Washington: A Life

by Ron Chernow

Washington believed that courage and cowardice originated from the top of an army. As he wrote during the American Revolution: “This is the true secret . . . that wherever a regiment is well officered, the men have behaved well—when otherwise, ill—the [misconduct] or cowardly behavior always originating with the officers, who have set the example.”

Washington’s code of leadership stipulated that, for maximum effect, the commander should be cordial but not too familiar, producing respect instead of affection. As one writer later summed up this strategy: “Power required distance, he seems to have reasoned, familiarity and intimacy eroded it.”

a regular practice of inoculating slaves against smallpox. The standard method was to scrape contaminated matter from the pustules of a victim with a mild case of smallpox, then slip it on a thread under the skin of the inoculated person. This produced a mild case of the disease,

No detail was too trivial to escape his notice, and he often spouted the Scottish adage “Many mickles make a muckle”—that is, tiny things add up.54

Washington exemplified the self-invented American, forever struggling to better himself and rise above his origins.

“the attention of the plebeians, whose unstable minds are agitated by every breath of novelty, whims, and nonsense.”

From the early 1760s till the time of his death, people imagined that George Washington was infinitely more prosperous than he was because they had no conception of his crippling debt.

Money was the one area where Washington tended to dodge personal responsibility and blame force majeure.

The tea tax wasn’t as punitive as is commonly supposed—the cost of tea to the colonists actually declined—but it threatened local merchants by eliminating smugglers and colonial middlemen, entrenching the East India Company’s monopoly. It also perpetuated the hated practice of taxation without representation.

In March Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill, shutting down the port of Boston until the townspeople reimbursed the East India Company for its lost tea. Along with other draconian measures that subverted the Massachusetts charter and clamped military rule on Boston, the harsh new laws were known as the Coercive Acts or “Intolerable Acts.”

Perhaps the most surprising resolution passed under Washington’s watchful eye was a plea to suspend the importation of slaves into Virginia, along with a fervent wish “to see an entire stop forever put to such a wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade.”10 It was the first time Washington had publicly registered his disgust with the system that formed the basis of his fortune.

Later on he had to muzzle his public views for the sake of continental harmony, but during the summer of 1774 he had no qualms about expressing open militance.

Remarkably, in this fierce letter he argued that the colonists should refrain from purchasing British imports, but not renege on paying debts owed to British creditors, “for I think, whilst we are accusing others of injustice, we should be just ourselves.”18 It was this steadfast sense of fairness, even at the most feverish political moments, that set George Washington apart.

Silas Deane said with admiration that Putnam was “totally unfit for everything” except fighting.

“When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen.”

Small wonder that Washington groaned that his life was “one continued round of annoyance and fatigue.”22

General Charles Lee couldn’t govern his temper. As one soldier recorded in his diary, “We was ordered to form a hollow square and General Lee came in and the first words was, ‘Men I do not know what to call you; [you] are the worst of all creatures,’ and [he] flung and cursed and swore at us.”

Washington knew the shortcomings of Martha’s education, and when she corresponded with intellectual women such as Mercy Warren, he or a secretary would draft her replies. There’s no evidence that Martha objected to this practice and may even have felt that it spared her embarrassment.

Without disclosing the exact nature of the impending operation, he warned his soldiers bluntly that “if any man in action shall presume to skulk, hide himself, or retreat from the enemy without the orders of his commanding officer, he will be instantly shot down as an example of cowardice.”

Few have experienc[e]d such care and attention from real parents as I have done. He best deserves the name of father who acts the part of one.”

He was always careful to separate the personal from the political, the man from the mission.

John Adams summed up the case succinctly: “In general, our generals have been outgeneralled.”

Fort Necessity—and

As in the Battle of Brooklyn, the Hessians took no prisoners and oversaw mass executions, shooting in the head dozens of young Americans who tried to surrender; one Hessian decapitated an American prisoner and posted his head on a pike.

Washington began to think creatively. He was now endowed with the clarity of despair, which unleashed his more aggressive instincts and opened his mind to unorthodox tactics.

Because of short enlistments, Washington had ten days to strike a mortal blow against the British; otherwise his troops would vanish into the woods. When Trenton residents reported to the Hessians rumors of an impending rebel attack, the foreign soldiers seemed incredulous. “We did not have any idea of such a thing,” said one Hessian, “and thought the rebels were unable to do so.”10

significantly retarded troop

On horseback, Washington was directing their movements when the hind legs of his horse buckled and began to skid down the ice-covered slope. His men then saw the greatest horseman of his age perform an equestrian tour de force. Twining his fingers through the horse’s mane, Washington yanked its large head upright with all his might. At the same time, he rocked and shifted his weight backward in his saddle until the horse regained its equilibrium. The amazing feat happened in the blink of an eye, then the artillery movement continued.

“Had he lived in the days of idolatry,” said a rhapsodic piece in the Pennsylvania Journal, Washington would have “been worshiped as a god.”

It’s worth noting that Washington didn’t see humans as passive actors and believed that God helped those who helped themselves:

retard

On that same day, in a magnificently gallant gesture, he sent Howe a two-line letter about a dog found roaming the Germantown battlefield. It said in full: “General Washington’s compliments to General Howe. He does himself the pleasure to return [to] him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the collar appears to belong to General Howe.”

Gates grew puffed up with his own power after the victory. If “old England is not by this taught a lesson of humility,” he told his wife, “then she is an obstinate old slut.”

Nor did he achieve popularity by coddling anyone, for he inflicted severe floggings on men caught stealing food. “The culprit being securely lashed to a tree or post receives on his naked back the number of lashes assigned to him by a whip formed of several small knotted cords, which sometimes cut through his skin at every stroke,” wrote Dr. James Thacher, who described how men survived this ordeal by biting on lead bullets—the origin of the term “biting the bullet.”

Always reluctant to resort to profanities, the chaste Washington cursed at Lee “till the leaves shook on the tree,” recalled General Scott. “Charming! Delightful! Never have I enjoyed such swearing before or since.”

Washington brusquely dismissed Lee’s reminder that he had opposed the attack in the first place: “All this may be very true, sir, but you ought not to have undertaken it unless you intended to go through with it!”

Lafayette later said of Washington’s encounter with Lee that “no one had ever before seen Washington so terribly excited; his whole appearance was fearful.”32 This was the temperamental side of Washington that he ordinarily kept well under wraps.

As in previous battles, Washington experienced narrow escapes. While he was deep in conversation with one officer, a cannonball exploded at his horse’s feet, flinging dirt in his face; Washington kept talking as if nothing had happened.

His fellow citizens, he thought, were too ready to glorify France, which had entered the war to damage Britain, not to aid the Americans.

“it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest.”

Then he made a comment that suggested how his wartime experience had dampened his general experience of things. When his “public duty” ended, he told Morris, “I may be incapable of . . . social enjoyments.”70

but we must consult our means rather than our wishes.”36

When Washington alerted Arnold that he would pass through the Hudson Valley on the way to Hartford—“I want to make my journey a secret,” Washington stressed—Arnold relayed this letter to his British accomplices, listing places Washington would spend the night.45 Had the letter not been delayed, Washington might well have been taken by the British.

Technically a British victory, the battle cost Cornwallis dearly: 532 dead and wounded soldiers, more than a quarter of his force. As Charles James Fox pointed out in Parliament, “Another such victory would ruin the British Army.”2

The poorly educated Mary sent him a thank-you letter in which she misspelled his name.

“Gentlemen, you must pardon me,” he said. “I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.”

The Americans are a curious, original people. They know how to govern themselves, but nobody else can govern them.”

As Benjamin Franklin told an English friend after the war, “An American planter was chosen by us to command our troops and continued during the whole war. This man sent home to you, one after another, five of your best generals, baffled, their heads bare of laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their employers.”38

In 1785 he conducted a frosty exchange with a slave whose arm was injured and in a sling. Washington didn’t see why the man couldn’t work. Grasping a rake in one hand and thrusting the other in his pocket, he proceeded to demonstrate one-handed raking. “See how I do it,” Washington said. “I have one hand in my pocket and with the other I work. If you can use your hand to eat, why can’t you use it to work?”41

In later years Jefferson stated that it had “always been believed” that some army officers, especially Steuben and Knox, had offered a crown to Washington and started the Cincinnati only when he rejected it, hoping the hereditary order would “be engrafted into the future frame of government and placing Washington still at the head.”2 There was no evidence whatsoever that Steuben and Knox ever contemplated such an offer.