Perhaps the best proof that the relationship between Washington and Sally Fairfax stayed deep but platonic is that the Washingtons remained intimate friends with George William and Sally Fairfax before the American Revolution and even traveled with them. In all likelihood, George confessed to Martha his longtime flirtation, which had cooled and receded to its proper place. The febrile yearnings of youth had made way for a more mature love. It speaks to the strength of the Washingtons’ marriage that they were never threatened by the close proximity of Sally Fairfax, who remained a welcome guest at Mount Vernon and no less a friend to Martha than to George. There is something admirably grown-up, sensitive, and dignified about the way these two couples handled a most delicate situation.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Darling of a Grateful Country

IN THE SPRING OF 1758 George Washington entertained one last forlorn hope of a brilliantly climactic military campaign in the Ohio Valley. He was about to tender his resignation when he heard reports in March that the Crown planned to send a fleet with seven thousand men to North America and contemplated another operation against Fort Duquesne. The new commander, Brigadier General John Forbes, was a veteran Scottish officer who took a decidedly low view of colonial officers, maligning them as a “bad collection of broken innkeepers, horse jockeys, and Indian traders.”¹

Hoping to curry favor with Forbes, Washington wrote to Brigadier General John Stanwix and badgered him “to mention me in favorable terms to General Forbes,” but “not as a person who would depend upon him for further recommendation to military preferment, for I have long conquered all such expectancies . . . but as a person who would gladly be distinguished in some measure from the common run of provincial officers.”² Perhaps a chastened Washington meant it when he now said that he expected no royal commission. Contrary to his bias against colonial soldiers, Forbes singled out Washington as “a good and knowing officer in the back countries.”³ To augment the chances for victory at the Forks of the Ohio, the Virginia assembly decided to raise a second regiment, doubling its armed force to two thousand men, with George Washington as the presiding senior officer.

In early July at Fort Cumberland, Washington showed how fighting in the hinterlands had tutored him in Indian-style warfare. When he ran short of uniforms, he outfitted both himself and his men in Indian hunting shirts and leggings, helping them to emulate the light, mobile style of their fleet-footed adversaries. While admitting to Forbes’s chief aide that it was “an unbecoming dress” for an officer, he argued that “soldiers in such a dress are better able to carry their provisions, are fitter for the active service we are engaged in, and less liable to sink under the fatigues of a long march.”⁴ Even though Washington won permission to assume Indian dress, he still acknowledged the incontestable superiority of Indian warriors: “I cannot conceive the best white men to be equal to them in the woods.”⁵

A victim of political wrangling in Williamsburg, Washington was eager to renew his bid for a seat from Frederick County in the House of Burgesses. He probably wished to erase the memory of his poor showing three years earlier and establish through public service his credentials as an aspiring gentleman. Learning from past mistakes, he gave plenty of notice for his candidacy this time and assembled a cadre of active, energetic friends who cheerfully drummed up support in Winchester in his absence. Nonetheless they pleaded with him to come and politick in person. His friend Colonel James Wood, the town’s leading citizen, warned that there was “no relying on the promises of the common herd . . . There are many of us embarked on the same cause with you and a disappointment will sit heavy on us.”⁶ Leaving no stone unturned, Robert Rutherford told Washington that they were encouraging voters “with the greatest ardor, even down to Will the hatter and his oily spouse.”⁷ Washington secured permission to travel to Winchester to campaign, then chose to stay with his troops. This may have been from a sense of duty or from fear that he would miss a victorious battle. Washington had also begun to intuit the subtle art of seeking power by refraining from too obvious a show of ambition.

On election day, July 24, 1758, the absentee candidate engaged in the popular, if technically illegal, custom of intoxicating local voters. His campaign forwarded him an expense account for thirty-four gallons of wine, three pints of brandy, thirteen gallons of beer, eight quarts of cider, and forty gallons of rum punch, costing the candidate a sizable thirty-nine pounds in Virginia currency. Accepting this expense, Washington hoped that his backers had plied all voters impartially with strong beverages: “My only fear is that you spent with too sparing a hand.”⁸

As voting for the two seats got under way in Washington’s absence, it was clear how much power the young war hero wielded in this rustic area. He profited from the fact that one candidate was Thomas Bryan Martin, the nephew of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, proprietor of the Northern Neck. Since each voter cast two votes, Washington and Martin formed a ticket against the incumbents, with the latter’s presence enlisting Fairfax support. Among those supporting Washington was Lord Fairfax himself, followed by a sterling list of local luminaries and his regimental surgeon, Dr. James Craik. Even George William Fairfax arrived in Winchester to endorse his wife’s faithful admirer. The final vote sharply reversed Washington’s crashing defeat of three years earlier as he garnered 309 of 397 votes cast and easily outpaced the other three candidates, including Thomas Bryan Martin, who, as runner-up with 240 votes, became the second burgess.

Washington’s vote-getting prowess was only magnified by having trounced his opponents in absentia. Robert Rutherford credited his victory to his fair treatment of his men and “ardent zeal for the common cause.”⁹ Colonel Wood was hoisted aloft and carried about the town amid boisterous huzzahs for Washington. In thanking friends for their support, Colonel Washington sounded openly jubilant: “If thanks flowing from a heart replete with joy and gratitude can in any measure compensate for the fatigue, anxiety and pain you had at my election, be assured you have them.”¹⁰ He instinctively struck a generous tone, stating that his best way of thanking voters was by “making their interests . . . my own and doing everything that lies in my little power for the honor and welfare of the county.”¹¹ With a thoroughness that previewed bigger things to come, Washington filed away the poll sheet so that he could form his own alphabetized list, showing how each person had voted.

Even as he thrilled to this electoral victory, he was entangled in a bitter imbroglio over the optimal route for the march to Fort Duquesne, a seemingly minor tactical dispute with major political overtones. Washington wanted the Forbes expedition to follow the road Braddock had charted through the wilderness, not only because he himself had originally blazed the trail but because it passed through Virginia and would consolidate the colony’s commercial presence in the Ohio Country. Some assertive Philadelphians agitated for a road from Raystown, Pennsylvania, which would benefit their colony. After chatting with Colonel Henry Bouquet, an aide to General Forbes, Washington was aghast to discover that he favored the Pennsylvania road. “If Colo. Bouquet succeeds in this point with the general, all is lost! All is lost by Heavens!” Washington told Forbes’s secretary, Francis Halkett. ¹² In resorting to hyperbole, Washington may have thought he was claiming the moral high ground, but Forbes saw only a self-serving maneuver by a bumptious young Virginian. “By a very unguarded letter of Col. Washington that accidentally fell into my hands,” Forbes told Bouquet, “I am now at the bottom of their scheme against this new [Pennsylvania] road, a scheme that I think was a shame for any officer to be concerned in.”¹³ At this stage of his life, Washington sometimes found it difficult to distinguish his own from the general interest. In selecting the Pennsylvania road, military historians have argued, Forbes may have selected the better route because it was shorter and bypassed treacherous water crossings. Conceding these advantages, an unyielding Washington countered that the Pennsylvania road had to span “monstrous mountains, covered with woods and rocks” and might not be finished before cold weather intervened.¹⁴