Commonplaces from Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Even amid the trips escapist pleasures, George had a conspicuous habit of improving himself, turning everything into an educational opportunity. 25

It was an early example of Washington being nagged by his sense of an inadequate education. 38

It’s also worth noting that Washington had received an invaluable education in frontier warfare. 49

"Errors once discovered are more than half amended," he liked to say. "Some men will 49 gain as much experience in the course of three or four years as some will in ten or a dozen." 50

This theme of disinterested service—honored mostly in the breach when he was young and in the observance when he was older—would be one of the touchstones of his life. 53

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. This cautious, disciplined political style would persist long after the original insecurity that had prompted it had disappeared. 56

As regimental commander, Washington received a comprehensive education in military skills, running the gamut from building barracks to arbitrating pay disputes. 64

Washington remained a stickler for discipline, which he identified as "the soul of an army,’ and he encouraged military discipline even in private matters. 65

In these dealings with powerful older men, Washington hadn't yet developed the tact that would distinguish him in later life, and given his age, he seemed to bristle unduly at being assigned a subordinate position. 69

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78-83 Martha

Nonetheless she was an avid newspaper reader and kept up with some of the best literature imported from London in the 1760s, including Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield and Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, as well as gothic romance novels. 82

83-86 Sally Fairfax, Washington’s Beatrice

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.2 98

Such attention always brought out a certain awkwardness in Washington, who was ill at ease with public oratory and uncomfortable with flattery, perhaps because he secretly craved it. 99

He practiced a minimalist art in politics, learning how to exert maximum leverage with the least force. Thomas Jefferson, who was to serve with Washington and Franklin in the Continental Congress, spotted their economical approach to power. "I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point, he later said of the two statesmen. "They laid their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves."10 Later on Washington coached his stepson on how to be a Virginia legislator, reminding him to be punctual in attendance and "hear dispassionately and determine coolly all great questions.""’ Washington’s experience as a burgess educated him in politics no less thoroughly than his combat experience on the western frontier groomed him for future mili 99 tary leadership, creating a rare combination of talents that endowed him with the ideal credentials at the time the American Revolution erupted. 100

102 Washington on love and marriage

That Washington still identified with the military life and retained some hope of future battlefield glory is evident in his ordering from Robert Cary six busts of great military figures in history: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick II of Prussia, Prince Eugene of Savoy, and the Duke of Marlborough When his London agents.couldnt fill the order, they came up with an alternate proposal to supply busts of writers ranging from Homer to Shakespeare to Milton. For the young planter, these literary heroes didn’t quite measure up to famous generals, and he vetoed the suggestion. 106

One reason that Washington and other planters submitted to their London agents was that they offered easy credit unavailable in the colonies. Like many of his affluent neighbors, Washington was land rich and cash poor and spent a lifetime scrounging for money. Historians have often pondered the paradox of why rich Virginia planters later formed a hotbed of revolutionary ferment, and the explanation partly lies in their long, sullen dependence upon London factors. Of four million pounds borrowed by colonists by the outset of the American Revolution, half was owed by the prodigal farmers of Tidewater Virginia." As they gorged on credit, their luxurious lives rested on a precarious foundation of debt. Virginia borrowers regularly blamed their London factors for this indebtedness rather than examining their own extravagant consumption. In piling up excessive debt, they repeated a vice then rampant among the spendthrift British upper class. 107

The situation deteriorated sharply the following year. Washington was congenitally prickly about money, and Robert Cary aggravated matters by being too quick to dun him for funds. In August 1764 Washington reacted to a call for more money by blaming "mischances rather than misconduct" for the repeated failures of his tobacco crops. He was outraged that Cary would pester him the second he lagged on his payments. "I did not expect that a correspondent so steady and constant as | have proved ... would be reminded in the instant it was discovered how necessary it was for him to be expeditious in his payments, he complained. Unlike some patrician debtors, Washington was uneasy carrying so much debt, reminding his 107 London creditor that "it is but an irksome thing to a free mind to be any ways hampered in debt."* In subsequent letters to London, Washington's fury fairly exploded off the page. When he sent a large shipment of tobacco the following year, he was aghast at the poor prices that Robert Cary fetched for him and accused the firm of securing better deals for other Virginia planters. "That the sales are pitifully low needs no words to demonstrate," he wrote. "And that they are worse than many of my acquaintance upon this river Potomac have got in the outposts ... is a truth equally as certain." Washington blustered that it might be "absolutely necessary for me to change my correspondence unless I experience an alteration for the

better."47

For the rest of his life, Washington was vehement on the subject of debt and frequently lectured relatives about its dangers. Even though he scapegoated creditors for his own debt, it is clear from later letters that he searched his soul long and hard on the subject. Decades later he admonished one nephew that "there is no practice more dangerous than that of borrowing money ... for when money can be had in this way, repayment is seldom thought of in time .. . Exertions to raise it by dint of industry ceases. It comes easy and is spent freely and many things indulged in that would never be thought of, if to be purchased by the sweat of the brow. In the mean time, the debt is accumulating like a snowball in rolling."48 Washington spoke knowingly, as only a reformed sinner can do as he reviews past transgressions. 108

Always receptive to innovation, he pored over agricultural treatises and experimented with oats, wheat, and barley, planted in soil from various corners of his property. 109

Temper in private

Work ethic

Time

In his library

Morning routine

Leading by example

Evening routine

Method

Model

Ch 11

Approbation

Self-improvement

Self-invented

Friendship

Dancer

Cato, Shakespeare

Ch 12

Religions fanaticism

The most generous sentence that ever flowed from Washington’s pen

Historical anomaly of a revolution inaugurated by affluent conservative leaders

Henry clay? Thomas Jefferson

Money

Businessman

Governed by fashion

Businessman

Mercantilism

Converted Washington from a rich disaffected planter into a rabid militant against British policies

144 On April 5, 1769, Washington sent Mason a remarkable letter

While Washington was in the right here, the letter shows how his bottled-up anger could spew forth unexpectedly and why people intuited correctly that he had a terrible temper. 150

Despite his insistence that the project would produce "amazing advantages" to both Virginia and Maryland, it foundered in the Maryland legislature because Baltimore businessmen feared it might divert trade from the Chesapeake Bay.°! When the project stalled momentarily, it provided Washington with yet another early example of the need for intercolonial cooperation. 151

Chapter Fourteen: The Asiatic Prince

Having been denied an adequate education, Washington went to inordinate lengths to educate his stepchildren properly. Starting in 1761, he hired a young, selfeffacing Scottish immigrant, Walter Magowan, to tutor the children at home, and they were soon introduced to the Greek Testament and Latin poets and other things George Washington never learned. 155

At first Boucher expressed high hope for his young charge, and Washington placed an order in London for one hundred books, many in Latin. 155

In dealing with his stepson, Washington betrayed the exasperation of a hardworking man coping with a spoiled rich boy. Jacky was spurning the very education that Washington had so sorely missed. Having never learned French himself, Washington told Boucher to teach it to Jacky: "To be acquainted with the French tongue is become a part of polite education and, to a man who has an|y idea] of mixing in a large circle, absolutely necessary.‘ Jacky never.learned French or Greek or mathematics, as he was supposed to do. 156

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Chapter Fifteen: A Shock of Electricity 165