George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  14. To Richard Washington, 14 July 1761, GWP; Martha Washington to Margaret Green, 26 June 1761, in Fields, Worthy Partner, 135; to Andrew Burnaby, 27 July 1761, GWP, and note 7.

  15. To Charles Green, 26–30 August 1761, GWP; “Cash Accounts,” 1761, GWP.

  16. John Pendleton Kennedy, ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, Richmond (1907) 10:7 (4 November 1761), 10:12 (6 November 1761), 10:23 (12 November 1761), 10:92 (15 November 1762), 10:111 (24 November 1762), 10:117 (29 November 1762), 10:165 (23 December 1762); to Peter Stover, 9 November 1761, GWP; Diary, 27, 29, 30 March and 7 April 1762, GWP; from Robert Stewart, 25 January 1762, GWP. On the session’s opening day, Governor Fauquier asked the House to address a question “of a most delicate nature”: Virginia’s lack of currency, which was crimping economic activity. British pounds sterling were scarce, and the colony’s paper money (called “emissions”) was an unreliable substitute. Most merchants accepted “tobacco notes” issued by tobacco warehouses as evidence that a planter had lodged and shipped certain quantities of tobacco, but those notes also expired over time. Despite the urgency of the problem, the House did nothing. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:65 (2 November 1762); Joseph Albert Ernst, “Genesis of the Currency Act of 1764: Virginia Paper Money and the Protection of British Investments,” WMQ 22:33, 34–36 (1965); Jack M. Sosin, “Imperial Regulation of Colonial Paper Money, 1764–1773,” PMHB 88:174 (1964); Freeman 1:140.

  17. A shrewd French diplomat, the Duc de Choiseul, predicted that the British would soon lose North America to an internal rebellion. W. J. Eccles, “The Role of the American Colonies in Eighteenth-Century French Foreign Policy,” in W. J. Eccles, Essays on New France, Toronto: Oxford University Press (1987), 141–55. For the impact of the peace treaty, see Barry M. Gough, British Mercantile Interests in the Making of the Peace of Paris, 1763: Trade, War and Empire, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press (1992), 88–90, 95–96; Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America, New York: Oxford University Press (2006), 8–10, 167–68; John Shy, “The American Colonies in War and Revolution, 1748–1783,” in P. J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, New York: Oxford University Press (1998), 308; Taylor, American Revolutions, 6; Woody Holton, “How the Seven Years’ War Turned Americans into (British) Patriots,” in Hofstra, Cultures in Conflict, 128; Gwenda Morgan, “Virginia and the French and Indian War: A Case Study of the War’s Effects on Imperial Relations,” VMHB 81:23, 24 (1973).

  18. Flexner 1:278; to Cary & Co., 10 August 1764, GWP; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 72; Breen, Tobacco Culture, 149–50, 169.

  19. Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1953), 21–22; Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen, 12.

  20. To Robert Stewart, 13 August 1763, GWP.

  21. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen, 66–67, 73; Jon W. Parmenter, “The Iroquois and the Native American Struggle for the Ohio Valley, 1754–1794,” in David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson, eds., The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754–1814, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press (2001), 109–10; Taylor, American Revolutions, 59–60; Robert Carter III to James Buchanan & Co., 31 December 1763, in Letterbooks of Robert Carter III; James Mercer Garnett, “The Last Fifteen Years of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1761–1776,” VMHB 18:213, 18:214 (1910); Eccles, Essays on New France, 150; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815, New York: Cambridge University Press (1991), 269, 275, 288.

  22. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen, 92–94; Taylor, American Revolutions, 61; Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington, 180–81; Woody Holton, “The Ohio Indians and the Coming of the American Revolution in Virginia,” J. Southern Hist. 60:453, 457 (August 1994); William E. Nelson, “Law and the Structure of Power in Colonial Virginia,” Valparaiso L. Rev. 48:757, 877 (2014); Fauquier to Board of Trade, 13 February 1764, in Official Papers 3:1076–79; Hillman, Executive Journals 10:257 (25 May 1763).

  23. Ernst, “Genesis of the Currency Act of 1764,” 33; Jack M. Sosin, “Imperial Regulation of Colonial Paper Money, 1764–1773,” PMHB 88:174 (1964); Lawrence H. Gipson, “Virginia Planter Debts Before the American Revolution,” VMHB 69:259 (1961).

  24. Hillman, Executive Journals 6:252 (28 April 1763); Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:171 (19 May 1763); to Robert Stewart, 2 May 1763, GWP; Morgan, “Virginia and the French and Indian War,” 43–44.

  25. Jonathan Boucher, Letter from a Virginian to the Members of the Continental Congress (1774), Evans Early American Imprint Collection (online), 8.

  26. John J. Reardon, Peyton Randolph: One Who Presided, Durham: Carolina Academic Press (1982), 16–18; Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:225–26; Greene, Negotiated Authorities, 265, 293, 306; Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:52, 1:225, 1:228; Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 6 January 1821, PTJ; J. Keith McGaughy, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: A Portrait of An American Revolutionary, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield (2004), 42–43; Pauline Maier, The Old Revolutionaries: Political Lives in the Age of Samuel Adams, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1980), 164–65; Greene, Negotiated Authorities, 187.

  27. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:175 (21 May 1763), 10:174 (20 May 1763), 10:188–92 (28 May 1763). Having no doubt as to the course the House would follow, Washington left Williamsburg to review an investment opportunity in the Dismal Swamp, land on Virginia’s southern border that might prove not at all dismal if only the swamp could be drained. Freeman 3:94.

  28. Statutes at Large, 4 Geo. III, c. 34; Sosin, “Imperial Regulation,” 185; Fauquier to Lord Halifax, in Official Papers 3:1258–59 (14 June 1765); “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I,” Am. Hist. Rev. 26:726, 743 (July 1921).

  29. Emory G. Evans, “The Rise and Decline of the Virginia Aristocracy in the Eighteenth Century: The Nelsons,” in Darrett B. Rutman, ed., The Old Dominion, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia (1964), 68–9.

  30. Fauquier to Lords of Trade, in Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:xxvi (3 November 1762); Evans, “The Rise and Decline of the Virginia Aristocracy,” 68; Robert Carter III to Samuel Athawes, 21 December 1763, in Letterbooks of Robert Carter III.

  31. Breen, Tobacco Culture, 133; “Additional Queries, with Jefferson’s Answers,” January-February 1786, PTJ.

  32. From Bernard Moore, 29 December 1766, and note 1, GWP; Diary, 4 November 1768, 4 May 1769, 9, 14, 15, and 16 December 1769, GWP; “Cash Accounts,” June 1770 (20 June); from Walter Magowan, 9 May 1773, GWP; Breen, Tobacco Culture, 169–70. The largest fortune in the colony, that of William Byrd III, was so dissipated that Byrd’s assets were raffled off.

  33. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:203–4 (12 January 1764), 10:205–6 (13 January 1764), 10:212 (17 January 1764), 10:206–7 (14 January 1764). The semi-official Journals of the House of Burgesses mark Washington as not attending the January 1764 sitting of the House of Burgesses, 10:201, but that seems plainly in error. Washington wrote a letter from Williamsburg on January 22, the day after the end of the session (to Robert Cary & Co., 22 January 1764, GWP), while his expense records reflect ferry crossings on the way to Williamsburg before the session began, plus spending at “Mrs. Campbells” (the inn he frequented) and with other Williamsburg merchants. “Cash Accounts,” January 1764, GWP. The attendance records reflected in the Journals include other errors as well.

  34. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:209 (16 January 1764), 10:213 (17 January 1764), 10:215 (18 January 1764), 10:216 (19 January 1764), 10:218 (20 and 21 January 1764); Hening’s Statutes at Large, chapter I, 8:9. Other commissioners included Washington’s brother-in-law Fielding Lewis of Fredericksburg, and Thomas Marshall, father of future S
upreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. Washington was entitled to 10 shillings a day for his work on the commission. He received £10, 10s for that work, which translates to twenty-one days, or a little more than four five-day weeks. “Cash Accounts,” November 1764 (8 November), GWP; Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:247–48 (9 November 1764).

  35. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:251 (10 November 1764), 10:253 (13 November 1764).

  36. Edward Hubbard to Henry Bouquet, 9 March 1759, in Stevens, Bouquet Papers 3:182.

  37. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:296–98 (15 December 1764).

  38. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:227 (5 October 1764); Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen, 11; from Robert Stewart, 14 January 1764, GWP.

  39. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:303 (18 December 1764); Jon Kukla, Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty, New York: Simon & Schuster (2017), 57–59; Bridenbaugh, Seat of Empire, 51.

  40. Taylor, American Revolutions, 51, 56.

  41. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:256–67 (14 November 1764); Fauquier to Board of Trade, 24 December 1764, in Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:lviii (calling the burgesses’ statement indecent).

  21. THE WHEEL OF HISTORY

  1. Pendleton to James Madison, 21 April 1790, PJM; Fauquier to Board of Trade, 5 June 1765, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 3:1250; Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:358 (29 May 1765).

  2. Danby Pickering, ed., The Statutes at Large, Cambridge, England: Joseph Bentham (1764), chapter 12, 26:180–204; Taylor, American Revolutions, 96; Kukla, Patrick Henry, 67; Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis, 21–35.

  3. Taylor, American Revolutions, 101.

  4. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765 10:lxv (quoting account by Thomas Jefferson); Freeman 3:131. Henry recruited George Johnston of Fairfax County to propose the resolutions on the House floor. As an attorney, Johnston represented Washington in commercial disputes and was succeeded by Washington as a trustee of the town of Alexandria. From G. Johnston, 5 January 1758, 8 January 1760, GWP; Land Grant from Thomas, Lord Fairfax, 20 October 1760, note, GWP; from Augustine Washington, 16 October 1756 and note 6, GWP; Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:lxv.

  5. “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I,” Am. Hist. Rev. 26:726, 745–46 (1921); William Wirt, The Life and Character of Patrick Henry, Philadelphia: James Webster (1817), 65; Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:lxvi–lxvii; John Ragosta, “‘Caesar had his Brutus’: What Did Patrick Henry Really Say?,” VMHB 126:282 (2018).

  6. Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765 10:lxvi–lxvii; Fauquier to Board of Trade, 5 June 1765, in Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765, 10:xviii.

  7. To Francis Dandridge, 20 September 1765, GWP; to Cary & Co., 20 September 1765, GWP.

  8. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 79–80.

  9. Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis 1764–1766, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1959), 50–62; “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, II,” 27:74, 83, 85 (1921); Richard Henry Lee to Unnamed Person, 4 July 1765, in Ballagh, Letters of Richard Henry Lee, 9; Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Congress, 151–57.

  10. Morgan, Prologue to Revolution, 62–63; Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis, 109–10.

  11. Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis, 121, 180–82, 201–2; Morgan, Prologue to Revolution, 114–17; Taylor, American Revolutions, 103; Kennedy, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761–1765 10:lxxii–lxxiv; Virginia Gazette (Rinds), May 16, 1766; R. H. Lee to Landon Carter, 24 February 1766, in Ballagh, Letters of Richard Henry Lee, 14; John C. Matthews, “Two Men on a Tax: Richard Henry Lee, Archibald Ritchie, and the Stamp Act,” in Rutman, The Old Dominion, 103–9. A delightful rendition of the protests led by Richard Henry Lee against the Stamp Act appears in Pauline Maier’s Old Revolutionaries, 195–97. She highlights a protest procession to a courthouse in Westmoreland County—led by Lee’s slaves in costume, other slaves who were naked, plus effigies of the Virginia tax collector and British prime ministers—calling it “surely among the most bizarre of the revolutionary period.”

  12. “Petition of the London Merchants to the House of Commons” in Morgan, Prologue to Revolution, 130–31 (17 January 1766); from Capel & Osgood Hanbury, 27 March 1766, GWP; Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis, 271; Taylor, American Revolutions, 102; Freeman 3:155, 160–61; Richard Beeman, Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor, New York: Basic Books (2013), 19; Statutes at Large 27:19–20 (6 George III c. 12).

  13. To Cary & Co., 21 July 1766, GWP.

  14. Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), April 11, 1766; “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I” 26:84.

  15. Dabney, “John Robinson,” 61–62; Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:152–53; Breen, Tobacco Culture, 189–90. The quotation from Henry’s speech is based on Thomas Jefferson’s account of the House debates. Jefferson to William Wirt, 14 August 1814, TJP.

  16. Virginia Gazette (Rinds), May 16, 1766.

  17. Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:183–84; Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon) (June 13 and 20, 1766) (Pendleton’s notice demanding repayment by debtors), 25 July 1766 (“Philautos”); Virginia Gazette (Rind), September 5, 1766 (by new treasurer Robert Carter Nicholas).

  18. Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:185–88; Fauquier to Board of Trade, 11 May 1766, in Reese, Fauquier Papers 3:1359–61; Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), July 29, 1773.

  19. Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis, 293.

  20. To Cary & Co., 10 November 1773, GWP.

  21. To Dinwiddie, 29 May 1754, GWP.

  22. PIVOT TO FAIRFAX COUNTY

  1. Ernst, “Genesis of the Currency Act of 1764,” 22:76.

  2. “Poll Sheet for election to House of Burgesses for Fairfax County,” July 1765, GWP; to Burwell Bassett, 2 August 1765, GWP; Freeman 3:142.

  3. Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:19–20; Bridenbaugh, Seat of Empire, 11. The Truro Parish Colonial Vestry Book, available online through www.pohick.org, names the people receiving charity support and the amounts paid.

  4. Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 58, 60–61; Tillson, Accommodating Revolutions, 46; Fithian, Journal and Letters, 296.

  5. “Notice of Truro Parish Vestry Meeting,” 20 March 1764, note, GWP; Bridenbaugh, Seat of Empire, 11; Rev. Philip Slaughter, The History of Truro Parish in Virginia, Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co. (1907), 34–41; Truro Parish Colonial Vestry Book, http://members.nova.org/~heintzer/pohick/vestrybook.html, 100–1, 108–112; Thomas M. Preisser, “Alexandria and the Evolution of the Northern Virginia Economy, 1749–1776,” VMHB 89:282 (1981), 292–93. Washington’s fellow vestrymen for the Truro church were the county’s elite, including George William Fairfax, George Mason, and John West, his fellow burgess. George Johnston, the Fairfax County burgess whose resignation opened a seat for Washington, was the parish lawyer.

  6. Always eager to fill in the blanks in his education, Washington assembled a respectable library of books about law, most written for non-lawyers. These included The Justice of the Peace’s Pocket Companion, as well as Attorney’s Pocket Book and The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer. Other legal volumes at Mount Vernon were Virginia Justice, A Complete View of British Customs, and volumes on bankruptcy and a landlord’s rights and duties. Harrison, A Powerful Mind, 88; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 87.

  7. George Webb, The Office and Authority of a Justice of the Peace, Williamsburg (1736), 201.

  8. Albert Ogden Porter, County Government in Virginia: A Legislative History, 1607–1904, New York: Columbia University Press (1947), 66–68, 96;
Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:52–56; Newton B. Jones, “Weights, Measures, and Mercantilism: The Inspection of Exports in Virginia, 1742–1820,” in Rutman, ed., The Old Dominion, 122–24; Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders, 82–83. The other products subject to public inspection and approval were beef, pork, pitch, turpentine, and lumber.

  9. Lydia Sparacio Bontempo, ed., Order Book Extracts of Fairfax County, 1769–1770, vol. 2, Berwyn Heights, MD: Antient Press (2000) (22 February 1770, 21 February 1769).

  10. Bontempo, Fairfax County Order Book, 1768–1770 2:36–39 (18 September 1769), 2:40 (19 September 1769), 2:46–47 (17 October 1769), 2:72–74 (20 February 1770), 2:36–39 (18 September 1769), 2:44–46 (16 October 1769), 2:79–88 (22 February 1770), 2:74–78 (21 February 1769); Fairfax County Order Book, 1770–1772, Microfilm Reel 39, Fairfax City Regional Public Library 1, 3 (16 April 1770), 157 (16 December 1770), 312 (19 November 1771); Fairfax County Court Order Book, 1772–1774, Reel 39A, 90 (17 August 1772), 123, 126 (23 September 1772); Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 91; Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:15.

  11. Nan Netherton et al., Fairfax County, Virginia: A History, Fairfax: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (1978), 81–82; Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 91–92; Bridenbaugh, Seat of Empire, 13; Nelson, “Law and the Structure of Power in Colonial Virginia,” 48:817, 48:820 (2014); Albert H. Tillson, Gentry and Country Folk on a Virginia Frontier 1740–1789, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky (2014), 31–32; Fairfax County Court Order Book, 1772–1774, Microfilm Reel 39A, Fairfax City Regional Public Library, 204 (18 May 1773); 1770–1772, Microfilm Reel 39, 317–22 (20 November 1771) (charges against tax cheats; two prosecutions for profane swearing; one for adultery). From 1770 to 1773, the court decided forty-six cases of assault and battery, while in 1770 it heard fifteen cases of selling liquor without a license; Porter, County Government in Virginia, 94–96.

  12. Wiencek, Imperfect God, 128–29.