They Made a Revolution by Jules Archer

Author:Jules Archer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sky Pony
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

The Disgusted General:

George Washington

The Father of his country was a most reluctant parent indeed. Even after the battle of Bunker Hill, every night at his New England headquarters he rose in the officers’ mess to toast the King. Independence, George Washington said firmly, was not desired “by any thinking man in all North America.”

Far from taking pride in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, he wrote his aide-de-camp, Joseph Reed, “Could I have foreseen what I have, and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command…. We are told that we shall soon get the army completed, but I have been told so many things which have never come to pass, that I distrust every thing.”

Nor was he overly fond of the Americans he was called upon to lead in battle. In August 1775 he wrote his cousin Lund Washington from Cambridge, “I daresay the men would fight very well (if properly officered) although they are an exceedingly dirty and nasty people.”

The miracle of George Washington is that he was on the side of the American radicals at all. One of the richest men in Virginia, a slave-holding aristocrat who dressed in the finest of fashion and most elegant of uniforms, calm and conservative in temperament, he properly belonged in the ranks of those John Adams derisively called the Cool Considerate Men.

But Britain’s violation of colonial rights offended his dignity as a Virginian, and in the end he proved more American patriot than British gentleman. When he did come over completely to the radical position of Independence as well as resistance, despite gloomy forebodings of disaster, no man fought for it more doggedly, intelligently, or courageously.

He was born at Bridges Creek, Virginia, on February 22, 1732. Contrary to popular opinion, he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father Augustin was a land-poor planter with a small four-room house on the Rappahannock in which George lived until he was fifteen.

His mother Mary Ball Washington was the second wife of his father, and by all accounts a tyrant of a woman. George’s half-brother Lawrence said he was “ten times more afraid” of her than of their father, terming her in awe a “majestic woman.”

Argumentative and illiterate, she constantly resented George’s career as he pursued it because she felt that it led him to neglect her.

At ease only when out from under her domination, young George escaped as often as he could by visiting friends and relatives. A strong, muscular boy who loved to climb mountains and wrestle, he enjoyed challenges to his physical endurance, despite—or perhaps because of—frequent bouts of illness.

His father died when he was eleven, and George was left under the guardianship of Lawrence. Three years later, tired of school and eager to master a man’s work, he asked Lawrence to persuade their mother to send him to England to study surveying. But Mary Washington flatly refused, nor would she permit George to join the British Navy.

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