatched Washington, who himself had no favorable opinion of the French and may have been eager to test his military skill against them.

Besides sending Washington on this second mission, the governor hired men to construct forts and supply houses to oppose French troops and their Indian allies thought to be moving deeper into disputed lands. These men were not trained in the use of arms, or as militia, and they quickly gave way as the French moved down from Lake Erie with the intention of gaining control of the Ohio Country.