A History of the American People

its ways. He was fond of using the word Empire.' He was proud of England's. If anything his instincts were imperialist. He certainly considered the idea of a career in the British Empire. He hadhad a good war.' In 1756 he had been given the command of the Virginia Militia in frontier
defense. In 1758 he led one of the three brigades which took Fort Duquesne. His success as a
rising military commander under the British flag helped him to court and win the hand of a
wealthy and much sought-after young widow, Martha Dandridge Custis (1732-1802), who had
17,000 acres and £20,000 in money.
It had long been Washington's ambition, which he made repeated efforts to gratify, to get a
regular commission in the British Army. This might have changed his entire life because it
would have opened up to him the prospect of global service, promotion, riches, possibly a
knighthood, even a peerage. He knew by now that he was a first-class officer with the talent and
temperament to go right to the top. His fighting experience was considerable and his record
exemplary. But the system was against him. In the eyes of the Horse Guards, the headquarters of
the British Army in London, colonial army officers were nobodies. American militias were
dismissed with special contempt, both social and military. It was a cherished myth in London
that they had contributed virtually nothing to winning the war in America and could not be
depended on to fight, except possibly against ill-armed Indians. Washington's service actually
counted against him, just as, a generation or so later, the young Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of
Wellington) found himself dismissed by the Horse Guards as a mere 'sepoy general' because of
his service in India. So Washington discovered that his colonial army commission was of no
value and that he had no chance of getting a royal one.' It was an injustice and an insult and it
proved to be the determining factor in his life and allegiance.
Washington's financial experiences also illustrated the way in which the American gentry
class were inevitably turning against Britain. The marriage to Martha and the death of his half-
brother and his widow made Washington master of Mount Vernon and transformed him from a
minor planter into a major landowner. He lived in some style, with thirteen house-servants plus
carpenters and handymen about the building. In the seven years from 1768 alone, the
Washingtons entertained over 2,000 guests. He did all the things an English gentleman, and the
Virginians who aped them, might be expected to do. He bred horses. He kept hounds-Old Harry,
Pompey, Pilot, Tartar, Mopsey, Duchess, Lady, Sweetlips, Drunkard, Vulcan, Rover, Truman,
Jupiter, June, and Truelove. He set up a library and ordered 500 bookplates from London, with
his arms on. He and Martha had no children but he was kind to the step-children she brought
with her, ordering fine toys from London: A Tunbridge teaset,' reads one list,three Neat
Tunbridge Toys, a neat book, fashionable tea chest, a bird on bellows, a cuckoo, a turnabout
parrot, a grocer's shop, a neat dressed wax baby, an aviary, a Prussian Dragoon, a Man Smoking,
and six small books for children.’
But he was not an English gentleman, of course; he was a colonial subject, and he found the
system worked against him as a landowner too. He had to employ London Agents, Robert Cary
& Co-every substantial planter did-and his relations with them made him anti-British. English
currency regulations gave them an advantage over Virginia planters and they tended to keep
them in debt with interest mounting up. Any dealings with London were expensive because of
the complexity, historical anomalies, and obscurantism of the ancient administration there, which
had evolved like a weird organism over centuries. Americans were not used to government.
What they had-for instance, the lands offices-was simple, efficient, and did its business with
dispatch. London was another universe. The Commission of Customs, the Secretary-at-War, the
Admiralty, the Admiralty Courts, the Surveyor General of the King's Woods and Forests, the