Progress is The End of Desperation
Thoughts from a biography of George Washington: His Excellency
There is an immense supply of biographies documenting the personal achievements and failures of great innovators like Jobs, Musk, Rockefeller, Grove, and Ford. They all have much to teach. But given the divisiveness of our era, I felt called to look back home: Alexandria, VA, the hometown of yours truly, Robert E. Lee (yikes), and George Washington.
Washington is a mystery to me, and apparently that is intentional. The young country needed an icon to embody its ideals, and he was all too happy to step into that role, often literally rewriting his own personal diaries. He wasn’t a political genius. He wasn’t a great military leader. His speeches are considered stiff, and he was extremely self-conscious about the simplicity of his education. Though he is an icon of liberty, he owned slaves all his life. How does one reconcile the reality of the man with his legacy? And what does his life and learnings teach us about material progress?
Those claims among the others I will make here are drawn from Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, who fortunately had the same questions. In fact, as I learned in the opening pages of the book, Alexandria is also his hometown. We even went to the same grade school in Old Town, St. Mary’s, albeit 30 years apart. His book on Washington, His Excellency, is something of the last word on Washington, as a batch of his correspondences were discovered and shared that historians assume must be the last remaining unknown letters. Thankfully, he did not approach this as an academic, but rather a rigorous summary of the most important elements of Washington’s life and historical consensus possible in 200 pages.
In the same vein, this post is not a book report, but an attempt to answer a few questions about Washington’s life that illuminate our own era:
What radicalized Washington against England?
What was Washington’s personal dream for America?
How do we reconcile Washington’s personal failings with his achievements?
What radicalized Washington against England?
There are many modern analogies between the colonial-era US and modern day. Many founding fathers were notorious shitposters, complete with anonymous profile pics and shifting accounts. As far as Ellis details, Washington never engaged in that particular domain; but he bears another hallmark of the internet age: he thought a conspiracy was out to get him.
Understanding why he saw British conspiracies behind every maneuver requires some understanding of his background. As the son of a middle-class family, Washington grew up in a position with which many middle-class Americans of today might sympathize: respectability and poverty both seemed equally possible. Washington was very much a striver for respectability (and would flip his shit at anyone who called him out on it). His endeavors before the Revolutionary War are fascinating, especially how he accidentally started the French & Indian War, but suffice to say, he married into respectability and wealth. The trick is that he was a steward of his wife’s fortune, and he could not use it unilaterally. Rather, a network of suppliers to his wife’s family would enact his requests and reject any they thought were not in her interest. (In my head, this entire incident plays out like an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia).
One of those suppliers was a merchant in England. At this time, Washington’s only revenue came from growing and selling tobacco. And a respectable Virginia gentleman would grow the finest tobacco, and sell it in England through a trusted merchant, in this case a merchant called Cary & Co. The firm had a long history with his wife’s family, and extended that service to Washington. A respectable Virginia gentleman would also outfit his estate, his family, and himself with the best products from England to flex on the country bumpkins, so the same merchant would receive a big list of stuff to buy from the best shops in England for his estate, his family, and himself. Many Virginians played this game, and almost all of them ended up in debt to merchants.
What radicalized Washington was this trusted merchant, constantly telling him the prices of the goods he had to sell and the prices of the goods he asked them to purchase moved against him. Ellis includes an aside investigating if they really were screwing him, and the historical record points to no. Instead, the British empire had successfully grown tobacco in India, and the market was flooded with supply. Regardless, Washington was ignorant of the Indian supply but extremely aware that he was headed on a path of permanent indebtedness.
“The more Washington thought about it, the more he concluded that no amount of diligence on his part, no spell of excellent weather, no favorable fluctuations in the tobacco market, could combine to pull him out of debt, because the mercantile system itself was a conspiracy designed to assure his dependency on the likes of Cary.”
You don’t have to squint too hard to see how familiar this arrangement is to anyone who dreams of owning a house in California.
After Washington saw the mercantile system as his enemy, he changed his entire estate. He treated British proclamations with mistrust, intended to enrich themselves off the colonists’ labor, specifically the Stamp Act and the proclamations from the king that the frontier was closed to settlement. Far from protecting the peace between colonists and natives, he thought the British ruling class was simply protecting the land for their own interests. They likely were, and Washington likely knew this because it is what he might do in their stead. Ultimately, he saw an economic system designed to enrich the powerful and impoverish everyone else. The mercantile system was zero-sum, a system of victims and victimizers. He did not want to be a victim of history (a theme of America’s beginning we will return to), so he changed his entire business model to support local industry. He changed his crops to food for trade in the colonies, and he set to work building ships to support local trade. He vertically integrated his estate to avoid being reliant on anyone else.
What was Washington’s dream for America?
In short, Washington wanted self-determination. He wanted a fair system for distributing the country’s resources. There was no question of if it belonged to the natives:
“He regarded the Indian tribes of the region as a series of holding companies destined to be displaced as the growing wave of white settlers flowed over the Alleghenies. There was nothing right or wrong about this development, as he saw it. It was simply and obviously inevitable. The Indians, understandably and even justifiably, would resist. After all, they had dominated the region for several centuries. But they would lose, not because they were wrong, but because they were, or soon would be, outnumbered. (Later on, during his presidency, he would attempt to guarantee tribal control over Indian enclaves, his effort to make a moral statement amidst a relentlessly realistic diagnosis of the demographic facts.)”
Ellis makes the case that Washington “instinctively understood the core principle of republicanism, that all legitimate power derived from the consent of the public”. Washington rarely used the term republic, but would refer to the American empire that called for both conquest and a strong executive, a consequence of his efforts leading the Revolutionary army that required unity of command i.e. the army can’t work with multiple people claiming authority and giving orders. The country could not either, no matter how much Jefferson and Southerners dreamed of an agrarian utopia where power is never concentrated.
As soon as the Revolutionary War ended, Washington felt the country was on the clock. The British maintained control of Canada, and they would not forget the possible riches of the New World. The young country must establish itself as an identity unique from the Old World. It must find a way to integrate the immigration into the country that makes it stronger. In fact, the Old World could only weaken the country. Far better to disavow any foreign alliances in order to avoid the conflict and zero-sum thinking of the wars of conquest fought there. Europe had no answers for its own desperate people, and the rulers there were only ever looking to use people e.g. the mercantile system.
Washington’s event horizon was the settlement of the Americas. He had no dream besides keeping the country going as an independent, contiguous entity, free of European interference. He could not forecast specifics—he had several misguided beliefs about how important Virginia would be to its future, including an incorrect belief that Virginia must have the most economically important waterways. Rather, his emphasis was on establishing America as independent and a nation i.e. a strong federal government and a national character binding Americans together.
Washington desired a country with talent and a sense of personal honor. His own attempts to emulate this looked like a king of a small country but with the assent of the people rather than a monarch or religious figure, who ruled because he was the best of them. In practice, it meant you had to be educated enough to know all the ways democracies fail, smart enough to figure out practical solutions, and command the respect of the public. For example of how talent mattered, consider an episode during the Revolutionary War. Frenchmen kept showing up claiming to be aristocrats and demanding to be generals to lead this American rabble. (The American experience of being lectured by Euros that think them backwards and in dire need of education and leadership is not unfamiliar—consider the modern UN, climate conferences, NATO leadership, etc.) Marquis de Lafayette arrived at Valley Forge in a similar fashion, right as the Revolutionary Army nearly came apart. In contrast to his countrymen, he asked to serve at any rank in the most dangerous missions. Washington immediately recognized he was different. His resourcefulness, commitment to high standards, and bias for action would earn Washington’s admiration, eventually becoming effectively an adopted son to Washington.
Washington believed in ordered freedom—freedom that brought chaos was no freedom at all. This sentiment was borne from his own experiences in the colonial army. He was entirely reliant on the Continental Congress to provide his funding, and it rarely provided it on time or in the amount promised. He saw the Articles of Confederation fail for the same reason. After Shay’s rebellion, when the states lacked a coordinated response to a farmer’s uprising, it became clear the country wanted to reassess the Articles of Confederation. Desiring legitimacy for a new set of national laws, states asked Washington to lend his war hero reputation to the cause. Washington refused any association with the effort until he had secured assurances that states were ready to seriously address the issue.
Washington desperately wanted the leaders of the country to be brothers in this endeavor, with the president being revered, such that no one would dare criticize the president’s choices or expect the president to address criticism. This hope vanished by the end of his second term. Jefferson and Madison were already slandering the policies championed by Washington and Hamilton, as well as Washington personally. They started anonymously and gradually became more visible, a rift he finally acknowledged but regretted that the norms now allowed the president to be criticized, that the country became so quickly divided into parties, and that his friends and subordinates could not agree on anything but his unique leadership capabilities.
In summary, Washington cultivated strength in the present facing an unknown future. He sought unity, integration, and a system that would fully ensure America would not be a victim to one of the imperial powers. Accomplishing that required effective coordination between the states, effectively integrating the desperate people from the Old World, isolation from European affairs, and time to cultivate the capability to resist future imperial incursions. Implementing this strategy would require new thinking from talented individuals who embraced the responsibility of securing the nation’s future.
How do we reconcile Washington’s personal failings with his achievements?
In the summer of 2020, when Black Lives Matters protestors physically attacked monuments of the country and ideologically assaulted the foundations of the country, Washington was frequently presented as one of a corrupted, mediocre man who's only defining characteristic was being white and in the right place at the right time. In many ways, my interest in Washington was a reflection that this was stupid and intentionally misleading.
Of course, it is true that the young country needed a myth, and they chose Washington. Building the idea of a nation was essentially one giant psy-op on barely literate people, and one that Washington embraced. At long last, he had respectability; nobody needed to know about his missteps because, of course, he had never had any.
Ellis is unflinching in peeling back this mask, often in very funny passages, but most frequently in documenting Washington’s history as a slave owner.
All his life, Washington owned slaves. When he went to war, his slave servants went with him. Washington accepted free blacks in the Continental army and commanded a racially integrated army. Washington endorsed the idea of extending freedom at the end of the war to any slaves in occupied South Carolina that took up arms against the British. As a Virginian, he was culturally surrounded by other slave owners. His tobacco farm was economically dependent on slave labor. When he married his rich wife Martha, her estate brought many slaves. Their slaves intermarried at Mt. Vernon.
Slavery was a weight on Washington’s mind. Lafayette told Washington the end of slavery must be a natural conclusion of the ideal of liberty at the heart of the American Revolution. After ending British rule in the US, Washington became the focus of an abolitionist campaign to show the US really did value freedom. What better way than having their icon free his slaves? Robert Pleasants, a Virginia Quaker, emancipated all of his slaves and implored Washington to do the same. Anticipating an exercise like this one, Pleasants predicted it would haunt his reputation forever. Quoting Ellis quoting Pleasants, “How sad it would then be to read that the great hero of American independence, “the destroyer of tyranny and oppression,” had failed the final test by holding “a number of People in absolute slavery, who were by nature equally entitled to freedom as himself.”
Washington ignored the letter, but supported other emancipation efforts. He told the Virginia legislature he supported a motion to allow emancipated slaves to remain in Virginia: “I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery]—but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished,& that is by Legislative authority: and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting.” He denied payment in slaves: “I never mean (unless some particular circumstances should compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by the legislature by which slavery in this Country may be abolished by slow, sure, & imperceptible degrees.” And yet, he still owned slaves.
One explanation is that the economics of slavery for Washington had changed. Remember how Washington abandoned the tobacco business because it was putting him in debt? The new crop (mostly wheat) and shipbuilding business did not require anywhere near as many slaves. Now, they were mouths to feed. Washington debated selling the slaves, not freeing them, but even then, he encountered overlapping concerns. For one, he did not own Martha’s slaves. In fact, Martha did not really own her slaves either; they were property of the estate. They were both overseeing the estate, but they could not legally liquidate its property. Only Martha’s son could do that when he inherited the estate. Second, Washington’s oldest slaves were past their prime working years. Third, and as Ellis claims most importantly, the slaves of the different estates had intermarried at Mt. Vernon. Washington had resolved not to break up families, making selling any large population difficult. His only way out was broad emancipation, as Pleasants asked. Instead, he “vowed never again to purchase another slave”, which rang hollow because his slave population was already economically a drain. Ellis makes the case that Mt. Vernon ran a deficit and effectively became a slave retirement home and child-care center, “who he was morally obliged to care for.” Washington would ultimately state in his will that all his slaves would be freed when Martha died, ensuring the families would not be separated. These were victims of history, his victims, but it is difficult for me to say he did not take this obligation seriously, even if he ignored Pleasants’ just solution.
In my mind, slavery is an entirely separate category of personal failing than others, but there were others. It is worth acknowledging the other issues to understand the man. Ellis’ goes to lengths to give a sense of who Washington really was. He was obsessed with acquiring land. He was a screamer, known to flashes of anger where he would simply unload on subordinates. To his credit, as he grew in stature, he knew he had to control this and developed a strict discipline to hold his tongue. Washington really pressed the limit on what he was supposed to be doing with Martha’s money, with merchants occasionally pushing back. Men in his family tended to die young, and he expected to follow them into the grave. When he retired from the Colonial army, he was convinced he would die before the country would move on from the Articles of Confederation. This sullenness prevented him from investing much in the country’s success, until his associates told him he would be needed again.
Washington and Progress
A recurring theme throughout Washington’s life is the victims of history. Slaves, natives, and the poor immigrants from Europe were all victims, desperate for a better life. Washington was nearly made a victim himself and seemed willing to victimize others (slaves, natives, and even other colonists) to avoid it. Washington’s enduring contribution was implementing a system that could end victimization by ending desperation. Simply having a system that allowed for integrating different cultures in a way that everyone could feed themselves was revolutionary in his era. Having a strong federal government set a baseline for how people could be treated in a region, a revolutionary idea, and a persistent failure point in the later French Revolution. What makes Washington stand out is that, for once, the tide of colonial victimization could be changed, albeit imperfectly. America’s founding ideal, then, is not colonial victimization but progress. The Industrial Revolution a hundred years later would put this into overdrive, but the very idea there is enough for everyone and everyone gets a fair shot at it is born from the American Revolution. Scarcity is an Old World concept that should be left there.
Washington saw to his own material security, then helped others, seemingly including his slaves and an attempt to help the natives. He controlled what he could, as exemplified by switching his estate’s business model from a declining one to a self-sufficient one, even if his new model only gave him the status of not being indebted forever. He built his way out of problems, as evidenced by his shipyards. Washington recognized and championed creativity and discipline from his subordinates, as evidenced by Lafayette’s disregard for rank and his commission of Nathanael Greene, a planter turned general whose mastery of logistics single handedly defeated the British campaign in southern colonies. Washington could make the most of a bad situation (including ones of his own making) and escape with his reputation intact because he was pragmatic, bold, and a little bit lucky.
Washington did not end the victimization of people, nor have we. As long as we have free will, it may not even be possible. But we can work to establish thresholds of food, housing, and public health. Consider that one of Washington’s most important decisions during the Revolutionary War was to demand the Colonial army be inoculated against smallpox, giving them an enduring advantage over their British opponents whose forces and mobility were degraded due to New World diseases. Every day, we can work to get closer towards it, even if there is an event horizon beyond which he could not guess the state of the world. How would democracy spread? How should the US interact with the world after it has consolidated power? Washington never ventured a guess, not because he was indifferent but because the people of those eras would need to find their own pragmatic solutions. They would have to choose to victimize or to synthesize.
Today we face our own set of confounding questions: How will AI transform our world? Will China go to war? Will Trump dissolve the US-led global order? Will a more competent, capable, responsive federal government rise from efforts like DOGE? These are my event horizons, and all we can do is see to our own material security and work to make tomorrow better than today, putting an end to victims of history where we can.
Ultimately, Ellis answered all my questions and then some about Washington. I can see the imperious man and probably would not want him as a landlord, though given his people’s loyalty, I suspect he was a great boss. The more time I spent in that era, the more it was clear how pervasive the cultural attitudes were about power being derived from taking from others: life was zero sum. Against that pitch black background, Washington and the founding fathers still shine bright as a positive sum game—that the world does not have to be that way, that we can make it better everyday, and that such an endeavor is worth committing Our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Elias shares Washington’s words from a period of immense uncertainty about the country that rings true today:
“We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation; which have national objects to promote, and a National character to support—If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.” In effect, Washington believed that America’s hard-won independence would be short-lived unless the “United States” became a singular rather than a plural term, because a mere confederation of states would become, as he put it, “the dupes of some [foreign] powers and, most assuredly, the contempt of all.”
Great piece, thanks for writing!