Washington- The Indispensable Man

by James Thomas Flexner

  Anxious to placate Virginia, Forbes sent an expert mediator to reason with Washington. When that failed, the British General gave the troublemaker a round scolding. But Washington remained incensed, protesting loudly concerning matters he did not understand. Although Forbes, whose principal gifts were as a supply officer, was holding the army back to complete elaborate preparations, Washington blamed the delay on the change of roads. He criticized Forbes’s Indian policies in entire ignorance of major developments in the forests.

  After several years of unofficial hostilities, war had finally been declared between England and France. This had unloosed the British navy, which established control of the Atlantic Ocean. One result was that the French had been unable to send to Canada the ammunition and trade goods needed to keep their Indian irregulars active and satisfied. British representatives were trying to persuade the Ohio tribes to desert an ally now so unsatisfactory. Another reason for Forbes’s delay was that he was waiting for the negotiations to mature.

  So little, indeed, did the Virginia Colonel understand matters outside his own area that he did not even mention in his letters the British capture, hundreds of miles northward, of Fort Niagara, which cut the French supply line to Fort Duquesne. Washington wrote passionately from one of Forbes’s encampments, “All is lost! All is lost, by Heavens!” not conscious that constellations were grouping towards victory.

  Forbes had every reason to dislike Washington. Yet he could not deny that the Virginian was the army’s greatest expert on the wilderness and its warfare. Temporarily raised to the rank of brigadier general, Washington was given command of the advanced brigade. When two Virginia contingents, as they blundered through the wilderness, mistook each other for the enemy and started a battle, Washington rode between them, knocking up flashing guns with his sword. Fourteen were killed and twenty-six wounded, but Washington, although infinitely the most exposed, was not touched.

  As winter descended, Forbes was still deep in the forest. He had just decided to wait until spring for the final attack when word came that the Indians had deserted the sheds around Fort Duquesne. Forbes decided to advance rapidly with twenty-five hundred lightly equipped men. Far ahead of the army, Washington laid out and cut part of the rough road that was now all that was needed.

  On November 24, 1758, Washington camped with Forbes’s reunited army, very close to Fort Duquesne. Every precaution was being taken to avoid a repetition of Braddock’s disaster, when some Indians appeared making gestures of peace. They reported that they had seen “a very thick smoke … extending in the bottom along the Ohio.” Four hours later, more news: knowing they could not defend themselves with their supply line cut and without Indian aid, the enemy had burned the fort and had disappeared down the Ohio. Thus, to what Washington admitted was his “great surprise,” the seemingly unattainable objective for which he had labored so desperately during four years was achieved without the firing of a shot.

  Although part of the Virginia Regiment was assigned to garrisoning the Forks, Washington felt he could resign. The Virginia frontier was, for the foreseeable future, safe. His duty was done. Returning to Mount Vernon, he turned his back, he believed forever, on the military life. He had experienced “much that I must strive to forget.”

  FIVE

  George Washington’s First War

  (1753–1759)

  Washington was active in the French and Indian War from the age of twenty-one to almost twenty-six. He was from the first never a follower, always a leader, even if sometimes subject to greater authority than his own. At twenty-two he became Virginia’s most celebrated hero. Although often envisioned by moderns as a stuffy old man with ill-fitting false teeth, he was among the most precocious of all great Americans.

  The most significant aspect of Washington’s early career was that it took place at all. Every responsibility he assumed required public selection and support. When he was hardly beyond his teens, many of his associates were already convinced that his destiny was importantly linked with the destiny of America.

  That his perfidious Indian guide should, even at point-blank range, have missed Washington in the wilderness seems reasonable, but it is strange that during the Braddock massacre, when every other mounted officer was struck, he remained uninjured. And then there was the time he rode between the two firing columns, striking up the guns with his sword. In subsequent years, during the Revolution, Washington was again and again to take the most foolhardy risks, but the bullets, although they tore his clothes and killed his horses, never touched his body.

  Washington’s seeming invulnerability to gunfire, more suited to mythology than factual history, was observed—he commented on it wonderingly himself—but it was only the most exotic aspect of that charisma which brought him so early the confidence and respect of his fellowmen. Too early, indeed, for he was entrusted with responsibilities beyond his ability to handle. Not only did his inexperience make him sometimes militarily inept, but he never understood the wider implications of the situations in which he was involved. Although, in moments of reflection conscious of his inadequacies, in action he could be rash, brash, impolitic, over-self-confident. He made dreadful mistakes.

  Among the reasons why, when he tripped so often, Washington was never allowed truly to fall, was that Virginia’s war effort, even the British war effort in the Ohio Valley, needed his tremendous energy. Despite the several extremely severe illnesses he suffered, his body and his drive remained those of a giant. Even if they found him upon occasion enraging, the Virginia authorities could not get on without him; nor, once they entered the wilderness, could the toplofty British professional command. Although his efforts to protect the inhabitants of the Shenandoah Valley succeeded so inadequately, the survivors elected him, in the middle of the war, their representative to the Virginia Assembly.

  Washington was already showing abilities that seemed inconsistent with his rashness and fierce energy. One of his fellow veterans wrote, “Method and exactness are the forte of his character.” Acting as his own supply officer, he took infinite pains to collect every obtainable shred of food or ammunition, and to see that it was used where it would serve best. Although he drank and gambled and (we gather) wenched as did his officers, he was known as a stern disciplinarian in military matters. It seems amazing to find an officer corps of frontier fighters saying farewell to a commander not yet twenty-six as follows: “In our earliest infancy, you took us under your tuition, trained us in the practice of that discipline which alone can constitute good troops.… Your steady adherence to impartial justice, your quick discernment and invariable regard to merit—wisely intended to inculcate those genuine sentiments of true honor and passion for glory, from which the greatest military achievements have been derived—first heightened our natural emulation, and our desire to excel.” The statement went on to mourn for “our unhappy country [Virginia]” which would, through Washington’s resignation, receive an irreparable loss. There was no one else so able to support “the military character of Virginia.”

  After Washington’s resignation, the Virginia legislature passed an enthusiastic resolution in his praise. It would seem natural for the young man who had so quickly gone so far to retire in a glow of self-satisfaction, hang his sword over his fireplace, and play the triumphant hero. The temptation was the greater because so many of the directions in which Washington had behaved stupidly were still outside the scope of his comprehension. Yet he felt that he had not done as well as he should. On the private level, he had not achieved the commission in the British regular army he so desired, and on the public level his achievement had obviously been full of flaws. He had been defeated at Fort Necessity; his defense of the frontier had been more active than effective; and his ultimate objective—driving the French from Fort Duquesne and the Ohio Valley—had been achieved over his protests in a way he found puzzling.

  As a planter at Mount Vernon, Washington turned his mind away from the adventures that had made him celebrated. The remainin
g campaigns of the French and Indian War, which triumphantly expelled the French from Canada, are hardly mentioned in his correspondence. His old regiment regarded him as their voice in the Assembly, but he could not bear to act that role for long.

  Yet subsequent actions reveal that down the years Washington mulled over his experiences in the French and Indian War. As his character and his world view expanded, more meanings became clear to him. He accurately defined his failures and worked out the reasons why he had failed. The results of this protracted self-education were to prove of the greatest importance to the creation of the United States.

  SIX

  A Virginia Businessman

  (1759–1775)

  For sixteen years, Washington was a private man, amassing an estate according to overall patterns long conventional in Virginia: a prosperous marriage, large-scale farming, the purchase of western land.

  After his recovery from his seemingly mortal illness and before he marched with Forbes, Washington became engaged to Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow slightly his senior and with two small children, who had inherited from her first husband a rich estate. The future Mrs. Washington, being about five feet tall, came up only to her suitor’s chest. She was plump, with small hands and feet. Her large eyes, wide brows, and strong, curved nose would have created bold beauty had not timidity imposed a gentle charm. Despite her grand first marriage, her own family background had been modest; she preserved simple manners, uninsistent dignity. She was not given to startling ideas or brilliant talk; her intelligence and imagination ran to relations with other people. Down the long years, when her husband was so often embattled, no man or woman ever wrote of her with enmity. She proffered appreciative friendship to all. Washington was to find her such a companion as he had dreamed of when a boy under the whiplash of his termagant mother: “A quiet wife, a quiet soul.”

  A songbook given to Martha by Washington in the year of their marriage and inscribed to her in his hand (Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union)

  The young soldier, who in 1758 offered her his hand, was thus described by a fellow officer: “Straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two inches in his stockings and weighing 175 pounds.… His frame is padded with well-developed muscles, indicating great strength. His bones and joints are large, as are his hands and feet. He is wide shouldered but has not a deep or round chest; is neat waisted, but is broad across the hips and has rather long legs and arms. His head is well-shaped, though not large, but is gracefully poised on a superb neck. A large and straight rather than a prominent nose; blue gray penetrating eyes which are widely separated and overhung by a heavy brow. His face is long rather than broad, with high round cheek bones, and terminates in a good firm chin. He has a clear though rather colorless pale skin which burns with the sun. A pleasing and benevolent though a commanding countenance, dark brown hair [actually it was reddish] which he wears in a cue. His mouth is large and generally firmly closed, but which from time to time discloses some defective teeth. [He had one pulled the summer before in Winchester.] His features are regular and placid with all the muscles of his face under perfect control, though flexible and expressive of deep feeling when moved by emotions. In conversation, he looks you full in the face, is deliberate, deferential, and engaging. His demeanor at all times composed and dignified. His movements and gestures are graceful, his walk majestic, and he is a splendid horseman.”

  After Martha had accepted George, Sally Fairfax could not resist teasing her longtime admirer about his “anxiety” at “the animating prospect of possessing Mrs. Custis.” This elicited from the young soldier, away on Forbes’s campaign, a passionate avowal that he loved only Sally: “You have drawn me, my dear Madam, or rather have I drawn myself, into an honest confession of a simple fact. Misconstrue not my meaning … nor expose it. The world has no business to know the object of love declared in this manner to you, when I want to conceal it.” He tried to elicit from Sally a similar avowal. Although she kept Washington’s letter by her for all her life, she did not give him the assurance he desired.

  It is impossible to doubt that Washington’s love for Sally brought him not only frustration but guilt. His marriage to Martha on January 6, 1759, brought him a grateful escape from traumatic entanglement. Although there are indications that the match did not start out smoothly, the husband soon concluded that his marriage had been the event of his life “most conducive to happiness.”

  Years later, Washington advised a stepgranddaughter not to “look for perfect felicity before you consent to wed. Nor conceive, from the fine tales the poets and lovers of old have told us of the transports of mutual love, that heaven has taken its abode on earth. Nor do not deceive yourself in supposing that the only means by which these are to be obtained is to drink deep of the cup and revel in an ocean of love. Love is a mighty pretty thing, but, like all other delicious things, it is cloying; and when the first transports of the passion begin to subside, which it assuredly will do, and yield, oftentimes too late, to more sober reflections, it serves to evince that love is too dainty a food to live on alone, and ought not to be considered further than as a necessary ingredient for that matrimonial happiness which results from a combination of causes: none of which are of greater importance than that the object on whom it is placed should possess good sense, a good disposition, and the means of supporting you in the way you have been brought up. Such qualifications cannot fail to attract (after marriage) your esteem and regard into which or into disgust, sooner or later love naturally resolves itself.… Be assured, and experience will convince you that there is no truth more certain than that all our enjoyments fall short of our expectations, and to none does it apply with more force than to the gratification of the passions.”

  His marriage to Martha taught the rash and impetuous young husband a lesson that was deeply to influence the rest of his career. It taught him that in action judgment was preferable to passion. He must have been a receptive pupil even as she was an able teacher because, in one important particular, the marriage failed irrevocably. Year after year, Martha remained childless.

  Since she was a young woman and had, during her brief previous marriage, quickened in rapid succession with four children (two died in infancy), it could well be concluded that the difficulty was not in her but in her husband. However, the magnificent athlete, who possessed in abundance every other physical prowess, could not altogether admit to himself that he was sterile. He believed, even when approaching old age, that if Martha died and he became remarried to “a girl,” he might father an heir. In the meanwhile, his lack was a grievous one. Not only did it seem in the eyes of the world (to what extent in his own fears?) a conspicuous flaw in his physical manhood: according to Virginian tradition, the ultimate objective of such an estate as Washington amassed was to establish a prosperous and influential dynasty. Yet there is no indication that the childlessness of their marriage caused between the Washingtons any major strains.

  There were, of course, the stepchildren. When he had proposed to Martha, John Parke Custis (Jackie), had been almost four, Martha Parke Custis (Patsy), two. Concerning her offspring, Martha was highly possessive. George felt for the children less a parent’s concern than a stepfather’s sense of responsibility. “I conceive,” as he explained, “there is much greater circumspection to [be observed] by a guardian than a natural parent, who is only accountable to his own conscience.” In addition to handling the property of his wards, a stepfather’s duties were to be “generous and attentive.”

  The annual orders Washington sent to his London factor always included much for the children. Jackie, for instance, received at the age of five “handsome silver shoe and knee buckles,” at eight, a silver-laced hat. At seven, Patsy received “a stiffened coat made of fashionable silk” and “one pair of pack thread stays.” There were also toys: every year Patsy had to have a new fashionably dressed “doll baby.”

  Washington’s marriage to the widow of the rich Daniel Parke Cust
is raised him financially from a run-of-the-mill planter to a man of substance: one third of the large Custis estate had come to him (with certain restrictions) as Martha’s husband, and he controlled the other two thirds as guardian of the children. Perhaps it was a sense of this obligation which made him always respectful of his stepchildren’s social rank, clearly much higher than his own. In trying to get the boy educated, Washington consistently pointed out to his teachers that improving his mind was of the greatest importance as he was destined for exalted station.

  Spoiled by his mother, who had at all times protected him, and possessed of the strange inheritance that came with the Custis blood, the boy proved uneducatable. As for Patsy, at the age of twelve she had a fall that was more than a fall: she was found to be an epileptic. Every effort was made to cure her and assuage her: a companion of her own age was brought in; she had a parrot and a spinet and the finest clothes that could be imported from London. A peripatetic dancing master was often in attendance and a doctor fitted her with an iron ring that was supposed to cure fits.

  During 1773, Washington wrote his brother-in-law that Patsy “rose from dinner about four o’clock in better health and spirits than she had 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 … has almost reduced my poor wife to the lowest ebb of misery.” He tried to find comfort for Martha by having his mother-in-law make Mount Vernon her “entire and absolute home,” but Mrs. Dandridge did not come.