Another George Washington Essay

George Washington

He was born 1732 and he died in1799. George Washington seems today a figure
larger than life itself…..almost as he was when he was a familiar person in the
halls, homes, shops, and bars of 18th-century city Williamsburg. On Duke of
Gloucester Street, in the Raleigh Tavern's Apollo Room, or the Governor's Palace
Gardens, his powerful frame and his nice attitude..his presence….drew to him the
notice that wrote his place in the history of the city, the state, and the
nation.

"His bones and joints are large, as are his hands and feet," friend of
Washington George Mercer observed in 1760. He said Washington kept "all the
muscles of his face under perfect control, though flexible and expressive of
deep feeling when moved by emotion. In conversation he looks you full in the
face, is deliberate, deferential and engaging. His voice is agreeable . . . he
is a splendid horseman."

Thomas Jefferson who served with Washington in the House of Burgesses, wrote:
"On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in a few
points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune
combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same
constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting
remembrance."

In Williamsburg, when it was the seat of Virginia's government, Washington
secured his first military commissions, learned and practiced the arts of
politics, and moved from the attitude of being just another country squire to
become the leader of a continental revolution.

Born February 22, 1732 in Westmoreland County he was the first son of his father
Augustine's second marriage: his mother was the former Mary Ball of Epping
Forest. When George was about 3 his family moved to Little Hunting Creek on the
Potomac, then to Ferry Farm opposite of Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock in
King George County.

His father died in 1743, and Washington grew nervous under his mother's guidance.
He proposed at one point to follow the sea, but he divided his adolescence among
the households of relatives, finding a home and a model in his half-brother
Lawrence at Mount Vernon. From Lawrence he learned trig and surveying and
accomplished a taste for ethics, novels, music, and the theater. An officer in
the Virginia militia, Lawrence had served with Admiral Edward Vernon…for who the
plantation was named, and tinged George with aspirations for military service.

In the interim, the powerful Fairfax family of neighboring Belvoir introduced
him to the accomplishments of wealth and in 1748 provided him his first
"adventure". That year Lord Fairfax dispatched him with a party that spent a
month surveying Fairfax lands in the still-wild Shenandoah. In the expedition,
he began to appreciate the uses and value of land, an appreciation that grew the
following year with his appointment as Culpeper County surveyor, certified by
the College of William and Mary.

Lawrence, suffering from a lung complaint took a Barbados voyage in search of
health in a warmer climate….and george accompanied him. The younger brother
contracted smallpox and returned to Virginia alone, but with a immunity to a
disease that destroyed colonial-era armies. Lawrence died in 1752, and the Mount
Vernon estate passed by stages into George's hands until he inherited it in 1761.

Washington also succeeded to Lawrence's militia office. Governor Robert
Dinwiddie first appointed him assistant for the southern district of the
colony's militia, but soon conferred on him Lawrence's assistantcy for the
Northern Neck and Eastern Shore. So it happened that in 1753 the governor sent
21-year-old Washington to warn French troops at Fort Duquesne at the forks of
the Ohio (that's modern Pittsburgh) that they were encroaching in territory
claimed by Virginia.

The French ignored the warning and the mission failed, but when Washington
returned Dinwiddie had Williamsburg printer William Hunter publish his official
report as The Journal of Major George Washington. It made the young officer
well-known at home and away.

Returning to the Ohio in April with 150 men to remove the intruders, Washington
got his first taste of war in a fight with a French scouting party. He wrote to
his brother Jack, "I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is
something charming in the sound."

A second fight quickly followed and Washington, retreating to Fort Necessity,
was beaten by an even more numerous French force. He surrendered and, in his
ignorance of French, signed an embarrassing surrender agreement. But he had
opportunities to get revenge for his defeat. The whistling bullets heralded the
start of the Seven Years' War, as it was called in Europe. In America it was
called the French and Indian War or, sometimes, Virginia's War. Horace Walpole
wrote, "The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set
the world on fire."

Washington returned to the field as an friend to General Braddock in 1755 and
performed with distinction, despite sickness, in the disastrous campaign against
Fort Duquesne. Later that year Dinwiddie gave him command of all Virginia forces
and promoted him to colonel.

In these years Washington had two arguments with English officers who viewed
their regular-army commissions as superior compared to of the Virginia militia
commander. These disputes may mark the beginning of Washington's anger of
British attitudes toward the colonies.

Operating from a fort at Winchester, Washington protected the Virginia frontier
until 1758 when he was made a militia and helped to chase the French from Fort
Duquesne for good.

Washington resigned at war's end and retired to Mount Vernon. He was defeated in
elections for the House of Burgesses in 1755 and 1757, but won in 1758 and was
seated the following year from Frederick County. For 15 years he devoted himself
to his legislative work and his farm. During this period, he also became a
family man, marrying the widow Martha Dandridge Custis, the mother of two
children, on January 6, 1759, in New Kent County.

In 1760, Washington took on the additional duties of a Fairfax County justice of
the peace. He also found time for the hobbies of a Virginia gentleman--fox
hunting, snuff taking, plays, billiards, cards, dancing, and fishing. He
delighted in bottles of Madeira, plates of watermelon, and dishes of oysters.

In these years his resentment of the subordination of American interests to
those of England grew. When Parliament attempted to force the Stamp Act in 1769,
Washington told someone that Parliament "hath no more right to put their hands
into my pocket, without my consent, than I have to put my hands into yours for
money."

By 1774 he was in the forefront of the defense of Virginia liberties and was
among the rebellious burgesses who gathered at the Raleigh Tavern on May 27
after Governor Dunmore dissolved the house. Washington signed the resolves
proposing a Continental congress and non-importation of British goods. On July
18, he chaired the Alexandria meeting that adopted George Mason's "Fairfax
Resolutions."

Sent to the First Continental Congress, Washington returned home afterward to
organize independent militia companies in Northern Virginia and to win election
to the Second Continental Congress. In Philadelphia on June 15, 1775, he was
offered command of America's forces, accepted, vowed to accept no pay, and left
to take over the army at Boston.

The years that passed before the victory at Yorktown in 1781 were marked as
often by frustration as by success. Hampered by shortages of supplies and the
disloyalty of enlistments, Washington commanded with caution. He once reported
to Congress, "We should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything
to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be
drawn."

Jefferson wrote:

"His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his
penetration strong . . . and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It
was slow in operation, being little aided by invention of imagination, but sure
in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he
derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected
whatever was best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more
judiciously. But if he deranged during the course of the action, if any member
of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment.
The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an
enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting
personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in
his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every
consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when
once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed."

Washington regarded Yorktown--a battle he planned in part at the George Wythe
House--as "an interesting event that may be productive of much good if properly
improved, but if it should be the means of relaxation and sink us into
supineness and security, it had better not have happened."

The war wound down and, as danger dropped, congressional disregard of the Army
grew. His troops urged Washington to seize power from the politicians, but he
rejected every such suggestion. On March 15, 1783, Washington met his unhappy
and rebellious officers at Newburgh, New York, to discourage them from marching
on Congress over back pay, but the speech he had prepared proved unpersuasive.

He decided to read a letter that he had received from a congressman. As he
reached into his coat for his glasses, he said, "Gentlemen, you will permit me
to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray, but almost blind, in
the service of my country." The officers were so touched that some cried, and
the day was carried. Biographer James Thomas Flexner wrote, "This was probably
the most important single gathering ever held in the United States."

On April 19, 1783--the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington--Washington said
bye to his staff at the Fraunces Tavern in New York and, on the way to Mount
Vernon, stopped in Annapolis to resign his commission to Congress. He resumed
the life of a plantation squire, and set out to repair his finances.

He had long hoped to connect the Virginia seaboard to the Ohio and the interior
by means of canals he rode away in autumn 1784 on a 650-mile journey for
observations. Improvement of his long-neglected farms, however was his primary
preoccupation. He wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette, "I have not only retired
from all public employments, but I am retiring within myself . . . Envious of
none, I am determined to be pleased with all; and this, my dear friend, being
the order for my march, I will move gently down the stream of life, until I
sleep with my fathers."

The weakness of the government created by the Articles of Confederation
concerned Washington and, in 1786, Shays's Rebellion alarmed him. He
regrettingly accepted a seat in the federal convention and election to its
presidency. His unanimous election as the first president of the United States
was certain before the Constitution was even adopted and, again, he accepted
with unwillingness. "My movements to the chair of government will be accompanied
by feeling not unlike those of a culprit, who is going to the place of his
execution," he wrote after the ballot. On April 30, 1789, he took the oath of
office in New York at age 57.

Washington not only had to organize a government but also to create a role for
the highest officer of the new nation. Both tasks earned him enemies. Always
opposed to factions, his two administrations prepared the rivalry of the
Federalist and Anti-federalist parties.

Though unopposed for re-election, his second administration was the subject of
uncommon, and sometimes indecent and abuse. He had one such attack to an alarm
raised against a rabid dog: "Such exaggerated terms as could scarcely be applied
to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket."

The Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania against a federal excise tax on
spirits was his critical domestic challenge. He rode partway to the field at the
head of the column of militia raised to put it down.

After serving as Washington's secretary of state, Jefferson split with the
president. The break became permanent. Jefferson wrote,

"I do believe that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the
durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined
gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that we must at
length end in something like a British constitution, had some weight in his
adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous meetings with Congress,
and other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a
change which he believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as
might be to the public mind."

Historians credit Washington's conduct of the office with the preservation of
the national union under the American Constitution. Washington issued his
farewell address on September 7, 1796, and was succeeded by John Adams the
following March 4. His last official act was to pardon the participants in the
Whiskey Rebellion.

When relations with France soured in 1798, his Country once more turned to
Washington for his service. Adams appointed him lieutenant general of a
provisional army. The danger lessened before the troops came together.

In December 1799, after a day spent riding on his farms in bad weather,
Washington's throat became inflamed. At 2 a.m on December14, he awakened his
wife to say that he was having trouble breathing. At sunrise she sent for Dr.
James Craig, who arrived at 9 a.m. and diagnosed the illness as "inflammatory
quinsy." During the morning Washington was bleeding three times and two more
doctors came, Elisha Dick of Alexandria and Gustavus Brown. One counseled
against bleeding, but more blood was taken. At midnight Washington said to his
secretary, Tobias Lear; "I am just going. Have me decently buried, and do not
let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead. Do
you understand me?"

Lear said, "Yes."

Washington's last words were, "'Tis well."