Part 1 (1/2)

Washi+ngton : a life

Ron Chernow

TO VALERIE, IN MEMORIAM

Siy

-ABIGAILADAMS, speaking of George Washi+ngton after his death

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Since I quote extensively froton's vast correspondence, I have taken the liberty of hteenth-century prose A biographer hesitates to forfeit the special period flavor that co But all too often, Washi+ngton's muscular style can seem aard and stilted to modern readers because of the way he distributed his co suddenly beco with more familiar punctuation Occasionally I retain the quirks of the original spelling in order to highlight the eccentricity or lack of education of the personality in question Throughout the text, the actual wording has been exactly reproduced

PRELUDE

The Portrait Artist

IN MARCH 1793 Gilbert Stuart crossed the North Atlantic for the express purpose of painting President George Washi+ngton, the supreh born in Rhode Island and reared in New-port, Stuart had escaped to the coshteen years producing portraits of British and Irish grandees Overly fond of liquor, prodigal in his spending habits, and with a giant brood of children to support, Stuart had landed in the Marshalsea Prison in Dublin,sworn in as first president of the United States in 1789

For the impulsive, unreliable Stuart, who left a trail of incoe Washi+ngton eed as the savior ould rescue him from insistent creditors ”When I can net a sum sufficient to take me to Aerly to a friend ”There I expect to ton alone I calculate upona plurality of his portraitsand if I should be fortunate, I will repay lish and Irish creditors”1 In a self-portrait daubed years earlier, Stuart presented himself as a restless soul, with tousled reddish-brown hair, keen blue eyes, a strongly nacious chin This harried, disheveled man was scarcely the sort to appeal to the iton In a self-portrait daubed years earlier, Stuart presented himself as a restless soul, with tousled reddish-brown hair, keen blue eyes, a strongly nacious chin This harried, disheveled man was scarcely the sort to appeal to the iton

Once installed in New York, Stuart hness of a ton's trusted friend Chief Justice John Jay and rendered a brilliant portrait of him, seated in the full majesty of his judicial robes Shortly afterward Stuart had in hand the treasured letter of introduction froton that would unlock the doors of the executive residence in Philadelphia, then the tearrulous Stuart had perfected a technique to penetrate his subjects' defenses He would disarm them with a steady strealib patter would coax theton, a er to spontaneity, Gilbert Stuart led to master and conceal his deep emotions When the wife of the British ambassador later told hi departure fronant: ”You are wrong My countenance never yet betrayed ue as much as his face: ”With ns appear froovern his tongue as much as his face: ”With ns appear froton swept into his first session with Stuart, the artist e-struck by the tall, co president Predictably, the more Stuart tried to pry open his secretive personality, the tighter the president claambit backfired ”Now, sir,” Stuart instructed his sitter, ”you ton and that I aton retorted drily that Mr Stuart need not forget ”who he is or who General Washi+ngton is”4 A ed at Stuart's facile bonho, and ceaseless chatter With Washi+ngton, trust had to be earned slowly, and he balked at instant fa up with Stuart, he retreated behind his stolid ton kne to turn hi before an obelisk arose in his honor in the nation's capital

As Washi+ngton sought to maintain his defenses, Stuart made the brilliant decision to capture the subtle interplay between his outward calm and his intense hidden emotions, a tension that defined thebehind an extreht be coainly dentures, but Washi+ngton's eyes still blazed froe that Stuart captured and that ended up on the one-dollar bill-a ton's moral stature and subli hard and suspicious in the wary eyes with their penetrating gaze and hooded lids

With the swift insight of artistic genius, Stuart grew convinced that Washi+ngton was not the placid and coure he presented to the world In the words of a mutual acquaintance, Stuart had insisted that ”there are features in [Washi+ngton's] face totally different fro; the sockets of the eyes, for instance, are larger than he ever met with before, and the upper part of the nose broader All his features, [Stuart] observed, were indicative of the strongest and overnable passions, and had he been born in the forests, it was his opinion that [Washi+ngton] would have been the fiercest e tribes” The acquaintance confirht him ”by nature a man of fierce and irritable disposition, but that, like Socrates, his judgreat self-command have always made him appear a h ton's aura of cool command, those who knew hiure, full of pent-up passion ”His te], but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it,” wrote Thomas Jefferson ”If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was reat self-commandbut to preserve so reat capacity Whenever he lost his temper, as he did sometimes, either love or fear in those about him induced them to conceal his weakness froreat self-commandbut to preserve so reat capacity Whenever he lost his temper, as he did sometimes, either love or fear in those about him induced them to conceal his weakness froton had ”the tureatness and frequently tarnish its luster With them was his first contest, and his first victory was over hily moved will bear witness that his wrath was terrible They have seen, boiling in his bosoreed that Washi+ngton had ”the tureatness and frequently tarnish its luster With them was his first contest, and his first victory was over hily moved will bear witness that his wrath was terrible They have seen, boiling in his bosohty forthese turbulent emotions behind his fabled reserve that he ranks as the ure in Ae more revered than truly loved He seems to lack the folksy appeal of an Abrahaor of a Teddy Roosevelt, or the chare Washi+ngton has receded so much in our collective meure, coly dull, phleg, presided over the victorious Continental Ared the office of the presidency is aessential about Washi+ngton has been lost to posterity,reatness

Froton, we have sanded down the rough edges of his personality and rasp He joined in this conspiracy to loried in their displays of intellect, Washi+ngton's strategy was the opposite: the less people knew about hiht he could acco his power and influencing events Where Franklin, Hamilton, or Adams always sparkled in print or in person, the laconic Washi+ngton had no need to flaunt his virtues or fill conversational silences Instead, he wanted the public to know him as a public otistical needs

Washi+ngton's lifelong struggle to control his emotions speaks to the issue of how he exercised leadershi+p as a politician, a soldier, a planter, and even a slave-holder People felt felt the inner force of his nature, even if they didn't exactly hear it or see it; they sensed hishis life, one is struck not only by his colossal tes was sensitive to the delicate nuances of relationshi+ps and prone to tears as well as temper He learned how to exploit his bottled-up emotions to exert his will and inspire and motivate people If he aroused universal admiration, it was often accompanied by a touch of fear and anxiety His contemporaries admired him not because he was a plaster saint or an empty uniforton scholar W W Abbot noted, ”An iton's leadershi+p both as a nified, even forbidding, demeanor, his aloofness, the distance he consciously set and maintained between himself and nearly all the rest of the world” the inner force of his nature, even if they didn't exactly hear it or see it; they sensed hishis life, one is struck not only by his colossal tes was sensitive to the delicate nuances of relationshi+ps and prone to tears as well as temper He learned how to exploit his bottled-up emotions to exert his will and inspire and motivate people If he aroused universal admiration, it was often accompanied by a touch of fear and anxiety His contemporaries admired him not because he was a plaster saint or an empty uniforton scholar W W Abbot noted, ”An iton's leadershi+p both as a nified, even forbidding, demeanor, his aloofness, the distance he consciously set and maintained between hioal of the present biography is to create a fresh portrait of Washi+ngton that will make him real, credible, and charismatic in the saleaning anecdotes and quotes from myriad sources, especially from hundreds of eyewitness accounts, I have tried to make him vivid and immediate, rather than the lifeless ork he has become for many Americans, and thereby elucidate the secrets of his uncanny ability to lead a nation His unerring judg character, rectitude, steadfast patriotis sense of duty, and civic-mindedness-these exemplary virtues were achieved only by his ability to subdue the underlying volatility of his nature and direct his entire psychological le-minded achievement of a noble cause

A rew in stature throughout his life This groent on subtly, at titon the most interior of the founders His real passions and often fiery opinions were typically confined to private letters rather than public utterances During the Revolution and his presidency, the public Washi+ngton needed to be upbeat and inspirational, whereas the private , hot-blooded, and pessimistic

For this reason, the new edition of the papers of George Washi+ngton, started in 1968 and one of the great ongoing scholarly labors of our time, has provided an extraordinaryinto his able teainia has laid a banquet table for Washi+ngton biographers and raphies of the las Southall Freeman (1948-57) and the four volumes by James T Flexner (1965-72) This book is based on a close reading of the sixty volumes of letters and diaries published so far in the new edition, supplemented by seventeen voluaps Never before have we had access to so ton's public and private lives

In recent decades, ton have appeared as well as perceptive studies of particular events, thee-scale, one-volurave narrative that will be both dra the explosion of research in recent decades that has enriched our understanding of Washi+ngton as never before The upshot, I hope, will be that readers, instead of having a frosty respect for Washi+ngton, will experience a visceral appreciation of this forereatness

PART ONE

The Frontierse Washi+ngton, dressed in his old uniform from the French and Indian War, painted by Charles Willson Peale in 1772

CHAPTER ONE

A Short-Lived Faton afforded hiratify his curiosity by conducting genealogical research into his family As he admitted sheepishly when president, ”This is a subject to which I confess I have paid very little attention My time has been so much occupied in the busy and active scenes of life from an early period of it that but a small portion of it could have been devoted to researches of this nature”1 The first Washi+ngton to claim our attention was, ironically, the casualty of a rebellion against royal authority During the English Civil War, Lawrence Washi+ngton, George's great-great-grandfather and an Anglicanof the Church of England under Oliver Croled learning with modest wealth Lawrence had spent the better part of his childhood at the farave Manor near Banbury in Oxfordshi+re, before earning two degrees at Brasenose College, Oxford; he later served as a fellow of the college and a university proctor Persecuted by the Puritans as one of the ”scandalous,”a common frequenter of alehouses,” which was likely a true2 His travails eoning tobacco trade with North Ainia in late 1656, John Washi+ngton settled at Bridges Creek, hard by the Potomac River in Westmoreland County Less a committed colonist than a terounded his shi+p and soaked its precious cargo of tobacco, proinia His travails eoning tobacco trade with North Ainia in late 1656, John Washi+ngton settled at Bridges Creek, hard by the Potomac River in Westmoreland County Less a committed colonist than a terounded his shi+p and soaked its precious cargo of tobacco, proinia

Onecertain traits-a bottomless appetite for land, an avidity for public office, and a zest for frontier corandson's rapid ascent in the world John also set a precedent of social h ht Indians in Maryland and was rewarded with a colonel's rank In this rough-and-tu five Indian e tribes of land, activities that won him the baleful Indian nicknaes” or ”Town Devourer”3 He also found time to woo and wed Anne Pope, whose well-heeled father favored the neith seven hundred acres of land John piled up an impressive roster of the sort of local offices-justice of the peace, burgess in the Virginia assenified social standing in colonial Virginia Most conspicuous was his o sixty-three indentured servants froranted fifty acres to each irant, and he eventually aest property bordering the Poto Creek, the future site of Mount Vernon He also found time to woo and wed Anne Pope, whose well-heeled father favored the neith seven hundred acres of land John piled up an impressive roster of the sort of local offices-justice of the peace, burgess in the Virginia assenified social standing in colonial Virginia Most conspicuous was his o sixty-three indentured servants froranted fifty acres to each irant, and he eventually aest property bordering the Poto Creek, the future site of Mount Vernon

After his wife died, John Washi+ngton married, in quick succession, a pair of lusty sisters who had been accused, respectively, of running a brothel and engaging in adulterous relations with the governor Coincidentally, both scandal-ridden wouise as justice of the peace In 1677 John succue forty-six to a fatal disease, likely typhoid fever, setting an enduring pattern of shortened life expectancy for Washi+ngton led his way up to the second-tier gentry, an uncertain stratuton with ato advance into the upperrandees

It was John's eldest son froton, who inherited the bulk of his father's estate and becarandfather of the first president With the land, Lawrence had been educated in the inia, where he, too, collected an array of local posts-justice of the peace, burgess, and sheriff-that complemented his work as an attorney If John furnished the faentry, Lawrence added a patina of social distinction by ious King's Council When he expired in 1698 at thirty-eight, Lawrence perpetuated the gri