George Washington: From “Defender of the King’s Dominions” to Leading Revolutionary

Courtesy Photo | Eventually known by 1778 as the “Father of His Country,” George Washington’s life began along a well-laid course of social distinction among what was later dubbed the First Families of Virigina. The death of his father in 1743 shortly after George’s eleventh birthday made him a landowner and slaveholder, as well as caused him to shoulder early responsibility for his younger siblings. Unfortunately, it also deprived him of the chance for a formal education in England like that of his older half-brothers, a lack that led to Washington’s lifelong habit of continual self-education and dedicated reading.  

REDSTONE ARSENAL, ALABAMA, UNITED STATES

07.01.2024

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command

Eventually known by 1778 as the “Father of His Country,” George Washington’s life began along a well-laid course of social distinction among what was later dubbed the First Families of Virigina. The death of his father in 1743 shortly after George’s eleventh birthday made him a landowner and slaveholder, as well as caused him to shoulder early responsibility for his younger siblings. Unfortunately, it also deprived him of the chance for a formal education in England like that of his older half-brothers, a lack that led to Washington’s lifelong habit of continual self-education and dedicated reading.
Denied his father’s guidance, young Washington looked to his much-loved older half-brother Lawrence as a role model and mentor. Although he was 20 years old when he first met 6-year-old George, Lawrence subsequently had a profound influence on the younger Washington. He provided his half-sibling with numerous experiences and important social connections that facilitated young George’s steady move into the upper echelon of the Virginia gentry. Lawrence also helped make possible George’s first career as a land surveyor. Regrettably, Washington’s loss of his older brother to tuberculosis in 1752 opened new opportunities for him as lessee and ultimate heir of the primary family estate of Mount Vernon. That second major bereavement also led Washington away from the field of land surveying toward a life of military service.
Despite his unsuitability due to a lack of experience combined with his young age, Washington ambitiously used his family and social connections to follow in Lawrence’s footsteps as one of Virginia’s four adjutants responsible for training the colony’s militia. His initial foray into military life coincided with the escalating Anglo-French imperial rivalry over North America into which the English colonies had been drawn sporadically between 1688 and 1763. The French and Indian War that started in 1754 in the Ohio River valley territory claimed by Virginia became the opening shots of the larger, worldwide Seven Years War of 1756-1763. First as a special courier and scout then as combatant for his colony, Washington made missteps in the first years of the conflict, but he learned much about tactical operations and military leadership.
When British Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock arrived in February 1755, Washington volunteered to serve as an unpaid aide-de-camp “to attain knowledge of the military profession.” However, the British refusal to accord combat-proven colonial officers respect and pay equal to that of inexperienced officers holding royal commissions vexed Washington. Even his heroic actions in the course of the rout of Braddock’s forces during the latter’s ill-fated expedition against the French Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh) did not change most British leaders’ condescending attitudes. As he wrote to Lt. Gov. Robert Dinwiddie in March 1757, “We (can’t) conceive, that being Americans should deprive us of the benefits of British subjects; nor lessen our claim to preferment: and we are very certain, that no Body of regular Troops ever before Served 3 Bloody Campaigns without attracting Royal Notice…. As to those Idle Arguments which are often times (used)—namely, You are Defending your own properties; I look upon to be whimsical and absurd; We are Defending the King’s Dominions…”
Promoted to colonel by Dinwiddie and placed in charge of Virginia’s defense, Washington dealt with a variety of problems, including disorderly troops, British disdain, insufficient logistical support and cooperation from the colonies, as well as ongoing raids along the Virginia frontier. However, these frustrations proved to be just the kind of challenges that helped prepare Washington for his future role in the American Revolution. He emerged from his final three years of colonial military service more proficient in “how to raise, train, discipline, and maintain military forces in the field.” Although in 1758 he became the only American to achieve the rank of brigade commander, the 26-year-old Washington finally had enough of dealing with the British army, resigning his commission that same year to return to civilian life.
For the next fifteen years, Washington continued to mature as both an economic and political leader. Married with step-children, he experimented with a variety of crops to replace his former dependence on tobacco cultivation, speculated in frontier land, and diversified his husbandry with other economic pursuits such as corn flour milling and fishing. His switch to growing wheat was prompted not just by soil exhaustion but his mounting anger at the London-based merchant house with which he did business. In a letter written in 1765, Washington cited the decline in the price paid for his “higher quality tobacco” combined with the increased cost for him to buy “poor quality goods” as reasons for “a discontinuance of my correspondence with your House.” More importantly, he could sell his wheat in the colonial market without a British middleman.
Washington was elected to Virginia’s House of Burgesses in 1758, where he remained active until 1775. His ongoing devotion to reading kept him alert to the political and business news of that time, not only in Virginia but elsewhere. After Britain’s victory in the Seven Years War, the period of colonial “salutary neglect” came to an end as Parliament sought to assert greater direct control over the empire, especially in North America. However, between 1760 and 1775, a new generation of American political leaders arose in the seaboard settlements to assert their natural rights as Englishmen living in the colonies and to challenge parliamentary claims to prerogatives and authority that the colonists did not accept as belonging to the mother country’s legislature.
Early activists such as Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock in Massachusetts, along with Robert Morris and James Wilson in Pennsylvania, as well as Patrick Henry and George Mason in Virginia devised some of the first responses to what they perceived as British tyranny. In his 1973 study, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers As Revolutionaries, historian Richard B. Morris focused on seven key founders based on what one reviewer described as “the triple assets of charismatic leadership, staying power, and constructive statesmanship.” They were (in alphabetical order) John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. Unfortunately, the colonies’ adoption of non-importation agreements and economic boycotts in conjunction with various petitions to Parliament and George III never convinced imperial authorities to accept American claims to British constitutional rights such as no taxation without representation by their own duly elected colonial assemblies.
Although not known for his political oratory or writings, Washington was a leader in both the economic and political resistance to Britain’s repeated attempts to tax the colonies and legislate other controls never before imposed on its North American subjects. More often, his practice was to work behind the scenes in the House of Burgesses, forming political alliances and urging a shift from formal written protests to more direct actions designed to achieve economic independence. Yet, evidence of his growing disaffection is apparent in Washington’s correspondence after 1763. In one letter written in April 1769, he argued, “At a time when our lordly Masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something should be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our Ancestors…. That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment to use (arms) in (defense) of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends; is clearly my opinion; Yet (Arms) I would beg leave to add, should be the last resource….”
Washington’s skills as a leader were refined further by his service as a vestryman for two Church of England parishes. Each vestry included twelve men responsible for levying taxes to pay the minister’s salary, provide a church budget, maintain and construct church property, and care for the poor. All vestry members also served as churchwardens, two of whom at a time rotated the daily active work of the parish. Because of his military service, profitable management of diversified economic activities, legislative contributions as a burgess, and hands-on public administration experience as a vestryman, all of which were strengthened by his extensive reading, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) James Dubik, a senior fellow of the Association of the United States Army, characterized Washington as “a leader of leaders,” in his 2022 article, “Washington’s Development into a Revolutionary Leader.”
By 1774, Washington was in full agreement with the other members of the Virginia House of Burgesses who opposed the passage of the Coercive Acts. In a letter of June 10, he wrote, “Americans will never be (taxed) without their own consent.” He also asserted that the cause of Boston “is and ever will be considered as the cause of America.” By July 4, he was ready to forsake further appeals to Parliament. “Did they deign to look at our petitions? Does it not appear, as clear as the sun in its meridian brightness, that there is a regular, systematic plan formed to fix the right and practice of taxation upon us? Does not the uniform conduct of Parliament for some years past confirm this?... Is there anything to be expected from petitioning after this?”
In spite of these sentiments, in the collection of George Washington’s Papers held by the Library of Congress (LOC) is a copy of the Fairfax Resolves he co-authored with George Mason on July 17. As the LOC introduction explains: “The Fairfax Resolves clearly stated the American claims to equal rights under the British constitution … Moreover, the Fairfax Resolves called for an inter-colonial association to enforce their claims to these rights and to protest British violations of these fundamental rights.” Adopted the following day by a county convention of citizens hosted by Washington, this gathering was just one of several similar meetings throughout Virginia and the other colonies called to protest Parliament’s harsh actions against Massachusetts in the wake of the Boston Tea Party.
Even so, those who ratified the Fairfax Resolves reaffirmed their loyalty to the king “under a just, lenient, permanent, and constitutional Form of Government…,” stipulating, “But (though) we are its Subjects, we will use every Means which Heaven hath given us to prevent our becoming its Slaves.” The Virginians also strongly denounced what they perceived as Parliament’s “most grievous and intolerable Species of Tyranny and Oppression, that ever was inflicted upon Mankind.” Moreover, they warned that if allowed to continue its assault on colonial rights, Parliament’s actions “will end in the Ruin both of Great Britain and her Colonies.” Closer cooperation was the next step in the colonies’ defensive plan for confronting the mother country.

• Date Taken: 07.01.2024
• Date Posted: 07.01.2024 14:08
• Story ID: 475318
• Location: REDSTONE ARSENAL, ALABAMA, US