later known as Mount Vernon, and George the estate on the Rappahannock, nearly opposite Fredericksburg, where his father usually lived.
Of Washington's early life little is known, probably because there was little unusual to tell. The story of the hatchet and the cherry-tree, and similar tales, are undoubtedly apocryphal, having been coined by Washington's most popular biographer, Mason Weems (d. 1825).[1] There is nothing to show that the boy's life was markedly different from that common to Virginia families in easy circumstances; plantation affairs, hunting, fishing, and a little reading making up its substance. From 1735 to 1739 he lived at what is now called Mount Vernon, and afterwards at the estate on the Rappahannock. His education was only elementary and very defective, except in mathematics, in which he was largely self-taught; and although at his death he left a considerable library, he was never an assiduous reader. Although he had throughout his life a good deal of official contact with the French, he never mastered their language. Some careful reading of good books there must have been, however, for in spite of pervading illiteracy, common in that age, in matters of grammar and spelling, he acquired a dignified and effective English style. The texts of his writings, as published by Jared Sparks, have been so “edited” in these respects as to destroy their value as evidence; but the edition of Mr Worthington C. Ford restores the original texts. Washington left school in the autumn of 1747, and from this time we begin to know something of his life. He was then at Mount Vernon with his half-brother Lawrence, who was also his guardian. Lawrence was a son-in-law of William Fairfax, proprietor of the neighbouring plantation of Belvoir, and agent for the extensive Fairfax lands in the colony. Lawrence had served with Fairfax at Cartagena, and had made the acquaintance of Admiral Edward Vernon, from whom Mount Vernon was named. The story that a commission as midshipman was obtained for George through the good offices of the admiral, but that the opposition of the boy's mother put an end to the scheme, seems to lack proof. In 1748, however, through the influence of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, the head of the family, who had come to America to live, Washington, then only sixteen years of age, was appointed surveyor of the Fairfax property; and an appointment as public surveyor soon followed. The next three years were spent in this service, most of the time on the frontier. He always retained a disposition to speculate in western lands, the ultimate value of which he early appreciated; many of his later investments of this character are treated in C. W. Butterfield's Washington-Crawford Letters (1877). He seems, too, to have impressed others already with his force of mind and character. In 1751 he accompanied his half-brother Lawrence, who was stricken with consumption, to the West Indies, where he had an attack of small-pox which left him marked for life. Lawrence died in the following year, making George executor under the will and residuary heir of Mount Vernon; and the latter estate became his in 1761.
In October 1753, on the eve of the last French and Indian war, Washington was chosen by Governor Robert Dinwiddie as the agent to warn the French away from their new posts on the Ohio, in western Pennsylvania. He accomplished the winter journey safely, though with considerable danger and hardship; and shortly after his return was appointed lieutenant-colonel of a Virginia regiment, under Colonel Joshua Fry. In April 1754 he set out with two companies for the Ohio, defeated (28th May) a force of French and Indians at Great Meadows (in the present Fayette county, Pennsylvania), but at Fort Necessity in this vicinity was forced to capitulate (3rd July), though only after a vigorous defence. For his services he received the thanks of the House of Burgesses. When General Edward Braddock arrived in Virginia in February 1755, Washington wrote him a diplomatically worded letter, and was presently made a member of the staff, with the rank of colonel. His personal relations with Braddock were friendly throughout, and in the calamitous defeat he showed for the first time that fiery energy which always lay hidden beneath his calm and unruffled exterior. He ranged the whole field on horseback, making himself the most conspicuous target for Indian bullets, and, in spite of what he called the “dastardly behaviour” of the regular troops, saved the expedition from annihilation, and brought the remnant of his Virginians out of action in fair order. In spite of his reckless exposure, he was one of the few unwounded officers. In August, after his return, he was commissioned commander of the Virginia forces, being then twenty-three years old. For about two years his task was that of “defending a frontier of more than 350 m. with 700 men,” a task rendered the more difficult by the insubordination and irregular service of his soldiers, and by irritating controversies over official precedence. To settle the latter question he made a journey to Boston, in 1756, to confer with Governor William Shirley. In the winter of 1757 his health broke down, but in the next year he had the pleasure of commanding the advance guard of the expedition under General John Forbes which occupied Fort Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt. (See Pittsburg: History.) At the end of the year he resigned his commission, the war in Virginia being at an end, and in January 1759 married Martha Dandridge (1732-1802), widow of Daniel Parke Custis.
For the next fifteen years Washington's life at Mount Vernon, where he made his home after his marriage, was that of a typical Virginia planter of the more prosperous sort, a consistent member and vestryman of the Established (Episcopal) Church, a large slave-holder, a strict but considerate master, and a widely trusted man of affairs. His extraordinary escape in Braddock's defeat had led a colonial preacher to declare in a sermon his belief that the young man had been preserved to be “the saviour of his country”; but if there was any such impression it soon died away, and Washington gave his associates no reason to consider him a man of uncommon endowments. His marriage brought him an increase of about $100,000 in his property, making him one of the richest men in the colonies; and he was able to develop his plantation and enlarge its extent. His attitude towards slavery has been much discussed, but it does not seem to have been different from that of many other planters of that day: he did not think highly of the system, but had no invincible repugnance to it, and saw no way of getting rid of it. In his treatment of slaves he was exacting, but not harsh, and was averse to selling them save in case of necessity. His diaries show a minutely methodical conduct of business, generous indulgence in hunting, comparatively little reading and a wide acquaintance with the leading men of the colonies, but no marked indications of what is usually considered to be “greatness.” As in the case of Lincoln, he was educated into greatness by the increasing weight of his responsibilities and the manner in which he met them. Like others of the dominant planter class in Virginia, he was repeatedly elected to the House of Burgesses, but the business which came before the colonial assembly was for some years of only local importance, and he is not known to have made any set speeches in the House, or to have said anything beyond a statement of his opinion and the reasons for it. He was present on the 29th of May 1765, when Patrick Henry introduced his famous resolutions against the Stamp Act. That he thought a great deal on public questions, and took full advantage of his legislative experience as a means of political education, is shown by his letter of the 5th of April 1769 to his neighbour, George Mason, communicating the Philadelphia non-importation resolutions, which had just reached him. In this he considers briefly the best means of peaceable resistance to the policy of the ministry, but even at that early date faces frankly and fully the probable final necessity of resisting by force, and endorses it, though only as a last resort. In May following, when the House of Burgesses was dissolved, he was among the members who met at the Raleigh tavern and adopted a non-importation agreement; and he himself kept the agreement when others did not. Though on friendly terms with Governor Norborne Berkeley, Baron
- ↑ Weems was a Protestant Episcopal clergyman, who first published a brief biography of Washington in 1800, and later (1806) considerably expanded it and introduced various apocryphal anecdotes. The biography, though worthless, had an immense circulation, and is to a considerable degree responsible for the traditional conception of Washington.
