In a decade-long enterprise that no one else had been willing to undertake, Washington had redeemed Dinwiddie’s promise and won benefits for fellow veterans and himself.22 The episode should have stood as an example of hard work rewarded. It would not, however, be so simple.
* * *
With land patents in hand, Washington resolved to recruit tenants for his new empire. In a broadside and newspaper advertisements, he touted the lands: “None can exceed them in luxuriancy of soil, or convenience of situation; . . . abounding in fine fish and wild fowl of various kinds, as also in most excellent meadows.” But no tenants came forward, especially after a resurgence of Indian violence. Emigrants preferred to own land, not lease it. Smaller parcels were available at very low prices or simply for the taking. Washington considered importing settlers from Germany, Ireland, or Scotland, but those notions fizzled.23
The situation continued to sour as conflict spread between the colonies and the mother country. In 1774, the British ministry ruled that only British soldiers could receive lands under the 1763 proclamation. Washington denounced the decision as one of “malice, absurdity, and error.” A year later, Virginia’s governor revoked every grant under the 1754 proclamation on a technicality: Surveyor Crawford had failed to swear the surveyors’ oath. Dunmore’s spiteful action did not last. Three years into the Revolutionary War, the Virginia Assembly approved the grants based on Crawford’s surveys.24
Washington, however, never realized his dreams of riches from western lands. In 1794, forty years after Dinwiddie’s proclamation, he still lacked tenants. “From the experience of many years,” he admitted, “I have found distant property in land more pregnant of perplexities than profit.”25
Nevertheless, Washington’s quest marked him as a man with an expansive vision of America’s potential wealth and power, willing to take on ambitious projects and pursue them relentlessly. For a decade, he tugged and hauled at the levers of government until he finally got what he thought he had been promised, and desperately wanted. In so doing, he won the gratitude of his fellow soldiers and the regard of those who knew how difficult his undertaking had been. Anyone watching his pursuit of land should have appreciated Washington’s relentless persistence and ultimate effectiveness, qualities that would serve him well in the coming fight with Britain. Moreover, when the royal government repeatedly broke its promises about western settlement and imposed arbitrary conditions, Washington knew injustice at its hands, an experience that reinforced his skepticism of British intentions and his own commitment as a public official to honor his commitments.
Chapter 25
Washington’s Association
After dissolving the General Assembly amid the Stamp Act ruckus of May 1765, Governor Fauquier waited more than a year before bringing the legislators back to Williamsburg. After those hated taxes were repealed, he decided that tempers should be cool enough for an assembly session in early November 1766. To fill the vacant Speaker’s chair following the death of John Robinson, the House chose corpulent, easygoing Peyton Randolph. The governor appointed a new treasurer as well.1
Reconciliation was the message of the day. Greeting the burgesses, the governor advised that with the Stamp Act rescinded, Virginia should repay Britain for its “many acts of kindness.” The House dutifully applauded the “best of kings” for the “tender regard shown to the rights and liberties of his British subjects in America.” Washington’s political footprint expanded when he joined the pivotal committee that heard election disputes, but the business of the session was largely unremarkable.2
The next assembly session, convened five months later, finally saw Washington shouldering a major legislative assignment: the colony’s crippling currency shortage. Sales of land and slaves froze because no one had currency for purchases. A committee developed a plan for issuing currency that blended two elements: a large issue of paper money secured by taxes on rum and tobacco, combined with a large loan from English investors at 5 percent interest (truly, a repackaged version of late Speaker Robinson’s earlier “loan office” proposal). The burgesses approved the program, then appointed six leading members to present the legislation to the Executive Council and seek its concurrence. Washington was one of the six.3
Having built his political career gradually, one brick at a time, Washington was winning recognition. For the first time, after eight years as a legislator, he was at the center of a critical, non-military issue. The assignment confirmed that his colleagues viewed him not only as a former soldier, but also as a political figure whose views mattered. When the Executive Council declined to endorse the House plan, the burgesses pressed ahead on their own, sending the proposal to Virginia’s London agent to present to the king.4
The king was uninterested in Virginia’s currency problems. His government faced a mountain of war debt and still intended that Americans pay part of it. By late 1767, Parliament changed course again, adopting another fistful of American taxes—called the Townshend duties after the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer—this time on tea, paper, glass, lead, and paint. To underscore its determination, Parliament suspended the colonial assembly in New York to punish that colony’s failure to supply army units there, and instructed that British soldiers be quartered in private homes.5 The truce in the transatlantic face-off had lasted less than eighteen months.
A Virginia legislative session in early spring of 1768 had the modest purpose of approving action against western squatters, but residents of six counties presented petitions protesting the Townshend duties and the sanctions imposed on New York. The House and the Executive Council promptly approved requests for repeal of the new taxes. The burgesses insisted that “no power on earth has a right to impose taxes [on Virginians] . . . without their consent.” Urging sister colonies to join them in opposing the taxes, the Virginians stressed that they did not seek “independency of their parent kingdom.”6
Washington missed that legislative session, instead meeting for several days at Mount Vernon with Crawford, his western agent, to plan his land acquisitions. He may have expected that the assembly would address no important matters, or his absence may simply have reflected his consuming passion for land deals.7
Through the rest of 1768, Washington showed little concern over the Townshend duties. His days were full. The family passed much of May visiting Martha’s sister, where Washington hunted and fished and attended the theater in Williamsburg. That was the year he hunted on more than fifty days. Over the summer, he delivered Jacky Custis to a school in Annapolis. In the autumn, Washington accepted his new position on the Fairfax County Court and reviewed the ditching progress at the Great Dismal Swamp. The arrival of the new colonial governor, Lord Botetourt, meant new elections, but they were not a serious concern for the man from Mount Vernon. On polling day in Alexandria, he led a field of three candidates by a wide margin, then spent only £25 on the election-night party.8
Though Washington’s life seemed largely unruffled, the Townshend duties, with their echoes of the Stamp Act, were reviving agitation in other colonies. In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Americans again embraced trade sanctions to challenge British policy. They formed “non-importation associations,” pledging to boycott British goods until the new taxes were repealed. The association movement spread south, reaching Dr. David Ross of Bladensburg, Maryland, who sent papers about the boycott across the Potomac to his acquaintance George Washington. That package changed Washington’s career.9
Despite his public silence about the Townshend duties, Washington had followed the controversy. When he studied the boycott proposal from Dr. Ross, a fire flared in Washington’s mind that must have smoldered for months before. He wrote a fierce letter to his neighbor George Mason, enclosing the package from Dr. Ross and voicing bitter anger with the British. In that letter, he endorsed resistance to the Townshend duties—including war, if need be:
At a time when our lordly masters in Great Britain wi
ll be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something should be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors. . . .
That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment to use a—ms [arms] in defense of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends; is clearly my opinion.
Having proclaimed himself ready for war, Washington drew a breath. His political engagement over the last decade had deepened his understanding of public opinion and sobered his judgment. He knew that Americans would not fly to arms as a first response, but only as a last resort. He had no interest in “addresses to the throne, and remonstrances to parliament.” He urged the middle course adopted by the northern colonists. Perhaps the British could be “awakened or alarmed by starving their trade and manufactures.”
Washington recognized the limitations of non-importation. Smuggling undermined it, and Americans were adept at smuggling. Nonetheless, he concluded that the colonists would join the effort if leaders “would be at some pains to explain matters . . . and stimulate a cordial agreement to purchase none but certain enumerated articles.” Accordingly, “the more I consider a scheme of this sort, the more ardently I wish success to it.” He proposed that he and Mason present a non-importation plan to the House of Burgesses.10
Washington’s approach was astute. By having a plan in hand when he arrived in Williamsburg, Washington—the leading man of Fairfax County—could take control of the burgesses’ debate. And the well-regarded Mason would fuel the effort with his intellect and pen. After ten years as a burgess, Washington understood that some men shape arguments more crisply and express them more persuasively. Not believing he had those gifts, he respected those who did. Mason was the first of several talented men whom Washington would recruit to translate his ideas into compelling form.
Mason replied on the same day. Having received the same papers from Dr. Ross, he firmly agreed with Washington, proclaiming, “Our all is at stake.” He urged that public opinion be nurtured to press the General Assembly to adopt the boycott. Non-importation, he continued, should apply to “finery of all denominations,” while Virginians should consider withholding tobacco exports. Because the leaf was taxed heavily, the British government would feel the pinch if supplies were cut off.11
Later in April, the two men met in Alexandria, where Washington was sitting on the county court, then adjourned to Mount Vernon to outline a non-importation association for Virginia. Although Mason complained of various ailments, he produced the outline plus a supporting memorandum.12
Mason’s draft followed one already adopted by Philadelphia merchants. Complaining of British policies that were “reducing [Americans] from a free and happy people to a wretched and miserable state of slavery,” the draft announced that the signers would “encourage industry and frugality and discourage all manner of luxury and extravagance” by importing nothing taxed by Parliament to raise revenue. With a few exemptions, the draft also disdained imports of spirits, beer, wine, fine foodstuffs, and high-end goods like jewelry, silks, carriages, clothing, and leather goods. And slaves.13
Because Washington was a burgess and Mason was not, and because Mason preferred to stay home, only Washington carried the plan to Williamsburg, where the Townshend duties dominated conversation. Though he was still careful to maintain his connection with colonial officials—on that trip, Washington dined twice with the governor—he explained his opposition to the taxes and outlined his plan.
The assembly convened on May 8 with a ceremonial greeting of the new governor. In a red coat with gold edging, Governor Botetourt rode in an elegant carriage to the Capitol, where he announced the birth of a royal princess. His bland remarks ignored the political powder keg that soon would detonate in that building.14
After routine proceedings, the House sat as a committee of the whole “to consider the present state of the colony.” The lawmakers addressed four resolutions, beginning with the assertion that only the burgesses could tax Virginians. Other resolutions insisted on colonists’ right to trial by jury, which recent British proposals would restrict. All passed by voice vote. Next day, Lord Botetourt summoned the burgesses. “I have heard of your resolves,” he announced, “and augur ill of their effect: you have made it my duty to dissolve you; and you are dissolved accordingly.”15
No one was surprised. Most of the burgesses walked a few hundred yards to the Raleigh Tavern, where they selected a committee to draft their response to the Townshend duties. Washington sat with that committee until ten that evening, offering his plan for an association for the colony.16
The following morning, eighty-eight legislators signed the committee’s report, which was based on the Mason/Washington draft. The principal change removed the ban on tobacco exports; that step might have threatened the solvency of many burgesses. Richard Henry Lee captured the mood of the moment: “The flame of liberty burns bright and clear, . . . The Americans . . . appear too wise, too brave, and much too honest, to be either talked, terrified or bribed from the assertion of just, equitable, and long possessed rights.”17
That afternoon, Washington bought a copy of John Dickinson’s pamphlet on the rights of Americans, then stayed an extra day in Williamsburg to attend the governor’s ball in honor of the queen’s birthday. Because he was still angling to acquire western lands, maintaining cordial relations with the governor only made sense for Washington.18
The events at the Raleigh Tavern further confirmed Washington’s ascent in Virginia’s hierarchy. In that status-conscious colony, signatories ordinarily were listed in descending order of importance, with the House Speaker’s name coming first; on the association papers, Washington’s name appears seventh of eighty-eight. That was no accident. Mason’s work on the non-importation association was critical, but it was Washington who presented the proposal and gained stature as a result. At thirty-seven, willing to challenge the British directly, he had become a man of weight in Virginia’s political world. His voice, and his leadership, made a difference now.19
* * *
Washington was unopposed in the elections of September 1769. The Fairfax County sheriff did not even poll the voters. When Washington traveled to Williamsburg for the next legislative session two months later, Martha and Patsy came with him. With Patsy’s affliction worsening, they consulted more physicians who could not help her.
Non-importation associations were in force in Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William Counties, and were spreading to other southern colonies, plus Connecticut and Rhode Island.20 Lord Botetourt began the legislative meeting with the report that Parliament was reversing itself again and would soon rescind all of the Townshend duties except one on tea. He explained the reversal not as a concession that Parliament lacked the power to tax Americans, but as based on “true principles of commerce,” a phrase without obvious meaning. The colonists again had forced Britain to back down. At an end-of-session ball honoring the governor, most celebrants showed their support for non-importation by wearing garments of American-made fabric.21
When Parliament repealed all but one of the Townshend taxes in April 1770, the non-importation movement lost momentum. Virginians remembered their fondness for British goods. From England, Arthur Lee reported seeing no evidence of the association’s impact there, while a brother in Virginia lamented “the shameful neglect of the former association among the merchants here.”22
With the tea tax still in place, Washington clung to the association, but proposed to soften it to increase public acceptance. At the assembly session in mid-May 1770, he was among twenty burgesses appointed to revise the association agreement. After several contentious meetings, they produced a compromise document that was signed in late June.23
The revision shortened the list of banned products, allowing imports of some food items, jewelry, leather, and pewter goods. But unlike the earlier version, it introduced a
n enforcement mechanism. In each county, the associators were to form a five-man committee to inspect merchants’ invoices, then shame violators by publishing their names.24 Washington thought the new agreement “too much relaxed,” while a colleague disparaged it as a compromise “just as if there could be any half way between slavery and freedom.” But it was the best they could get. Washington joined the associators at the Raleigh Tavern for seventeen toasts to the revised agreement.25
Three months later, Washington was named to the five-man committee of the Fairfax County associators, which proceeded to unearth a grand total of two violations, involving twelve improperly imported men’s hats. Virginia’s Executive Council president, William Nelson, observed at year’s end that the association’s spirit was “cooling every day.” By mid-1771, the Fairfax committee reduced its oversight to tea, paper, glass, and colored paints. Washington promptly ordered several previously banned items from his London agent, including a bearskin hat.26
George Washington Page 22
