Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

While the Ohio Company slipped into oblivion, George Washington’s prospects were decidedly on the rise. Already a wealthy man from his own efforts to plow almost everything he earned back into land acquisition, in 1759 Washington married, and married very well. Martha Custis was a very wealthy widow who brought 17,000 acres to the union as well as nearly one hundred dower slaves.14 Although Washington apparently courted only women from wealthy families and was rebuffed at least once by a father who thought him of too middling a family for his daughter, still we should not overemphasize the importance of Martha’s fortune. Make no mistake: Martha Custis and George Washington had a love match. That said, her deep pockets helped further advance Washington’s opportunity to accumulate land and fame.

Back in February 1754, on the eve of war with France in America, Robert Dinwiddie, in his capacity as lieutenant governor of Virginia and acting explicitly on behalf of the king, declared:

for the security and protection of his majesty’s subjects in his colony; and as it is absolutely necessary that a sufficient force should be raised to erect and support the same; for an encouragement to all who shall voluntarily enter into the said service, I do hereby notify and promise, by and with the advice and consent of his majesty’s council of this colony, that over and above their pay, two hundred thousand acres, of his majesty the king of Great Britain’s lands, on the east side of the river Ohio, within this dominion, (one hundred thousand acres whereof to be contiguous to the said fort, and the other hundred thousand acres to be on, or near the river Ohio) shall be laid off and granted to such persons, who by their voluntary engagement and good behaviour in the said service, shall deserve the same. And I further promise, that the said lands shall be divided amongst them, immediately after the performance of the said service in a proportion due to their respective merit, as shall be represented to me by their officers, and held and enjoyed by them without paying any rights and also free from the payment of quit rents, for the term of fifteen years. . . . 15

This grant of land to Virginia veterans of the campaign against the French and Indians proved of tremendous value, and not a little controversy, for Washington, who had been raised to the rank of colonel by Robert Dinwiddie. With the war well over, Washington petitioned in 1769 for the 200,000 acres promised to him and his soldiers. The petition was granted with the proviso that the land to be granted not infringe on prior settlements. Washington then accomplished a feat that in hindsight appears both prescient and incredibly audacious: he met with his former soldiers and reached agreement that he would secure the 200,000 acres of land on his and their behalf, and that they would pay their share of his expenses to handle their affairs.16 In doing so, however, he took the best land for himself, leaving them with the dregs. As historian Ron Chernow has observed, Washington “felt an acute sense of urgency, since settlers were already flocking to the Ohio and Great Kanawha Rivers, and he feared they might preempt the most productive soil. He also got wind of a huge scheme by English investors to obtain 2.5 million acres and inaugurate a new colony, Vandalia, whose borders might further curtail the bounty lands.”17 English investors, favored by the king, were a growing threat to Washington’s land acquisition ambitions, a fact that was also true for others among the nation’s founders, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who were using their wealth to speculate in land. All of these gentlemen, other than Washington (who had resigned from the Continental Congress upon being designated as commander in chief of the as yet nonexistent Continental Army), were signatories to the Declaration of Independence; that is, the declaration of war against Britain. Like Washington, they were all fabulously wealthy individuals—in today’s dollars, holding assets between a hundred million dollars and, in Franklin’s case, perhaps billions of dollars apiece. A new British colony could mean the loss of their massive accumulated wealth and investments.

Washington had maneuvered to ensure that his friend and business associate William Crawford would carry out the land surveys that would allocate acreage to Washington and his former comrades in arms. Crawford secured for Washington “the cream of the country,”18 which meant the best waterfront lands Crawford could find, doing so in violation of a Virginia statute of 1712 that imposed restrictions on the dimensions of land tracts—legislation presumably intended to avoid the very unfair advantages that Washington was seeking at the expense of his former comrades.19

This did not go unnoticed by his former soldiers. As John Ferling writes, “Washington ultimately acquired 20,147 acres. Within two years some of the men began to feel they had been duped.” He goes on to quote Crawford’s communication to Washington to the effect that they are “a good deal shagreend [chagrined]” to discover that “you have all the bottom . . . Land”—that is, the best land in the valleys and near the rivers and streams. Crawford went on to state that none of the land “in the country is so good as your Land.”20 Washington was unsympathetic, even disdainful of those among his former soldiers who complained. He had the land he wanted, which, in the end, was his true objective. He did nothing to redress their complaints.

Crawford was new neither to surveying on Washington’s behalf nor to controversy surrounding the work he did for the future president. Following the Proclamation of 1763 that prohibited colonists from settling in the Ohio Valley, Washington sent Crawford to scout out land in the prohibited area, telling him, “I can never look upon that proclamation in any other light (but this I say among ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians which must fall, of course, in a few years, especially when those Indians are consenting to our occupying the lands. Any person, therefore, who neglects the present opportunity of hunting out good lands and in some measure marking and distinguishing them for their own (in order to keep others from settling them) will never regain it.” Aware of the risks, Washington went on to say, “I would recommend to you to keep this whole matter a profound secret . . . because I might be censured for the opinion I have given in respect to the King’s proclamation.”21 Obviously he knew his actions were against the king’s orders, hence the need to keep the matter secret, but that did not deter his avaricious desire to beat others to land claims in the area formerly explored by the Ohio Company.

Through tough business dealing, prudent spending, and a superb eye for opportunities in land acquisition and other businesses, George Washington turned himself into a phenomenally wealthy man. And then the economic world around him was turned topsy-turvy by new policies emanating from Britain. These policies and the threat they represented to his, and many other founding fathers’, personal interests were a great impetus for revolution. Indeed, the threat to Washington’s fortune was, in our view, at least as momentous for American history as any worries about taxation without representation or about the alleged tyranny of the king.

Washington’s Pre-Revolution Challenge

STARTING WITH THE DEATH OF GEORGE II IN 1760 AND GEORGE III’S Proclamation of 1763, the economic prospects for America’s richest colonists were increasingly in doubt. The new king seemed interested in opening investment opportunities to British speculators at the expense of the colonists. Further, he showed an interest in steering settlements by colonists north into Canada, to help control the French, and south to Florida, to keep the Spaniards at bay, rather than in the Ohio Valley, which by the late 1760s he made clear he believed was part of his frontier.