CHAPTER II

THE BOY WITH A WILL AND A WAY

I. EARLY CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE FIRST AMERICAN HERO 1732

George Washington has his place in American history, not only as being the great commander-in-chief of the American revolutionary army, but as being no less influential and powerful as a political leader and constructive American statesman. He was born February 22, 1732, in one of the wealthiest and most cultured homes in America. From the front door of his father’s house, on the estate that was a few years later named Mount Vernon, could be seen many miles of the Potomac River, and a wide sweep of the shores of Maryland. All that can enter into making life delightful flourished abundantly about the cradle of this child, and contributed toward his preparation and development for leadership, that was to produce a new power in the cause of human freedom for the world. There are easily seen many contributing interests that seemed to be carefully engaged in fitting him for the consequential task of taking the divine right from kings and giving it back to the people who alone have the right to the freedom of the earth.

Very soon after the birth of this child, the family moved to an estate owned by the father on the shores of the Rappahannock, across from Fredericksburg.

All traditions agree that the boy’s father was exceedingly careful that his son should have his mind built up in the most gentlemanly honesty.

Somehow, as we trace the early lives of great men, that word honesty is always intruding as of first importance. In an age when so many men seem to arrive at riches and power through intrigue and the unscrupulous manipulation of means, the word honesty loses significance and is looked upon either as hypocrisy or a joke. And yet, such conditions fail and the success does not succeed.

George Washington was fortunate in his childhood protectors. Besides having his father and mother to take watchful care of his right views of life, there was Lawrence, fourteen years older than George. Lawrence Washington was a son of their father’s earlier marriage. He had been sent away to England to be educated and he returned when George was eight years old. He has been described as a handsome, splendid, gentlemanly young man. He dearly loved George and did all he could to give the boy his honorable ideas of social and political life.

In the midst of this fraternal interest, at the most impressionable age of a child, came a great military excitement. War for the possession of the West Indies was on between Great Britain and Spain. Admiral Vernon had captured Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Darien, and the Spaniards, aided by the French, were preparing to drive the English out. A regiment was to be raised in the Colonies and Lawrence Washington was eager to become a soldier. Such was his father’s position in Colonial affairs that Lawrence was given a Captain’s commission and he sailed away in 1740.

The sound of fife and drum, with Lawrence’s enlistment, doubtless excited the martial spirit in George, as is confirmed by many an anecdote, and started him on the way to that knowledge and training which fitted him to become the head of the revolutionary army.

Augustus Washington, George’s father, died suddenly in 1743, at the age of forty-nine. He was estimated to have been at his death the wealthiest man in Virginia. At least he was able to leave an inheritance to each of his seven children, so that they were each regarded as among the most extensive property owners of that prosperous colony.

Lawrence inherited the estate on the Potomac, which he named Mount Vernon, in honor of his commander in the war with the Spaniards.

George was eleven years old when his father died, and he, with the other four minor children, were left with their property to the guardianship of their mother.

She was indeed the great mother of a great man. Her management morally and financially was conscientious, exact and admirable. George, being her eldest child, was always her favorite, but, with scrupulous care she served each as needed and with the unstinted affection of a noble mother.

II. A COMMUNITY PROUD OF ITS FAMILY HONOR

Lawrence Washington showed in many ways that he dearly loved his reliable, busy little half-brother. George spent much of his time at Mount Vernon. Lawrence had become quite an important man in the public estimation. He had what might well be called a princely estate, which he upheld in princely style, without offence to any one, and with the admiration of all the people.

Next to him, on the picturesque Potomac ridge, lived his father-in-law on the beautiful estate named Belvoir. This very honorable and high-minded gentleman was of an old aristocratic English family, and he was the manager of the extensive estates in Virginia of his cousin, Lord Fairfax.

George Washington grew up in these severely aristocratic associations, in which the gentility had no snobbery and the class distinction nothing offensive beyond the requirements of merit, culture and the manners of genuine gentlemen. Doubtless in admiration for the neatness, cleanliness, harmony and scrupulous morality of these beautiful homes, he was inspired to draw up his famous code known as “Rules for Behavior in Company and Conversation.” We can easily imagine that the visitors he met at Mount Vernon and Belvoir were the very well-bred ladies and chivalrous gentleman of a courtly English period, among whom were mingled numerous heroic captains from the West Indies, whose chief topics of conversation were thrilling descriptions and stories of Pirates and Spaniards. Perhaps he was then receiving a vision of international affairs, from a world view, that was important to his mission in civilization, even as Lincoln learned his country’s welfare in his struggle upward among the backwoods commoners of his times.

That George was greatly influenced by the warship heroes he met is shown by his eagerness to join the navy. Everybody seemed to think this was the thing for him except his mother. Even her firm decisions were at last overcome, a midshipman’s place was obtained for him and his personal effects were sent aboard the man-of-war, but the mother could not say good-bye to her eldest son. She couldn’t give him up and she didn’t. It is hardly likely that the world, a hundred years later, could have known that there ever was such a person as George Washington, if his mother had not changed her mind and kept him from the boisterous turmoil of the uncertain sea. However that may be, he was sent to school instead of making a cruise in the West Indies. His study was mathematics and military tactics, the very thing most needed in the sublime undertaking that was to make his name immortal.

Strange to say, he was known as a very bashful boy. In fact, all through his life he was embarrassed in the presence of ladies. A girl of his own age, who saw much of him when he was a boy, wrote in later life, that “he was a very bashful young man.” She says, “I used often to wish that he would talk more.”

That his emotional feelings were very early developed is quite certain from his own diary written at that time. He wrote, with the usual foolishness of a boy, about some unnamed girl with whom he was madly in love. He was for a long time exceedingly unhappy. Even his well-disciplined mind and his severe regulation of conduct were no proof against the turmoil of unreturned affection. We have never known anything about this beautiful lodestone that had drawn the heart out of him. He never described her or told who she was. It was probably merely a fancy ideal with which he clothed some one utterly impossible as a real friend or mate to him. Such queer freaks of interest have often happened to the emotions of a growing mind, and later, the victim wondered what was possible in the object to cause such feelings. In all likelihood, there was nothing in the object that should have caused anything more than a just admiration or respect. But instead, the feelings caught on fire and had to burn out. So it was with Washington. As he was loyal to his ideals, even when they were merely fancy, foolishly wrapped about some inappropriate object, he remained devoted to his grief until years wore out the memory.

III. THE SELF-PITY AND SENTIMENTALISM OF YOUTH

Those who like their hero to be of chiseled marble may be shocked to think that George Washington, “the father of his Country,” wrote pages in his journal of foolish love-sighs and more foolish poetry. He often bewailed his “poor restless heart, wounded by Cupid’s dart,” and wrote of this wounded heart as “bleeding for one who remains pitiless to my griefs and woes.” That he never had a confidant to whom he could tell his sacred heart-burnings is indicated by the lines:

“Ah, woe is me, that I should love and conceal, Long have I wished and never dared reveal.”

But such experiences let George Washington come a little closer to us as a real boy, and is consolation for many a man who had a like foolish spell in his youth.

George not only kept a tell-tale diary, which has given us all we know of his inner life in youth, but he wrote letters in that journal to many persons. Whether those letters were imaginary or were actually copies of real letters we do not know. Some of these were written while visiting the Fairfax family of Belvoir, after Lord Fairfax had come there from England as the head of the family interests. He wrote to his “dear friend Robin”: “My residence is at present at his lordship’s, where I might, was my heart disengaged, pass my time very pleasantly, as there’s a very agreeable young lady lives in the same house; but, as that’s only adding fuel to the fire, it makes me the more uneasy, for, by often and unavoidably being in company with her, revives my former passion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas, was I to live more retired from young women, I might in some measure alleviate my sorrows by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in the grave of oblivion.”

The “lowland beauty” he refers to is said to have been Miss Grimes, of Westmoreland, who, as Mrs. Lee, became the mother of General Henry Lee, famous in revolutionary times as Light Horse Harry, and always a favorite with General Washington.

Lord Fairfax, to whom he often refers, had a strong influence on his life. This real nobleman had inherited through his mother the Virginia lands granted to Lord Culpepper by Charles II. Having been jilted at the altar, in the very height of a rather famous career, by a lady who had a chance to marry a duke, Lord Fairfax renounced society and left England for Virginia. He took a great liking to young George Washington and they became companions on many a fox-hunt.

Presently it became necessary for Lord Fairfax to have his lands surveyed, and Washington, having studied surveying, was chosen for this task. The boy, though now man’s size, was not yet seventeen when he undertook this very responsible work. But here his careful training served him well. Nothing was ever undertaken by him until it had been thoroughly thought out, and success was thus assured in this his first man-making task. He still kept his journal day by day, but it was now full of the business of life. The emotional dreams of his Lowland Beauty are recorded no more.

This escape from self-pity and individual sentimentalism is in line with Edison’s advice to get busy at something useful if you would avoid temptation and foolishness. Even one so sternly set as Washington needed to have his attention occupied with something to do, as employment for idle hands, in order to be free from devil-ideas sowing artificial interests in the growing mind.