Read Online His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis - Free Book Online

surprise that he ordered all the dogs in the regiment killed before the attack.) But when they reached Fort Duquesne, it was deserted and burning. There was no battle because the French troops, recognizing they were outnumbered, had fled down the Ohio the previous day. It was an empty, anticlimactic victory-of-sorts. Critical of Forbes to the end, Washington complained to Fauquier that not enough troops were left behind to rebuild and garrison the fort, which would probably be recaptured and lead to a repeat of the whole bloody business on the Virginia frontier the following year. 61
    How to explain Washington’s insubordinate behavior during the Forbes campaign, which proved to be an atypical chapter in his long career as a soldier and statesman? Three overlapping explanations suggest themselves, each perhaps containing a portion of the answer. First, he was still very young, only twenty-six, headstrong about his own prowess as the founder of the Virginia Regiment, and overeager to ingratiate himself with the planter elite in Virginia, which had vested interests in making Braddock’s Road the preferred route into the Ohio Country. Second, he mistakenly regarded Bouquet and Forbes as updated versions of Braddock and Loudoun, imperious symbols of British privilege who thought of American colonists in much the same way colonists thought of Indians, namely as a semicivilized inferior people. He was factually wrong on this score, but his experience of British authority still smoldered, and his own sense of pride gave that experience a special edge of resentment. Third, and finally, he was in emotional turmoil at this moment, because he had fallen in love with one woman and was about to marry another.
    LOVE AND MARRIAGE
    T HE WOMAN he was planning to marry was Martha Dandridge Custis, probably the wealthiest widow in Virginia, with an inherited estate of eighteen thousand acres valued at £ 30,000, making her the prize catch of Chesapeake society. (All the other eligible women Washington had previously pursued were also wealthier than he was, extending the male tradition in his line of marrying up.) Washington had begun courting her in the spring of 1758. The preceding year he had launched major renovations at Mount Vernon in anticipation of creating a more suitably lavish household, a risky wager on his future prospects made before he knew of Martha’s availability, but a sign that he was confident that an appropriate consort would turn up soon. He probably proposed in June. The following month he stood successfully for election to the House of Burgesses in Frederick County. On one previous occasion he had permitted his name to be put forward, but had made no concerted effort to win. This time he mobilized his friends to campaign for him and opened accounts with four taverns in Winchester to provide impressive quantities of rum, wine, and beer at the polls. Even as the Forbes campaign was getting underway, he had already decided to surrender command of the Virginia Regiment for a more settled life on the banks of the Potomac with an attractive and much-coveted partner. His thoughts were on the new chapter he planned to open up in his life, east rather than west of the Blue Ridge. 62
    His emotions, on the other hand, were swirling around another subject altogether. Her name was Sally Fairfax, wife of George William. The evidence is scanty, but convincing beyond any reasonable doubt, that Washington had fallen in love with his best friend’s wife several years earlier. Just when the infatuation began, and whether it ever crossed the sexual threshold, has resisted surveillance by generations of historians and biographers. What we do know is based primarily on two letters Washington wrote to Sally in September 1758 while serving in the Forbes campaign, and one letter he wrote near the end of his life in an uncharacteristically sentimental mood. In the latter he confessed to an elderly Sally that she had been the passion of his