A History of the American People

Washington himself said he suffered from consciousness of a defective education.' That was why he never attempted to write his memoirs. He said that young men of the gentry class brought up in Virginia, andgiven a horse and a servant to attend them as soon as they could ride' were
in danger of becoming indolent and helpless.' But Washington was in no such temptation. He wanted to get on. There was a powerful drive in this big young man to better himself. He developed a good, neat, legible hand. To improve his manners, he copied out 110 maxims, originally compiled by a French Jesuit as instructions for young aristocrats. Thus:Sing not to
yourself with a humming noise nor drum with your fingers and feet.' Kill no vermin, as fleas, lice, ticks etc in the sight of others.'When accompanying a man of great quality, walk not with
him cheek by jowl but somewhat behind him, but yet in such a manner he may easily speak with
you.'
Alas! It was Washington's misfortune and grievance that he knew no one of great quality.' He lacked interest,' as they said in the 18th century. Interest' was one of the key words in his vocabulary. Men were driven by it, in his opinion. He wrote ofinterest, the only bonding
cement.' It applied equally to men and nations. Men may speculate as they will,' he wrote,they
may talk of patriotism ... but whoever builds upon it as a sufficient basis for conducting a long
and bloody war will find themselves deceived in the end ... For a time it may of itself push men
to action, to bear much, to encounter difficulties, but it will not endure unassisted by interest.' He
thought it was the universal experience of mankind' thatno nation can be trusted further than it
is bound by interest.'' It is important to grasp that Washington saw both the Revolution and the
constitution-making that followed as the work of men driven mainly by self-interest. It was
always his dynamic, and he felt no shame in it, following it until his own interest was subsumed
in the national interest. The nearest he came to possessing interest himself was the marriage of
his half-brother Lawrence to a daughter of Colonel William Fairfax, head of a branch of one of
the grandest families in Virginia. Washington made every use he could of this connection. His
brother-in-law George Fairfax, a young man with great expectations and a touch of Indian blood
(like many Americans) was a role-model.
Washington discovered, aged sixteen, that for a young man of his background and modest
education the next best thing to owning a lot of land was to become a land surveyor. A neat hand
and the ability to draw maps, take measurements, and make calculations were all that was
required. The fascination all Americans had in land, the constant speculation in it, the vast
amount there was still to be occupied further west, ensured there would be no lack of occupation.
His first job was to survey part of the Fairfax estate west of the Blue Ridge. This took him into
the frontier district for the first time and he found he liked the life, the opportunities, even the
danger. He joined the militia and found he liked that too. He was a natural soldier. In 1753, when
he was twenty-one, the governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, sent Washington, with the rank
of major, into the Ohio Valley, on behalf of the Ohio Company, a private-enterprise venture set
up with government backing to develop the frontier districts. Washington's orders were to
contact any French he found there and warn them they were straying on to British territory.
The following year was the critical one. Washington, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel and a
force of Virginia volunteers and Indians, was sent back to the Ohio and instructed to build a fort
at the Ohio Forks, near what is now Pittsburgh. He kept a detailed journal of this expedition. At
the Forks he found the French had been before him and constructed Fort Duquesne. He built his
own, which he called Fort Necessity-he was having an administrative battle with Governor
Dinwiddie over pay and supplies-at Great Meadows. Then he fell in with a French detachment,
under Lieutenant de Jumonville, and when the French ran for their muskets, `I ordered my