I finally finished one of the great biographies of George Washington by Ron Chernow. Chernow is best know for his biography of Alexander Hamilton which inspired and was the basis for the Broadway musical Hamilton that he consulted for. This is the second biography I’ve finished by Chernow, the first being about John D. Rockefeller. I have to say that they have been two of the most enjoyable, and well-written biographies I’ve ever finished. Chernow is a master of bringing the subjects to life and letting you into the intricate details of their lives that give you a true sense of the person, without getting into anything too boring or mundane. He strikes a great balance between extreme details about their lives, while tying that to the big picture on how it affected them, or events surrounding them.
I’ve long wanted to learn more about Washington. I feel he’s one of those characters we learn about in school and all know the basics or the mystique of. We all know how respected he was and generally how he was chosen as the General to lead the Continental Army as well as elected the first President of the US, the “Father” of our country. But I’ve always wondered if much of the reverence for Washington was due to people looking through rose colored glasses at history, or lionizing him among some of the other Founders into a story to sell to the country. History often gets things wrong or is reinterpreted through the years to fit a particular narrative. I wanted to know the why and how behind the man in more detail.
Here are some things I either didn’t know, or were perhaps more crystallized for me about Washington.
Character & Personality
I would say that the character of the man and reputation that we all grew up hearing about Washington was absolutely true. Washington was a very dutiful man and a true servant of the country. When he was a young soldier, he perhaps had a bit of ego about him, but that seemed to fade the more he grew up into the man we learned about. Washington was very against bragging about himself, and would almost go out of his way to do the opposite or give no opinion on his actions. He preferred to let his actions speak for themselves. He didn’t really lobby for most of the positions we would come to know about him. He wanted to be General of the Continental Army, but again would not vocalize it, and wouldn’t lobby for it. And he was very humble in accepting the role saying that he hoped he would carry out the position with honor and excellence.
Washington was the type of General who was literally in the heat of battle with his men. He slept outside generally with them, taking on all of the same experiences, and was often begged by his captains to take cover and protect himself more, as he seemed unfazed exposing himself to great danger on a regular basis. He was also not above playing games with the common soldier, choosing to be around and socialize with them, but he also commanded great respect among the troops: they knew who the boss was at the end of the day, mainly because of the way Washington conducted himself and his actions of discipline, but also being inspiring to them by practicing what he preached so to speak. He didn’t ask them to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself, such as suffering through the horrible conditions, famine, and sickness at Valley Forge.
After the war, Washington wanted one thing: to retire to Mount Vernon and take care of his farm. He was begged to become the President of the Continental Congress, and begged to run for and become the first President of the country. He actually felt both of these were great burdens that he didn’t really want to do, but he acquiesced as most people convinced him that he was the only figure who most of the country would trust to be a neutral party and caretaker for the country. If he didn’t do it, then the new Constitution would have a really high chance of failing and the country dissolving. Washington wanted to resign the Presidency after 2 years to go back to Mount Vernon but kept getting convinced if he left, and didn’t run for a second term, that again the country would dissolve. Washington was a great believer that the Federal government had to be powerful, so he of course reluctantly (and mostly unhappily) stayed into and completed a second Term.
Washington was surprisingly a very passionate man as well. He wrote a lot of subtle and forthright love letters in his day. He loved to dance, and even as he was aging and was President, he loved being around younger women and would delight by dancing with every lady in the room for hours at parties. He of course would never think of cheating on his wife Martha though. He would also forthrightly tell friends that he loved them, and would sometimes cry in their presence, like at the last meeting of his officers after the Revolutionary War.
Washington was a very practical man and politician, preferring to hear both sides of an argument – actually more like all sides of an argument or debate, and then think on it for a LONG time. But once he had made a decision, he was all in in defending it or doing the things necessary to make the decision work. He was not much of a philosopher, but more of a practical decision maker. He was very humble, and would never say that he was the smartest man in the room. He preferred to surround himself with the smartest people he could find and ask them their opinions to form his own judgment. His humility shined throughout the biography.
The Burdens of Service
One of the most fascinating things I found I didn’t know was how burdensome running his plantation while trying to serve the country was. Washington actually wasn’t a very wealthy man even though he had inherited great wealth, land, and yes, slaves. The best analogy I can give for him would be the business owner today that has a business making $5M per year today, but the business say loses $500K per year or breaks even. And the business owner has to borrow money every year just to get by and never makes a profit. That was Washington. Mount Vernon was never very profitable but he had hundreds of slaves and other workers managing it. He had great trouble with planting, getting the right crops planted at the right times, figuring out how to rotate them etc. He also had vast dilapidation on Mount Vernon while he was at war for 8 years, and the 8 years of his Presidency, as the caretakers of course weren’t as disciplined as he would have been had he been there.
Washington also had other business needs that were quite costly. He had squatters on much of his other lands who refused to pay rents, and he spent significant amounts taking people to court to try to get money out of them. People who owed him money would pay him back in colonial coin that was eaten up by inflation during the war. After the war, a seeming endless flood of guests would show up out of the blue to be entertained by Washington at Mount Vernon and hear about the war, and these guests were extremely costly as Washington always took them in, fed them, and begrudgingly entertained them if possible for a day or two. He had almost no time to himself during this period and seemed to be frustratingly shelling out money to feed and entertain guests, run his farm, and collect on debts, usually unsuccessfully. Sometimes friends would ask him for loans and Washington would have to let them know that even though people thought he was rich, that he actually had no money, and would have to turn them away. Often though he would scrounge up a way to help people, like his mother, (whom he basically disliked and had a tense relationship with), who would write him begging for and complaining that she had no money. He often found a way to help people who asked for it.
The long and short is, Washington was a hard working man managing a large business that pretty much lost money or broke even every year, and the burdens of him serving the country as General and as the first President certainly didn’t help that at all. Many of the letters during his time as General and as President are him lamenting that the only thing he wanted to do was go back to Mount Vernon and live a peaceful life and take care of his farm. He somewhat dreaded the position he was in of having to serve while leaving his own happiness and business aside. Alas, the duty to the country called on him to begrudgingly serve and do the best he could.
Slave-Owner
Washington was a slave owner through inheritance. Pretty much all of Washington’s wealth and property came from inheriting it from his deceased father, his deceased older brother, and from Martha’s deceased ex-husband who was very wealthy. Interestingly though, under law, much of the wealth from Martha’s previous marriage he was not allowed to touch and he had to be a steward of and file documents with the courts demonstrating he was a good conservator. He and Martha didn’t have their own children, so legally, Martha’s children with her previous husband owned a lot of property, but Washington had to manage it for them and not touch it.
I only knew that Washington was a slave owner, but did not know the circumstances and how he dealt with this. As far as slave owners go, he was definitely not on the brutal or cruel end of the spectrum. He expected his slaves to work and be productive and would be upset if he felt that they weren’t. He wasn’t one to resort quickly to physical abuse and would prefer to try to verbalize his anger or discontent if he felt a slave wasn’t working productively. But he was also not above telling his conservators while he was President for them to issue “corrections” to slaves who were not obeying. It could be said though that Washington also issued “corrections” and even executions to some soldiers under his command that deserted etc. He could be a harsh disciplinarian at times.
Washington overall, could be argued, gave more freedom to his slaves than most other slave owners did. He made sure that they certainly were all fed and cared for, ensuring that if any of them were sick that they were cared for and received medical attention (for what medical attention was in those days). He also let them hunt and fish and then sell their catches in town to pocket extra money for themselves. He was ADAMANTLY against ever breaking up families, and he would allow his slaves to have relationships and marriages with slaves from other plantations if they wanted to. And he would do his best to accommodate a way to bring relationships together and families the ability to be together the best he could. Washington was always a sucker for giving advice to others in relationships btw.
His personal aide was the slave Billy Lee, and repeatedly Washington showed great affection for Billy Lee’s long years of service, as he was with him all through the war and even into the Presidency. Even when Lee became crippled during his Presidency, Washington bent over backwards to hire personal escorts to get him to the Capitol so he could be with them, even though his health didn’t allow for him to be as useful and vigorous as he once was. This also went for some others who were Martha’s personal aides. Billy Lee always had a place in Washington’s heart, and upon his death, Washington willed him a lifetime pension payment along with his freedom. Interestingly, when some of the other slaves who were serving the family personally ran away, the Washingtons couldn’t understand why they would leave them, feeling a bit astonished that they weren’t happy to be there. Clearly, they fully didn’t understand why a slave of theirs would want to be free.
Washington greatly struggled with the issue of slavery, and through the years mostly agreed that it should be abolished when talking to close friends. One of his best friends, almost a son to him, the Marquis de Lafayette, the famous Frenchman who fought in the Revolution and would make a name for himself during the French Revolution also, was a staunch anti-slavery advocate and lobbied Washington to oppose it and free his slaves. Washington agreed with him, however, he often felt hand tied because he relied on slavery to maintain his Mount Vernon estate and farm. He often felt that the farm, and in extension he, did not make any money from the farm as it was, and he often said that it barely made enough in order to feed and house all of the slaves and workers there as it was, especially over the years as his slave population grew due to natural child births. So he always felt hand tied often saying that in his heart he wanted to set all his slaves free but didn’t know how either they would make their own living, or how his money losing farm could possibly survive without them. He felt both needed each other. Clearly he justified this in his own mind to justify the horror of slavery that he was by extension perpetuating.
At the end of his life however Washington set out in his will to set all of his slaves free. Legally as I mentioned, he only owned about half of the slaves under his conservatorship, as he legally didn’t own Martha’s nor her children’s inherited slaves. But in his will, he directed to set all of them that he owned personally free. He was adamant about this as on his death bed he made it clear that the will he wrote stating so be carried out after he died.
Jeffersonians vs Hamiltonians
One of the most illuminating parts of the biography was how sharply divided the country was even during his Presidency, and also how insidious Thomas Jefferson could be – he gets a major downgrade from me after this book. I’m almost surprised how much history seems to revere Jefferson after hearing about a lot of his schemes.
It’s funny to hear people say how divided the country is today. But in the time of the Revolutionary War and the founding of the country, it was just as divided, perhaps more so, and probably along sharper, more consequential lines than today.
During the war, Washington had a very mixed, if not leaning bad, record of commanding battles and strategy. Several times he had to deal with other commanders trying to undermine him with the Congress, or vie for his job, recommending his firing. But Washington’s character ultimately prevailed in peoples’ faith that he was the man for the job. As I said, he preferred to let his actions speak for themselves, so he really didn’t angrily react to a lot of this infighting, and didn’t try to admonish the character of others who were trying to admonish his character or fitness for the job. Also, the Torries all throughout the colonies were people who sympathized with the British and didn’t believe in breaking away. Pretty sure we don’t really have that problem today!
During his Presidency there were bitter debates on the role of Federal power, and Washington would be the one to set these precedents for the country. Hamilton, his Treasury Secretary, believed in a strong federal government and banking system – Jefferson believed this was a breach of Federal power and that it would help lead to a monarchy in the US. It’s amazing how underhanded Jefferson was in trying to undermine Washington and spread the rumors that he was trying to install a monarchy – writing pseudonymously with James Madison under a publication that they would distribute trying to spread these rumors. For years, their publication was circulated and was critical of Washington and Hamilton’s policies, and insinuated that they were trying to install a monarchy in the US. This while Jefferson dealt with Washington all the time as his Secretary of State, and would say verbally that he believed Washington had the highest character of any man he knew. The secret undermining Jefferson engaged in, along with him being a complete fanboy in believing how great the French Revolution was, turning a blind eye to its atrocities, showed Jefferson to be very wrong on some of the most important historical issues of the time. Jefferson was brilliant though most people, including Washington, agreed. And the fact that Washington kept both Hamilton and Jefferson close to him in his cabinet, while they were locked in such intense psychological political gamesmanship, speaks to his credit as being able to manage both massive personalities. Both men would say how much they both greatly respected his character and leadership, even if they disagreed with him on some issues or tactics from time to time.
Some other interesting tidbits. Washington was the only President to personally command troops in the field as he marched troops into western Pennsylvania as a show of force during the Whiskey Rebellion, as many people protested and used violence, angry at the imposed whiskey tax. Upon arrival, the rebellion ceased, and Washington harmoniously handled the aftermath of the uprising. But he felt it was very important to show that the Federal government could enforce its taxes and laws to not set a bad precedence for the country.
After Washington’s Presidency, President Adams called on Washington to become the General for the country yet again as they were afraid the French Revolution would spill over into the US and that there would maybe be an invasion. Washington began mobilizing and organizing his captains and the army fairly enthusiastically, surprising to me for how unhappy he was being away from Mount Vernon during his service. He delegated a lot of responsibilities but served for 17 months in the post until his death. A pretty fascinating return to service at an old age and after all he had been through.
Washington was an amazing person, and seemed to be the right person in history at the right time. His character really unified the country during the Revolutionary War and into the implementation of the Constitution. Any other person in those roles would quite possibly have led to the country dissolving, but because everyone could trust Washington was doing his best to do the right thing and govern fairly, the country would go onto succeed. During his Presidency, Washington seemed to strike the perfect balance in demonstrating that the Federal Government was the authority in the country, while not trying to overstep his bounds as President – showing that it was NOT a monarchy. It was a great biography that I highly recommend, and Washington definitely is highly upgraded in my view after living with him everyday for a couple of months or so finishing the biography.