Washington: A Life (35 page)

On October 30 George Washington was back at Mount Vernon, where the most urgent matter claiming his attention was the sale of property owned by his business partner George Mercer, then in woeful financial straits. Several weeks later Washington conducted a sale of property, including ninety slaves, from Mercer’s plantation at Bull Run Mountains. “The Negroes, horses, and stock have all sold exceeding high,” Washington reported after the auction .
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It shows the schizophrenic nature of Washington’s world that he was auctioning off slaves in the immediate aftermath of the First Continental Congress, which had endorsed an end to importing slaves. Ditto for Washington’s action in February 1775, when he paid fifty-two pounds “for value of a Negro boy Tom,” whom he sent off to his western lands .
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While Washington was in Philadelphia, one hundred neighbors in Fairfax County, under the tutelage of George Mason, had organized themselves into a voluntary militia—probably the first in the colony—electing Washington their commander. Borrowing the colors of the English Whig party, the Fairfax Independent Company wore blue uniforms with buff facings and white stockings. Their military gear was a curious hybrid of European and American traditions: they carried bayonets and cartridge boxes for muskets right along with tomahawks. Washington knew of the unit’s formation while he was still in Philadelphia, for they had asked him to order drums, fifes, and halberds. To that he added his own personal order for a silk sash, gorgets, epaulettes, and a copy of Thomas Webb’s
A Military Treatise on the Appointments of the Army
. Across Virginia, Washington rejoiced, men were “forming themselves into independent companies, choosing their officers, arming, equipping, and training for the worst event.”
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As groups of militia sprang up, they clamored for Washington as their commander. Now ubiquitous in the cause, he accepted the field command of four independent companies: in Prince William, Fauquier, Richmond, and Spotsylvania counties. It is striking how forthright Washington had become. In January the
Virginia Gazette
thanked the aspiring hero in a quatrain: “In spite of Gage’s flaming sword / And Carleton’s Canadian troop / Brave Washington shall give the word, / And we’ll make them howl and whoop.”
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During the winter of 1774-75 Washington and Mason did everything they could to strengthen the Fairfax militia, even advancing it money for ammunition. In order to be reimbursed, they and other local leaders decided to levy a three-shilling poll tax on Fairfax County citizens “for the common benefit, protection and defense of the inhabitants.”
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The residents had little choice but to pay this “voluntary” tax: the local sheriff, among others, would collect the money, and laggards would be stigmatized on a special list. The poll tax was a highly coercive measure. Even amid the hubbub of revolutionary activity, Washington remained rather testy about money, accusing Mason of collecting money from those prepared to pay and leaving him “to scuffle as he could with the rest.” Mason grew incensed at the notion that he wasn’t going to share all proceeds equally: “It cannot but give me concern that I should be thought capable of such disingenuous conduct.”
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As chairman of the Fairfax County Committee, Washington expanded defensive preparations by urging residents to form sixty-eight-man companies and study military science. The joint efforts of Washington and Mason helped to convert Fairfax County into a rabid center of resistance to British rule.

In late December 1774 the arrogant, irascible Charles Lee arrived for a six-day visit to Mount Vernon. He was a painfully thin man with a small head set on a spindly body. Born in England, Lee had served as a major in the French and Indian War, then fought as a mercenary in various European wars before sailing back to America in 1773. Haughty, imperious, and overflowing with opinions, Lee seldom had a kind word for anyone’s military talents except his own. Versed in Greek and Latin, worldly and well traveled, he had a razor-sharp wit and must have made Washington feel a bit insular in comparison. This eccentric and notably slovenly man was always trailed by his beloved dogs. “When I can be convinced that men are as worthy objects as dogs,” he once explained, “I shall transfer my benevolence to them.”
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It was widely thought that the ambitious Lee had set his sights on the job of commander in chief, but he disclaimed any such intention. “To think myself qualified for the most important charge that ever was committed to mortal man is the last stage of presumption” was how he put it in a letter to Edmund Burke.
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In March 1775 Washington was summoned to Richmond to attend the Second Virginia Convention, held at Henrico Parish Church, an Anglican house of worship. This meeting ratified the resolutions of the First Continental Congress and applauded the work of the seven Virginia delegates. Patrick Henry argued that British troops intended to enslave the colonies, and he set pulses racing with his flaming response: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
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Buoyed by these words, the convention agreed that Virginia should be placed in “a posture of defense.”
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Along with Henry, Washington was named to a committee that recommended raising volunteer companies in every county; he served on another that was instructed to “prepare a plan for the encouragement of arts and manufactures in this colony.”
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Such was Washington’s new preeminence that when the gathering chose seven members to attend the Second Continental Congress, Washington was the second one named, ahead of Patrick Henry and superseded only by Peyton Randolph. The vote was overwhelming, as he received 106 of 108 votes cast. On the same day, as if struck by a sudden premonition of what was about to happen in Philadelphia, Washington wrote to his brother Jack that “it is my full intention to devote my life and fortune in the cause we are engaged in.”
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It is astonishing that Washington, having long brooded over money as he built up his fortune, should now be willing to hazard all on this highly speculative rebellion. The death of Patsy Custis had briefly afforded some financial relief, but the anxiety over money had quickly returned. A few weeks earlier, when his brother Jack asked to borrow two hundred pounds, George had turned him down cold, saying “I would gladly borrow that sum myself for a few months, so exceedingly difficult do I find it, under the present scarcity of cash, to collect enough to answer this emergency and at the same time comply with my other engagements.”
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Although George Washington scarcely needed further reasons to detest British rule, Lord Dunmore inflicted one last blow. Back at Mount Vernon, Washington heard a distressing report that Dunmore planned to annul the land patents that Washington had received under the 1754 proclamation. Seizing upon a technicality, the royal governor claimed that Washington’s surveyor, William Crawford, was improperly qualified. When Washington asked for clarification, Dunmore confirmed the worst, stating that “the surveyor who surveyed those lands did not qualify agreeable to the act of assembly directing the duty and qualification of surveyors.”
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This appalling decision, if upheld, would strip Washington of 23,000 acres of land. He told Dunmore that he found the decision “incredible,” citing the enormous time and expense consumed by the nullified surveys.
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Washington didn’t buckle under pressure from Dunmore. As Douglas Southall Freeman notes, “If Washington suspected blackmail or reprisal, it did not deter him from a single act of military preparation or from the utterance of a word he would have spoken in aid of the colonial cause.”
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That April it momentarily seemed as if an early chapter of the Revolutionary War would be written in Virginia. Lord Dunmore feared that one of the new militia companies might grab gunpowder stored in a Williamsburg magazine. To forestall this possibility, he had marines who were attached to the armed British schooner
Magdalen
empty fifteen barrels of gunpowder from the magazine, load them on a wagon, and abscond to a man-of-war anchored off Norfolk. To universal disbelief, Dunmore contended that he had removed the gunpowder to deal with a slave revolt and vowed to bring it back if needed to defend the colony. When enraged patriots threatened to invade the governor’s palace, George Washington counseled caution and advised the five independent companies under his command not to march on Williamsburg. The young James Madison, twenty-four, condemned Washington and his ilk for having “discovered a pusillanimity little comporting with their professions or the name of Virginian” and blamed the fact that their “property will be exposed in case of civil war.”
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As a military man, Washington knew how indomitable the British military machine was and how quixotic a full-scale revolution would be. As he later said of America’s chances in the spring of 1775, “It was known that … the expense in comparison with our circumstances as colonists must be enormous, the struggle protracted, dubious, and severe. It was known that the resources of Britain were, in a manner, inexhaustible, that her fleets covered the ocean, and that her troops had harvested laurels in every quarter of the globe … Money, the nerve of war, was wanting.” But the colonists had something much more precious: “the unconquerable resolution of our citizens, the conscious rectitude of our cause, and a confident trust that we should not be forsaken by heaven.”
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BEFORE SETTING OUT for the Second Continental Congress, Samuel Adams and John Hancock decided to spend a quiet weekend in hiding in Lexington, Massachusetts. On April 14, 1775, General Gage received instructions from London to arrest these ringleaders of the insurgency, and he planned to seize a powder magazine in nearby Concord as well. Patriotic forces were tipped off to this raid, whereupon Paul Revere galloped off to alert Adams and Hancock. When overwhelming British forces descended on Lexington Green on April 19, they were confronted by a small but doughty band of volunteers. The historic shots were fired, killing eight Americans and wounding ten more before the British, having lost only one horse, moved on to Concord. When the redcoats marched back to Boston, however, they were suddenly engulfed on all sides by armed farmers, known as Minute Men, who shot with deadly accuracy, shielded by trees, buildings, and fences. By the time the frantic British troops had scrambled back to town, 273 had been killed or wounded versus only 95 colonials. As John Adams proclaimed with self-evident truth, “The battle of Lexington on the 19th of April changed the instruments of warfare from the pen to the sword.”
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George Washington was sobered and dismayed by the shocking news; there was nothing bloodthirsty in his nature. As he lamented to George William Fairfax, “Unhappy it is … to reflect that a brother’s sword has been sheathed in a brother’s breast and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves.”
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He fathomed the full import of what had happened. As he had already regretted to a friend a year earlier, he wished “the dispute had been left to posterity to determine, but the crisis is arrived, when we must assert our rights or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us.”
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As the colonies submitted to a frenzy of military preparation, young men everywhere grabbed muskets and formed militias. Like others committed to the cause, Washington brushed up on warfare and dipped into military volumes. For all his frontier experience, he was still a neophyte when it came to large-scale conflict. In the weeks before he left for the Second Continental Congress, the early leadership of the Continental Army began to coalesce on his doorstep, as if power were already shifting toward him. Charles Lee came for dinner, as did another, unrelated Lee named Henry—later celebrated as Light-Horse Harry Lee—who was nineteen and had graduated from Princeton the previous fall, specializing in Latin. Another military figure spending the night at Mount Vernon was Horatio Gates, a British officer who had been wounded during the Braddock campaign. He was a ruddy, thickset man, with a large, aquiline nose and long hair flowing over his shoulders from a receding hairline. After rising to the rank of major in England, he had returned to Virginia and bought a plantation in the Shenandoah Valley. As Washington was to discover, Gates had more than a trace of egotism and duplicity in his nature.

On May 4, 1775, George Washington climbed into his chariot, which was guided by a coachman and a postilion (an elegant conveyance for the future leader of a revolutionary army), and sped north. He was probably joined by his friend Richard Henry Lee, a talented orator and fellow burgess. In his diary Washington recorded drily, “Set out for the Congress at Phila.” and described the spring weather as “very warm indeed, with but little wind and clear.”
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Had he foreseen the many tempestuous years that would elapse before he again set eyes on his cherished estate, he might have gazed back longingly. En route to Baltimore, Washington and Lee encountered other coaches hastening to the same destination, a swelling column of southern delegates that included Peyton Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia and Joseph Hewes and Richard Caswell of North Carolina. Previewing things to come, Baltimore’s citizens asked Washington to review four volunteer companies on the town common. The southern delegates must have already felt a palpable crescendo of excitement as they approached Philadelphia, for six miles outside of town they were greeted by a throng of five hundred people on horseback—officers, town dignitaries, and curiosity seekers—who had ridden out as a welcoming party. Two miles from town they were embraced by a lively patriotic band and a spirited honor guard of foot and rifle companies, so that they streamed into Philadelphia enfolded in an extemporaneous parade. On the same day John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and John Adams rolled in from the north.