By Ron Chernow.
Continuing on the Hamiltrain, here’s the flip side: reading the Washington biography. I’ll admit I liked this one a little more, as somehow the author makes you REALLY feel the shit that Washington was going through. I find battles very hard to follow, but this book made the action going on pretty clear to me, and that’s Saying Something. (Holy shit, were the Continental Army screwed for most of that, it’s amazing they won AT ALL.) You get a good view of Washington’s good points and bad points and the various dramas going on around him. So, good job!
I’ll just start summarizing the interesting bits here:
Washington on being painted:
“As a portraitist, the garrulous Stuart had perfected a technique to penetrate his subjects’ defenses. He would disarm them with a steady stream of personal anecdotes and irreverent wit, hoping that this glib patter would coax them into self-revelation. In the taciturn George Washington, a man of granite self-control and a stranger to spontaneity, Gilbert Stuart met his match. From boyhood, Washington had struggled to master and conceal his deep emotions. When the wife of the British ambassador later told him that his face showed pleasure at his forthcoming departure from the presidency, Washington grew indignant: “You are wrong. My countenance never yet betrayed my feelings!” He tried to govern his tongue as much as his face: “With me it has always been a maxim rather to let my designs appear from my works than by my expressions.”
Later, Washington allowed various members of the Peale family to paint him at once—five of them—and Charles Stuart walked by and saw the sight and expressed his shock to Martha, saying he was in a “perilous situation.” “You who know how much he has suffered when only attended by one, can judge of the horrors of his situation.”
There's one story about how Washington was getting a life mask made and he was flat on his back with plaster on his face. Martha walked in and started screaming, and he was amused enough to smile a bit--which was evident in the bust.
Washington's mother:
Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington, was a super unpleasant woman who never, ever, ever, ever stopped bitching him out for anything or any reason. "With more to brag about than any other mother in American history, she took no evident pride in her son’s accomplishments.” The author posits that's why Washington learned to control his tongue. There's bits like "Washington was cancelling a vital military meeting to mollify his overwrought mother." She whined that he deserted her for the military, would make crazy demands for him to pick stuff up while on military campaigns (and he'd be all "we don't have any of that here," basically). Also, "Everyone in the colony seemed to cheer on George Washington as a bona fide hero except his own mother." At one point she writes to the Virginia assembly saying she needs an emergency pension because guess what, her son has abandoned her. Washington has to explain how well his mother is actually set up and tell them not to do anything.
There's a lot of fun bits about how Washington addressed letters and what they meant about how much he liked you or not at the time. His letters to his mother were addressed to "Honored Madam" and ended in "Your most Dutiful and Obedient Son, George Washington." He apparently didn't write her during the entire war, but set her up with money.
Washington on writing personal letters:
“He had powerful ways of communicating his likes and dislikes, though subtle gradations of tone. With strangers or acquaintances, he addressed letters to “Sir.” As he warmed up, he wrote to them as “Dear Sir,” and when he grew very close, they were favored with “My Dear Sir.” He was no less artful in closing letters. If he went from signing “Humble Obedient Servant” to “Affectionate Obedient Servant,” the recipient had made a major leap forward in his emotions.”
For those of you wondering about the line in Hamilton about "I led my men straight into a massacre and witnessed their deaths firsthand," that's Fort Necessity. Added bonus: the French found Washington's diary, published it, and made fun of it.
On marital life (at least at the start):
“The newlyweds were by no means prudish. In his first postnuptial order to London, George ordered four ounces of Spanish fly, a popular aphrodisiac prepared from dried beetles. At some point that year, he also drew up a list of books inherited from the Custis estate that may disclose something of the amorous interests of Daniel and Martha Custis, or perhaps of Daniel’s father. The couple possessed a copy of Conjugal lewdness: or matrimonial whoredom by Daniel Defoe and The lover’s watch: or the art of making love by Aphra Behn.”
On ambition:
“Washington believed that ambitious men should hide their true selves, retreat into silence, and not tip people off to their ambition. To sound out people, you had to feign indifference and proceed only when convinced that they were sympathetic and like-minded. The objective was to learn the maximum about other people’s thoughts while revealing the minimum about your own. Always fearful of failure, Washington wanted to push ahead only if he was armed with detailed knowledge and enjoyed a high likelihood of success.” Later: “The only way he could proceed, it seemed, was to show extreme reluctance to become president, then be swept along by others.” He couldn’t ask for advice from anyone about whether or not to be president, Hamilton and Lafayette advised him to go for it.
Here's how Washington's first political campaign for the House of Burgesses went: it was advantageous for candidates if the first voters favored them, so he planted the idea in the sheriff's mind to mention his voters first. "If Washington took an ethical shortcut here, he wanted to keep up appearances and pretend that he wasn’t.” He won. "Washington, feigning aristocratic indifference to the outcome, told a visitor a few weeks later, “I deal little in politics.” Uh-HUH, sir.
On his paid employees:
“On one occasion he capitulated to the drinking of a talented gardener whose sprees he agreed to tolerate so long as the man confined them to certain holidays. In his employment contract, Washington stated that he would be given “four dollars at Christmas with which to be drunk four days and four nights; two dollars at Easter, to effect the same purpose; two dollars at Whitsuntide to be drunk for two days; a dram in the morning and a drink of grog at dinner at noon.” It was typical of Washington’s thoroughness to pin down such an agreement in writing.”
After Washington's best men quit his Cabinet, he had a very hard time getting new ones, and those he got to shop around from were mediocre at best. After the next secretary of state gets busted for treason, Washington had five guys turn down the job and he only got someone for it by making his secretary of war do it...and then it took three other tries to get a new secretary of war.
On slavery:
At one point Washington had a run in with a slave boy named Darby Vassall. “In a friendly manner, Washington expressed interest in taking him into his service, but Darby, imbued with the spirit of liberty, asked what his pay would be. At that interjection, Washington evidently lost interest. “General Washington was no gentleman,” Darby later said, “to expect a boy to work without wages.” Hahahahahaha.
In Pennsylvania, any adult slaves resident in the state for six consecutive months were automatically free. While living in Philadelphia, Washington would shuffle his slaves back and forth to Mount Vernon to prevent their freedom and made up excuses for it. A fellow named Hercules got told about it and he claimed to be horrified that people would suspect him of escaping. Later, guess what, Hercules escaped! Washington was grumbly that he’d vowed to not buy any more slaves and then had to come up with some way to get a new cook. He ended up hiring an English widow.
Quote from Dr. David Stuart, second husband of Jacky Custis’s widow: “Their support costs a great deal; their work is worth little if they are not whipped; the [overseer] costs a great deal and steals into the bargain. We would all agree to free these people, but how to do it with such a great number?”
Washington could only free the slaves he owned outright, but any inherited from the Custis estate he couldn’t because they would go to his step-grandson Washy after Martha’s death. (And some from both groups were intermarried.) Meanwhile, at least 47 slaves of their at least tried to escape, I'm not sure how many made it of that number.
After George freed his slaves (or more specifically, they'd be freed after Martha's death), Martha was afraid she was going to get murdered so all of the slaves could go free. She overheard talk in the slaves quarters about that, and at one point there was an attempt to set fire to Mt Vernon. Martha freed the slaves herself a year after George’s death.
On parenting:
Washington was a good dad to his stepkids and later step-grandkids, but unfortunately both his stepson Jacky and step-grandson Washy were flaky rich layabouts who didn't care about college. Jacky wanted to elope as a teenager and they eventually caved in because well, at least she's a nice girl.
Washington tended to do really well in inheritances. It's specifically pointed out that when his stepdaughter Patsy died of epilepsy, the inheritance allowed him to join the war effort without financial difficulties and let him forego a salary, and Martha was able to join him for half the year instead of nursemaiding. "Patsy Custis’s death, paradoxically, set up George and Martha Washington for their shining moment in history.”
On Washington being broke-ass almost all the time:
He was usually broke due to poor crops, people owing him money he couldn't collect on, couldn't sell his land, had a ton of slaves and family members living off of him...Washington was the first American celebrity other than Ben Franklin, and he constantly had people showing up to his house that he had to feed. He had to take a loan to actually GO to be president, had to give in and take a salary.
After the war he came home around Christmas and didn't have a meal alone with his wife until the end of June. He would do things like post inadequate signs indicating the way to his house.
On reputation:
After Washington is appointed commander in chief of the army, he says to Patrick Henry: “Remember, Mr. Henry, what I now tell you: from the day I enter upon the command of the American armies, I date my fall, and the ruin of my reputation.” Henry reported that he was crying when he said it. Yeah...I don't think that went the way he thought.
OMG SERIOUSLY THE CONTINENTAL ARMY WAS SO SCREWED HOW DID THEY EVER WIN?!
"At first he was told that he had 308 barrels of powder, only to learn from Brigadier General John Sullivan that the actual number was 36, a risible nine pounds per man. When he conveyed this stunning news to Washington, Sullivan recalled, the general
“did not utter a word for half an hour.”
He couldn’t defend himself without citing how few men and supplies he had, but that would alert the enemy to his weaknesses, so he had to appear confident.
“For the rest of his life, Washington remained the prisoner of roles that forced him into secrecy and evasion, accentuating an already reticent personality.”
“When General Howe herded 300 destitute Bostonians, riddled with disease, onto boats and dumped them near American lines, Washington feared that they carried smallpox; he sent them humanitarian provisions while carefully insulating them from his troops. After a second wave of 150 sickly Bostonians were expelled, Washington grew convinced that Howe had stooped to using smallpox as a “weapon of defense” against his army. By January 1777 he ordered Dr. William Shippen to inoculate every soldier who had never had the disease.” OMG BIOLOGICAL WARFARE ALREADY!
Later he also “circulated the fiction that he possessed eighteen hundred barrels of powder-an early American case of a successful disinformation campaign.” He only told the speaker of the Mass. House of Rep. that they had so little powder. Even worse, trigger happy Virginia riflemen were just shooting at random for fun. Washington issued a general order to stop doing that, but didn’t mention the waste of ammo.“Rochambeau was secretly appalled at the minute size of Washington’s army and the bankruptcy of American credit. “Send us troops, ships, and money,” he wrote home, “but do not depend on these people nor upon their means; they have neither money nor credit; their means of resistance are only momentary and called forth when they are attacked in their own homes.”
On Henry Knox:
Henry Knox was probably Washington's best friend for most of his life, but this changes later. In general, Washington preferred young new shiny guys, and had a shortage of good generals around at the time. However, Knox was basically AWOL during the Whiskey Rebellion and by the time he was willing to show up, Washington was “banishing the secretary of war from the largest military operation to unfold since the Revolutionary War.” That pretty much ended the friendship and Knox took the hint and resigned to “Sir.” Washington addressed him as “Sir” right back and didn’t beg him to stay. At the end of his term in office, he did write Knox a condolence note for the loss of his three children though and called Knox one of his few intimates.
On Washington's military strategy:
“His belief that wildly audacious moves sometimes work because they seem too preposterous for the enemy to credit.” Washington’s military strategy as summarized to John Adams: “time, caution, and worrying the enemy until we could be better provided with arms and other means and had better disciplined troops to carry it on.”
CHARLES LEE! Oh my god, this guy's even more of a douche! Total douche!
“Haughty, imperious, and overflowing with opinions, Lee seldom had a kind word for anyone’s military talents except his own.” He claimed he wasn’t interested in being commander in chief-uh-HUH. He was constantly insulting Washington behind his back.
Washington made the mistake of confiding in his adjutant general, Joseph Reed, about various things. Unfortunately, Reed wasn't as fond of him and said so to Charles Lee, When Washington was sending a letter to Lee begging him to bring his brigades from New York to help defend New Jersey, Joseph Reed added a secret note of his own saying that Washington’s staff had lost faith in him and thought he was vacillating. He told Lee to go to Congress and form a new plan. Washington later accidentally opened a letter from Lee to Reed and found out that (a) Lee’s going to disobey the order and send his men to someone else instead, and (b) quoted Reed’s thoughts on Washington’s “indecision.” Washington wrote Reed a letter with a copy of Lee’s enclosed, apologized for opening it accidentally, and didn't really say anything else besides pay my respects to your wife. Washington doesn’t talk directly with Reed about it ever. Reed tendered his resignation to Congress, but Washington got him to revoke it. They resume a civil if guarded relationship. Finally Reed brought it up and attempted to repair the relationship, but it took awhile for Washington to reconcile. He later signs a letter “your obedient and affectionate” George Washington, which is very warm for him!
Washington never told Lee about this incident and Lee’s behavior got worse and he still refused to send men. Washington finally began low-key campaign to discredit Lee, mentioning to John Hancock that he still hadn't heard from him after sending daily dispatches.
Lee spent the night with a hooker in Basking Ridge (he liked dirty hookers a lot, apparently), three miles from his army, and got caught by the British. Dude was forced to surrender in his slippers and nasty shirt, and the British wouldn't let him get a coat or hat. He requested that Washington send his dogs along to him! He spent 16 months in British captivity, which turned out to be far more fun than you'd think, since he got good food and wine and bed, and he gave General Howe a plan on how to win the war.
MONMOUTH! Washington deputized Lee to hold the offensive, Lee balked as the assignment was beneath his lofty dignity, fit only for a “young volunteering general,” so Washington handed it to Lafayette. Then Lee got all upset that Lafayette would get his glory and said he’d reconsidered. If he didn’t get the command, he’d be disgraced and might have to resign. Washington couldn’t afford a feud with his second in command on the eve of battle, so he put Lee in charge.
After fleeing, Lee claimed that Washington had nothing more to do in the battle than strip the dead and sent him out of the field when victory was assured. Lee waited on an apology from Washington for two days, then sent him a nasty letter. Washington usually had infinite patience and overlooked a lot of faults, but this is where he hit his limit. Lee guilty in a court martial and got suspended for a year.
Chernow says it's unclear if Washington tacitly sanctioned the Laurens/Lee duel-he opposed dueling, but it seems unlikely that Laurens and Hamilton would have defied Washington’s explicit wishes, and Washington felt gagged in responding to all the libel.
On surrogate sons:
Who's Washington's surrogate son? Not Hamilton, who was too proud for that sort of thing-nope, it was Lafayette, who he loved as his own son. Unfortunately, when Lafayette ended up in jail and his wife was begging Washington to get him freed, Washington couldn't afford to piss off the French Republic that hated Lafayette. He sent money instead.
Like the Hamilton book, there's a "Citizen Genet" chapter. That dude is still annoying.
On Washington's other enemies and rivals:
After the Conway Cabal incident (in which Thomas Conway and some others tried to get Washington ousted and failed), John Cadwalader shot Conway in the mouth and neck in a duel and bragged, “I have stopped the damned rascal’s lying anyway.” Conway survived and wrote a note (OF COURSE ALL HE COULD DO WAS WRITE A NOTE) of apologizing to Washington for what he did.
After trouncing the English at Saratoga and capturing 5,000 men, here's General Horatio Gates: “old England is not by this taught a lesson of humility, then she is an obstinate old slut.” Later he had his ass whooped at Camden, with 900 dead, 1000 taken prisoner, and Gates himself running away on horseback for 180 miles before stopping to report to Congress. Hamilton thought this was HILARIOUS and said, “One hundred and eighty miles in three days and a half. It does admirable credit to the activity of a man at his time of life.” Gates got removed from command too. No more rivals for Washington after that!
Oh lordy, Benedict Arnold again: Peggy Arnold's act continues to be priceless even in book two: Washington went up to her room and found "her dressing gown thrown open for easy viewing" (DOES THAT MEAN BOOBIES?!), she claims she has amnesia and can't recognize Washington, says spirits carried her husband to the ceiling... Chernow has some snark about this himself: “Blinded by chivalry, Washington, Hamilton, and Lafayette were duped by her lunatic ravings, if not aroused by her immodest getup.” Lafayette and Hamilton were pretty uh, turned on and easily impressed. “In dealing with Arnold’s wife, Washington and Hamilton left something to be desired as psychologists. The sudden onset of her madness and her exaggerated theatrics should have aroused their incredulity.”
Meanwhile, Arnold has the nerve to write Washington saying he did what he did because America was ungrateful and he's a better patriot than Washington, AND THEN ASKS HIM TO FORWARD ON HIS STUFF. Washington actually does send on his stuff, damn.
On Hamilton:
Hamilton's quitting Washington's service: he decided after his wedding that if he and Washington got into (another?) fight, he'd just end it there instead of picking a fight himself or making up after one. So the quitting incident comes from Hamilton making Washington wait for him for ten minutes, they had a two minute fight and it was over. Washington apologized, Hamilton declined, and then later wrote a snippy letter to his father-in-law claiming he and Washington hadn't been friends for 3 years and had opposite dispositions. Obviously, he gets over that later.
“As the contrasting behavior of Hamilton and Knox during the Whiskey Rebellion made clear, Washington warmed to Hamilton because the latter never let him down, never disappointed him, and always delivered in an emergency.”
In addition to being the Father Of His Country, Washington is also the Father of the American Mule.
As president, Washington held Tuesday afternoon events to deal with the stready stream of guests, but then he'd make it hard for them to ask him for anything.
Washington's favorite play was The School for Scandal, and he loved risque plays.
At one point Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton all went on a fishing trip together. I AM SO CURIOUS AND WANT LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA TO WRITE THIS SCENE, PLEASE.
On Jefferson:
Jefferson was convinced that Hamilton was a giant scammer and duping Washington--not really, they just agreed a lot. After "The Room Where It Happened" incident, Jefferson bitched that Hamilton duped him and “of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned me the deepest regret.” “Later Jefferson wrote how much he had hated doing battle with Hamilton in the cabinet, descending “daily into the arena like a gladiator to suffer martyrdom in every conflict.”
After Jefferson quit, Washington stopped calling him "My dear Sir" and switched to "Dear sir." To quote Chernow, “Thus did the subtle Washington consign ex-colleagues to slow oblivion.”Later, Jefferson wrote a snotty letter to Phillip Mazzei about Washington, and for whatever reason Mazzei had this published in an Italian newspaper, which finally got translated into French and English and got published in NYC. RUH-ROH. Washington never spoke to Jefferson again.
On other racial relations:
Washington’s “Address to the Cherokee Nation.” – “It was, in essence, telling the Indians that to survive they had to renounce their immemorial way of life—that is, cease to be Indians and become white men. At bottom lurked the unspoken threat that, if they flouted this advice, harm would follow.” Paging Sarah Vowell!
On John Jay:
People were so pissed off at the Jay Treaty that this following rhyme emerged:
“May it please your highness, I John Jay /Have traveled all this mighty way / to inquire if you, good Lord, will please, / to suffer me while on my knees, / to show all others I surpass / In love, by kissing of your _____.”
“By the July Fourth celebrations, Jay had been burned in effigy in so many towns that he declared he could have traversed the entire country by the glare of his own flaming figure.”
On James Monroe:
Washington hated James Monroe’s “A View of the Conduct of the Executive in the Foreign Affairs of the United States,” which Jefferson coached him through. Washington wrote nasty comments in the margins for sixty-six pages. Lines like “Self-importance appears here” and “Insanity in the extreme!”
The Adamses claimed that Washington left the house a pigsty and it was full of drunks. I doubt this, somehow.
Washington had a crush (probably not fulfilled all the way?) on his friend George's wife Sally Fairfax. Around the end of his life he writes her "the ultimate romantic compliment." What's that? “Washington had won a long war, founded a country, and created a new government, but such accomplishments paled beside the faded recollections of a youthful love affair.” Uh-HUH.
This book covers the Quasi-War again and how Washington wanted Hamilton as his right hand man again and how Adams hated this idea. "When Adams rattled off his three favorite generals, Pickering pointedly caviled at each one: Daniel Morgan, for having “one foot in the grave”; Horatio Gates, for being “an old woman”; and Benjamin Lincoln, for being “always asleep.” Adams claimed they’re still better than Hamilton. Meanewhile, Knox was totally miserable and hurt at being put below Hamilton, and Washington fudged the truth a little about putting Hamilton first because he had all those kids to support. Hey, remember how all of Knox's kids are dead? Awkward!
Giant paragraphs that sum up Washington in a nutshell:
"His military triumphs had been neither frequent nor epic in scale. He had lost more battles than he had won, had botched several through strategic blunders, and had won at Yorktown only with the indispensable aid of the French Army and fleet. But he was a different kind of general fighting a different kind of war, and his military prowess cannot be judged by the usual scorecard of battles won and lost. His fortitude in keeping the impoverished Continental Army intact was a major historical accomplishment. It always stood on the brink of dissolution, and Washington was the one figure who kept it together, the spiritual and managerial genius of the whole enterprise; he had been resilient in the face of every setback, courageous in the face of every danger. He was that rare general who was great between battles and not just during them. The constant turnover of his army meant that he continually had to start from scratch in training his men. He had to blend troops from different states into a functioning national force, despite deep ideological fears of a standing army. And before the French alliance, he had lacked the sea power that was all-important in defeating the British.
Seldom in history had a general been handicapped by such constantly crippling conditions. There was scarcely a time during the war when Washington didn’t grapple with a crisis that threatened to disband the Army and abort the Revolution. The extraordinary, wearisome, nerve-racking frustration he put up with for nearly nine years is hard to express. He repeatedly had to exhort Congress and the thirteen states to remedy desperate shortages of men, shoes, shirts, blankets, and gunpowder. This meant dealing with selfish, apathetic states and bureaucratic incompetence in Congress. He labored under a terrible strain that would have destroyed a lesser man. Ennobled by adversity and leading by example, he had been dismayed and depressed but never defeated…..Few people with any choice in the matter would have persisted in this impossible, self-sacrificing situation for so long. Washington’s job as commander in chief was as much a political as a military task, and he performed it brilliantly, functioning as de facto president of the country. His stewardship of the army had been a masterly exercise in nation building. In defining the culture of the Continental Army, he had helped to mold the very character of the country, preventing the Revolution from taking a bloodthirsty or despotic turn. In the end, he had managed to foil the best professional generals that a chastened Great Britain could throw at him.”“Washington’s catalog of accomplishments was simply breathtaking. He had restored American credit and assumed state debt; created a bank, a mint, a coast guard, a customs service, and a diplomatic corps; introduced the first accounting, tax, and budgetary procedures; maintained peace at home and abroad; inaugurated a navy, bolstered the army, and shored up coastal defenses and infrastructure; proved that the country could regulate commerce and negotiate binding treaties; protected frontier settlers, subdued Indian uprisings, and established law and order amid rebellion, scrupulously adhering all the while to the letter of the Constitution. During his successful presidency, exports had soared, shipping had boomed, and state taxes had declined dramatically. Washington had also opened the Mississippi to commerce, negotiated treaties with the Barbary states, and forced the British to evacuate their northwestern forts. Most of all he had shown a disbelieving world that republican government could prosper without being spineless or disorderly or reverting to authoritarian rule. In surrendering the presidency after two terms and overseeing a smooth transition of power, Washington had demonstrated that the president was merely the servant of the people.”
You know what, this is getting four stars.
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