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

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S IMPORTANCE HARDLY NEEDS COMMENT. LONG before July 4, 1776, and the declaration of war against Britain, he had achieved the status of an American hero. He first came to public attention after being sent into the Ohio Valley wilderness in December 1753 as a representative of England’s King George II (1683–1760). Serving in both a military and diplomatic capacity, Washington—then only twenty-one years old and with the rank of major in the Virginia militia—was to seek out the French on a mission designed to ensure their departure. The French were establishing forts, exploiting fur-trading opportunities, and forging ties with local Indian tribes. More to the point, they were asserting control over land that the British king claimed was his, a view Washington fully shared. He came to Fort Leboeuf (located in what is now Erie County, Pennsylvania), one of the French strongholds in the Ohio Valley, and there presented George II’s case for the withdrawal of the French to Captain Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre. The captain, with the utmost politeness, assured Washington that he would pass the proposed withdrawal on to his commanding officer, the Marquis Duquesne. But he also made clear his view of the proposal Washington had conveyed: “As to the summons you send me to retire, I do not think myself obliged to obey it.”4 With this news in hand, Washington set out in the dead of winter on an arduous, life-threatening journey back to Williamsburg, then Virginia’s capital. Upon arriving, he wrote an impressively detailed account of his experience and of the French fortifications, including important military information about the number of canoes at the disposal of the French, the quantity of artillery they had, and other equipment with which the French and their Indian allies might assert control over territory. The account was widely published and attracted considerable attention to the young irregular military officer, giving him his first public exposure.

While much of the attention Washington got was flattering, not all of it was. He had not only been sent into the Ohio country on behalf of the English king, but also as an agent of the Ohio Company of Virginia—about which we will have much more to say. Many of his fellow Virginians suspected that he had simply concocted a story designed to advance the interests of the Ohio Company. In describing the reaction to his report, Washington wrote bitterly that “after I was sent out in December, 1753, and brought undoubted testimony even from themselves [i.e., the French] of their avowed design [to control the land in the Ohio Valley that was also the object of English ambitions], it was yet thought a fiction and a scheme to promote the interest of a private company, even by some who had a share in the government.”5

Washington’s fame—or infamy, depending on which side one was on—rose further, thanks to his leading, and often disastrous, part in the initiation of the French and Indian War just a short time later. A few months after his encounter at Fort Leboeuf, now having attained the age of twenty-two, Washington, elevated to the rank of lieutenant colonel, led about forty of his men overnight in heavy rain to attack a contingent of thirty-five French soldiers in the wilderness. Although his orders were to use force only defensively against the French, he instead initiated a military strike that ultimately killed ten, including French military commander Joseph Coulon de Jumonville. Jumonville did not die in the immediate engagement. Rather, he was taken prisoner and then assassinated, according to the French, by one of Washington’s Indian allies known as Half-King. Although there is controversy over the details, it is clear enough that from the French perspective the incident was an atrocity. As historian James Flexner notes, the French accused Washington “of murdering ambassadors. The Frenchmen, it turned out, had carried diplomatic credentials with instructions to find the English, express a desire for peace, but warn them off lands belonging to the king of France.”6 Washington, of course, did not know that Jumonville came in peace because he and his forty men fell on the French without warning.

Washington was dismissive of French claims to the Ohio country and viewed the outcome of what came to be known as the Jumonville Affair as a military triumph. So did many of his fellow Virginians. However, from a broader perspective it was a monumentally consequential diplomatic and political disaster. As Voltaire described the one-sided battle, “Such was the complication of political interests that a cannon shot [a gross exaggeration of the arms possessed and used by Washington’s troops and their Indian supporters] fired in America could give the signal that set Europe in a blaze.”7 Washington’s first drawing of blood, the one-sided fight led by the lieutenant colonel, was, in fact, the beginning of the French and Indian War and the much larger and deadlier Seven Years’ War. It was followed by other significant military engagements and some defeats, culminating slightly more than two decades later to his leading the Continental Army.

Throughout the French and Indian War, and indeed, ever after, despite his rising prominence as a soldier Washington was mindful of his own limitations as a commanding officer, although rightfully proud of his personal bravery in battle. Especially in later years as the press for revolution mounted, he was a man of measured temperament rather than a fiery revolutionary. Indeed, the young James Madison was highly critical of the Tidewater landed gentry, of which Washington was a part, because of their reluctance to fully embrace revolution. Washington’s reserved, cautious approach to the rising threat of war against England differed markedly from the bellicose views of such men as Madison and Patrick Henry. In Washington’s reluctance to plunge the country into war, he was probably more closely aligned with the views of the broader body politic.

The average colonist probably was filled with a mix of enthusiasm for the colonial cause and extreme foreboding in taking on so momentous an adversary as George III’s Britain. Washington was likely to have been filled with similar foreboding, albeit motivated by different considerations. If the war were lost, he contemplated establishing himself on his extensive lands in the wilderness, prepared to fight off the British in a fantasy that foreshadowed just such efforts by disaffected southerners following defeat in the Civil War.8 For Washington, the truly great problem was that defeat might cost him his enormous fortune, whereas a failure to fight seemed, under the king’s policies, nearly certain to do so.

George Washington’s Economic Ambition

WASHINGTON WAS HIS FATHER’S FOURTH CHILD. HE WAS BORN IN 1732 into a comfortable, but not rich, propertied family. When his father died, eleven-year-old George inherited only a small portion of the approximately 5,000 or so acres his father owned. The great bulk of his father’s estate went to George’s beloved half brother Lawrence, who was nearly fifteen years older than him. The little Washington did inherit was managed by his mother (she would live a long life, surviving into his first term as president), who ran his inheritance into the ground. As a result, Washington started out in life with few resources and a deeply ingrained, lifelong attentiveness to counting every penny he spent. Born into moderate comfort, George Washington died one of the richest men in America—by one estimate, the fifty-ninth wealthiest man in all of American history .9 Yet despite his almost unimaginable wealth, he spent much of his life cash-poor. He sank almost everything he had into land acquisition and diverse business undertakings ranging from innovative farming to mills to fisheries to canal building. By the time he died, Washington owned about 60,000 acres of land encompassing tracts in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Kentucky, Maryland, and West Virginia. Clearly he lived a life of remarkable accomplishment, achieved through his industriousness and skill. He benefited from good fortune in his brother’s connections, aggressiveness in his pursuit of wealth, and his own advantageous marriage.