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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:40:03
The Truth About George Washington
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Hi everybody, this is Stephen Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
Yes, first things first, I know we have a very lengthy presentation here on the truth about George Washington.
But if there is one truth about presentation to watch on this channel, this would be the one.
There is such a wealth of shock, wisdom, surprise, disaster, salvation.
in the man's life that it is a veritable fount of illustrative wisdom.
So I hope that you will follow us along.
If you're on YouTube, of course, you can leave the browser return and it should pick up where you left off.
Of course, you can also go to fdrpodcast.com to download the audio.
So we have a lot of material to go through.
Let's dive straight into the truth about George Washington.
As you know, I'm sure, George Washington, the only president unanimously elected as the first president of the post-Constitution United States of America after winning the American Revolutionary War as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
Washington was first called father of his country three years after the beginning of the Revolutionary War, a status he earned not only for his military accomplishments, but also because of the numerous virtues he was perceived to possess as a human being-slash-military-political-demigod.
But within Washington's impeccable character, one quality stood out for people the most – his unique immunity to the corrupting effects of power which stemmed from his selfless nature.
The great poet Robert Frost said, I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.
America's great poet, philosopher.
Of course, after working for years to overthrow the tyranny of the British Empire, Americans were a little unwilling to trust anyone with the power of a central government.
But in George Washington, of course, they saw a man who had transcended human fallibility.
Had he lived in the days of idolatry, the Pennsylvania Journal noted in 1777, Washington would have been worshipped as a god.
So, nice stuff to have in your resume.
As President Abraham Lincoln remarked, Washington is the mightiest name of Earth, long since the mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation.
To add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible.
Let none attempt it!
In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked, deathless splendor leave it shining on.
That's nice, too.
How could such a man ever abuse his power, let alone become a tyrant?
Furthermore, if men like Washington exist and can be elected into power, perhaps the United States government would never follow in the footsteps of the hated British Empire and never become an imperialistic power with military bases overseas.
Does the mortal George Washington live up to his immortal legend?
What is the truth about George Washington?
So, let's start before the beginning, which is where these tendencies always arise.
Augustine, George Washington's father, was a rich Virginia planter and slave owner who came from an ancient noble family that traced its roots back to medieval England.
The progenitors of the Washington clan had fought under William the Conqueror during the Norman Conquest and were awarded land and title for their service.
Coincidentally enough, my family fought under William the Conqueror and were awarded land and title For our service.
Nothing like killing peasants to get you some sod in Ireland.
Augustine, George Washington's father, was left an orphan at the age of seven after his mother died.
He had lost his father three years earlier.
Now, of course, you know, we are way back in history, so there's an airstrike of mortality that seems to land with fair regularity on people.
It's something that... It's a good thing we've left in the rear view of history, but it's a common theme throughout this family clan, and of course most families at the time.
But the tragic instability in George Washington's father as a young boy had only just begun.
His mother had remarried after the death of her first husband, and so the young boy was placed in the care of his stepfather.
And the stepfather seems to have been pretty much out of Grimm's fairy tales where stepmothers and stepfathers, which often are perceived to be psychological replacements for real mothers and fathers, was not a particularly pleasant fellow.
After a series of legal battles over inheritance, the cousin of Augustine became his guardian until he came of age.
So, lost his father, there were huge amounts of battles with the stepfather, and then he was given to a guardian.
Augustine found a kindred spirit in a lady named Jane Butler, a sixteen-year-old orphan who he married at the age of twenty-one.
Not only did they come from similar backgrounds, but Jane's 1,740 acre dowry augmented his 1,100 acre inheritance.
Which, of course, wasn't overlooked by a man who is described as a remorseless, hard-driving businessman.
Augustine had also inherited his ancestor's insatiable hunger for land and throughout his life worked tirelessly to increase his wealth.
So, brief aside here, we're talking about Virginia, as you probably know.
Virginia means tobacco, and tobacco is a crop that severely exhausts the soil.
Certainly in the way that it was farmed back then, after a couple years, maybe three or four at the most, the soil was pretty much exhausted and you had to get new land.
And so this drive to expand one's holdings was not mere landlust, but also had something to do with the nature of tobacco farming and the degree to which to continue farming tobacco you constantly needed new land.
Jane gave Augustine four children before dying prematurely at the age of 29.
The Washington's first-born baby died in infancy, and so the remaining three children were now in the sole care of the always-busy Augustine.
Finding a second wife became a top priority for the widower, and after a two-year courtship he married Mary Ball in 1730.
And so here we have some challenges, of course, in the family history.
You have, of course, a man who's an orphan marrying a woman who's an orphan, a man with conflicted and difficult relationship with his parents marrying a woman who was an orphan and therefore had no relationship with her parents.
That is a compatibility that can sow some seeds of dysfunction, to say the least.
So Mary Ball, Augustine's second wife and George Washington's mother, came from a wealthy, high-status family that belonged to the gentry class of Virginia.
Her father, Joseph, was a militia leader and a member of the prestigious House of Burgesses, the first legislature in the English North American colonies.
Having lost his first wife, Joseph made a decision that skirted on the edge of local scandal.
At the age of 58, he married an illiterate widow despite the protests of his children.
Mary was the product of this second marriage, but much like Augustine, she never got to know her biological father because, in the tragic domino of death known as this time period, he died when she was only three years old.
Within about a year, her mother found a third husband who also died shortly after the marriage.
As if losing both her father and stepfather wasn't enough, Mary became an orphan at the age of 12 following the death of her mother.
Basically, there are arguments out there that say that you cannot find a childhood before the 18th century that wasn't unbelievably tragic, at least in the way that the children were raised, which was very roughly, as you can imagine, and also just the endless parade of scything, parent-decapitating death that seemed to happen to families regularly.
Very, very traumatic childhoods.
Raised into adulthood by George Eskridge, her guardian, Mary never received the education that was expected of a woman with her social status.
And we'll see, of course, as the story goes on, that Mary, George Washington's mother, also denied him an education as she herself was denied an education.
Eskridge later introduced Mary to Augustine Washington, highlighting the immense wealth and assets she had inherited from her parents.
One biographer points out that, quote, at 23, Mary was already slightly old for marriage, which may say something about her feisty personality or about Augustine's hopeful conviction that he could tame this indomitable woman.
Marriage, of course, particularly among the rich, was primarily a business transaction in those days.
Augustine likely saw a woman who shared much of his childhood trauma and identified with his pain.
It's not a coincidence that Mary was the second orphan that he decided to marry.
George Washington was named after his mother's guardian, George Estridge And he was born in February 1732.
Since Augustine was often away on business trips, George never really bonded with his father.
As two scholars point out, never being close to his father, the young boy developed a sense of love deprivation.
In all likelihood, the cold and emotionally unavailable Augustine never sought such a bond to begin with.
So there's orphans, of course, and they have no relationship with parents who are dead.
I think that there is a significant amount of torture having a parent who is around but not available, like not emotionally bonded, because then it's like just out of reach, always proximate, and you're always hoping.
It's kind of a torture, I think, for kids.
And I think could also be more tortuous in some ways than with the relative biological closure that comes from being orphaned.
Now, almost nothing is known about George's relationship to his father, partly because in thousands of pages of correspondence he mentions his father in only three passing references.
Indeed, as far as the future, quote, father of the United States was concerned, his own father was nothing but a dark and distant shadow.
Now, there is a significant lack of information about George Washington's boyhood, so naturally there's endless speculation and mythologizing that goes on.
It's a perfect blank screen to project people's thoughts and feelings on.
Many biographers crafted stories that would weave 19th and 20th century ideals into the young boy's character, turning him to a role model for future generation of kids.
What would Washington do?
I'm sure it became pretty considerable influence for kids throughout the post-Washington period.
According to one well-known story I'm sure you've heard of, young George admitted to having cut down his father's cherry tree after he was confronted about it.
I cannot tell a lie, claimed the boy.
I did cut it with my hatchet.
Augustine, moved by this confession, embraced his son in recognition that such honesty is worth more than a thousand trees.
The story was actually invented by one of Washington's first biographers, actually more of a hagiographer, or somebody who writes the lives of saints, to be precise.
There's no evidence that this ever happened, but the story caught on.
The emotional scars left by the lack of paternal care paled in comparison to the damage inflicted by George's mother.
Mary was not only a selfish, possessive, and strong-minded woman, but an unpredictable, imperious, and volatile one as well.
Underneath the distant and aloof exterior of young George lay boiling rage directed at a mother who, quote, spared no effort to reduce him to obedience as a means of augmenting her own personal comfort.
Historian Ron Chernow offers a detailed description of the impact Mary had on her son.
There would almost be a cool, quiet antagonism between George Washington and his mother.
The hypercritical mother produced a son who was overly sensitive to criticism and suffered from a lifelong need for approval.
One suspects that in dealing with this querulous woman, George became an overly controlled personality and learned to master his temper and curb his tongue.
It was the extreme self-control of a deeply emotional young man who feared the fatal vehemence of his own feelings, if left unchecked.
He continues.
Anything pertaining to Mary, Ball, Washington stirred up an emotional tempest in George, quelled only with difficulty.
Never able to express these forbidden feelings of rage, he learned to equate silence and a certain manly stolidity with strength.
This boyhood struggle was in all likelihood the genesis of the stoical personality that would later define him so indelibly.
And throughout his life, Washington continually distanced himself from his mother Mary.
Aside from providing her with financial support, he avoided the abusive woman who was becoming increasingly embittered in her old age.
When she died at the age of 83, he didn't even attend her funeral.
Now, at the age of three, George had his first exposure to death after a POW!
Another lightning strike, his older half-sister died.
Several years later, another tragedy befell the Washington family.
fell ill and died at the age of 49.
George was 11 years old at the time.
This is a mindset that's important to understand during this time period, 18th century and before.
Life expectancy was not very long.
Life expectancy in the Roman Empire was like 22, but if you made it out of childhood, you were likely to live for a longer period of time.
But, you know, a UTI, anything could just bang, kill you dead.
Teeth, of course, were a huge problem.
Washington had massive problems with his teeth throughout his life.
But in the modern world, you know, we're kind of cautious because, you know, I'm going to live forever.
I'm going to live to be 80 or 90 or whatever.
But George Washington had throughout his life a feeling that he wasn't going to make it much past his early to mid 40s because so many of his family members had died at that time.
That gave him a certain recklessness, which we'll see.
So George was 11 when his father died.
His mother then became a widow, of course, at the age of 35, and instead of remarrying, as was customary at the time, she chose the life of a single mother.
And one of the reasons she may have made that decision is that if she were to remarry, her husband would be in charge of the significant fortunes left by her deceased spouse, Augustine.
Augustine, through hard work, had planted his family firmly among the regional gentry, acquiring 50 slaves and 10,000 acres of land.
It's important to remember that, of course, only a few percentage points of people in America, even in the South, own slaves.
Like 4 or 5% of people own slaves.
But a slave costs about as much as a car.
And so, you know, this is like Leno's style garage or Seinfeld style garage.
So think 50 expensive cars, 10,000 acres of land, that's quite a lot of money.
So likely due to her controlling personality, Mary chose to run the affairs of the Washington estate all by herself.
Well, of course, with the help of her children.
While Mary's two step-sons were starting their own lives, the young George was the one she turned into a surrogate husband.
Now this, of course, is a pattern as old as time that a single mom can often fix upon one of her sons as a surrogate husband, much to the emotional detriment of both.
Quote, one wonders whether he, George, resented his mother for her failure to find a second husband which imposed inordinate burdens on him as the eldest son, noted a Washington biographer.
The death of Augustine, sadly, marked the end of George's formal education, which was limited to basic math, reading, and writing.
While Mary didn't send her son to a prestigious English school, a privilege enjoyed by George's older half-brothers, it's unclear why she neglected his education to such a degree.
Perhaps she wanted to keep him around so he could assist in the supervision of the estate, or Her own lack of education prevented her from seeing the value of such knowledge.
There is, of course, a certain amount of self-sacrifice that is necessary for parents who wish their children to vastly outstrip their own capacities.
It doesn't seem, based upon reports of her personality, that Mary, mother of George, was such a person.
So, whatever the reason, Washington remained profoundly insecure about his limited education Which he did supplement, of course, to a degree by doing exercises on his own and copying important documents to memorize any practical information he could find.
A quote, um, the degree to which Washington dwelt upon the transcendent importance of education underscores the stigma that he felt about having missed college, noted a biographer later in life.
Washington was often the subject of condescension from his college educated contemporaries in the American elite.
John Adams, for example, described him as too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation.
Had Mary remarried, George would have been able to go to college, a factor that likely added to the resentment the boy felt towards his mother.
Watching your half-brothers go to college while you have to stay home and tend to single mom and the family farm could make people a little upset.
So Lawrence Washington had a huge impact on George.
He was George's older half-brother.
He was older by 14 years.
And in terms of the influence of the development of the future president, he was second only to Mary.
So when George was five, in 1737, he met Lawrence for the first time.
And Lawrence, who was studying in England up until that point, quickly became a surrogate father for the young boy, given how little time Augustine invested in parenting.
As one scholar noted, Lawrence would function as both a peer and a parental figure for his half-brother, and his youthful adventures operated so powerfully on George's imagination that the latter's early life seems to enact a script first drafted by his older brother.
Now, part of that script involved military service.
When the British declared war on the Spanish Empire in 1739, Lawrence saw an opportunity to increase his social status.
Of course, back in the day, military service was the easiest way to climb the social ladder.
He became a captain of the British Army after obtaining the prestigious Royal Captain's Commission, and he served for two years.
Although Lawrence didn't actually participate in any combat activities, unlike George in the future, and he only observed battles from a distance, his letters and war stories left a deep impression on his young brother.
Lawrence frequently talked to George of war and the honors and glories of a soldier's life.
As a youngster, George confided to Lawrence that if one had to die, dying in battle would be the most honorable.
Not the first son of a single mother to be highly interested in combat, whether in the street or on the battlefield.
The degree to which distant fathers don't help their sons achieve positive and benevolent masculinity can be, to some degree, the degree to which they end up with this caricature of masculinity which involves significant and overt aggression so often.
Roughly a year after his return from the war and three months after his father's death, Lawrence married Anne Fairfax, the daughter of Colonel William Fairfax, a British politician who wielded breathtaking power in Tidewater, Virginia.
On behalf of his cousin, the 6th Baron Fairfax, Sir William was administering, yes, 5 million acres of land in colonial Virginia.
A Washington biographer wrote, through a maze of business dealings and social and marital ties, Fairfax power ramified into every corner of Virginia society.
So the fact that Lawrence married the daughter of pretty much the most powerful landowner around was going to have a huge influence on where George Washington was going to end up.
Having acquired the backing of the Fairfaxes, Lawrence eventually amassed land, got elected to the House of Burgesses, remember the political assembly, and was even appointed Adjutant General of Virginia, which brought him the rank of Major and put him in charge of the state's militia.
Above all, Lawrence's marriage opened up the doors to Belvoir, the Fairfax estate, for his brother George.
Seeking refuge from his mother, who became even more abusive after the death of Augustine, the young boy became a frequent guest at the aristocratic mansion.
During those visits, Colonel Fairfax became fond of George and decided to take him under his wing.
The stage was now set for Washington's ascent to power.
Under the patronage of Colonel Fairfax, George acquired the political power and skills that would allow him to move through the upper echelons of society.
Unbeknownst to Mary, Lawrence and Colonel Fairfax devised a secret plan for George to join the British Royal Navy, which would free the young boy from the clutches of his mother and launch him on a promising career.
George embraced the idea, but there was one final obstacle, his mother Mary.
When he eventually notified his mother of the plan, she approved of it at first.
Mary then consulted a family friend on the matter, but her mind was already made up.
One word against his going has more weight than ten for it.
She eventually vetoed the plan and George bowed to her decision.
One of his biographers described his mother's motivation.
One can say with certainty that it was the first of many times she seemed to measure her son's worth not by what he might accomplish elsewhere, but by what he could do for her.
Even if it meant thwarting his career, she would always be strangely indifferent toward his ambitions, making decisions about him from a purely self-interested standpoint.
On the other hand, she was a single mother, clearly valued George's abilities as the eldest son, and deemed him a necessary substitute for the missing father.
The following year, the Washingtons experienced severe financial difficulties due to Mary's poor management of the estate.
And so George, at the age of 15, decided to become a surveyor, a well-paid job with roughly the same status as a doctor or a lawyer.
Now, being a surveyor required government-pull-government connections.
There's a reason why a 15-year-old could get a job with the same status as a doctor or lawyer, and it was because of his political connections.
This is not a free market.
Activity.
Although it is.
I did gold panning and surveying and claim staking after high school.
Spent in total a year and a half working in the wilderness in a tent through the winter.
Minus 30.
It's hard work.
Although, of course, didn't get that cold in Virginia.
So Washington's connections to the Fairfax family yet again proved invaluable in this undertaking.
In 1746, Baron Fairfax decided to carve up his vast dominion into saleable leaseholds and so he made a trip to Virginia.
The young and inexperienced George was hired to join a surveying expedition and eventually became the youngest county surveyor in Virginia's history.
To become a county surveyor, one ordinarily had to endure a lengthy apprenticeship and to have accumulated considerable experience running surveys.
Young Washington had neither.
Obtaining his post, this post was his introduction to politics, for he could not have gotten the position had not powerful patrons, doubtless Lawrence and the Fairfaxes, pulled the necessary strings.
So it also reminds me, so this guy, at 15 he becomes a surveyor, at 17 he's running a surveying company.
How much opportunity is squandered in society by keeping able and intelligent teenagers cooped up in schools.
But, topic for another time.
So George was running his own surveying business by the age of 17, which brought him a significant income.
Many of his surveys were conducted on land that belonged to a large land speculation organization, the Ohio Company, whose founders included his older half-brothers and many of the Fairfaxes.
So they gave him The capacity to do the job through pulling political strings and then they gave him jobs themselves.
Over the next few years, Washington amassed enough capital to begin his career in land speculation.
He was now well on his way to becoming one of the wealthiest men in Virginia.
By the age of 20, he owned 2,500 acres on the Virginia frontier.
Ah, what's that all saying?
I would say at least up until the modern times, the foundation of all wealth is a crime and given the amount of political Pull that was required to propel him to this level of wealth.
It's not that distant from the definition.
Despite his financial success, the young Washington struggled to contain his volcanic temper, which was a significant impediment to his social ascent.
Baron Fairfax, recognizing this aspect of George's personality, wrote to his mother, I wish I could say that he governs his temper.
He is subject to attacks of anger on provocation, sometimes without just cause.
It goes to show you there's no amount of success in the world that will make your personality a better place to live.
Colonel Fairfax, who once boasted that he had trained himself to make no outward show of emotion, was likely the one who introduced Washington to the Greco-Roman philosophy of Stoicism.
The 17-year-old young man was profoundly influenced by Seneca, in particular a Roman philosopher and politician who emphasized sacrifice, tenacity, courage, restraint, and the control of one's emotions.
So this is a long time before the Socratic dictum or mandate to know thyself, know your own motivations, know your own thoughts and feelings, had sort of come back full circle through Freud and Jung and Adler and the self-help movement of the mid to late 20th century.
And so if you have a volcanic temper and a huge amount of boiling rage, this sort of, you know, push it down and ice it over generally causes a lot of problems elsewhere.
The rage comes out somewhere and we'll see this going forward with George Washington.
In the writings of the Stoics, Washington found justification for suppressing and concealing his emotions.
Seneca, for example, a Roman but also honorary half-Falcon, viewed anger as, quote, the most outrageous, brutal, dangerous, and intractable of all passions, the most loathsome and unmannerly, nay, the most ridiculous, too.
I think Aristotle had a better handle on anger, which he said the Aristotelian means, like a bell curve of virtue.
Too little anger and you get pushed around.
Too much anger, you become a bully.
There is a right amount of anger in the middle that is a challenge to achieve and maintain, but is a very healthy part of psychological health.
So several years later, Colonel Fairfax complimented Washington on his practice of a philosophic state of mind.
Although he was moderately successful in masking his emotions in public, Washington's temper remained a defining feature throughout his life.
According to his secretary, Tobias Lear, few sounds on earth could compare with that of George Washington swearing a blue streak, noted historian.
He was well known for cursing to the point where people expected birds to fall from the sky in shock.
George Washington and Colonel Fairfax also shared a fascination with war, exchanged books on Caesar and Alexander the Great, and frequently swapped views on military heroes from antiquity.
The young businessman would soon have an opportunity to quench his thirst for war, an opportunity he would not miss.
In 1752, Washington's semi-father substitute Lawrence died of tuberculosis at the age of 33.
The untimely death of the older brother had a transformative effect on the younger one.
As Lawrence lay on his deathbed, George decided to abandon his career as a surveyor to become a soldier.
And so he asked Virginia's governor to appoint him as adjutant for the Northern Neck District, despite the fact that he lacked any military training or experience.
What do you need those for when you have political contacts?
So Washington achieved partial success.
He was awarded the Southern District instead.
Not satisfied with this low prestige appointment, he employed his powerful patrons to lobby on his behalf.
At the same time, the ambitious George became a lifelong Freemason to expand his political context and to leverage the influence of the Masonic lodges.
He was promoted to the highest rank of Master Mason within a single year.
His efforts at political lobbying did pay off.
In 1753, the 20-year-old businessman was appointed adjutant to the Northern NEC and was given the title of Major George Washington.
In his first political battle, he was alternately fawning and assertive, appealingly modest and distressingly pushy.
As one of his biographers noted, while he knew the social forms, he could never quite restrain, much less conceal, the unstoppable force of his ambition.
So tensions between Britain and its bitter rival France began escalating in the early 1750s and George Washington played a key role in what was to come.
The two superpowers, France and Britain, were contesting the ownership of the Ohio Country, a fertile region in the modern-day Midwest of the United States.
In 1750, France deployed an army in the region, threatening Virginia's interest in the lucrative frontier land.
Remember, they've got to expand because of the exhausting nature of growing tobacco crops.
So, the frontier land was a portion of the Ohio country that supposedly belonged to the Ohio Company, whose director was the royal governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie.
So Dinwiddie, of course, was not eager to start a war.
We can't expand land when it's soaked in blood.
He waited for the British Crown's instructions on how to proceed with the delicate situation.
In 1753, Great Britain decided to inform the French army of its claims to the land and demand the withdrawal of all French troops.
Someone had to carry this message, and Washington volunteered for the job.
Was he a diplomat?
Did he understand this?
Did he even speak French?
A number of public officials considered him too inexperienced for a diplomatic mission of such importance.
But after Colonel Fairfax put in a word on behalf of his protégé, Dinwiddie commissioned Washington for the job.
And so the dominoes were set in motion.
Off the record, George was told to scout out a location where Virginia might be able to build a fort.
The Ohio company could legally claim the land it wanted, only if such an installation was established.
So this was your standard invest labor and so on.
If you build a fort, then the area around it is considered owned by the local state.
The mission went fairly smoothly.
Washington's party was intercepted by a French patrol, but the Virginians were treated cordially and were sent back home several days later.
This is important.
The French were dealing rather justly and reasonably with the Virginians.
Let's see how it went the other way.
Washington was to deliver a letter containing the French Army's refusal to accept Britain's claim to the land.
The French regarded the territory as theirs by right of discovery and exploration.
I think it's fairly safe to say that if you're wandering around and there are enemy soldiers there, according to the law of the time, it could be considered close to French land, let's put it that way.
In response to the French army's refusal to accept Britain's claim to the land, Governor Dinwiddie raised a 300-man volunteer army, and Major Washington wasted no time contacting influential political figures in Virginia about an appointment to a higher rank than he currently held.
He was promoted to a lieutenant colonel, not a colonel because he didn't wish to head the Virginia Army.
Vain though he was, Washington probably recognized he had no experience as a soldier, let alone a military commander.
So he was tasked with the building of a fort, and Washington, who led only 186 men, was dispatched to the Ohio country, while the army commander stayed behind to recruit more men.
We don't have enough men!
Go into the wilderness, build a fort, I'm sure you'll be fine.
Along the way, the Lieutenant Colonel's army started falling apart as the volunteer soldiers grumbled about their low pay, dwindling rum, and the wet, inhospitable conditions.
Some deserted, others threatened to follow suit.
Fearing disgrace before his superiors, Washington was desperate to appease his men, and so he exceeded his authority by confiscating supplies along the way.
This was of course with a huge problem in America during the Seven Years War, the Revolutionary War, that the British, and of course to some degree the Americans, would just come and take stuff, which was, you know, pretty bad if you were settling in for the winter and only had enough food to get you through till spring.
Washington, when he was 22, wrote, I doubt not that in some points I may have strained the law, but I hope, as my sole motive was to expedite the march, I shall be supported in it, should my authority be questioned.
He might have strained the law by stealing supplies when he was supposed to be paying his men.
Did he ever take his own money and pay the men that way?
Well, not so much.
Washington even went behind Dinwiddie's back to raise the issue of pay before the governor's council.
And on the march there were more pressing issues to deal with, about 25 miles away from his destination.
Washington received a very poorly written message from Tanakarasan, one of his Indian allies, warning him that an unknown number of French soldiers were heading his way with the intention of meeting him.
This Indian, also known as the Half King, seemed to suggest that the French were out to strike the English.
This wasn't true.
And the half-king was either blinded by his Francophobia, the half-king claimed that he hated the French because they had supposedly killed, boiled, and eaten his father.
Or perhaps he intentionally lied about it.
So you get a poorly written message from a guy who thinks the French ate his father, and apparently, that's legit, is the phrase that scrolls across your mind at the time.
So whatever the case was, Washington was not sure about how to interpret the message, so he stopped advancing and began to entrench himself, sort of dig in some defenses.
Several days later, he was notified by one of his men, I assume a scout, that a French party of less than 50 soldiers was approaching his position.
Okay, if the French wanted to strike the English, why would they attack with such a small force?
It really doesn't make much sense at all.
Washington decided to engage in a preemptive strike.
This was a clear violation of the orders he'd received from Governor Dinwiddie weeks earlier, which were, you are to act on the defensive, but in case any attempts are made to obstruct the works or interrupt our settlements by any persons whatsoever, you are to restrain all such offenders, and in case of resistance, to make prisoners of or kill and destroy them.
Alright, so, his orders are, do not initiate aggression against the enemy.
Only if you are obstructed and they resist are you allowed to attack them.
Now the military has to operate on orders, at least the military of the time, and if you are not authorized to use force and you go around killing people, kind of like a My Lai massacre in Vietnam, insofar as you are then guilty of the crime of murder because you are not authorized to initiate aggression.
So he wanted to He committed a surprise attack against the French.
The Washington took only 40 men along with about half as many Indians.
And in May 1754, he ambushed an unsuspecting group of 33 French soldiers early in the morning while they were making breakfast.
Yes, croissants, eggs, and lead was on the menu.
And this is, again, he was not authorized to do this.
This would be a court martial offense in any reasonable army of the time.
Whether he was incompetent or just full of bloodlust, remember we talked about the rage that was suppressed, the young Deputy Commander Washington, before giving the signal for attack, ignored the fact that this supposedly hostile force hadn't set up any kind of defensive parameter.
They were just ambling through the forest having some breakfast.
As historian John Ferling has noted, quote, Washington was mad for glory.
He was eager to prove his courage, both to his officers and to powerful figures in Virginia, and zealous for the combat that would bring the renown for which he hungered.
It was a bloodbath.
The French never even had a chance.
Taken by surprise, they were victims of a massacre.
When the firing stopped, 10 to 12 Frenchmen were dead.
Washington gave various accounts of how many died.
And many more were wounded, including Joseph Coulombe de Jumonville, the commanding officer.
The British suffered only one casualty.
So he surrounds these guys, they're making breakfast, there's no defense, he's not authorized to attack them, and he guns them down.
It's a war crime!
Even by the standards of the time.
While we don't know, of course, what was going on through the deputy commander's head at the time, a letter he wrote to his younger brother suggests that he was likely entranced by the fighting.
Washington said, I heard bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.
Now what happened next has been the subject of much debate amongst historians due to the conflicting accounts of the events.
A private in the Virginia Regiment related, in a sworn statement, what he had heard from soldiers who were present at the event.
According to this version of the story, the half-king, the Indian leader, personally executed the French commander with a hatchet, while the latter was attempting to explain the purpose of his mission to Washington after his remaining men were captured.
We're on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan!
Bludgeoned, beheaded, slaughtered with a giant, well I guess a mini axe.
That is pretty horrendous.
A French soldier who managed to escape the carnage also claimed he saw Washington and Jumonville together but didn't know what happened afterwards because he fled the scene.
Murder the captured leader of a force you weren't even allowed to attack, or to allow that murder under your watch, not good, not good at all.
In the Half King's account, it was the British who killed the captured French commander, not him.
And in his journal, Washington stated that the Indian leader wasn't responsible for the death of Jumonville.
One possibility, I put this out there, it is in accordance with all the facts, but one possibility is that When Washington realized that he'd attacked a diplomatic mission, then he realized that he was going to need to kill the witnesses or kill the head, right?
So he could have just killed this guy because he had made such a terrible mistake and it would be impossible to cover up if he didn't kill the guy.
So like a hit.
So regardless of who committed the murder, when the battle, which was really a massacre, was over, Washington read the papers he found on Jumonville's body and discovered that the French officer was leading a diplomatic mission, not a war party, and was sent to do exactly what George volunteered to do six months earlier, which was to go and parley about the land.
Not only did Washington ignore his orders to remain on the defensive, but he initiated a hostile act against a peaceful party.
This is a man, if you remember from the beginning, who was praised for the virtues of his character.
How would he react to such a catastrophic mistake?
This was a war starting event.
A war which everyone was striving to avoid.
He wrote to the Virginia government that Jumonville and his men were spies of the worst sort and that the arrested Frenchmen he was sending back ought to be hanged.
Washington even cautioned Dinwiddie not to listen to the prisoners' stories.
I doubt not, but they will endeavor to amuse your honor with many smooth stories as they did me.
So, he had attacked, against orders, a peaceful diplomatic group And he sent prisoners back and he says that they ought to be hanged.
This is not the actions of an honorable man, I'm sure.
I don't need to tell you.
He wanted the witnesses killed and said, oh, they'll lie about everything.
One member of Jumonville's party escaped the ambush in Washington, then of course expecting a French retaliation, abandoned his original goal and built a defensive installation that he called Fort Necessity.
The remainder of the volunteer army, remember there was a guy Hanging back to get more volunteers joined him in June, and Washington learned that the previous commander had died after falling from his horse.
At the age of 22, the Lieutenant Colonel was now commanding an army.
However, when an independent unit comprised of about 100 professional British soldiers arrived in Fort Necessity, Washington had to settle a dispute over his authority before taking charge of the Virginia Regiment.
Under British law at the time, soldiers commissioned by the British Crown outranked all colonial officers.
Like Lawrence Washington, James Mackay, the veteran commander of the British unit, held a Royal Captain's Commission, and so he expected to take charge of the army, and that's what the law supported at the time.
Of course, the ambitious Washington wasn't about to let that happen.
Anxious and threatened, he railed in a message to Dinwiddie about the interloper's wish to take command of his men, and he claimed that Captain McKay's presence was impeding the operations of the Virginia Regiment.
Even though he had served in the British Army since Washington was about five years old, McKay agreed to leave the young and inexperienced Virginian in charge, establishing his unit outside of Fort Necessity.
The French, commanded by Jumonville's brother, arrived in early July, yearning for revenge after encountering the scalped and unburied bodies that Washington had left behind.
And that's important too.
So he basically murdered these guys and allowed the Indians to scalp them and didn't even bother burying the bodies.
That is not, again, an honorable warrior.
Outnumbering the British approximately two to one, It was a brief and one-sided battle.
So the French took down the British.
Now, Washington suffered a pretty humiliating defeat because the location he had chosen for Fort Necessity was surrounded by hills and woods.
Of course, if you're building a fort, you don't want hills and woods around you because then you're trapped inside.
You need flat land around you.
This is not brain surgery.
This is D&D 101.
Sorry, I shouldn't laugh.
And this could be, of course, why the British commander said, okay, you guys stay in the fort, and we'll camp outside the fort, and that way when the French come, you guys will all get killed, and then I'll take charge.
So, about 700 Frenchmen surrounded the fort, and they had hide advantage and tree cover.
They just poured bullets into the fort, killing a large number of them, and the French suffered only three casualties, and they grievously wounded many more.
It was only a fear of possible enemy reinforcements that kept the French from killing every last man inside the fort.
George Washington had not only surrendered, he didn't only just surrender to the French, but he signed an incriminating confession that he was responsible for the assassination of Jumonville.
In exchange, he was permitted to march back to Virginia with his men.
Again, I don't mean to praise the French too much, but that's fairly civilized.
I mean, if you caught the guy who murdered your brother, at least that's what you believe, would you say, sign a confession and I'll let you go?
Well, let's just say there was an honor imbalance in the conflict.
So, this is not good.
When he returned home, Washington focused all of his attention on damage control.
So, in a triumphant tone, he wrote embellished accounts of what actually happened.
He said, ah, my army killed over 300 French soldiers, which was a hundred times the actual number.
And after suffering a valiant defeat against the overwhelming enemy numbers, he marched home with drums beating and his colors flying.
He did not admit any errors on his behalf whatsoever.
He blamed his military loss on insufficient supplies and a callow soldiery.
Not that great to blame your troops when you chose the location of the fort.
Washington's written admission of Jumonville's murder seriously threatened the reputation he had built, and so he decided he dedicated most of his time to managing the public's reaction.
The man, who, as legend goes, couldn't tell a lie, took advantage of the fact that his translator was kept hostage by the French, never to return to Virginia, and used him as a scapegoat.
So he'd signed a confession that he had murdered Jumonville, Washington portrayed his translator as a Dutchman, little acquainted with the English tongue, who had translated the French, La Seigneur du Jumonville, to mean death or loss of Jumonville, not that I assassinated him, just that he died.
The poor Washington had no idea he was signing a confession of murder.
That's what he said.
I didn't know!
How was I to know that the word assassinat had anything to do with assassination?
In case anyone doubted this shaky excuse, he attacked his translator's integrity as well, implying a deliberate mistranslation.
Wasn't my fault!
Didn't kill the guy, signed a confession that I did, but it was a translation problem.
And the guy lied to me!
So much for, I cannot tell a lie.
While Washington was busy trying to clear his name, France and Great Britain were gearing for war.
As one British politician put it, the volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.
This is why it is very important to follow orders in the military of the time, because if you go against your orders and start fighting, you can end up doing just this, which is starting a giant war.
George Washington's actions were the spark that eventually lit the fire of an Anglo-French war that became known as the Seven Years' War.
Everybody, at least those who've studied history, remember the name of the Serbian anarchist who rolled a bomb Under the King's carriage and started World War I. Back in Virginia, Governor Dinwiddie broke up Washington's regiment into several companies and attempted to demote the ambitious use to a rank of captain.
Only in the military could you go against order, start a war, and result only in a demotion.
Washington quickly resigned to avoid the humiliating consequences of his grave failures, claiming that his decision was due to the call of honour.
In private, however, he was extremely bitter.
My commission was taken away from me, he raged in a letter to Augustine Junior, his older brother.
When the British dispatched General Edward Braddock to America, Washington, who had returned to the life of a planter, saw an opportunity to obtain the royal commission he had so zealously pursued.
To reach and surpass the social standing of his brother, he had to become a British Army officer.
Upon learning that General Braddock could commission only captains, a rank he wasn't willing to accept, the former Lieutenant Colonel instead opted to become an unpaid and unranked assistant to the seasoned veteran.
Washington intended to learn everything he could from the British General, even copying Braddock's orders in a notebook so he could emulate him in the future.
As an assistant, he observed that his commander was a man whose good and bad qualities were intimately blended.
Yet the General failed to disguise weaknesses such as his volatile temper and a blunt and often rude manner of speaking.
Historian John Fruling commented on why George was so intent on studying and emulating Braddock's character.
As always, Washington sought to hide what he thought were his own shortcomings, his lack of education, a volcanic temper, and vaulting ambition, and to exhibit what others would see as virtues, including dedication, industry, and fairness.
Though his service under Braddock was very brief, Washington learned a great deal from his superior.
In late April, 1755, the British general and his troops finally went on the move, following the path Washington's regiment had taken during the disastrous campaign one year earlier.
Right after the British forces crossed the Mahongahela River in Ohio, their vanguard stumbled upon a French army that was attempting to set up an ambush.
Both sides were surprised, as the French weren't expecting the British to arrive so early, and Braddock was preparing for a siege, not a battle.
Severely outnumbered and outgunned, the French did the sensible thing.
They abandoned their European style of fighting and rushed into the nearby woods.
Using the trees as cover, they poured a merciless fire into the ranks of the British.
The ranks of Braddock's professional army quickly crumbled before the guerrilla tactics of the enemy.
All pretense of discipline and orderly resistance gave way to terror within the Anglo-American army.
Braddock made a fatal mistake by issuing a foolish yet stern order that none of the troops should protect themselves behind trees.
Gah!
War is a very frustrating thing to read about.
So you come across these French, they melt into the woods and start shooting at you from under the cover of the trees.
You're being cut down mercilessly because your soldiers are all in ranks in a European style of fighting.
And what do you do?
You say, you can't hide behind trees.
So without cover, the British soldiers were gunned down by the hundreds.
I'm sure that some of his descendants ended up sending over British troops into the withering fire of World War I trench warfare.
Washington found himself in the middle of one of the bloodiest battles he would ever see.
When all of Braddock's aides got killed or injured, the young Virginian alone delivered the general's orders to all soldiers on the battlefield.
And after the British commander was shot by the enemy, Washington assisted in carrying the mortally wounded body away from the carnage.
So Washington was the one who told the soldiers being gunned down by the French people hiding behind trees, don't hide behind trees.
The British not only lost the battle, but also a third of their 1,300 soldiers.
The staggering death toll was contrasted by only 23 casualties suffered by the French and Indian forces.
So, there's that.
Washington was amongst the roughly 300 men who escaped the blood-soaked battlefield and scathed in a letter to one of his younger brothers.
He noted, By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability and expectation, for I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me.
Yet although death was leveling my companions on every side of me, I alone escaped unhurt.
And this is interesting.
You see this in military history quite consistently, that good luck saves a few people, but because A lot of people believe that God intervened in the battlefield and saved or let people die according to his divine plan.
If you survived a bloody massacre, bullets whizzing by you, and Napoleon used to ride at the front of his troops and emerge unscathed, you were believed to have God on your side, and then you got a kind of divine uplift in your reputation, where of course it was just blind chance that he didn't die, but enough blind chance equals God's on your side, which, you know, is a little tough to argue against.
Washington's bravery during the battle brought him back into the public eye.
About a month after the tragic events took place, the story of his miraculous survival even became a part of a sermon preached by the future fourth president of Princeton University.
This kind of rewriting of history in the military context is always essential.
The degree to which massacres have to be turned into glorious tales of survival is because you need to recruit new soldiers, and new soldiers don't want to fight for people who say, don't hide behind trees when guys are shooting at you from behind trees.
They don't want to go out and get slaughtered, and so they often have to rewrite.
Getting the truth about military history is almost an impossible task.
The crushing British defeat also served to bolster Washington's damaged reputation.
If the veteran Braddock lost in such a spectacular manner, then Washington's defeat at Fort Necessity was an inevitability.
The French are that good, apparently.
When he returned to Virginia, Washington was showered with praise for his bravery.
Dinwiddie promoted him to the rank of colonel and put him in charge of a 1,200-man army.
Despite yearning for the promotion, he didn't want to appear to solicit the command.
Instead, the position of commander had to be pressed upon him by the general voice of the country.
This pantomime of the man who takes charge unwillingly against his better instincts because of the general clamor of blah blah blah.
So he was pretty inexperienced as a military man, but his skill in politics was pretty evident.
Even at the age of 23, Washington knew how to cloak his bottomless ambition for power in the voice of the country, the people need me.
He was already drawing upon the knowledge he had acquired through observing General Braddock, and throughout his life he successfully used the same strategy over and over again.
Soon after resuming command, Washington yet again started pursuing the ever-elusive Royal Commission, but his focused efforts failed to yield a satisfactory result, despite Dinwiddie's assistance and a personal meeting with the British Commander-in-Chief for all troops in America.
Furthermore, in the span of one and one-half years, a third of Washington's men died fighting a guerrilla war with local Indians.
Washington was unable to point to the least success in this campaign.
To make matters worse, he was undermining the support of civilians with his habit of confiscating goods.
He complained, to such a pitch has the insolence of these people arrived that some are threatening to blow out my brains.
So, not popular with the locals.
They really wanted to kill this guy who kept stealing their food and goods and money and livestock and doing God knows what to their own.
As was typical of Washington, he never accepted a single shred of responsibility for the failures of his regiment and instead endlessly blamed Virginia politicians.
This eventually resulted in a falling out with Governor Dinwiddie.
Quote, the steady drumbeat of fault fighting that poured from Washington's pen would have irritated anyone.
That the carping came from a young officer who had yet to achieve his first success on the battlefield was bad enough, but it was made even worse as the governor knew that he was doing all that was politically and militarily feasible.
Dinwiddie also became infuriated when he learned that Washington was going behind his back to complain to other influential politicians in Virginia.
If you have a patron, do not do an end run.
Washington also learned that the governor and other assemblymen regarded him as deceitful and suspected him of hiding the misconduct of some of his officers.
However, when the issue of Washington's failures was raised in Virginia's only newspaper, the relationship between the governor and the colonel escalated to a boiling point.
Dinwiddie flatly told Washington that he was not just unmanly, but an ingrate, and these words carried significant weight in the 18th century.
That I have foibles, and perhaps many of them I shall not deny, replied the enraged Washington.
I should esteem myself, as the world also would, vain and empty, were I to arrogate perfection.
Then he continued, with a more passive-aggressive tone, I conceive it would be more generous to charge me with my faults, and let me stand or fall according to evidence, than to stigmatize me behind my back.
In other words, complaining to me directly is Bad!
I'm going to accuse you of stigmatizing me behind my back, even though I've been going around bad-mouthing you to other politicians.
This conversation was held in private, but Washington, partly out of spite, planned to publicly rebut the governor to clear his name.
However, Augustine Jr., his older brother, persuaded him to do nothing of the sort.
The media storm gradually blew over, yet the relationship between Didd and Whitty and Washington remained strained.
A British historian summarized his views on the young commander.
Quote, There is something unlikable about the George Washington of 1753 to 1758.
He seemed a trifle raw and strident, too much on his dignity, too ready to complain, too nakedly concerned with promotion.
As a British historian, how about significant portions of his men died in a useless campaign against the Indians?
Despite his cantankerous behavior and total lack of military success, the young colonel kept his position because the local politician feared that his successor, who was a man from North Carolina, was beyond their control.
In December 1757, the British finally decided to break the stalemate on the American colonial front and tasked Brigadier General John Forbes with capturing the much-contested Ohio country.
Forbes had two choices on how to reach Fort Duquesne, France's principal defensive installation in Ohio, which General Braddock had failed to conquer.
He could either use the road his predecessor had created or carve a new one straight west from Pennsylvania.
For strategic purposes he chose the latter as cutting a new road would require him to cross less major rivers while also allowing him to use the heavily populated eastern Pennsylvania for resupplies.
An army marches on its belly is the old statement and an army is only as good as its supply chain.
This of course is one reason why the Americans had significant advantage against the British.
The British had to get new soldiers in some ways by crossing them over the Atlantic thousands of miles on rickety boats Whereas the supply chain for the rebels was much shorter.
So there was that advantage, right?
Given what happened to Braddock at the Monongahela River, avoiding the dangers of the existing road was a foremost concern.
In an attempt to change the General's decision, Washington immediately launched an insistent lobbying campaign on behalf of himself and other Virginia businessmen.
If Braddock's road remained the only connection to Ohio, It would raise the value of the land along the road and ensure a post-war economic boom for Virginians.
And this you'll see happening over and over again, that somebody who owns a huge amount of land, in this case Washington, Often we'll push for military decisions that enhance the value of his land and that's pretty significant.
We'll also see how later on you could really argue that Washington's land greed or his greed to increase the value of his land was responsible for the formation of the communist dictatorship in Russia in 1917.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see whether we can make that case.
Tenuous though it may be, it's a reasonable case to make.
That's what he wanted to do, and he wanted to make sure that the military decisions would continue to enhance the value of his land.
However, the British general saw through the colonel's intentions.
Like Dinwiddie before him, Forbes grew to question Washington's integrity, even his suitability for leading an army.
Washington, Forbes concluded, put his attachment to his province, his land, before the good of the army.
When the General stuck to his decision, George Washington despaired in private.
All is lost!
All is lost by heavens!
Our enterprise ruined!
So... Oh, you know, you definitely want a lack of hysteria in your military leaders.
Colonel Washington participated in only one military action during Forbes' campaign, the one that brought him even more shame.
After the French sabotaged a British supply post, the General ordered several hundred Virginians to pursue the attackers.
He later sent out even more Virginians as reinforcements for the first group.
Can I also mention here, the French were actually Pretty intelligent in their way of fighting.
Sabotaging supply posts, take to the trees, shoot down, you know, they just went into this medieval style open confrontation where everyone marches at each other.
And it's the spy way of fighting rather than the full frontal assault way of fighting.
And because Washington was hungering for this full frontal assault style of fighting all the time, it was tough for Washington to win against these guys.
Several hundred Virginians were supposed to pursue those who had sabotaged a British supply post.
He later sent out even more Virginians as reinforcements for the first group.
Washington was in charge of one of the detachments.
There are conflicting accounts on which one he commanded, and when his forces stumbled upon the other Virginian group, right?
Friendly fire!
Washington's in charge of one of the Virginian groups in pursuit of the French.
He stumbles across another Virginian group.
Both sides open fire on each other amidst the confusion, and 40 men were either killed or wounded.
So, who knows who started it?
There's no way to know for sure, although we generally can say it's probably the opposite of what Washington says.
Friendly fire, friendly forces, 40 men killed or wounded in this encounter.
There are only two accounts of what happened during the incident.
Washington, after 30 years of silence, blamed the commander of the other group and credited himself for swiftly ending the carnage.
One of his trusted officers, on the other hand, claimed that the colonel was, quote, responsible, not just for the calamity, but for doing next to nothing to stop the bloodshed.
So giving Washington's track record when it comes to incompetence, taking responsibility, and outright lying, it's not impossible to decide which account is more believable.
One of his trusted officers said basically Washington opened fire on men from the same army and then did almost nothing to stop the bloodshed.
So that's not good.
Despite the Virginian blunder, Forbes' campaign was successful and ended without any major engagements.
The French simply abandoned Fort Duquesne before the general reached it.
When George Washington returned home after the campaign was over, in the eyes of the general public, he was considered a war hero.
By the age of 27, he had climbed to the rank of a colonel and participated in a major war against France.
Although he never got the royal commission he so desperately desired, his social status and influence now far surpassed those of his deceased half-brother Lawrence.
As the historian Ferling noted, Not even the Fairfaxes were as exalted as Colonel Washington.
The dizzying arc of his ascent was truly astonishing.
It had to have exceeded his wildest dreams.
All right, so let's go from the head to the heart, or the bullets to the heart.
While Colonel George Washington's social status was elevated beyond his wildest dreams, he wasn't successful on the romantic front.
His first, and perhaps only, love was unrequited.
So he was about 16 when his friend George William Fairfax, the son of Colonel Fairfax, married Sally Carey, a beautiful and rich 18-year-old girl who was a member of the Virginia aristocracy.
It's not clear when the young Washington developed feelings for his friend's wife.
But shortly before the disastrous Braddock campaign, he began exchanging flirtatious letters with her.
Anxious to avoid a scandal, Sally kept her distance, but didn't outright reject his love either.
The coquettish Sally seemed to be feeding his amorous fantasies while simultaneously holding him rigidly at arm's length.
Because men dropped like flies, you know, having one on deck, having one waiting in the wings, one on the back burner, not the most ridiculous sexual survival strategy.
By 1758, with his military service nearing its end, the 25-year-old Washington began looking for a wife.
He met Martha Custis, a single mother of two children and one of the wealthiest widows in Virginia.
Ka-ching!
And after spending less than a day together, the two were engaged to be married.
Let's have our money get married and you and I can attend as ring bearers.
General Forbes was yet to capture Fort Duquesne, so the ceremony was postponed until the following year.
So, he obviously wanted to have an affair with his friend's wife.
Not the most honorable thing in the world.
And then he met a rich woman and it's like John Kerry style.
It's like, I love your money.
You, you, nothing.
Money has nothing to do with it.
Several months after he got engaged and on the eve of his wedding ceremony, Washington referred to him, referring to himself as a victory, a votary to love, sorry, wrote Sally a letter in which he openly confessed his feelings for her.
His advances, however, weren't reciprocated.
So he married Martha in January, 1759.
So right before he gets married, he's like, hey, will you marry me, wife of friend?
And she's like, no, fine, I'll marry Martha.
Oh, it's just a pain to true love.
Washington was indeed a votary for Sally.
For Sally, she remained his lifelong love, which is evidenced by a letter he sent her a year before his death.
Quote, So many important events have occurred, none of which, however, nor all of them together, have been able to eradicate from my mind the recollection of those happy moments, the happiest of my life, which I have enjoyed in your company.
And there is something very sad about that, when somebody, towards the end of his life, a life of great outward success, looks back and sees a few stars in the black night of his interstellar Ambition, a few stars of light, which remain shreds of happiness from his youth.
It's very tragic and very instructive about where you should put your energies in life.
So, of course, Mary, the harridan of a mother, incessantly complained about being abandoned by her son, but then she also boycotted his wedding, and according to one of Martha's biographers, may not have met the bride until the year after the wedding.
So, nice.
Very little is known about Washington's relationship with his wife, and of course there's more speculation about that.
Martha purposely burned her correspondence with George, leaving only three letters behind.
We don't never know what was in them.
There's a few things we can guess at, which we'll get to in a bit.
Washington maintained that the basis of his marriage was friendship, as opposed to enamored love.
However, according to some scholars, Washington's relationship with Martha is best described as a business partnership.
As one editor of George Washington's notes points out, with his marriage, Washington was now in control of one of Virginia's largest and most profitable estates, including property in six counties amounting to nearly 8,000 acres.
Slaves valued at 9,000 pounds Virginia currency and accounts current and other liquid assets in England of about 10,000 pounds sterling.
So, that's a lot.
I mean, this is a time when a skilled tradesman would earn like 20 bucks a year.
In a rhetorical question, John Adams also remarked, Would Washington have ever been commander of the Revolutionary Army or president of the United States if he had not married the rich widow of Mr. Custis?
Adding to the image of a loveless marriage is the fact that George never had any children with Martha.
Some have speculated that about a smallpox in his youth may have left him sterile, but no one really knows why the father of the United States never fathered any children of his own.
The return to civilian life and the acquisition of enormous wealth didn't put an end to Washington's ambition.
Indeed, his insatiable lust for land didn't leave him until his dying breath.
Instead of resting on his laurels, he decided to secure even more powers and influence by becoming a member of Virginia's legislative assembly, the House of Burgesses.
In 1758, while still a military officer, he succeeded in doing so and thus began his political career.
This hunger for power is insatiable in certain people.
There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
And the more we try to gather laurels to fill the hole in our hearts, the more it feeds the hole in our heart.
Washington, of course, later in his life would loudly proclaim repeatedly that he wasn't a politician, but he did spend 16 years as a member of Virginia's Legislative Assembly, so he doth protest too much methixed.
To win the 1758 election, Washington engaged in the popular, if technically illegal, custom of intoxicating local voters.
The alcohol he purchased added up to a little over 39 pounds, which represented nearly two years' income for a skilled tradesman.
So, he got voters drunk in order to get them to vote for him.
A very, very brief aside here, because we're going to get to this with the issue of slavery.
To what degree do we judge Washington by the standards of his time versus our time and so on?
Well, he wasn't into animal rights and he didn't care about global warming.
I get all of that.
But there's a couple of things to remember in this.
Number one, we can reasonably compare Washington to the highest standards of his time.
So when it comes to slavery, there was a significant abolitionistic movement.
Three percent of people, even in the South, in the mid 18th century were abolitionists and there was a strong abolitionistic movement that was going on at the time.
He was a Christian and believed that, of course, the slaves had souls and so on.
And so being against slavery, and he lived in a country where a significant portion of the states did not allow slavery and set slaves free, which we'll get to later, particularly Philadelphia.
If you were a slave in Philadelphia for six months, you were automatically freed.
And so there was a strong anti-slavery movement at the time, which he was perfectly aware of.
So we can judge him by those standards.
We can also judge a man by the standards that he himself proposes and puts forward.
And so if the man talks about honor, integrity, honesty, and so on, self-responsibility, Then does he follow his own standards from that standpoint?
So we can't just look at everything negative that Washington did and say, well, we can't judge him by the standards of our time.
Actually, he did things negative judging by the standards of his own time and judging by the standards that he loudly proclaimed in public.
So yes, we can give him a few gold stars shy of an A based upon those standards.
Why was Washington so eager to acquire political power?
Well, political power led to land.
When Virginian politicians decided to raise an army to secure the Ohio country back in 1754, Governor Dinwiddie, yes, I've not made one fun of that name, I'm quite proud of myself, promised 200,000 acres of bounty land that would be divided between men who enlisted.
So, Dinwiddie had, of course, billions of acres of land, pretty much, and he was willing to give some of those land to soldiers in order to make sure that the French didn't take his land.
So, officers were not entitled to any of the 200,000 acres of land because they already had crazy benefits already.
As a land speculator, George Washington hoped to use his political power to acquire a portion of those 200,000 acres.
Following his military service, Washington's pursuit of western lands became a driving force in his conduct as an assemblyman, as a politician.
He not only hoped to secure title to some of the lush land in the newly won Ohio country, but he fixated on acquiring a share of the bounty lands that had been promised to Virginia's soldiers.
Again, this is reprehensible.
The soldiers joined the army partly in order to get the land that was promised to them, which was not promised to the officers, but George Washington hoped to bypass that and get the land reserved for the soldiers who did most of the fighting, which he was never supposed to get his hands on.
After the Seven Years' War ended and the Virginians were allowed to settle in Ohio, it was finally time to allocate the land Dinwiddie had promised.
George played a key role in the process.
Washington understood the reality of early American politics quite well, and for some time he had been covertly active to ensure that the lands were made available at the earliest possible moment, that the officers received the lion's share of the bounty lands, that the lands went to those who had served in the Fort Necessity campaign, which would reduce the pool of veterans, leaving more land for each man, and that he had a hand in determining the location of the lands that were ultimately allocated.
So he's just working and working and working to grab led from the soldiers.
Horrendous.
This is like in the modern, it's the modern equivalent of stealing the pensions of soldiers and getting all that money for yourself and leaving them with virtually nothing.
Conspiring with his officers, Washington managed to allocate seven-eighths of the bounty land to just 18 people.
Let that sink into your mind.
This is supposed to be going out to I don't know how many thousands of soldiers.
He managed to allocate seven-eighths of the 200,000 acres of bounty land to just 18 people.
Furthermore, upon visiting their land, several soldiers discovered that the former commander, who had insisted that all tracks were of similar quality, was lying all along.
Their land was, in fact, worthless.
Stealing from your own soldiers.
Responding to mounting complaints, Washington's officers tried to assure both veterans and authorities of their commander's disinterested conduct and his intention to administer impartial justice in how the tracts were distributed.
However, their opinion would soon change after discovering that Washington had double-crossed them as well by securing the cream of the country for himself.
So his officers are saying, no, no, no, he's doing the right thing, he's being impartial, and then they go and see their land and it's crap.
And he's kept it for himself.
So this £39 get-em-drunk election campaign turned out to be a pretty good investment for the disingenuous and greedy Washington.
The bounty lands he acquired more than doubled his already large property holdings.
Yet this still wasn't enough for him.
As one biographer pointed out, not only did Washington exploit his position to pin down prime real estate for himself, but he brought up rights surreptitiously from needy veterans to enlarge his holdings.
The years George Washington spent as an assemblyman reveal a remarkably corrupt man, which is particularly interesting given that he would soon be immortalized for his astonishing virtue.
While Washington was scheming to secure the best bounty land for himself, tensions between Great Britain and its colonial states started to escalate.
To fight the Seven Years' War, the Crown had accumulated a huge debt.
And to pay it off, British politicians, in an unexpected, unprecedented move, started to impose various taxes on the American colonies.
And this is the cycle you see over and over in history.
War breeds debt.
Debt breeds taxation.
Taxation breeds rebellion.
Rebellion breeds war.
Breeds debt.
Breeds taxation.
Breeds rebellion.
You get the cycle.
While the Sugar Act of 1764 didn't affect many people, the Stamp Act that was imposed in the following year was met with strong opposition.
Washington, like many of his contemporaries, viewed this unconstitutional method of taxation as a direful attack upon American liberties.
However, preoccupied with his plantations, he didn't actively participate in the political debates over the Crown's encroaching taxation.
However, towards the end of the 1760s, and amidst increasing demonstrations, boycotts, and a series of newspaper articles furiously denouncing taxation, Washington erupted with fiery rhetoric, decrying the policies of our lordly masters in Great Britain as a grave threat to the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors.
He was also among the first, if not the first, to speak of going to war in defense of so valuable a blessing, i.e.
of liberty.
Let's see if you can figure out George Washington by now.
What prompted his sudden change?
Hmm... Let's figure it out.
So, by now, George Washington was heavily in debt, partly because of Britain's mercantilist policies towards American tobacco planters, like himself.
So, we'll put links in below, and all the sources, of course, of the presentation will be below.
Britain's mercantilist policies They basically wanted lots of raw materials to come into England.
England then would apply factory labor to produce them into finished goods and export them.
So there was a lot of barriers to trade, a lot of taxes designed to manipulate trade, which was harmful to the colonists who generally were producing raw materials.
So furthermore, British politicians had repeatedly hindered his attempts to acquire portions of the Ohio country bounty land.
So the politicians were in the way of his financial and land interests.
So suddenly war for liberty becomes... anyway.
The infamous Key Act of 1773 didn't even register on George Washington's radar because he was more concerned with a change in British policy with regards to bounty lands that were promised to soldiers who participated in the Seven Years' War.
Under the new terms, only British regulars could claim the bounty, which meant that Washington stood to lose 10,000 acres.
Remember, he took all that land for himself, away from his own soldiers.
But only British regulars could claim the bounty.
Which, of course, George Washington wasn't, so he stood to lose 10,000 acres if the British remained in control of the colonies.
To make matters worse, in 1774 Washington learned that Parliament, in an effort to abolish Virginia land speculation, had passed an act that gave the province of Quebec all land north of the Ohio River.
Just think of how smoking in church in Poutine could have spread out of Quebec.
He now not only worried about his existing claims, but he feared that his chances for further speculation within the Ohio country would be limited.
The enraged Washington was now prepared to use force.
As historian John Furling noted, bitter that his pocket had been picked by the revocation of his bounty land claims and other Western actions taken in faraway London, Washington yearned to exert his free will and influence in quest of his goals.
In May 1775, when Washington learned about the battles of Lexington and Concord, which marked the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, he lamented that, "...the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves." It's a bit of a false dichotomy, but he continued, "...sad alternative, but can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?" Freedom!
Washington's choice, of course, was already clear.
In June 1775, the Continental Congress unanimously elected him as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.
So, Washington, the man who had foolishly triggered the war that was at the root of the current conflict over taxation, was now in charge of an even larger army.
Many politicians viewed him as modest and virtuous, as well as amiable, generous, and brave.
Historian Peter Henriques writes, it was his character rather than his military knowledge or experience that made him the perfect choice to lead America's new army.
As one delegate put it, Washington removes all jealousies and that is the main point.
Two days after accepting the position of Commander-in-Chief, Washington wrote his wife.
You may believe me, my dear Patsy, when I assure you in the most solemn manner that so far from seeking disappointment I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity.
But, as it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my understanding of it is designed to answer some good purpose.
It was utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment without exposing my characters as such centrists as would have reflected dishonor upon myself, and given pain to my friends.
This I am sure could not, and ought not, to be pleasing to you, and must have lessened me considerably in my own esteem.
I shall rely therefore confidently on that providence which has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall.
I shall feel no pain from the toil or the danger of the campaign." Forehead permanently stapled to back of hand.
Several years later he would also proclaim, I did not solicit the command but accepted it after much entreaty.
Was he playing hard to get?
Are we to take Washington's words at face value?
Do we know him by now?
Given the zeal for war that he displayed when fighting against France, it's hard to believe he had abandoned his quest for glory completely.
His actions?
Not quite in line with his words.
Even though he attended the Second Continental Congress as a civilian delegate, Washington, who was no stranger to theater and theatrics, chose to wear his military uniform.
So that's an interesting decision, given His supposed apprehension and avoidance of serving in the army.
It's like a shapely woman in a low-cut dress decrying male attention.
He was the only delegate to attend both the First and the Second Congresses in full military dress.
John Adams highlighted this fact by stating, Colonel Washington appears at Congress in his uniform and by his great experience and abilities in military matters is of much service to us.
So, let's just say he may have been a bit ambivalent about that.
Additionally, and we talked about this earlier, Washington was now in his forties, an age at which a significant number of men in his family had died.
So there were good reasons for him to believe that his end was nigh.
Perhaps this war was his last opportunity to die an honorable death on the battlefield, a desire he had expressed in his youth.
Ah, the number of wars fought by men who don't like their wives.
He certainly understood that he wasn't qualified to lead a large army.
As one delegate later recalled, a tearful Washington on the night of his appointment had made a grim prediction.
From the day I enter upon the command of the American armies, I date my fall and the ruin of my reputation.
A lack of knowledge and experience, however, never got in the way of his ambitions in the past, and that wasn't about to happen now.
Whatever the case may be, actions speak louder than words, and George Washington would soon fight tooth and nail to keep his position as Commander-in-Chief.
The Revolutionary War started out pretty well for George Washington in March 1776.
He liberated Boston in a relatively bloodless victory after allowing the British, who had threatened to raze the city, to withdraw.
You'll notice a pattern that George Washington seems to do very well when the other army is on its way out of the conflict.
Washington took sole credit for this success even though it was his officers who persuaded him to avoid attacking directly and to fortify a series of low hills that overlooked Boston Harbor instead.
He was always rushing for this upfront confrontation.
Furthermore, since the British commander-in-chief, General William Howe, had already decided to abandon the city, the decision to leave without fighting, wasn't particularly difficult.
So a tree falls down and I claim that I pushed it over.
Describing the siege of Boston in a letter to his brother, Washington emphasized the difficulty of his accomplishment.
I believe I may with great truth affirm that no man perhaps since the first institution of armies ever commanded one under more difficult circumstances than I have done.
Maybe General Custer.
I can think of a few, but Setting up a siege and then having the British Army retreat.
I'm no army man, but that does not seem like.
I go into the ring with Muhammad Ali in his prime.
Muhammad Ali has an aneurysm and I dance around saying, I'm now the greatest!
Muhammad Ali's great.
I'm so fast, last night I turned off the light and I was in bed before it was dark.
I'm so fast I swing at you and I miss.
You die from pneumonia, from the breeze.
George Washington soared to majestic heights with the liberation of Boston.
However, his first real battle, the largest of the entire war, was about to prove just how bad of a decision it was to put an inexperienced commander who had nothing but failures in his resume in charge of a large army.
Following the victory in Boston, General Washington moved his army to New York City and took a defensive position in anticipation of a British attack.
The uncharacteristically sanguine and self-assured Washington arrived in Manhattan, eager for the showdown battle that had been denied during the siege of Boston.
As Ferling noted, the key to unlocking the door to the Hall of Heroes, he believed, was through scoring a decisive triumph in a climactic and epic battlefield confrontation, the Ragnarok of the New World.
Now, New York was a great fortress at the time.
No conceivable way that any sane British commander would pour out of a secure fortress to attack a surrounding army.
That just makes no sense at all.
General Howe arrived in August and crushed Washington's defenses in Long Island within a single day.
Aside from allowing his army to be outflanked and attacked from behind, Washington committed one grave tactical mistake.
He had divided his army in the face of a superior foe, a violation of the cardinal maxim of warfare.
His decision assured that his army would be outnumbered no matter where Howe chose to fight.
Taking advantage of the bad weather that had incapacitated the Royal Navy, Washington's forces crossed the East River and fled to what is now Brooklyn.
He had seemingly abandoned his hope of an epic battlefield confrontation and instead suggested to Congress that it would be best for the Continental Army to withdraw.
After receiving permission to abandon New York City, he managed to escape the clutches of Howe for the second time.
One day to crush his defenses.
Upon the Continental Army's retreat, a fire erupted and destroyed a quarter of New York City.
British officials managed to arrest 14 arsonists, and three others were apprehended by civilians.
Washington had asked Congress for permission to burn New York City to the ground, but his wish was categorically denied, a decision that enraged him.
Ferling writes, it stretches credulity to believe that it was accidental or coincidental that 17 firebugs turned out on the same night.
So George Washington says, I want to burn down New York City.
And Congress says, don't you dare.
And then all these arsonists start setting fire to New York City.
Not the last time or the first time that he disobeyed direct orders.
Historians have often struggled to explain Washington's perplexing behavior after the loss of New York City.
Scholars analyzing his personality from a psychological standpoint have reached the following conclusion about his character.
Making a distinction between benign or normal narcissism and neurotic or malignant narcissism, it appears that the young Washington squarely fits the former category.
More specifically, the young Washington had a mirror-hungry personality, one that requires a continuous stream of admiration to shore up his grandiose self.
How many podcasts do I have?
Ah, topic for another time.
However, given the events that followed Washington's defeat, it's hard to see how his narcissism wasn't malignant, if not downright suicidal.
Despite telling Congress that he would engage in guerrilla warfare and evasive maneuvering, Washington chose to remain on Manhattan Island.
In preparation of a giant showdown, he deployed his army in Harlem Heights.
What?
First he takes Manhattan, then Berlin?
I think that's how it goes.
So, lying to Congress.
Well, it's a long tradition.
And guerrilla tactics, all of that, that's what I'm going to do.
But then he didn't do anything of the kind.
John Ferling again writes, Washington's defenders have maintained that congressional pressure led him to remain in this snare.
And that is the notion he appears to have promoted.
And that is the notion he appears to have promoted.
In fact, there is no evidence that Congress ordered Washington to defend Manhattan.
And if it had ever mandated such a course, it certainly did not do so following the debacle on Long Island.
Nor did Washington's generals lead him astray.
By a majority of more than three to one, they had sanctioned abandoning New York a full month prior to Howe's landing.
Staying in Harlem Heights was Washington's idea, and he said as much late in September, when he announced unequivocally that he would not retreat from Manhattan.
Washington may have learned that politicians in Philadelphia were extremely critical of his failures, which would give him a reason to make a stand against the British and clear his name through a victory on the battlefield.
However, this still isn't enough to explain why he would choose to fight Howe, despite his opinion that if he stayed on Manhattan Island, the enemy would, quote, cut this army in pieces.
Furling offers another perspective.
Washington's potentially shocking blunder may also have arisen from his hallmark inclination for battle, the very state of mind that had led him to make his injudicious stand at Fort Necessity years before, and repeatedly drove him to propose assailing his heavily fortified enemy in Boston.
For fifteen long months he had waited impatiently for a great confrontation with the enemy.
His blood was up, and he wanted to avenge the humiliation of Long Island.
He hungered The best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior, and all the way back to when he initiated the slaughter of Jumonville's pack of croissant-eating, breakfasting Frenchmen.
He was a dog of war, longing to be let slip.
However, it's Washington's psychological state that is the most revealing.
Refusing to accept any responsibility for the dire situation he was in, he blamed both Congress and his subordinates instead.
Crippling despair and a feeling of being betrayed by everyone around him fueled a suicidal rage.
How's that repression working out?
In a letter to one of his cousins, Washington wrote, In short, Such is my situation that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings, and yet I do not know what plan of conduct to pursue.
I see the impossibility of serving with reputation or doing any essential service to the cause by continuing in command.
And yet I am told that if I quit the command, inevitable ruin will follow from the distraction that will ensue.
In confidence, I tell you, that I never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born.
If I fall, it may not be amiss that these circumstances be known, and declaration made in credit to the justice of my character.
And if the men will stand by me, which by the by I despair of, I am resolved not to be forced from this ground while I have life.
When the deep insecurity that underlies narcissism is brought to the surface, an outburst of rage usually follows.
Psychoanalysts refer to this phenomenon as narcissistic rage.
It was sheer luck that saved General Washington, his Continental Army, and likely the entire war.
General Howe was delayed by poor maps of the area, which gave General Robert Lee enough time to reach Washington's headquarters and shake the Commander-in-Chief out of his daze.
Following the advice of General Lee, Washington ordered the withdrawal of most of his men.
But he himself stayed on the island and joined the remainder of his forces in Fort Washington, a defensive installation he had built prior to Howe's arrival in New York.
So Lee strides into his tent, slaps him around the face, and says, you're going to get cut to pieces here.
Get your men out of Manhattan.
Even though he had predicted that the British would come after the fort and despite his officers telling him the installation was useless, Washington remained there until Howe attacked him in November.
Washington observed the battle from a safe distance while a British army that outnumbered the Continentals over 3 to 1 overwhelmed the fort's defenses and captured nearly 3,000 of his men along with 146 cannons and other large military supplies.
Washington subsequently failed to evacuate Fort Lee, a huge supply depot in New Jersey, and the British acquired a large portion of his army's arsenal.
These latest calamities, both foreseeable and avoidable, plunged Washington into a desperate and forlorn state of mind, perhaps his wartime nadir or low point.
While leading a dangerous retreat across New Jersey, Washington found the time to do damage control by scapegoating both the soldiers and the officers in his army.
The buck stops nowhere near here, apparently.
The siege of Boston and the New York campaign revealed a pattern that Washington would repeat without fail throughout the Revolutionary War.
He took all credit for his few victories, yet fervently denied having any responsibility for his numerous losses.
However, Washington probably suspected that his favorite strategy wouldn't work this time.
The disastrous New York campaign was too grave a failure, and his own generals were already criticizing him for his incompetence.
He needed a victory, no matter how small, to appease Congress and escape a humiliating demotion, if not military court.
His desperation pushed him to attempt a bold, and possibly suicidal, counterattack on the British, who had abandoned the pursuit to prepare for the onset of winter.
Early in the morning on the second day of Christmas, Washington launched a surprise attack on the German mercenaries stationed in the city of Trenton, New Jersey.
Significantly inferior in both numbers and artillery, the Germans surrendered within about one and a half hours.
And here we do see in the quirks of history the Americans fighting against the British and Germans.
It switches around a little bit later on in history.
In response, the British sent General Cornwallis from New York to deal with Washington's army.
The British General's main forces advanced upon Trenton from Princeton and eventually trapped the Continentals against the Delaware River.
However, Washington managed to escape under the cover of the night and marched on Princeton.
On his way, he stumbled upon two British regiments and defeated them before retreating into safety.
But overall, Washington's army killed 50, wounded three times as many, and captured a little over 1,000 enemy soldiers.
It was an insignificant loss for the British, but the victories at Trenton and Princeton transformed George Washington from a failure that almost lost the war to a shining hero.
So, there of course is good and bad luck in war as there isn't anything else.
You're marching through the forest and you come across a bunch of sleeping enemies.
You can't knit those into any kind of consistent victory, but they can give you You know, brief victories from time to time.
Even a blindfolded quote marksman will shoot the target once or twice.
It's pretty random.
You can blindfold yourself and have a great hit in tennis, but that doesn't mean you're going to make it to the top of Wimbledon anytime soon.
The glimpse of hopes at the end of the disastrous 1776 campaign transformed Washington in the eyes of America's political elite.
Washington's redemptive Trenton-Princeton campaign fostered his newfound hope and self-assurance, but it was nourished, too, by the praise lavished on him early in 1777.
America's Commander-in-Chief was lauded to a degree unmatched in the halcyon atmosphere that followed the liberation of Boston.
So exalted was the Commander-in-Chief that John Adams deplored the superstitious veneration of Washington that had seized many in Congress.
Now, why was everyone so behind Washington?
Why couldn't they get him fired?
Well, firing a general is incredibly bad for the morale of the army, right?
Sorry, firing the commander-in-chief is incredibly bad for the morale of the army.
Plus, of course, when you take up arms against a government, you either win or you're dead, right?
Because you get tried for treason and hung.
So they really kind of all in with regards to Washington.
So they really had, if they had fired him, the army would likely have dissolved, and if he lost, they would all be hunted down and killed.
There's an old quote, one of my favorites, it says, treason doth never prosper.
What's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
So treason is when you rebel and lose.
If you rebel and win, you're called the government.
So they really were, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound, running from the noose with Washington.
Most congressmen who pay tribute to Washington appear to have believed that the disasters in New York had been due to the Commander-in-Chief's inexperience or that he'd been let down by those around him.
Some also seem to have concluded that the six-month-old United States, which, unlike all other Western countries, was devoid of royalty, needed a figurehead around whom the citizenry could rally.
George Washington could be the glue that held together the young, fragile Union, the great man who inspired loyalty and patriotism, the father image for a paternalistic people, the lonely, altruistic and majestic preceptor of the nation who sustained morale during the long, difficult war.
Already Congress had withheld information from the public about Washington's many blunders in 1776, and to some degree it had sanctified your name, as Robert Morris informed the commander, in the hope that his purported example would draw forth the exertions of some good men.
Not by accident, some patriots at banquets and rallies invoked a cry that bore royal Overtones.
God save Great Washington, right?
So they wanted to enhance Washington's reputation so that it would be easier to recruit new soldiers.
As we mentioned earlier, the editor of the Pennsylvania Journal remarked that had he lived in the days of idolatry, Washington would have been worshipped as a god.
Indeed, General Washington was the shining beacon that Congress used to attract volunteers into the crippled and disintegrating Continental Army.
Keeping his image unstained was of utmost importance in maintaining civilian morale as well.
However, the campaign of 1777 was about to prove just how difficult it is to prop up a false idol.
In September 1777, the Continentals clashed with the British Redcoats near Brandywine Creek, not Shire, but Pennsylvania.
Washington failed to properly survey the terrain, and frozen with indecision, he ignored reports of a British flanking maneuver for several hours.
He managed to escape Howe's trap, but lost the battle and suffered heavy casualties.
Even though Congress privately criticized Washington for his failures, public blame for Brandywine was pinned on John Sullivan, One of his generals and professional scapegoat.
As Ferling noted, the attack on Sullivan took the heat off Washington.
Content for Sullivan to be the current scapegoat for his lack of success, Washington did nothing to help his subordinate, who was eventually vindicated by a court-martial.
Washington took no responsibility for the many lapses that had nearly produced a crushing defeat on the Brandywine.
Without encountering any opposition, Howe entered Philadelphia, the provisional capital of the United States, shortly after he won the Battle of Brandywine.
He secured this bloodless victory because Washington failed to anticipate his maneuvers or send out enough scouts to figure out what was going on.
As if the embarrassing loss of Philadelphia wasn't enough, Washington was now beginning to encounter competition for the affection of politicians and the general public.
A few weeks after the humiliation at Brandywine in Philadelphia, General Horatio Gates of the American Continental Army scored perhaps the most crucial victory in the American Revolutionary War.
In October 1777, after waging a by-the-book campaign, the former officer of the Crown defeated the British in the Battle of Saratoga County, New York.
Gates's major victory is considered the turning point in the revolution because it demonstrated to potential foreign allies that American rebels had a chance of winning the war.
Indeed, several months later, France signed a treaty of alliance with the United States.
Desperate to redeem himself, Washington attempted to replicate his success from the previous year by carrying out a surprise attack on an outlying British post near Philadelphia.
Three days before Gates' victory at Saratoga, 11,000 Continentals clashed with 9,000 Redcoats in Germantown.
Washington's plan was to execute a synchronized direct attack from all sides.
But this strategy was too complex to follow and relied on many points of potential failure.
To get everyone surrounding an army and all attack at the same time, not easy in the days of really crippled communications.
Nevertheless, the Americans still had an advantage and may have won the battle, if not for a terrible decision made by George Washington, their commander.
Washington squandered an entire brigade and a full hour in an attempt to drive the British out of a heavily fortified civilian residence called the Chew House.
A third of the American casualties in the battle died there, and the surprise attack ultimately lost its edge.
The British successfully drove Washington out of Germantown, killing, wounding, or capturing over 1,000 of his men.
So if you've got a heavily fortified group of soldiers, you just go all the way around them.
And if you want, you can set up a perimeter and staff them out in the long run, but you don't assault them directly and squander an entire brigade.
Again, this is his madness of, I mean, this is like a spiteful kid throwing lead soldiers into a hot fire.
Some of Washington's officers were furious with their commander's irrational fixation on the Chew House.
Quote, it destroyed the morale of the men, said one, while another remarked that victory, which had been within the grasp of the Continentals, had been shamefully lost through Washington's poor leadership.
Even some British soldiers were surprised that Washington had failed so badly.
Ah, the scapegoat.
Always need a scapegoat for Washington.
The scapegoat this time.
was General Adam Stephen, who was made responsible for the defeat at Germantown.
Washington further lied that the British losses were twice, if not three times as great, while the actual number was one half.
He even told one politician that, upon the whole, our men are in high spirits and much pleased with the fortune of the day, though not so completely lucky as could have been wished.
After learning about General Gates' decisive victory, Washington, who was unable to produce a single success throughout the 1777 campaign, began to worry about whether he would be able to remain the head of the army.
Now, of course, if he was interested in the good of the nation, he would have resigned or never taken it in the first place.
The guy who won was the guy who had been a British soldier for his career, I think.
Indeed, he was about to wage one of the most important battles in his career.
It just so happened that the battlefield was political and the adversary was likely imaginary.
Soon after Germantown, Washington was tipped off that a strong faction was supposedly forming against him.
In the new Board of War and in the Congress, which wished to replace him with Horatio Gates as Commander-in-Chief.
Many influential politicians were indeed starting to question Washington's capability to wage war.
Thousands of lives and millions of property are yearly sacrificed to the insufficiency of our Commander-in-Chief.
wrote Pennsylvania's Attorney General.
Two battles he has lost for us by two such blunders as might have disgraced a soldier of three months standing.
And yet we are so attached to this man that I fear we shall rather sink with him than throw him off our shoulders.
Benjamin Rush, one of America's founding fathers, wrote to John Adams, I've heard several officers who have served under General Gates compare his army to a well-regulated family.
The same gentlemen have compared General Washington's imitation of an army to an unformed mob.
Look at the characters of both, the one on the pinnacle of military glory, exulting in the success of schemes planned with wisdom and executed with vigor and bravery, and above all, see a country saved by their exertions.
See the other.
Washington out-generaled and twice beat it, forced to give up a city, the capital of a state, and after all outwitted by the same army in a retreat.
If our Congress can witness these things with composure and suffer them to pass without an inquiry, I shall think we have not shook off monarchical prejudices, and like the Israelites of old, we worship the work of our hands.
To make matters worse, many of Washington's own officers were starting to speak out against him in private.
One general claimed that Washington was the weakest general under whom he had ever served, adding that if the commander-in-chief ever does anything sensational, he will owe it more to his good luck or to his adversary's mistakes than to his own ability.
Another general lamented that Washington's force is not an army.
It is a mob.
When General Horatio Gates was promoted to President of Congress's Board of War, Washington became certain that a vast conspiracy was plotting his removal as the Army's commander.
Even when some of the most influential Virginian congressmen assured him that a faction in Congress against you had never existed, Washington continued to believe that Gates and his conspirators were out to get him.
In truth, the vast majority of congressmen either trusted Washington or considered him too dangerous to antagonize.
Many in Congress simply believed it too risky to seek the removal of the commander.
Some thought the situation so delicate that it was dangerous even to speak ill of Washington.
To actually seek Washington's ouster would ignite a political firestorm, and it might trigger mass resignations among the Army's officers, provoking a meltdown of the Continental Army.
Washington is too well-established to be easily injured, and too important to be sported with, said one congressman, who understood that Washington was still idolized by the public.
So, of course, the Congress had put forward Washington as a demigod in order to get recruits and to fuel the war morale.
And then, of course, when he proved to be incompetent, if they had said, oh, we were wrong, then what would people think of their judgment?
So.
Benjamin Rush's claim about Congress, we worship the work of our hands rather than anything objective, now takes new meaning.
By holding Washington as a symbol of all that is virtuous while simultaneously protecting his reputation through deception, they reached a point in which the Commander-in-Chief had acquired enormous influence over both the Army and the general public.
As one French military chaplain observed, through all the land he appears like a benevolent God.
Decades after the war, John Adams wrote about what Congress had done to promote the Commander-in-Chief.
The great character of George Washington was a character of convention.
There was a time when northern, middle, and southern statesmen and officers of the army expressly agreed to blow the trumpets of Panjyrik.
accolades, in concert, to cover and dissemble all faults and errors, to represent every defeat as a victory and every retreat as an advancement, to make that character popular and fashionable, with all parties, in all places, and with all persons, as a center of union, as the central stone in the geometrical as a center of union, as the central stone in the I miss good political writers.
Going back to the political turmoil that followed General Gates' victory, the Commander-in-Chief was now waging an ingenious political war from his winter quarters in Valley Forge.
He sowed the impression among congressmen that Gates was a member of a secret cabal that conspired to overthrow him, which would jeopardize the American Revolution.
Those who believed him confronted colleagues whom they suspected of harboring doubts, demanding to know whether they were involved in the conspiracy.
So that's the crazy thing about Washington, is that he does in politics what he should have been doing militarily, which was to wage a subtle campaign of deception and of sabotage and guerrilla tactics.
So he's very good at doing that in politics, just this upfront stuff is kind of crazy in the military sphere.
The infighting Washington provoked created an environment in which questioning his virtues invited danger.
As one congressman noted, it was too risky to utter a word of criticism about Washington.
A general, who the paranoid commander-in-chief implicated in the conspiracy, was challenged to a duel and nearly killed.
Fear and hysteria mixed with joy over the alliance with France and served to elevate Washington to new heights.
So even criticizing Washington, people were so hysterical, if they'd lost the war they'd all be killed, that If you even criticize Washington, you could be challenged to mean that.
That's some serious trollery.
John Ferling describes the Commander-in-Chief's social standing after losing two battles, squandering Philadelphia, yet winning the political war.
Washington had been lauded for his successes in Boston and the Trenton-Princeton campaign, but Valley Forge was the time of his transfiguration.
As never before, Washington came to be seen as the truly heroic figure.
He was saluted as the glue that held together the Army and its angry officers through the Winter Encampment in 1778.
That winter, Washington's birthday was celebrated publicly for the first time.
The celebration was contrived, but veneration for Washington was swelling.
Almanacs, which had once documented the king's birthday, now noted Washington's.
A patriot's catechism circulated that pointed to General Washington as the best man living.
A political ABC for youngsters published that year proclaimed, The W stands for Brave Washington and worlds that rejoice for the honor he's won.
Literary works were dedicated to Washington, the savior of his country, the supporter of freedom, and the benefactor of mankind.
Toasts to the Commander-in-Chief became fashionable.
In 1778, Washington was called the father of his country for the first time, and by year's end, it was commonplace for him to be praised in that manner.
John Furling.
If George Washington wasn't untouchable before, he certainly was now, Meanwhile, General Gates had fallen out of favor with Congress and many others in the military.
In June 1778, Washington clashed with the British Army that was withdrawing through Monmouth County, New Jersey, in what became the last major battle in the North.
General Lee prepared the strategy and led the operation.
And even though both sides suffered equal losses, the British rearguard achieved a tactical victory by successfully covering the main army's withdrawal.
Lee ordered a retreat, but in the heat of the battle, he neglected to inform Washington.
When the Commander-in-Chief learned about Lee's order, he immediately headed towards the front lines.
But on his way there, he was told by some soldiers that the retreat was unnecessary, which wasn't true.
When he caught up with his general, the furious Washington exploded with rage and started cursing Lee.
As one eyewitness recalled, he swore that day till the leaves shook on the trees.
Never have I enjoyed such a swearing before or since.
Over the next few days, Washington kept silent as mounting evidence showed that Lee's decision was justified.
General Lee, on the other hand, started to publicly criticize Washington and demanded a court-martial to clear his name.
He obviously didn't understand what he was getting into.
Even congressmen couldn't go against Washington at this point.
Although the court-martial transcript eloquently demonstrates that Lee had probably saved a considerable portion of the American army at Monmouth, he was convicted of breach of orders and having ordered an unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat.
Unwilling to settle for such injustice, he continued to protest until he was challenged to a duel for having disparaged the character of the commander-in-chief.
After getting shot and nearly killed, Lee finally learned his lesson.
In a letter to Congress, he bitterly remarked that, George Washington is considered a necessary man.
He is to be indulged in the sacrifice of any officer whom from jealousy, pique, or caprice he may have devoted to destruction.
So, George Washington gets away with disobeying orders, starting wars, setting fire most likely to New York against the orders of Congress.
Nothing bad happens to him.
He's the father of the country.
Lee orders a necessary retreat and is nearly killed.
George Washington remained passive for the next three years.
He vetoed proposals to attack Canada, largely because Horatio Gates would lead the invasion army, and Washington was painfully slow to grasp the significance of the war in the southern states.
What occupied his mind was a grand strategy, as he called it, to retake New York City.
However, no one else was willing to get behind this strategy because the city was an impregnable fortress.
This didn't stop Washington from continuously proposing the idea and obsessing over the glorious end it would bring to the war.
Above all, a victory in New York might have eradicated the memory of the egregious losses that he had sustained on these islands in 1776.
General Henry Clinton, who had taken over as the British Commander-in-Chief after Howe resigned in 1778, prayed that the Allies would attack New York.
He believed the almost certain failure of a Franco-American siege would swing the war around in favor of the British.
Washington, however, was blind to the dangers of the campaign he was trying to organize.
New York had become the Moby Dick to his Captain Ahab, an irrational desire for victory against all evidence.
By 1780, France's treasury was bleeding dry and reports indicated that Washington showed no signs of acting boldly.
Desperate to end the war as quickly as possible, the French government sent over its own professional army.
It's like musical chairs.
We'll fight the French.
They're our allies.
When Washington met with the Comte de Rochambeau, France's commander-in-chief, he immediately proposed an attack on New York.
which the French general saw as an exercise in wishful thinking.
Rochambeau proposed an invasion of Canada instead, and Washington temporarily agreed with the plan.
The final decision was to be made during their next formal conference.
The two commanders met again next year to plan the campaign of 1781.
Unsurprisingly, Washington yet again urged an attack on New York.
Losing his patience, Rochambeau bluntly reiterated all his objections to such a reckless move and proposed a campaign in Virginia instead.
However, Washington didn't back down this time.
As Rochambeau wrote, General Washington during this conference had scarcely another object in view but an expedition against the island of New York.
The French general eventually complied with Washington's wishes.
Given that Rochambeau remained under orders to defer to the wishes of the American commander, he consented to march his army from Rhode Island to the periphery of Manhattan, where the Allies would prepare for a joint operation to retake New York.
Unbeknownst to Washington and in defiance of his wishes, Rochambeau was secretly planning what he believed would be a campaign that was more likely than an attack on New York to produce a decisive outcome.
During the discussions, the French general purposefully omitted the fact that the French fleet had been ordered to set sail for North America.
When the conference was over, he immediately contacted Comte de Grasse, the admiral in command of the fleet, ordering him to arrive in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, as opposed to New York.
Rochambeau eventually informed Washington of the Admiral's voyage, but lied about the actual destination.
When he finally learned that de Grasse will be arriving in Virginia, the stunned Washington was forced to comply with the secret plan of the French Commander-in-Chief.
That's how to fight.
Rochambeau's target in Virginia was Lord Cornwallis, one of Clinton's leading generals, who was stationed at Yorktown near Chesapeake Bay.
Ironically, it was Washington's incompetence that set the stage for a Franco-American checkmate in the Revolutionary War.
Expecting the Allies to attack New York, and confident that he'd been able to repel them on his own, General Clinton didn't recall the army of Cornwallis, leaving it widely exposed.
In the Battle of Chesapeake, Admiral de Grasse's fleet cut off the Royal Navy's access to Yorktown, while over 16,000 Allied soldiers surrounded the city.
Trapped from all directions, Cornwallis and his 9,000 men were doomed.
Please note, this was the exact opposite of anything that George Washington wanted to do.
I wonder who'll get the credit?
Washington left the attack in the hands of Rochambeau, who was experienced in siegecraft, while he lounged around giving minute orders.
Never had he lived so comfortably during the course of an engagement.
After over a week of heavy artillery bombardment, which kept the Redcoats crouched in terror while reducing the village to rubble, the British general finally surrendered.
When the battle was over, Washington publicly thanked Rochambeau for his cheerful and able assistance.
Apparently, as far as our George Washington was concerned, carrying out a masterful strategic campaign and capturing a British general only qualified as assistants.
As was typical of Washington, he took all the credit for the decisive victory.
A letter to him from the President of Congress exuded ecstatic admiration.
Words fail me when I attempt to bestow my small tribute of thanks and praise to a character so eminent for wisdom, courage, and patriotism, and one who appears to be no less the favorite of heaven than of his country.
I shall only therefore beg you to be assured that you are held in the most grateful remembrance and with a peculiar veneration by all the wise and good in these United States.
He then proceeded to clean Washington's boots with his tongue.
Naturally, Congress wasn't informed of what had happened behind the scenes, but neither did it care.
Years after the war, Washington went so far as to claim that he never was in contemplation to attack New York.
As historian Ron Chernow noted, Washington later tried to rewrite history by suggesting that his tenacious concentration on New York was a mere feint to mislead the British in Virginia while maintaining the political allegiance of the eastern and mid-Atlantic states.
He wanted to portray himself as the visionary architect of the Yorktown victory, not as a general misguidedly concentrating upon New York while his French allies masterminded the decisive blow.
Washington made it difficult for people to catch his lie because he alleged that he had tried to deceive his own side as well as the enemy.
Hence, any communication could be construed as part of the master bluff.
So he said, I never wanted to attack New York.
And he kept writing to people, I want to attack New York.
And he's like, that was just to fool the British.
I never want to.
So anyway, the crushing defeat at Yorktown eventually prompted the crown to negotiate an end to the Anglo-American conflict and It would be argued that the Revolutionary War was won despite George Washington's command.
Nevertheless, he went down in history as the heroic general who lost most battles, yet emerged victorious in the end.
As one historian writes, Washington saved the new nation from near destruction and led the way to victory.
For doing so, he was revered to the point of near deification and became the model for all future American commanders-in-chief.
Historians have often argued that his role was to serve as a shining beacon that motivated and guided the Continental Army through the darkest hours of the Revolution.
It was his character that was important, not his military accomplishments.
But when one looks at the real man, and not the idol that was crafted through public relations campaigns, it's hard to see any virtues at the core of his legend.
While Yorktown was the last major land battle, Washington still had an important part to play as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.
With the prospect of peace on the horizon, Washington announced that he would resign as Commander-in-Chief and return to civilian life, a decision that turned him into an icon of civic virtues.
Of course, most times in history, in the Caesar style, the guy who wins the battles ends up becoming the civilian ruler.
He was immediately associated with Lucius Cincinnatus, a famous Roman official who rescued Rome in a war and then selflessly relinquished the power he was bestowed.
Washington was so revered that an organization comprised of war veterans called itself the Society of the Cincinnati to honor him.
Interestingly enough, the city of Cincinnati, Ohio was named after this organization.
So why did he give up the power he could so easily obtain?
Well, there are several reasons.
The state of Washington's business had severely decayed during his eight-and-a-half-year absence.
Furthermore, according to his own estimates, he had lost about £10,000 because debtors paid him with inflated currency.
While his financial situation wasn't dire, it did require his immediate attention.
Washington was also well aware of his advance aged.
As he wrote a year after his resignation, I called to mind the days of my youth, and found that they had long since fled to return no more, and that I was now descending the hill.
I had been fifty-two years climbing, and that though I was blessed with a good constitution, I was of a short-lived family, and might soon expect to be entombed in the dreary mansions of my fathers.
But above all else, he realized that to climb the staircase of power even further, he had to step down first.
As one Washington scholar noted, Washington was a virtuoso of resignation.
He perfected the art of getting power by giving it away.
He tried this first, unsuccessfully, as a young colonel of militia, but then only as a gesture from hurt pride.
He was still learning that mere power to refuse is real but limited.
The power would later be refined, as would the gestures, when he learned the creative power of surrender.
His whole war service was urged forward under the archway of two pledges to receive no pay and to resign when independence was won.
He was choreographing his departure with great care.
It was an act of theatre and the world applauded.
If Washington hadn't honoured the promise to resign, the virtuous character that Congress had so masterfully created would have crumbled into dust and the legend of George Washington would never take flight.
Interestingly, even though the act of resigning went down into history as a shining example of a lack of ambition for power, another aspect of it has remained largely ignored.
Before his resignation, Washington, in his 1783 circular, Letter to the States, pledged not to take any share in public business hereafter.
Needless to say, he did not honour that promise.
While Washington was busy organizing a theatrical return to civilian life, the debt-ridden economy of the United States was on the verge of collapse.
Following the outbreak of the war in 1775, Congress began issuing the Continental, a paper currency that replaced the British Brown Sterling.
Within three years, the young country was getting ravaged by hyperinflation, as politicians attempted to print their way out of amounting war debt.
Inflation is not rising prices.
Inflation is creating or printing more money than the growth of the economy can justify.
So, just to mention that.
This is a constant problem.
After the First World War, of course, the Weimar Republic hyperinflated currency.
I've got a whole podcast series or video series on French inflation of currency around the time of the revolution and so on.
So, I just wanted to mention that.
So under the Articles of Confederation, which was the first constitution of the United States, Congress didn't have the power to levy taxes.
And so it turned to the printing presses as an alternative to fund itself.
Indeed, it would have been difficult to impose taxation to fund a war that was started over the issue of British taxes.
So here's how one writer described the economic carnage of hyperinflation.
The annihilation was so complete that barbershops were papered in jest with the bills, and the sailors, on returning from their cruise, being paid off in bundles of this worthless money, had suits of clothes made of it, and with characteristic light-heartedness turned their loss into a frolic by parading through the streets in decayed finery, which in its better days had passed for thousands of dollars.
A contemporary merchant and author wrote, paper money polluted the equity of our laws, turned them into engines of oppression, corrupted the justice of our public administration, destroyed the fortunes of thousands who had confidence in it, innovated the trade, husbandry, and manufacturers of our country, and went far to destroy the morality of our people.
Fair description of what happened after Nixon went off the gold standard in 1971.
George Washington also complained about the rampant inflation.
The depreciation of it, the Continental, has got to so alarming a point that a wagonload of money will scarcely purchase a wagonload of provision.
Wealthy Americans who had become creditors of the United States Congress began to worry that they'd never see their money back, and so they began to lobby for a more powerful federal government that would be able to pay its debts by imposing taxes.
As one historian noted, The cause for a substantive constitutional remodelling of the Articles of Confederation came almost exclusively from major speculators, the urban, financial and commercial centres in the North and Southern planters and slave owners, whose states were a sectional minority in the Articles of Confederation, and whose slave-owning properties lacked adequate safeguards under the existing framework.
However, despite the strong push of the one percenters of the time, the 5% federal import tax amendments of 1781 and 1783 were both rejected.
Indeed, back then, and in light of what started the revolution, a mere 5% import, not income, tax was a very controversial proposition, because the power to levy taxes would give the central government a huge amount of power, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1780.
All imposts upon commerce ought to be laid by Congress and appropriated to their use.
For without certain revenues, a government can have no power.
That power, which holds the purse strings absolutely, must rule." Hamilton, a fervent Federalist who served as an aide-de-camp or field assistant to George Washington during the war, would soon become one of America's founding fathers and the chief architect of the country's financial system.
The Federalists, as those who favoured the creation of a strong federal government came to be known, were becoming increasingly desperate, especially when the threat of England began fading into the horizon and as the war was coming to an end.
In 1782, Robert Morris, the Superintendent of Finance and one of the wealthiest men in the United States, stopped paying the army to allegedly alleviate the young nation's crushing debt burden.
Morris considered housing and food to be sufficient until the war ended and the economy regained its footing.
Not surprisingly, by the end of the year, the soldiers' patience had run out, prompting Major General Alexander McDougal to ride into Philadelphia on behalf of the Army encamped at Newburgh to petition Congress to reinstate military pay.
Proponents of the federal tax amendment seized upon the Army's discontent as an opportunity to advance their agenda, and Federalists like Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris embarked on the dangerous path of stoking the officers' resentment, thus threatening anti-Federalists in Congress with the possibility of a military coup d'etat.
If you don't pass the tax amendment, how are you going to pay these soldiers?
And if you don't pay the soldiers, they may come after you.
They're going to do you a favor.
Don Corleone could learn a lot from the subtle mafia style of early American politics, which is not wildly contrasted by the not-so-subtle mafia style of later American politics.
It was a plan fraught with peril, but the conspirators executed it masterfully, and Washington was to play a crucial role.
So Hamilton sent a letter to Washington, who was still Commander-in-Chief at the time, asking him to use his vast influence and act as a peacemaker by putting out the fire that the Federalists themselves were starting.
Historian Richard Cohn describes the difficult position the General was put in.
On the one hand, he could in no sense compromise Congress's jurisdiction over the military.
On the other hand, the officers' temper had turned so ugly and so directly in conflict with civil authority that a refusal to stand on their side, perhaps any counsel of moderation, might cost him his position and authority.
Yet Washington never wavered.
He was certain that the sensible and discerning part of the army could scarcely be unacquainted with his faithful service.
That by the sheer power of his personality and the officers' almost filial devotion to their commander, he could continue, as he wrote Hamilton, to hold them within the bounds of reason and moderation.
Washington was kept in the dark regarding the full extent of the Federalist plan, but he was given enough hints to puzzle out that soldiers are to be made use of as mere puppets to establish continental funds, and that rather than not succeed in this measure or weaken their ground, they, the Federalists, would make a sacrifice of the army and all its interests.
The Commander-in-Chief later advised against playing such dangerous double games because the Army, considering the irritable state it is in, its sufferings and composition, is a dangerous instrument to play with.
When the tensions between the Army and Congress reached a boiling point, it was time for Washington to make a grand entrance and put on a great show.
In a famous speech before a handful of high-ranking officers, Washington expressed his shock and disappointment in the mutinous sentiments within the Army.
He proposed a peaceful course of action that would better serve military interests and even demonstrate to the whole world that the last stage of perfection in humanity has not been reached yet.
However, the appeal didn't achieve the desired effect.
No one knew better than Washington, a devotee of the theater and admirer of action, that his speech had turned few heads.
Washington, a polished actor himself, the best he had ever observed in his quarter-century in public life, John Adams once noted, seized the moment with his final gesture.
Washington pulled out a letter from a congressman, a letter filled with empty promises, but appeared to have difficulty reading it.
He reached into his coat once more, pulled out a pair of glasses, put them on, and, in a soft voice that resonated despair and fatigue, apologized to his audience.
Gentlemen, you must pardon me.
I have grown grey in your service, and now find myself growing blind.
While his previous speech did not move the hearts of the officers, this simple gesture reduced the battle-hardened men to tears.
All fire and zeal and all defiance evaporated in a flash, wrote one historian.
After he finished reading the letter, Washington left the room without a word.
His job was done.
Ferling writes, Washington had followed the script that Hamilton had prepared for him, and in a dazzling performance he had snuffed out the officers' conspiracy at Newburgh, reinforced the principle that in America the military remained subservient to civil rule, and solidified his reputation.
Many would now see him as the leader who had saved the American Revolution from the menace of a standing army and treacherous officers.
Even some who had never been sold on Washington's merits as a general now saw him in a different light.
More than ever he was seen as a leader to be cleaved to.
So it's a challenge, right?
You go to war against the British saying we're going to liberate you from foreign taxation.
In so doing you create an enormous debt and then you have to raise taxes higher than they were before under the British in order to pay off the cost of freeing yourself from taxation means you have to raise taxes higher.
The Federalists ultimately achieved their goal.
George Washington's fame soared to new heights and the soldiers got what they wanted.
The fact that the young country had come perilously close to becoming a military dictatorship because of the zeal of the Federalists and the issue of taxes remains a topic that a handful of historians occasionally bring up.
Hamilton's plan may have ended in a bloodbath if it wasn't for the shining image of the beloved Commander-in-Chief.
Time and again, Washington demonstrated that his mythologized character serves an important political purpose, and so the presidency was the logical next step in his career.
Indeed, even while the battle over the ratification of the new Constitution of the United States raged on, he privately mused over whether to accept the inevitable proposals to become President.
When a torrent of proposals eventually came along, it took him months to finally accept them.
That Washington delayed his acceptance for so long was largely theatre by the consummate actor, but not entirely self-serving, writes Ferling.
Part of his authority, his political capital, came from his image as one who did not seek power for himself, but who acted only to answer his country's call.
His show of reluctance served to reinforce this.
At the age of 57, Washington left the comfort of his plantation to resume his political career.
The results of the presidential election were entirely predictable.
He became the only president in the history of the United States to have received 100% of the electoral votes.
While his victories on the battlefield were rare and questionable, in politics he was unmatched by anyone.
One newspaper proclaimed before the election, Can Europe boast of such a man, or can the history of the world shew an instance of such a voluntary compact between the deliverer and the delivered of any country as will probably soon take place in the United States?
I think that's rhetorical.
Alas, if only this voluntary compact wasn't permeated by such entrenched mythology.
It should be noted that Washington was not the first president of the United States.
He was the first president under the current U.S.
Constitution.
John Hansen, Washington's predecessor, was elected president under the Articles of Confederation.
While this may seem like a small technicality, the powerful symbolism of the phrase first president shouldn't be underestimated from a psychological standpoint.
President Washington didn't take a very active role in the establishment of the new government.
He often felt unfit for the presidency because of his lack of legal training, which prevented him from discussing matters that pertained to the Constitution.
Furthermore, his lack of knowledge of economics also presented a challenge given the pressing issue of public debt in the post-war period.
He wrote, I am so little conversant in public securities of every kind as to not know the use or value of them and hardly the difference of one species from another.
And that was the year before he became president.
Nevertheless, Washington did leave his mark on several important events that took place during his two terms as president.
Historians have often viewed George Washington and the question of slavery or how Not all men are created equal.
In the negative, they examine what the President didn't do, and perhaps what he should have done.
A brief history of Washington's background with slavery is in order before we continue to explore this subject.
George Washington became a slave owner at a very young age.
He inherited 10 slaves from his father when he was 11 years old.
Throughout his life as a planter, slaves continued to play an essential role in the operation of his business.
He was pretty harsh by many reports.
Richard Parkinson, an Englishman who lived near Mount Vernon, often reported, or once reported that, it was the sense of all of his neighbors that he treated his slaves with more severity than any other man.
Again, there's that repressed rage thing, right?
Washington referred to his slaves as a species of property and used harsh punishment against them, including whippings.
He also, on several occasions, sold slaves to a buyer in the West Indies, which meant that the slave would never again see his family or friends.
In April 1781, 17 of Washington's slaves escaped to a British warship, where they were technically free.
Washington's personal assistant also planned to escape with his fiancée, but his plans were discovered and thwarted.
Washington's family cook, Hercules, did escape successfully.
When a Polish poet visited the Washington estate in 1789, he was startled by the poor conditions in which Washington's slaves lived.
Quote, We entered some negro's huts, where their habitations cannot be called houses.
They are far more miserable than the poorest of the cottages of our peasants.
The husband and his wife sleep on a miserable bed, the children on the floor.
A very poor chimney, a little kitchen furniture amid the misery, a tea kettle and cups, A boy, about 15, was lying on the floor with an attack of dreadful convulsions.
They receive a cotton jacket and a pair of breeches yearly.
A Washington scholar noted that most of the slaves who worked Washington's farms he treated as cattle and referred to only by their first names.
What is interesting that today at Mount Vernon, Washington's estate, which has been preserved as a historical site, a well-built basement space made to represent slave quarters has been well furnished.
Indeed, the whitewashing of history is often in full effect when it comes to President Washington.
Now, during his presidency, Washington, of course, moved to Philadelphia, which subjected him to a very interesting law, Pennsylvania's Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, which postulated that slaves who lived in the state for longer than six months were automatically set free.
What did he do?
Well, to circumvent this law, he moved his slaves outside the state every six months.
And he wrote to his personal secretary, I request that these sentiments and this advice may be known to none but yourself and Mrs. Washington.
So, in order to maintain his slaves, he just moved them out and moved them back in.
Washington also signed the first Fugitive Slave Law in 1793.
So, before this, if you made it to a free state, like an enslaved state, as a slave, then you would be free, or at least you couldn't be seized.
The Fugitive Slave Law meant fleeing slaves could be seized in any state, and harboring or assisting a fugitive cost a $500 penalty and potential imprisonment.
So very harsh.
In 1793 to 1794, Washington authorized $400,000 and 1,000 weapons for the slave owners of the French colony of what would later be called Haiti, so that they could put down a slave rebellion.
In May of 1796, a heartbreaking story, Ona Judge, a 22-year-old slave woman who'd been with the Washingtons since she was 15 and was the personal maid of Martha Washington, escaped from the president's house in Philadelphia.
And she fled.
She overheard Martha Washington planning to give her away to her granddaughter as a wedding gift.
Ona Judge ended up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which was a virtually slave-free city with 360 free blacks.
Then she got married, she had three children.
Of course, legally, both she and her children still belonged to Martha Washington.
Washington was hot on her tail, pursued her for three years, sending relatives, friends, and officials to find and seize her.
Even twelve weeks before he died, he was still directing her capture.
Now in his will, Washington directed that his slaves be emancipated after the death of his wife.
He's a smart guy.
You've got to wonder how well he liked his wife.
So she's surrounded by all these slaves who desperately want to be free, and the only thing standing between the Washington slaves and their freedom is the pulse of Martha Washington.
I'm not sure she would have slept too soundly.
Hey!
Who's that?
I'm coming to free myself!
So she actually freed them in 1800.
She was fearing for her life, of course.
Now, of course, Washington didn't have any biological children to give his slaves to, so the fact that he emancipated them, he also was aware that value of slaves was diminishing because of more automation and better procedures in farming.
Now, George Washington's wife, Martha Washington, lived until 1802, willed all of her slaves to her inheritors, emancipating none.
Now, some of the land that the Washingtons inherited had slaves that they could not legally sell, so there's that aspect as well.
There's evidence that George Washington took teeth from his slaves, paying them about a third the going rate.
And, of course, if you're a slave, you don't really have a lot of economic independence.
George Washington paid for, whether the teeth were extracted or fell out, probably extracted, Taking teeth from your slaves while throwing them a couple of coins.
Seems a little brutal to me.
The first bank of the United States.
Ah, into the land of central banking and fiat currency, a big topic.
But we'll keep it brief here.
Thank you for your patience.
Washington displayed a rather unusual vigor when it came to the Residence Act of 1790, which set a loose boundary in the Federal District along the Potomac River for where the new capital of the United States would be situated, but allowed the President to choose the precise location.
Washington immediately asked Congress to revise the Act and move the boundary slightly to the south, so that it would encompass land that he owned.
His search for the best side of the capital was so transparently dictated by his self-interest that it aroused whispers at the time, although no one dared speak out.
However, Washington's request overlapped with another piece of legislation which made his goal a lot harder to achieve.
Alexander Hamilton, now a Secretary of the Treasury, wanted to replicate the British mercantilist economic system in the United States, and his plan included the creation of a central bank modeled after the Bank of England.
This is basically giving the government monopoly over currency and the capacity to create currency at will.
While Washington deferred to Hamilton in most matters of governance, he didn't like the central bank proposal, and neither did James Madison or Thomas Jefferson.
Like many 18th century people, the president was deeply suspicious of the banking industry.
Hamilton's central bank would issue paper currency and inflate the money supply, both of which were policies that Washington strongly opposed, at least in principle.
Before he became President, he wrote to the former Deputy Governor of Rhode Island, quote, After Congress eagerly passed the bank bill, those who opposed it put their hope in Washington's presidential veto.
However, their hopes were soon crushed.
It took Washington over a week, but he finally signed the bill into law.
fraud and injustice.
After Congress eagerly passed the bank bill, those who opposed it put their hope in Washington's presidential veto.
However, their hopes were soon crushed.
It took Washington over a week, but he finally signed the bill into law.
What happened?
The president found himself at the intersection point of the vested interests surrounding the bank bill and the Residence Act.
As one historian noted, Disgusted to see the federal district placed so far south and anxious to see the bank bill passed, northern senators ominously deferred Washington's request.
For the first time ever, Congress withheld one act to pressure the executive into signing another.
To avoid a setback fatal to the Potomac, Washington approved the bank.
Within hours of getting what it wanted, the Senate obligingly modified the federal district's boundaries.
So Washington wanted to increase the value of his lands, by having the capital closer to his lands or on his lands, and they withheld that bill until he signed the banking bill, and then he signed it so to increase the value of his lands he set in motion central banking.
Many years later, John Adams complained that Washington had profited from the federal city by which he raised the value of his property and that of his family a thousand percent at an expense of the public of more than his whole fortune.
But what was the cost of Washington's lucrative profit?
The first bank of the United States, which the bank bill established, was considered unconstitutional by many, and it set the stage for the development of the country's financial instruments all the way up to the present Federal Reserve System.
The new bank immediately started issuing millions of dollars in paper money, and the resulting inflation caused a 72% price increase in the span of just five years.
Right, so this led all the way to the Federal Reserve, instituted in 1913.
Central banking paved the way for America's entry into the First World War.
And America's entry in the First World War, which was papered over with currency printed by the Federal Reserve, allowed for England and France to decisively crush Germany.
As Germany was being decisively crushed, it sent Lenin through Finland to overthrow the Romanovs and establish The Communist dictatorship in Russia.
See, I told you I was going to get there!
You didn't believe me, did you?
Now you see.
More importantly, the lessons of what happened with the Continental, the dollar, were quickly forgotten now that politicians could pay their debts with inflated money.
Another landmark event during Washington's presidency was the Whiskey Rebellion.
Good name for a band, too.
On the day prior to proposing the bank bill, Hamilton urged a tax on distilled spirits, the whiskey tax.
It was the first tax that the new government imposed on a domestic product, and it turned into the spark that started a fire.
The tax proposal was approved by Congress despite the fact that, as Washington recalled, it was vehemently affirmed by many that such a law could never be executed in the southern states.
Get between a Southern man and his whiskey, and you have a Southern man hole-shaped size between you and the whiskey.
Indeed, given that the Tea Act of 1773 triggered a war with Great Britain, it didn't take an oracle to foretell that hostilities would erupt over the excise whiskey tax of 1791.
After a trip to the South, Washington became convinced That the tax will be carried into effect not only without opposition, but with very general approbation in those very parts where it was foretold that it would never be submitted to by anyone.
Like, this tax isn't going to cause any problems.
He was wrong.
I'm sure he blamed a general.
Outrage over the tax reached a crescendo within three years after a series of attacks on tax collectors.
Hamilton argued, a competent force of militia should be called forth and employed to suppress the insurrection and support the civil authority in effectuating obedience to the laws and the punishment of offenders.
It appears to me that the very existence of government demands this course and that a duty of the highest nature urges the civil magistrate to pursue it, the Constitution and laws of the United States contemplate and provide for it.
Washington agreed with this proposal, and in August 1794, issued a proclamation couched in language that was remarkably similar to that used by George III in 1775, when he proclaimed that his American subjects were in rebellion.
History, it's the same damn story over and over again, just with different costumes and mildly varied accents.
Riding at the head of about 13,000 militiamen, an army only slightly smaller than the forces he commanded at Yorktown, Washington headed for Pennsylvania, which he declared to be in a state of open rebellion.
The rebels fled at the sight of the army and the conflict ended without bloodshed.
So, how's that anti-tax movement working out for you?
Fully noted, Washington's use of force to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion won the approval of most citizens, the lion's share of whom not only deplored the violence of the tax resistors, but in a country in which three-fourths of the party-affiliated press consisted of Federalist newspapers, obtained most of their information about the affair from prejudicial sources.
See, even back in the day, hundreds of years ago, the press The quelling of the Whiskey Rebellion set an important precedent in the history of the United States and the similarities between how the British and the Americans handled an insurrection over taxes should give anyone pause.
If history seems to repeat itself, it's because we so staunchly resist its lessons.
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force.
This quote is frequently misattributed to George Washington, but it's still pretty important to note in light of what the Pennsylvania farmers went through.
If you don't pay your taxes, 13,000 guys will arrive with swords and muskets.
And they ain't there to chat.
Washington is often praised for his non-partisan approach to politics, but in reality he was a staunch Federalist and aligned himself with other supporters of the idea of a strong central government.
The man in charge of the central government was very keen on us.
This eventually drove a wedge in his relationship with both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Ah, non-partisan, it's so weird.
You're supposed to be voting for viable alternatives, but then, when one of those viable alternatives, who aren't supposed to be mirror images of each other, gets in power, somehow they're supposed to both act the same way, and it's called non-partisan.
It's completely bizarre.
Well, there's food, see, and there's poison.
You gotta choose between one.
You choose the food, okay, now it's supposed to act like a poison.
Which it does.
By the end of his second term, Washington was worn out physically and emotionally due to his advanced age and the increasing tension between the two political factions in American politics.
Even though most of the media at the time, three-fourths, was controlled by the Federalists, Washington was still receiving a lot of criticisms for his political decisions.
As one historian noted, The anti-federalist Republican public attacks were vicious and lacerating.
As Washington himself said, they assailed him in such exaggerated terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket.
When he retired as president in 1797, Republican congressmen, including Andrew Jackson, refused to thank him for his services.
Republican legislators of his own Virginia debated his wisdom and patriotism, and the nation's chief Republican editor called for a jubilee of rejoicing.
That the name of Washington from this day ceases to give currency to political iniquity and to legalize corruption!
Such criticism followed him into retirement at Mount Vernon.
Ah, there's nothing better than being venerated.
Because, you know, when you're worshipped, There's never a backlash ever, is there?
People never get mad at you for their own irrational veneration of you.
So, for a man who was obviously very concerned with his public image, the presidency was, in fact, only hurting his legacy.
So, thank you for making it to the conclusion.
Washington died at home on December 14, 1799, too lazy to make it to the next century, with his family surrounding his deathbed.
His second term as president had ended two years earlier, and having achieved the status of demigod, he returned to the ordinary life of a planter awaiting the end of his life.
But even though the man expired, his legend lived on.
Historian John Ferling concluded his semi-biographical treatise on George Washington with a very poignant observation.
What is most remarkable about Washington's ascent is that he emerged an unsurpassed hero from two wars in which he committed dreadful, even spectacular blunders, and was personally responsible for only marginal successes.
Much of the aura that surrounded Washington in life and death, in particular the perception of his masterful generalship, reluctance to hold power, and lofty disinterestedness on partisan issues, was mythological.
But nation builders know that legendary heroes and mythical tales are essential for the creation and maintenance of their realm.
Otherwise, the very idea of nationhood is likely to seem to many to be only a delusion.
They also knew that the iconic Washington was as indispensable in death as he had been in life.
Fusing myth and reality, George Washington was made the template for the virtues and character that supposedly were necessary for assuring national ascendancy.
Although Fröhling speaks from the perspective of a student of history, he's also making a very political, or apolitical, depending on how you view it, statement.
There's a myth, a lie, at the core of every country.
A fundamental falsehood embedded in the ideas that legitimize governments.
But what is this falsehood?
In 1786, George Washington wrote that mankind left to themselves are unfit for their own government.
How then can he justify his governance of other people?
Is he not part of the mankind he speaks of?
This obvious contradiction is hidden away in the act of mythologizing a person, a leader.
By elevating George Washington above mankind, by creating a hero, the founders of America legitimized their rule above the common, ordinary people.
To rule over mere mortals who are unfit to rule themselves, you must create divinity.
Falsehoods precipitate exploitation, and mythology is often the vehicle for the most dangerous falsehoods humanity has ever invented.
There are many lessons that we can draw from the life and myth of George Washington.
In my work with other historical figures, Gandhi, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela, and so on, And the truth about series as a whole, I have striven to demythologize heroes and illuminate the lies that create them, so that you, my listeners, my watchers, my friends, can live happier and more fulfilling and more powerful lives.
When we take down false idols, we make room for ourselves to become Real heroes in life and to contribute in a positive and meaningful way to the great unfolding story of mankind.
When we look up, we feel smaller.
When we look level, we grow into greatness.
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