GENERAL WASHINGTON’S GUIDE TO CONDUCT, 13
The Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation was, as Josiah noted, a constant guide and companion of the General’s. The full version has been translated by John T. Phillips II, who also provides a history of this guide to etiquette in the Compleat George Washington Series. Rules of Civility can also be found in many sources, including at the beginning of The Writings of George Washington cited above.
Some of the rules may seem antiquated to modern eyes and seemed so even to Josiah reflecting back in the 1840s. The General took them seriously, however, and I have therefore quoted them exactly on many occasions in these pages.
MARTHA WASHINGTON’S WEALTH, PAGES 14-15
I assumed, like many, that Martha was the wealthy partner in the Washington marriage. This is true but with the caveat mentioned by Josiah: her wealth was largely inherited, and the inheritance was tied up for decades due to litigation by the heirs, many illegitimate, fathered by Martha’s first husband’s father. The lengthy litigation gave great business on both sides of the dispute to many of Virginia’s finest lawyers. While this litigation went on, the family’s main wealth derived from George.
MARTHA WASHINGTON’S INTERRACIAL RELATIVES, PAGES 14-15
Regarding Josiah’s reference to Lady Washington’s mixed-race relatives, according to Helen Bryan’s Martha Washington, First Lady of Liberty, Martha’s half sister, Ann, was fathered by Martha’s father, John Dandridge, with an Indian-Negro woman. Similarly, Martha’s first husband, Daniel Custis, had a black half brother, fathered by Daniel’s father, John Custis.
The financial, sexual, and interracial background of Martha’s family has been explored by Bryan, and so has Washington’s by Bryan, Henry Wiencek in An Imperfect God, and others. There were numerous rumors spread by the British about George Washington’s sexual activities outside his marriage to Martha, but there is little supporting evidence, particularly of interracial sex. What there is rests on a family legend about a slave at Mount Vernon, Wes Ford; speculation on a visit by Washington to his brother John Augustine’s plantation ninety-five miles from Mount Vernon (where the alleged slave mother resided); and a visit by his brother’s family and slave to Mount Vernon. If there was an interracial relationship, the evidence, weak as it is, points to John Augustine. While Josiah notes the contemporary discussion of Jefferson’s sexual relations with his slave Sally Hemings—it was then known that Jefferson lived in Paris for years with Hemings, and there is now DNA evidence supporting the relationship—there is no such evidence for such a relationship involving Washington. As Edward G. Lengel, editor of the Washington Papers Project at the University of Virginia, acknowledges, while you can never absolutely prove a negative, by this standard, “one might as well assume that half the population of the United States may be descended from Pocahontas.” (See Edward G. Lengel, Inventing George Washington, p. 191.) According to Lengel, and I agree, Washington was not only a prude but also too concerned with his public reputation to engage in what society then would have regarded as improper conduct.
CHAPTER ONE: DAY ONE, MONDAY—THE FIRST ANONYMOUS LETTER
THE FIRST ANONYMOUS LETTER, 20 (QUOTED IN FULL IN APPENDIX B, PAGE 272)
MUTINIES DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, PAGES 20-21
Mutinies took place throughout the Revolutionary War, far more on the American side than on the British side. These had very little to do with the devotion of the sides to their respective causes. As described earlier, in the 1781 Pennsylvania mutiny, American troops were devoted to the cause of independence, but the devotion of the state authorities and Congress to paying, feeding, and clothing the troops was much less. The causes of the very first mutiny in 1775 described here were typical of the causes of all the American mutinies: lack of pay, food, and clothing. “Taxation without representation” may have inspired the Revolution, but sometimes the troops who fought the battles may have wondered if the Revolution was against all forms of taxation, as state legislatures and the Congress were far more diligent in raising troops than in raising the taxes to care for them. Committees and riots against taxation were common during the war. (See John Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 350, 351.)
The corruption and incompetence of the authorities in buying and dispensing supplies compounded the deprivations suffered. These failures by Congress and the state legislatures were a constant concern to General Washington. One could almost compose a volume just of the letters Washington wrote to Congress and the governors pleading for relief. Later in this book, some of these letters are quoted, including allusions to the threat of mutiny. (For an overview of mutinies during the Revolutionary War, see John A. Nagy, Rebellion in the Ranks.)
TRAVAILS OF AMERICAN COMMON SOLDIER, PAGES 20-22
The quotation from General Greene’s letter to a South Carolina militia general that politicians think the army “can live on air and water” expressed the view typical of higher officers toward the Congress and the states. These officers saw months without pay, weeks without clothing, and days without food as the norm.
There are very few firsthand accounts of the difficult lives led by enlisted men during the war. The best and most readable is A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier: Some Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of Joseph Plumb Martin by Joseph Plumb Martin. By contrast, British and Hessian troops were equipped, fed, and trained as well as any troops in the world. An average enlistment of a year for the American soldiers compared with fifteen years’ service and training for the average British private.
REVEREND DUCHé’S APPEAL TO WASHINGTON TO LEAD A COUP D’éTAT, 24 (QUOTED IN APPENDIX B, 257-262)
Jacob Duché was a Philadelphia clergyman whose prayer at the First Continental Congress helped sparked the revolutionary cause. Duché, however, had become a “defeatist” who believed the American cause under congressional leadership had grown hopeless. Duché wrote to Washington that “’tis you Sir, and you only, that support the present Congress.” The American people, according to Duché, supported General Washington rather than the Congress and “the whole world knows that its [the army’s] very existence depends upon you, that your death or captivity disperses it in a moment.” If Congress could not negotiate an end to the war, argued Duché, Washington should lead a coup d’état.
In his reply, Washington is reported to have rejected the suggestion as “ridiculous” and immediately sent on copies of Duché’s letter the next day to Congress. This action, as we will see, enhanced Washington’s standing with Congress. (See Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol, 133.)