Basically American History - Part One

George Washington was not what you have always believed he was. Really, right now, get that image - including the one on the dollar - out of your head. Washington was a real flesh and blood man who always wanted to do the right thing. He never chopped down a cherry tree. it wouldn't have been the right thing. He did have some eccentricities though, as we all do. One of his was to write a little book with all the mannerism of a "gentleman" contained in it. When he would learn new ones, he would add those too. He always carried this little book. Washington wouldn't dream of doing anything ungentlemanly. If people - any people - walked into a room where Washington was sitting, he would immediately stand out of respect. It could have been the janitor. Washington would be standing there in full regalia offering the janitor his hand. For example, when Washington was finally through fighting in every American war and was done with the terms this nation's first presidency, he came back to Mount Vernon, hoping for a long, quiet life on the land that he loved, but no one would leave him alone. There were the constant letters that had to be answered and a never-ending line of uninvited "guests," many of them, complete strangers, but Washington just had to welcome them in and have them at the table for something to drink or eat. He could never stop being Washington right up to the day he died. To stop being Washington for any other reason would have been ungentlemanly.

So picture yourself sitting with some friends at the City Hotel on Broadway in New York City in 1804. It is the day before Col. Alexander Hamilton and then Vice President Aaron Burr are set to have a duel. At the City Hotel you are within walking distance of the site of Washington's first inauguration. New York City was the capital city of the U.S. back when Washington was sworn in so he had to live there. And he did, right on Cherry street, which is also within walking distance of where you are hoisting your drink. In fact, across from the first "white house" was an iron foundry. It was noisy and it was smelly and it was run by a Dutch family called Duykinck. They could count amoung their ancestors the very first "limner" (portrait painter) of any importance in the U.S., and they were also wonderful engravers and makers of stained glass windows. But almost everyone was the "first" something in New York City back then. The country was still too young to have a popular history.

One of your drinking buddies is wondering why Hamilton won't simply accept Burr's apology and call it a day. Everyone knows that Gen. Alexander Hamilton is a phony, a numbers guy, who got the bank he wanted and should shut up, while Burr is the real deal. He could literally shoot the whiskers off a bunny rabbit, was a man's man and a ladies man and was sitting over in the Vice President's House (The VP's official residence was not yet in Washington) dreading the idea of having to kill the buffoon Hamilton the next day. He even sent word to Hamilton that he was sorry and didn't want to duel. But that was not good enough for Hamilton who would have his satisfaction - or so he thought. Hamilton lived not far from Burr at 12 Garden Street. But hell, New York City was a lot smaller in those days. If you had a "house in the country," you were talking about Harlem. New York City itself didn't even get to where Midtown is today. There was Broadway and something they called the Boston Road because if you got on it and stayed on it you would eventually find yourself in Boston. We call it I-95.

Vice President Burr won the duel, Hamilton went to his grave, which I believe is somewhere near Wall Street (really) and Pres. Jefferson was faced with the arrest of his vice president. Dueling was illegal, but someone had apparently forgotten to tell Hamilton and Burr and now Burr, America's first outlaw cowboy and a few of his closest pals were on the run, headed Southwest. He actually tried to establish a new nation near Mexico. He was unsuccessful. Arrested, tried, found not guilty. He lived in Mexico for a while.Then headed back to New York City, broke, his daughter had died at sea. He lived for a while into the 1830s at his cousin's house in Staten Island before he passed away an old and beaten man. Your have to admit though, Hamilton really screwed up when he wouldn't back down.

Did you know that Washington didn't own Mount Vernon for a long time? It belonged to his half brother, who being a member of the British Navy, had named the manse after his favorite British Admiral - Vernon. Washington as a young man was gangly, always a tall person among midgets. He had been living with his mother, Mary Washington, but was getting older, so was sent off to Mount Vernon. He taught himself to be a land surveyor, and he also bought a lot of land, almost a state's worth of land. Not far from Mount Vernon lived Lord Fairfax, a real British Lord, with a really beautiful daughter named Sally. Washington was crazy about her and the society she lived in, and wanted to learn everything he could about both. And so he began to write his little book of rules of behavior.

But there was much to be done. He was given an officer's commission in the Virginia state milita and he ordered the uniform and it had to look just right. And his horse had to be the whitest of white. The British who were over here fighting the French and Indian War let him go to war at their side, where he had three horses shot out from under him, but never got a scratch. He applied for a senior officer's position in the British Army. Isn't that hard to believe when you hear it today? His reasoning was simple though; in part he thought he'd have a better chance with Sally Fairfax in a British officer's uniform. But the British turned him down, said they thought he wasn't up to snuff. Someone screwed up. How do you think the King of England felt later when he learned that just prior to the Revolution, Washington had applied for a commission in the British Army but was turned down?

The extremely tall man wearing the bright colored military uniform at the back of the room in all those John Trumbull paintings of the early constitutional conventions is George Washington . The uniform is something he had designed himself and he would like to go to war against the Brits wearing it. In fact, on his plantation, which needs British goods to run, he now owes the Brits more than they owe him. His business is in shambles trying to pay outrageous taxes to the Brits.

The rest of the story is pretty well known from here on. Washington loses more battles than he wins, but he wins the war. Ho Chi Minh, leader of Vietnam, would later study Washington's battle plans and see the genius in them. The strategy was simple. You were fighting a force who was not as familiar with the land as you were. So, why not attack them, do as much damage as possible and run like hell back to your familiar surroundings? That's what Washington and his commanders did all the way to victory at Yorktown. It wouldn't be fair to give Washington all the credit for that strategy, though. It is one he learned from the Native Americans during the French and Indian War.

But back to Sally Fairfax.. George and Sally have become the Romeo and Juliet of colonial history. But what was really going on there? In his last letter to her the year before he died, Washington writes: "During this period |the Revolutionary War| so many important events have occurred and such changes in man and things have taken place, as the compass of a letter would give you but an inadequate idea of it. None of which events however nor all of them together have been able to eradicate from my mind, the recollection of those happy moments, the happiest in my life, which I have enjoyed in your company."

Seriously, can there be any doubt here, at least about Washington's feelings?

Sally was living in England when Washington wrote her this letter on May, 16, 1798. Near the end of the letter (from the same one above), he writes: " . . . permit me to add that I have wondered often ( your nearest relations being in this country), that you should not prefer spending the evening of your life among them . .. "

Yes, he wants her to come to Virgina. But he lives with his wife Martha in Virgina. So what is going on here? Has Washington stopped reading his little book of proper behavior?

Obviously Sally Fairfax, at least as far as Washington is concerned, is something special. One could easily say that only a year before his death, he is still in love with her. He never had a son or daughter of his own. There was a Bushrod Washington, a semi-distant relative, who was an idiot of sorts, whom Washington literally couldn't stand. He would show up at Washington's camp during the Revolution and ask to be made a colonel. Washington could not get rid of him. And when Washington died in Dec. 1799, just two weeks before the turn of the century, some of his things were left to Bushrod, who promptly sold everything he could.

Washington's letters, of which there were thousands, wound up in the hands of a Harvard professor, who later wrote a halfway decent biography of Washington. But Prof. Jared Sparks himself was a fool in the way he treated the documents. For example, he would often cut Washington's signatures out of his letters and give them to his friends as presents.

When Washington wrote his Will, he left orders for all slaves "owned by me" to be freed. Further, his orders included they should all be educated and given a stipend and one in particular was to be taken care of for life. Washington had written many letters regarding freeing slaves. He did not think slavery was "morally right." He also felt that if he freed them before he died, he would incur the wrath of the pro-slavery forces, and in that, he lacked the courage. He is not only the first President of the United States. He is the first President of the United States to free slaves. Strangely, he couldn't free his wife's slaves because they were not his "property."

My favorite Washington moment is when the Revolutionary War is just beginning and he gallops off to Massachusetts. He arrives in Cambridge. He is shocked. The men are dirty, badly dressed. Their speech can barely be understood. This is the first time he has met men from New England, and he wonders if they are all like this. Then he meets Gen Knox of Maine, and within a half hour of talking to Knox, he is nearly convinced they can win the Revolution.

But I guess that wasn't really my favorite moment. There is a story about Washington and Ben Franklin and other men sitting near a swamp drinking and basically having a good time. Franklin remarks on the scent of swamp gas in the air and tells the others that he can literally light the swamp water on fire. They all doubt him of course. He's pretty old by then and people are beginning to ask questions. But they do what he requests, stirring up the bottom of the swamp. Franklin lights a torch and it all goes up like gasoline.

Franklin was always such a showoff. My feeling is that Washington wrote something new in his little book that night in the "things never to do" section.