Mary Ball Washington

by Craig Shirley

  From here on out, George and Mount Vernon would be permanently connected, only broken in times of war or during his presidency. George moved out of Ferry Farm to Mount Vernon—where he had often visited—in 1754, marking a new beginning of his life.

  Mary was now separated from her oldest son, the same son whom she wanted to protect—or order around—so badly. In many ways, it was a new beginning for her life as well.

  Chapter 8

  Lieutenant Colonel Washington

  CLASH OF THE TITANS: ENGLAND AND FRANCE

  1754‒1772

  “I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.”

  The year 1754 was an unusual year not just for the Washingtons, but for the entirety of North America. For the past seventy years, France and England had laid claim to different, or sometimes the same, land on North American soil. By 1754, this was resolved through three overarching phases: in the late 1600s was King William’s War, in the early 1700s were Queen Anne’s War and Dummer’s War, and in the 1740s were King George’s War and the War of Jenkins’ Ear. These conflicts were by-products of the overall international problems.

  The year 1754 would be the start of the final phase. Though history knows the collective conflicts as the French and Indian Wars, this final one, lasting nine years, would be known to the English as the French and Indian War. As a theater of the Seven Years’ War in Europe—very much a world war—from 1756 to 1763, this colonial conflict was to shape future imperial-colonial relations.

  The Ohio Valley was again up for grabs between the English and French Empires. It was prime real estate for both, as settlers wanted to expand westward.1 In the meantime, George had joined the Virginia militia, becoming a major. His boyhood education paid off, as he had been personally selected by Governor Robert Dinwiddie as emissary to the French. He was tasked in late 1753 to deliver an ultimatum to the French: leave the Ohio or be attacked. The conversation he had with his mother would have been a repeat of before: “Do not go, my son, or you will die.” Yet he was prepared, and was reported to have said in reply, “Madam, didn’t you above all others teach me the importance of duty?”2

  During the 1600s, Native Americans had called George’s great-grandfather John Washington “Conotocaurious,” or “Town-Destroyer.” The French-aligned Iroquois gave the same name to then Lieutenant Colonel George Washington. After leading a series of battles, Washington was captured at Fort Necessity in July of 1754, and subsequently released, returning to Virginia. A month prior to the news of his capture, he was hailed as a hero, and news reached his mother and the Fredericksburg area. “Your Mother &c. whom I frequently see are well, very lately I had the honour to dance with her, when your health was not forgot,” wrote Daniel Campbell, a Fredericksburg friend and fellow Masonic member.3 The same day, William Fairfax also wrote to George, saying that “Yr Mother & Family are well and Send their Several Greetings, desiring often to know of yr Welfare & Progress.”4 His welfare and progress were grand, truthfully, but only for the time being; within a month, he was captured. Heroics did not mean infallibility, and George’s failure at Fort Necessity persuaded him to resign his commission in October of that year.

  In these months, George grew beyond, perhaps, what his mother would have wanted. He killed men and led men to kill and to die. Indeed, his actions and the death of one man directly led to France and England formally declaring war.

  Joseph Coulon de Jumonville was a French-Canadian officer who died in late May 1754 at the Battle of Jumonville Glen in current-day Pennsylvania. He was killed by George’s forces. The French claimed that he was to deliver a peaceful message to the British—no more than a messenger. But the British believed he was leading his thirty-five men to spy on nearby Fort Necessity. Washington deployed his men, and the two forces fought. Joseph Coulon was wounded and captured. However, the chief of the British-allied Iroquois who accompanied Washington in battle, named Half King, killed Joseph with a tomahawk strike to the head.

  The French immediately took this not as a legitimate killing, but as breaking rules of war. It also boiled down to “who fired first”—the French, or the British? The controversy led directly to the declaration of war.

  Mary’s oldest boy was a commander of forces, directly responsible for military tactics. And he enjoyed it. “I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound,” he wrote to his younger brother John Augustine.5 If she was worried he would be in danger in the Royal Navy, she must have been frantic now. “Poor Mary Washington!” said Nancy Turner. “She had shorn him of one uniform only to see him don another.”6 She would have considered this a disobedient son, a betrayal of his earlier promise. But years had passed since then, and George was no longer a boy, but a man who managed his own plantation, away from his mother. She was mad, and, in Chernow’s words, “hell-bent upon preventing George” from reenlisting.7 But it was a good lesson for him when he resigned after his failure. That meant he learned.

  Mary soon found out he wasn’t going to stay put.

  In 1755, Major General Edward Braddock, a Scotsman and capable leader and veteran, arrived in Alexandria, Virginia, with orders to expel French forces from the Ohio Valley. George quickly introduced and acquainted himself with the general, and volunteered as an officer of the expedition.

  Mary would have none of it.

  She rode to Mount Vernon to make her case. Just as she had done years earlier, she asked that he stay. Now he had a plantation; that was more important than some distant land. He was an adult, yes, but that only put his life in more danger, not less. “Oh, this fighting and killing!” she yelled. That did not work. So she invoked religion, and evoked God Almighty, whose destiny for George was to stay at home. “God is our sure trust. To Him I commend you.”

  Without missing a beat, George was said to have replied, “The God to whom you commend me, Madam, when I set out on a more perilous errand, defended me from all harm, and I trust he will do so now.”8

  (Conveniently, the more hagiographical biography, The Story of Mary Washington by Mary Terhune, aka Marion Harland, skipped George’s curt reply, instead explicitly saying that Mary approved of and blessed the venture.9)

  The talk might have gone on for some time—Mary apparently didn’t take no for an answer kindly.

  “My Mother [is] alarmd [sic] at the report of my intententions [sic] to attend your Fortunes,” he wrote to Robert Orme, an aide to Braddock, in early April of 1755. His mother had prevented George from meeting with Orme, tarnishing a good impression of his military duties. It was humiliating, frankly, that he must miss such an important meeting. The Mount Vernon plantation was only six miles from downtown Alexandria, no considerable distance by any means on foot or horse. And he could not leave. “I find myself much embarrassd [sic] with my Affairs; having no person in whom I can confide, to entrust the management,” he wrote.10

  Mount Vernon had to be managed in his absence, and leaving affairs in disarray certainly would have vindicated Mary. As she was wont to say, “Ah, George had better have stayed at home and cultivated his farm.”11 Better to make a profit at home on the safe plantation of Virginia than to travel over mountains and rivers in Ohio, with the dreaded French and Indians wanting to put a sword or arrow in every redcoat they saw. It was clear to Mary which decision was better for her child. The responsibility of Mount Vernon ultimately fell on his brother John Augustine, but the argument between mother and son, again, was a thorn in his side.

  Washington was nevertheless accepted to the Braddock Expedition as a colonel, and this time, no amount of begging or pleading would stop him. Mary, defeated in swaying her disobedient son, went back to Ferry Farm, alone. The expedition departed on April 16, 1755, from Alexandria.12 Two weeks later, from Winchester, Virginia, George wrote to his mother that he was “very happy in the Generals [sic] Family, being treated with a complaisant Freedom which is quite agreeable.” Perhaps Mary’s insistence that his service in the Royal Navy wo
uld limit his “freedom” still stung George—perhaps this was a little gnawing back at his mother, the first of many times that this adult would disagree.

  He had, he continued, “no reason to doubt the satisfaction I hoped for, in making the Campaigne.”13

  The gnaw became a bite.

  IN EARLY JUNE, ONLY TWO MONTHS AFTER THEY DEPARTED VIRGINIA, MARY sent a letter to George, requesting, of all things, butter and a Dutch servant, referring to the wave of German immigrants into the colony. George in all likelihood would have been dumbfounded. Here he was, in the newly built Fort Cumberland, Maryland, over one hundred miles north, on an expedition to retake the Ohio, and she asks for butter and a servant! “We are quite out of that part of the Country where either are to be had,” he replied to her. In fact, it was an impossible task, whether he wanted to deliver it or not. “Butter cannot be had here to supply the wants of the army,” he pithily wrote.

  He reminded her of what she agreed upon, that she would stay at Mount Vernon during his absence, which would allow his brother John to assist her. She probably did not visit, but nevertheless, George was diplomatic in reminding her: “I hope you will spend the chief part of your time at Mount Vernon as you have proposed to do where I am certain every thing will be orderd as much for your satisfaction as possible.”14 George wanted to take care of her.

  SCANT LETTERS ARRIVED FROM EITHER OF THE TWO, AND NO RECORD OF any update exists until well past the defeat of the Braddock Expedition.

  On July 9, 1755, near what is now known as Braddock’s Field in Braddock, Pennsylvania, nearly two hundred miles northwest of Ferry Farm, and far away from motherly protection, General Braddock and his forces neared their goal of French Fort Du Quesne. The fort is located where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River. Suddenly, a surprise raid attacked and absolutely slaughtered the British forces. The surprise took any numerical advantage away from the British. “The dead,” wrote David Humphreys in Washington’s authorized biography, “the dying—the groans—lamentations—and crys [sic] along the Road of the wounded for help . . . were enough to pierce a heart of adamant.”15

  General Braddock himself was wounded and died four days later. George was also the target of many musket balls, though luckily for the country, none of them struck. Hundreds of the British were killed, and even more wounded, whereas the French and Indians had barely any casualties. It was a total and complete annihilation.

  The news spread quickly, and Mary, upon hearing of the rumors, would have thought it the end of her son. A story spread that George was among the victims, having given brave and honorable last words before arrows and swords fatally pierced his body.16 It was not an outlandish rumor, either. Most officers were killed, and George, she thought, reckless for such abstract things as honor and valor, would have been one of them. Any consolation that her boy was alive was futile—the Braddock Expedition was dead.

  George would have sensed this worry. The same day that he wrote the governor, he also wrote his mother, just as much a priority, to get her the news. The letter, lengthy for a letter of his to her, was detailed, as it provided a firsthand account similar to his letter to Governor Dinwiddie:17

  Honour’d Madm

  As I doubt not but you have heard of our defeat, and perhaps have had it represented in a worse light (if possible) than it deserves; I have taken this earliest oppertunity to give you some acct of the Engagement, as it happen’d within 7 miles of the French Fort on Wednesday the 9th Inst.

  We Marchd onto that place witht any considerable loss, havg only now and then a stragler pickd up by the French Scoutg Indns. When we came there, we were attackd by a body of French and Indns whose number (I am persuaded) did not exceed 300 Men; our’s consisted of abt 1,300 well armd Troops; chiefly Regular Soldiers, who were struck with such a panick, that they behavd with more cowardice than it is possible to conceive; The Officers behav’d Gallantly in order to encourage their Men, for which they sufferd greatly; there being near 60 killd and wounded; a large proportion out of the number we had! The Virginia Troops shewd a good deal of Bravery, & were near all killd; for I believe out of 3 Companys that were there, their is scarce 30 Men left alive; Capt. Peyrouny & all his Officer’s down to a Corporal was killd; Capt. Polson shard near as hard a Fate, for only one of his was left: In short the dastardly behaviour of thos[e] they call regular’s, exposd all other’s that were inclind to do their duty to almost certain death; and at last, in dispight of all the efforts of the Officer’s to the Contrary, they broke, and run as Sheep pursued by dogs; and it was impossible to rally them. The Genl was wounded; of wch he died 3 Days after; Sir Peter Halket was killd in the Field: where died many other brave Officer’s; I luckily escapd witht a wound, tho’ I had four Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me; Captns Orme & Morris two of the Aids de Camps, were wounded early in the Engagemt which renderd the duty harder upon me, as I was the only person then left to distribute the Genls Orders, which I was scarcely able to do, as I was not half recovered from a violent illness that had confin’d me to my Bed, and a Waggon, for above 10 Days; I am still in a weak and Feeble condn which induces me to halt here 2 or 3 Days in hopes of recovg a little Strength, to enable me to proceed homewards; [f]rom whence, I fear I shall not be able to stir till towards Sepr, so that I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you till then, unless it be in Fairfax; please to give my love [to] Mr Lewis and my Sister, & Compts to Mr Jackson and all other F[rien]ds that enquire after me. I am Hond Madm Yr most Dutiful Son

  G. W.

  An interesting observation here: the inclusion of his personal danger. In a similar status report to the governor, George described the near-fatal encounter, and then scratched it out, deeming it unprofessional. Perhaps an intimate touch was considered fluff for the governor, and not so for his mother. Still, when reading the letter, and how disastrous it was, how he was nearly killed . . . Mary wouldn’t have wanted to read that sentence. But he was safe, and disappointed in his illness that prevented him from seeing her, Betty, Fielding, all others, and trusted her word to update all as soon as possible. She was still his mother, and he knew that she cared for him as any mother would.

  George returned to Mount Vernon within three weeks, on July 26.18

  Mary must have been immensely relieved. Even Joseph Ball, Mary’s half brother in England who so long ago helped solidify her decision to keep George away from the navy, applauded him: “It is a Sensible Pleasure to me to hear that you have behaved yourself with such a Martial Spirit in all your Engagements with the French Nigh Ohio. Go on as you have begun; and God prosper you. We have heard of General Bradock’s Defeat. Every Body Blames his Rash Conduct. Every body Commends the Courage of the Virginians and Carolina men: which is very Agreable to me.”19 Joseph understood nearly a decade had passed since that pivotal (or decisive) letter to his sister, and understood that George was no longer a child.

  Mary did not. She couldn’t.

  She wanted him to stay; she wanted him to be by her side.

  He couldn’t.

  Despite the horrors and failures of the Braddock Expedition, George was commended as a hero, and promoted to commander of the newly formed and unified and combined Virginia forces, the highest military position of the state. “Commander-in-chief . . . twenty-three and a half years old,” wrote Douglas Freeman.20 The success was unbelievable. But there was still work in the Ohio—the French of course did not retreat, and the war was still raging—and no one seemed more suitable for the role than the young man himself.

  But with the fame and success came a new batch of worries from his mother.

  Mary, again, begged him not to go. Not to return to Ohio. He would definitely be killed or worse if he went back, she thought. He had nearly been killed before, as simply an aide to Braddock. On August 14, 1755, before his appointment, George wrote his mother a simple letter from Mount Vernon: “Honored Madam, If it is in my power to avoid going to the Ohio again, I shall, but if the Command is press’d
upon me by the genl voice of the Country, and offerd upon such terms as can’t be objected against, it woud reflect dishonour upon me to refuse it; and that I am sure must, or ought, to give you greater cause of uneasiness than my going in an honourable Comd; for upon no other terms I will accept of it, at present I have no proposals, made to me nor have any advice of such an intention except, End, from private hands. I am Dr Mm &c.”21

  The letter’s original draft had scratched off “eternal” before “dishonour,” showing not a simple dishonor for him but a damning one if he refused and accepted his mother’s pleas again.

  There was no eternal disgrace that day, for hours later, that same day he wrote Mary, he received word of his appointment.22

  THE REMAINDER OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR UNDER THE GENERAL command of Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts, who succeeded Braddock, resulted in mixed results for the British cause. Colonel Washington of the Virginia Regiment led his troops in a series of battles, most impressively the Forbes Expedition in 1758, a rousing success for the British with the attack on Fort Du Quesne, which the French burned down rather than allow capture.

  George tried to keep up correspondence with his mother, whose fear for her son’s life—or, maybe, fear for her own comfort without her son—never abated. Some correspondences were minute and bland of character. At one point, he asked his mother to buy material for clothes, which otherwise were delayed from Britain, causing a headache for George, as winter was fast approaching and he needed clothes for his numerous slaves. “Therefore [I] beg the favour of you to choose me about 250 yds Oznbitgs 200 yds of cotton 35 pr Plad Hoes and as much thread as is necessary in Mr [Fielding] Lewis’ Store if he has them if not in Mr [Robert] Jackson’s and send them up by [John Alton, a servant] who comes down with a Tumbler for that purpose.” In the same letter, he relieves her of his brother Charles’s fears of impending marriage.23 Also in 1757, a few months earlier, he visited Mary and gave her 5 pounds.24