Washington: A Life (34 page)

During the summer of 1774 Washington unburdened his thoughts freely to the Fairfaxes. Black with gloom, he wrote despondently to George William that the Crown was failing to protect Virginia from “cruel and bloodthirsty” Indians in the backcountry, while simultaneously “endeavoring by every piece of art and despotism to fix the shackles of slavery upon us.”
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He made clear that the “cause of Boston … now is and ever will be consider[e]d as the cause of America … and that we shall not suffer ourselves to be sacrificed by piecemeal, though God only knows what is to become of us.”
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Further souring his mood was that a bitter winter frost had given way to an equally bitter drought. In short, Washington concluded, “since the first settlem[en]t of this colony the minds of people in it never were more disturbed, or our situation so critical, as at present.”
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Washington went on corresponding with George William as if communicating with a kindred spirit. Far different was his tense standoff with his longtime friend Bryan Fairfax, the half brother of George William and a former lieutenant in Washington’s Virginia Regiment. Bryan Fairfax was a grave, austere fellow. In June 1774, when Washington had tried to coax his old foxhunting companion into running with him for the House of Burgesses, it became clear that a political gulf yawned between them. On July 4 Washington sent Bryan a letter that was neither soft-spoken nor conciliatory. Instead of ducking politics out of respect for their friendship, Washington gave an unusually forthright statement of his beliefs. As if the scales had fallen from his eyes, he embraced a conspiratorial view of British intentions. The Crown’s policies weren’t just fumbling or misguided but were part of a settled design to rob the colonists of their ancient liberties. “Does it not appear, as clear as the sun in its meridian brightness, that there is a regular, systematic plan formed to fix the right and practice of taxation upon us? … Ought we not then to put our virtue and fortitude to the severest test?”
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George Washington passed here some personal Rubicon. Remarkably, in this fierce letter he argued that the colonists should refrain from purchasing British imports, but not renege on paying debts owed to British creditors, “for I think, whilst we are accusing others of injustice, we should be just ourselves.”
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It was this steadfast sense of fairness, even at the most feverish political moments, that set George Washington apart.

When Bryan Fairfax sent Washington a lengthy reply, defending petitions as the only legitimate means of protest, the hot-blooded Washington didn’t mince words. On July 20 he sent Bryan a truculent letter that recounted the many colonial petitions spurned by Parliament, which had violated both the “law of nature and our constitution … I think the Parliament of Great Britain hath no more right to put their hands into my pocket without my consent than I have to put my hands in yours for money.”
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Instead of more petitions, Washington endorsed the nonimportation scheme, “for I am convinc[e]d, as much as I am of my existence, that there is no relief for us but in their distress; and I think, at least I hope, that there is public virtue enough left among us to deny ourselves everything but the bare necessaries of life to accomplish this end.”
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Washington said he would mistrust his own judgment if he didn’t recoil “at the thought of submitting to measures which I think subversive of everything that I ought to hold dear and valuable.”
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Washington’s vision abruptly seemed richer and broader, his words now throbbing with passion. His letters to Bryan Fairfax make clear that, even though he didn’t originate political ideas, he was a quick study who soaked them up rapidly, as he was coached by George Mason and other colonial leaders. His sudden eloquence is striking, as his ideas were forged in the crucible of powerful emotions. In a final blast at Fairfax late that summer, Washington wrote that “an innate spirit of freedom first told me that the measures which [the] administration hath for sometime been, and now are, most violently pursuing are repugnant to every principle of natural justice, whilst much abler heads than my own hath fully convinced me that it is not only repugnant to natural right, but subversive of the laws and constitution of Great Britain itself.”
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By this point George Washington knew that a clash with the mother country was almost inevitable. For that reason, the auction of Belvoir’s effects in August and December must have carried heavy symbolic overtones for him. For reasons of pride, status, and undoubtedly nostalgia, George Washington bought more than half of the Fairfax furniture, everything from window curtains to candlesticks to a bust of Shakespeare. He indulged his old penchant for mahogany, the expensive wood that signified wealth in the colonies. It must have been a melancholy task for Washington to see Belvoir’s furnishings dismantled, ending the aristocratic world that had shaped his early dreams.

As the old world emptied out, a new one was being born that August in Williamsburg, where the rebel burgesses, trained in self-government, reconstituted themselves as the Virginia Convention. “We never before had so full a meeting … as on the present occasion,” Washington exulted, as more than one hundred delegates attended.
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Within a week, the delegates had thrashed out a plan aligned with the Fairfax Resolves, thrusting Washington into the forefront of the action. They agreed to set up an association that would ban imports beginning in November and, if Great Britain still refused to redress their grievances, tobacco exports after August 1775. They also issued a stinging indictment of the arbitrary behavior in Boston of Washington’s old colleague General Gage.

On Friday, August 5, 1774, George Washington’s life changed forever when he was elected one of seven Virginia delegates to the general congress that would meet in Philadelphia, to be known as the First Continental Congress. When these statesmen were selected, Jefferson said, a “shock of electricity” flew through the air.
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The vote underscored the dramatic elevation of Washington’s standing: he trailed Speaker Peyton Randolph by only a few votes and received nine votes more than the superlative orator Patrick Henry. Before leaving Williamsburg, Washington obtained a copy of Jefferson’s pamphlet
A Summary View of the Rights of British America,
which took dead aim at the notion that the colonies existed to benefit the mother country. Jefferson ended with a dire warning for George III: “Kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people. Open your breast, Sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the Third be a blot in the page of history.”
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ON AUGUST 30, 1774, two influential burgesses, Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton, spent the night at Mount Vernon before departing with Washington and his manservant, Billy Lee, for the First Continental Congress. They left on a sultry, windless morning, and Martha Washington, infused with martial spirit, saw them off like a good, self-sacrificing matron from antiquity. Edmund Pendleton left an indelible portrait of Martha’s unwavering commitment: “She seemed ready to make any sacrifice and was cheerful, though I know she felt anxious. She talked like a Spartan mother to her son on going to battle. ‘I hope you will stand firm—I know George will,’ she said. The dear little woman was busy from morning until night with domestic duties, but she gave us much time in conversation and affording us entertainment. When we set off in the morning, she stood in the door and cheered us with the good words, ‘God be with you gentlemen.’”
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It was a courageous show on the part of a woman who had already buried a husband and three children, the last of whom had died little more than a year before.

The three travelers rode into Philadelphia on September 4. The next morning they repaired to the City Tavern, where delegates decided to hold their meetings in Carpenters’ Hall. The choice of the jowly Peyton Randolph to chair the Congress furnished Washington with a potent ally. He’d had business as well as political dealings with Randolph, having loaned him 250 pounds a few years earlier, and Randolph had been one of four people assigned to monitor Washington’s handling of the Custis estate for the General Court.

The taciturn Washington, at forty-two, found himself in an assembly of splendid talkers who knew how to pontificate on every subject. John Adams left this slightly mocking commentary on the verbose gathering: “Every man in it is a great man—an orator, a critic, a statesman, and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory, his criticism, and his political abilities.”
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Relegated to a secondary role, the modest, retiring Washington wasn’t appointed to either of the two new committees: one on colonial rights, the other on trade policy with Great Britain. Nonetheless, in this conclave of talkative egomaniacs, Washington’s understated style had an inevitable appeal. Amid gifted talkers, he was a masterful listener who characterized his role as that of “an attentive observer and witness.”
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It was slowly becoming clear that, in a fractious, boisterous gathering, a calm figure of sound judgment such as Washington could inspire confidence and serve as a unifying figure.

Amid much overheated rhetoric, Washington spoke hard, plain truths. Silas Deane of Connecticut reported home that the stony-faced George Washington had a “hard countenance” and was “a tolerable speaker … who speaks very modestly in a cool but determined style and accent.”
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A Virginian praised Washington as “a man noted as well for his good sense as his bravery.”
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From Washington’s recent letters to Bryan Fairfax, we know that he could serve up impassioned language, so that his reticence in Philadelphia reflected not simply a circumspect personality but a fine-tuned political instinct. On the surface, Washington may have been cool and phlegmatic, but he was fiery underneath, blasting the British as “diabolic contrivers.”
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The specter of military action preoccupied delegates who sized up Washington as a prospective commander in chief. There was an esprit de corps about Washington and his self-assured Virginians. According to John Adams, the Virginians “were the most spirited” people in the hall, and one Pennsylvanian said that, in comparison, “the Bostonians are mere milksops.”
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The delegates swapped tales of Washington’s youthful exploits in the French and Indian War, with Silas Deane writing excitedly home that Washington “was in the first actions in 1753 and 1754 on the Ohio and in 1755 was with Braddock and was the means of saving the remains of that unfortunate army.”
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In an inspired mood, Dr. Solomon Drowne of Rhode Island composed a martial tribute in verse to Washington: “With manly gait / His faithful steel suspended by his side, / Pass’d W-shi-gt-n along, Virginia’s hero.” People buttonholed him and pressed him to accept the army command, if offered. While hoping to avert bloodshed, Washington warned one correspondent that “more blood will be spilt on this occasion (if the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity) than history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of North America.”
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Increasingly a seasoned politician, gifted with a light touch, Colonel Washington seemed to know that self-promotion would only backfire among delegates who, by the nature of their revolt, possessed heightened fears of power-hungry leaders. The last thing they wanted was a general who pushed himself forward too overtly. As stories about Washington swirled around the Congress, he let them do the talking. Thomas Lynch of South Carolina told John Adams that Washington “had made the most eloquent speech at the Virginia Convention that ever was made. Says he, ‘I will raise 1000 men, subsist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston.’”
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That the rumor mill churned out such a thrilling (and likely apocryphal) tale about Washington foreshadowed the verdict of the following spring.

Washington worked the First Continental Congress like a mature candidate. He turned ecumenical in his churchgoing habits, attending services at Presbyterian, Quaker, Roman Catholic, and a pair of Anglican churches. With the weather consistently fine and clear, he socialized assiduously in the evenings, dining out in thirty-one private homes in two months and scarcely ever sticking to his lodgings. He became a habitué of something called the Governor’s Club, summarized by one visitor as “a select number of gentlemen that meet every night at a certain tavern, where they pass away a few hours in the pleasures of conversation and a cheerful glass.”
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With his compulsion to record his everyday life, Washington asked Lund Washington to send on his diary, disguised for safekeeping as a letter. “It will be found, I presume, on my writing table,” he wrote. “Put it under a good strong paper cover, sealed up as a letter.”
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Washington showed a knack for expanding his network of acquaintances, meeting with “Farmer” John Dickinson and befriending two young Philadelphians—merchant Thomas Mifflin and lawyer Joseph Reed—who later served as his aides. Along with John Adams, Washington received a memorable guided tour of the Pennsylvania Hospital from Dr. William Shippen, Jr. The finest hospital in the colonies, it still had a vaguely medieval air, as Adams noted: “We saw in the lower rooms underground the cells of the lunatics … some furious, some merry, some melancholy.”
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An inveterate shopper, Washington also took time to buy a cloak for his mother and a pocketbook for his wife. This conservative revolutionary decided that Billy Lee should dress a little more fashionably for the historic occasion and plunked down fifteen shillings for new shoes for his slave.

The First Continental Congress balked at the still-radical idea of independence, and George Washington expressed the predominant mood when he declared flatly, “I am well satisfied, as I can be of my existence, that no such thing is desired by any thinking man in all North America; on the contrary, that it is the ardent wish of the warmest advocates for liberty that peace and tranquillity, upon constitutional grounds, may be restored and the horrors of civil discord prevented.”
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The delegates clung to the pleasing fiction that a benevolent George III was being undermined by treacherous ministers, and they implored the king as their “loving father” to rouse himself and rescue his colonial subjects. Going beyond mere words, they set up a Continental Association (hence the name Continental Congress) that would block imports sooner, and exports later, from and to Great Britain. To police this agreement, delegates called for creation of local enforcement committees, which could spawn militias if necessary. They also vowed to “wholly discontinue the slave trade” and “discourage every species of extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse-racing, and all kinds of gaming, cock-fightings, exhibitions of shows, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments.”
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This emphasis on moral reformation could only have assisted the likelihood that the clean-living Washington would become commander in chief. An exceptionally conscientious delegate, he was one of only two Virginia delegates still in Philadelphia when the First Continental Congress adjourned on October 26, 1774.