America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation Paperback (13 page)

When Lawrence chose to sail on to see if the air in Bermuda might | 99 \

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have more beneficial effect than that of Barbados, George returned to Virginia. But the ocean air and warm weather did not provide Lawrence with the hoped-for cure. He returned to Mount Vernon a few months later, only to die in July 1752. In his will, Lawrence left Mount Vernon to his wife, Ann, in trust for their infant daughter. George Washington would inherit the estate only if the child, Sarah, should die.

Ambitious, knowing that surveying would not bring the wealth or social standing he sought, and saddled with a small and somewhat un-profitable farm—as well as a mother who lorded over him—Washington decided to try for a military career. He applied to acting governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia for a commission in the colonial militia, essentially seeking to fill his late brother’s post. Dinwiddie instead divided the command into four separate commissions and put them out to bid. In a day when such a commission went for a high price, George Washington could ill afford to purchase his position, but he still had powerful friends. Despite his obvious inexperience and meager finances, Washington turned to the Fairfaxes. William Fairfax pulled some strings, and in December 1752 George Washington commenced his military career. He was made a major and charged with training militias in the southern Virginia district. His preparation for this new post apparently involved reading books on military drills and tactics.

At the time, most males—at least white ones—between sixteen and sixty were required to participate in local militia companies, and they could be compelled to train as often as once a week.

At this point in his life, George Washington made another choice that has inspired conjecture, controversy, and conspiracy theories for centuries. In August 1753, at age twenty-one, he became a Freemason, joining the lodge in Fredericksburg, Virginia. An ancient fraternal | 100 \

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order, Freemasonry took on a new life in eighteenth-century Europe during the Enlightenment, when it grew increasingly hostile toward organized religion, Catholicism in particular. A mélange of religion and ancient fraternal rituals, Masonry recognized a supreme deity, but it also celebrated universal brotherhood, works of charity, and individual liberty. Its deistic ideals may have appealed to Washington, whose devotion to Anglican (later Episcopalian) beliefs seemed tepid at best.

It has been oft noted that Washington routinely left church services before partaking of communion. Although this peculiarity has been cited as evidence of Washington’s deism, and perhaps even his refuta-tion of the notion of Jesus’ divinity, other commentators have remarked that it was not unusual for colonial Anglicans to skip the Eucharist.

Like many men of his day—including Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, James Madison, and several other Founders, as well as many British officers—Washington may have simply been drawn to Masonry’s “old boys” club atmosphere. As David L. Holmes wrote in
Faiths
of the Founding Fathers,
his excellent overview of religion’s impact on the Revolutionary generation, the Masons were “a fraternal organization that provided a club for men at a time when clubbing represented a principal form of entertainment.”8 Born in England out of an old craft union that guarded the trade secrets of masons, the movement had morphed into an Enlightenment-era secret society that was concerned with moral and spiritual improvement, accompanied by a rejection of clerical dogma. By the eighteenth century, it had become more antagonistic toward Roman Catholicism, and the Vatican had long prohibited Catholics from joining the Masons.

As with almost everything else about Washington’s life, his personal religious beliefs became shrouded in a mixture of mythology and speculation almost instantly upon his death. Fabricated tales of axes | 101 \

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taken to cherry trees were conflated with nonexistent prayer vigils in Valley Forge to assert Washington’s religious ardor. Yet he had taken the presidential oath of office with a Masonic Bible, wore a Masonic apron at the laying of the Capitol’s cornerstone, and was buried with both Masonic and Episcopal funeral rites, the latter perhaps for his wife’s benefit. Masonry was, after all, a gentleman’s preserve. On the other hand, his Masonry seems to have fallen far short of fanatical devotion to a secret society pledged to a “new world order,” as some critics of Masonry persist in suggesting. According to H. Paul Jeffers’

account of Washington’s Masonry, “Records indicate that he attended at most three meetings, and possibly fewer or none. He may have attended the dinners, but he seems not to have participated in meetings of the lodge of which he was the first master under its Virginia charter. . . . While master of the lodge, he did not assist in the work of the lodge.”9

Young Washington’s big break came as the cold war with France heated up considerably. The English had staked a claim to the Ohio Valley territory as part of its western frontier. The French had other ideas. From their base in Quebec, the French loosely controlled an American trading empire that arced from eastern Canada past the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and down to the port city of New Orleans, established by the French in 1718. Their claims were based on the discoveries made by French explorers, including La Salle, who had traveled the length of the Mississippi River during a 1682 expedition. In June 1753, the governor of Canada, the Marquis de Duquesne, announced that France exclusively owned this territory and ordered all trespassers—meaning principally English settlers—out. He dispatched three hundred French regular soldiers, twelve hundred militiamen, and some two hundred Indians to build three forts: Fort | 102 \

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Presque Isle, on the southern shore of Lake Erie (present Erie, Pennsylvania); Fort Le Boeuf, at the head of French Creek (Waterford, Pennsylvania); and Fort Venango (now Franklin, Pennsylvania), at the point where French Creek joins the Allegheny River. These fortresses would solidify a water route from Lake Erie to the Ohio River and ultimately to the Mississippi, allowing French troops to move easily by river into the territory.

In Virginia, Governor Dinwiddie was alarmed at these French maneuvers. Complicating matters, settlers from the English colonies of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland had begun to push across the Appalachian Mountains into the Ohio River Valley. In exchange for furs, they began to sell guns, ammunition, and whiskey to the Indians. Influential Virginians, including Dinwiddie, the late Lawrence Washington, the Fairfaxes, and other Virginian aristocrats such as the Lees, wanted to secure a grant of a half million acres out of this territory for their “Ohio Company,” formed in 1747. When George Washington learned that Governor Dinwiddie was looking for an emissary who could carry a message to the French military commander in the Ohio River Valley, warning the French to withdraw from the region, he volunteered.

The mission was no stroll in the park. The trip meant traveling through unmarked wilderness, upriver, and across the Allegheny Mountains, then returning south with the rivers—some five hundred miles each way through Indian country. And winter was not far off.

In spite of his relative youth and inexperience, Washington was chosen by Dinwiddie because he possessed a unique skill set. He knew the wilderness, was an excellent horseman, and, although far from aristocratic, ranked sufficiently high on Virginia’s social ladder through his connections to the Fairfaxes to qualify as a suitable royal messenger.

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An experienced surveyor with a good eye for real estate, Washington could also fulfill another part of the job. Essentially, he would be spying on the French as he reconnoitered the territory. Washington could competently map the area and survey possible routes for roads or locations for a fort the English planned to build to counter the French advance. He was accompanied by Jacob van Braam, a Dutch-man with a sparse knowledge of French, as an interpreter, and was joined by veteran fur trader and Ohio Company employee Christopher Gist, who would communicate with the Indians they expected to meet. Part of Washington’s mission was to demonstrate to the French that the English had a strong alliance with the Iroquois Confederacy.

The party was rounded out with four backwoodsmen and a string of pack horses.

Setting off in November 1753, Washington went ahead of the main party and reached the point where the Allegheny River joins the Monongahela River, which rises in the Allegheny Plateau (in modern West Virginia) and flows north to form the Ohio River at the site of present-day Pittsburgh. Washington explored the area for two days until finding what he considered the best site for a fort, a judgment later confirmed by separate French and British efforts to erect fortresses precisely at the location that Washington had singled out.

After the others caught up to him, the little expedition moved on to an Indian village called Logtown, where Washington first encountered the Iroquois chief Tanaghrisson, the Half King. Taken captive as a child by the French and their Indian allies, Tanaghrisson had been adopted by the Seneca. He had become a subchief among the Iroquois Confederacy in the Ohio Valley, the reason he was later dubbed the Half King by the English. Although Washington hoped to convince the Indians to bring a large force of warriors to his meet-

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ing with the French, only the Half King and three other elderly chiefs accompanied Washington to meet the French and deliver Dinwiddie’s ultimatum.

At the first of the French forts he reached, Washington was treated cordially and invited to dine with the officers. As they supped, Washington drank more modestly than his French hosts, and he later recorded the results: The Wine, as they dosed themselves pretty plentifully with it, soon banished the Restraint which at first appear’d in their Conversations, and gave a Licence to their Tongues to reveal their Sentiments more freely.

They Told me That it was their absolute Design to take possession of the Ohio, and by G—— they would do it; for that they were sensible the English could raise two Men for their one, yet they knew, their Mo-tions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any Undertaking of Theirs.

They pretend to have an absolute right to the River, from a discovery made by one La Salle 60 years ago.

— G e o r g e Wa s h i n g t o n ,
“Journal to the River Ohio”

Soon after his first encounter with these well-oiled Frenchmen, Washington was taken to Fort Le Boeuf, where the main French force had already established a fort Washington would later describe as “bristling with cannons.” Hundreds of canoes were also beached nearby. The French were not trying to disguise their strength or intentions from Washington.

When the young colonial envoy delivered Dinwiddie’s message, the French commander rejected the letter, which contained King George’s | 105 \

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ultimatum to the French. A veteran soldier of the wars in Europe, the French general minced no words. All lands drained by the Ohio River belonged to France. Any outsider would be arrested—if the Indians did not get them first. With little ceremony, Washington was sent packing.

Washington knew that it was urgent that he get the information about the disposition of the French to Dinwiddie. But the trip back to Virginia was far more difficult than the journey out had been. Now late December, it was bitterly cold, and heavy snow fell, slowing the horses, which had to be rested frequently. Unwilling to delay, Washington decided to continue on foot, so he and the trader, Christopher Gist, set off together. At least twice on this return journey, Washington was very nearly killed. First he and Gist were set upon by a group of “French Indians” and one of them shot at the two Virginians at close range—according to Washington, “not 15 Steps, but fortunately missed.” Washington and Gist captured their Indian assailant but then let him go, deciding instead to walk all night and put more distance between themselves and the Indians.

When they reached the Allegheny River, expecting it to be frozen over, the pair discovered that it was only half iced and set about building a raft. Working for a whole day with what Washington called “one poor hatcher,” the men constructed a rough raft to cross the river. But almost as soon as they set out across the ice-choked river, the raft was caught in an ice jam and Washington was tossed into ten feet of icy water. After pulling himself back aboard, Washington poled the raft with Gist’s help to a nearby island, where they spent the night. As temperatures plunged during the night, Washington shivered in his wet clothes and Gist suffered frostbite on his fingers and toes. But in the extreme cold, the river had frozen solid overnight. The two men | 106 \

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were able to set off on foot, and early in January 1754, Washington reported back to Dinwiddie in Williamsburg.

Bringing the French response, along with his assessment of French strength and detailed maps he had made of the territory, Washington urged Dinwiddie to build a fort where the Ohio River formed at the fork of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers. His completed report, including his accounts of the Indians and his several brushes with disaster, was sent on to the Virginia legislature, the House of Burgesses.

It was later published as a pamphlet,
The Journal of Major George Washington,
and this brief but exciting adventure narrative, filled with descriptions of the wilderness and Washington’s close calls with Indians and frozen rivers in the wild interior of America, made the little-educated, backwoods colonial something of a celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic. His next act caused much larger waves.

Dinwiddie’s interests were divided between what was good for Virginia, what was good for England, and what was good for himself as a shareholder in the Ohio Company. With Washington’s report in hand, the governor got the burgesses to authorize a three-hundred-man army and construction of a fort at the location Washington had detailed.