Thinking Point
	What events from Washington's youth might have influenced his actions as an adult? List three of them.

The young Washington is brash, argumentative, impatient, greedy for land and possessions, in hot pursuit of a commission in the British army, often not particularly likable, but very human. His independence and self-reliance were undoubtedly fostered by his father's early death and his lifelong incompatibility with his mother. (His mother has come down to us as something of a harridan; it was not until the nineteenth century that she was canonized as Mary, Mother of Washington.) Washington lost no time in getting away from the rural environment of his mother's house near Fredericksburg, Virginia.

When he was still in his teens he moved to his half brother Lawrence's plantation at Mount Vernon, which he would inherit after Lawrence's death. It was a new world for him, and he flourished in the heady environment. He seems to have produced his own game plan for advancement, qualifying as a surveyor in 1749, making modest purchases of land and acquiring a network of influential connections from his brother's world. Obviously, he was very much a young man on the make, in search of social and economic advancements.

And, in view of the warm support of his friends and mentors, if he lacked polish, he must have had considerable charm. In his teens, what was soon to become his lifelong obsession with self-improvement and character-building was evident.

Among his papers at the Library of Congress there are a number of sheets of paper, probably written by Washington before he was 16, containing rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversation, copied from a seventeenth-century English translation of the writings of a fifteenth-century French Jesuit. Some of the maxims for social contact caught Washington's eye, and he copied them down, reflecting the timidity of a young man moving out of rural society into the more elegant surroundings of his brother's world:

"Kill no vermin as fleas, lice, ticks, etc., in the sight of others," the author warned. "Spit not in the fire. Put not your meat to your mouth with your knife in your hand. Neither spit forth the stones of any fruit pie upon a dish, nor cast anything under the table. Cleanse not your teeth with a tablecloth, napkin, fork, or knife. But if others do it, let it be done with a pick tooth." And "Sleep not while others are speaking."

All were designed to keep the speaker from disgrace in a dining room at Mount Vernon and neighboring plantations. But there were other, less pragmatic maxims, dealing with respect for one's superiors and one's God, with honesty in business, with moderation in behavior. Many of the rules correspond with Washington's later standards of conduct.

For many years it would have seemed that he had composed, rather than copied, the maxims. Although he may have been shy and awkward in the first years of his residence at Mount Vernon, when he fell under the sway of Lawrence's circle Washington was not the complete country bumpkin. He was familiar enough with the amenities of life and the qualities required of a gentleman to know what attributes he sought to add to his own repertoire.

Washington's education
Washington probably had very little schooling in any formal sense. And what there was seems to have stressed such practical skills as surveying and mathematics. He was well aware of his lack of formal education, and it continued to trouble him throughout his life. There are frequent disparaging references to it in his correspondence. And no doubt it contributed to the diffidence with which he always responded to calls on him for public service. It may also have accounted for his reserve in the presence of men he considered his superiors in learning. It was universally observed that he had, as John Adams said, the gift of silence. If so, it was a quality that added immensely, if accidentally, to his reputation for wisdom.

It has often been suggested, not least by such contemporaries of Washington as John Adams, that Washington's reading was not extensive. Indeed, Adams, always a jealous observer, remarked that it was beyond dispute that Washington was too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station. But it is likely that he read more widely at an earlier age in the extensive library that he had collected by the end of his career than has been generally appreciated.

Washington's papers from the French and Indian War, when he commanded Virginia's troops on the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontier from 1754 to 1759, reveal how much this war was a microcosm for the problems he was to face as commander in chief and as president. They are also the most revealing about his emerging character. If he was interested in projecting an image of the stoic ideal at this stage of his career, he was more concerned with the form than with the substance. Like Saint Augustine, he may have prayed, "Oh, Lord, make me good, but not yet."

His papers reveal misgivings, the diffidence, the uncertainties, the often unreasonable expectations and an explosive temper, traits that did not entirely disappear from his character but that his iron will largely suppressed during his public years.

The French War: a trial of character
During the years of the French War, he became increasingly sensitive to any criticism that he felt threatened his growing reputation, partly because he was extraordinarily aware of his own shortcomings. Washington always had few illusions, but one of them was that rectitude of purpose would shield him from criticism.

	Ready Reference
	French and Indian Wars Northwest Territory Fort Necessity The Columbia Encyclopedia

He struck out without mercy when public or private criticism hit a point on which he felt vulnerable, and he carried that instinct with him for the rest of his life. And, as a young officer on the frontier, he did receive criticism: for his precipitative firing on the French mission in 1754; for his surrender of Fort Necessity; for his frank and carping complaints to Virginia's governors on his military situation; and for the behavior of his officers during several of his campaigns. His military correspondence with officials in Williamsburg, Virginia, very quickly declined from deferential acknowledgments of his gratitude for his appointment to imperious pronouncements of his views and demands, punctuated with frequent threats to resign.

Complaints over precedent and pay occupy almost as much of his correspondence as military matters. It is easy to interpret the often arrogant letters of the young officer to his civilian superiors as evidence of an overwhelming self-confidence. But, in fact, his underlying misgivings concerning his ability to succeed in his new role are evident.

A typical response is his reply to reports of criticism of his regiment from the Virginia Assembly. "I find that my own character must of necessity be involved in the general censure, for which reason I cannot help observing that if the country think they have cause to condemn my conduct and have a person in view that will act, then he may do so. It will give me the greatest pleasure to resign a command, which I solemnly declare I accepted against my will."

Washington and the "Common Man"
Washington's legacy from the French War was not only his military training. Another result of his experience had just as major-- perhaps more disturbing--impact on his later personal and political life. At no time in his career was Washington to come so close to that amorphous and desperate group of people known as the "common man" as he did during his years with the Virginia regiment.

During his later years of public service, he was somewhat sheltered by his rank. But on the frontier there was no buffer, and he encountered ordinary men, with all their foibles and inconsistencies. He was not favorably impressed. The settlers on the Virginia-Pennsylvania frontier tended to exhibit a strong sense of independence and a marked lack of reverence for leadership from east of the mountains, traits that did not endear them to the Tidewater establishment.

Although Washington pleaded movingly on many occasions for supplies and protection for the frontier inhabitants, he often tended to forget that frontiersmen were people on the thin edge of survival. These infatuated people consistently failed to behave as he thought they should. In general, Washington found them very selfish, expecting forces to protect their doors but angry when those same forces protected their neighbors'. "The timidity of the inhabitants of this country," he complained to John Robinson, "is to be equaled by nothing but their pervasiveness."

The local small businessmen outraged him. "Were it not too tedious," he wrote Governor Dinwiddie in October of 1757, "I could give your honor such instances of the villainous behavior of these tippling housekeepers as would astonish any person." The local professionals did not escape his ire. "The country has great objections," he complained to Robert Stewart, "to certain medical men, these occasional quacks whose only study is to swell their bills and to make their profit of the country."

The militia were obstinate, self-willed, perverse, of little or no service to the people and very burdensome to the country. "Every mean individual has his own crude notion of things," he wrote, "and must undertake to direct. If his advise is neglected, he thinks himself slighted, abused, and injured."

In general, Washington's taste of disorder on the frontier contributed to his lifelong suspicion and wariness of the masses. He was willing to risk everything for them. But this did not mean that he regarded them as competent to make decisions that he often felt better left to their superiors.

By the beginning of 1759, Virginia's role in the French and Indian War was largely over, and by 1758 Washington had had enough of regimental life. As valuable as the practical aspects of his military experience had been during his years on the frontier, it is hard to discern in the young martial Washington the qualities that later set him apart from other men.

After the war: preparing for a public career
After his return from the war, in 1758, he had for the first time, in spite of the demands of his plantation, at least some leisure to contemplate the improvement of his own character. Indeed, Washington himself may not have much liked the young man his early struggles had created.

In any case, with increasing maturity he undertook to remedy his defects and embark on an agenda for improvement. What he now did, consciously or not, was to model his character on the image of the classical figures admired by his society. In Virginia he began to pay his political dues in the civilian service mandated for men of substance in the colony. He served in the House of Burgesses, and on the tour of Vestry, as a member of the Fairfax County Court. He even changed his handwriting.

He worked hard on his growing reputation among his peers, but he also cultivated the private man. Washington's pre-Revolutionary years at Mount Vernon were a nursery for his later conceptions of private responsibility, reputation and national character.

Graphic Material NWDNS-19-N-1587; "George Washington receiving French generals at Mount Vernon;" N; Records of the Bureau of Ships, Record Group 19; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.

George Washington and his wife Martha receiving French generals at their plantation, Mount Vernon, located in Virginia.

He had unending plans for the improvement of his plantation. To adorn it he purchased furniture and ornaments that he could often ill afford. He avidly acquired surrounding properties to add to its size. His new methods of acquiring land, especially on the frontier, were sometimes not above reproach, as a few of his land purchases were probably the closest he ever came to sharp dealing.

As for most successful planters, Washington's daily life on the plantation was one of strenuous labor. But it was a rich life personally as well. His marriage, in 1759, to Martha Dandridge Custis brought him a happy home life and control of a fortune of the first rank. He liked the barbecues and balls in Alexandria, where he could keep up with local politics. He loved gambling and the theater. Fox hunting was one of his passions. His diaries are filled with the details of hunts and of the ancestry, breeding and amorous behavior of his horses and hunting dogs.