Books: Mt. Vernon to Valley Forge

GEORGE WASHINGTON (Vols. Ill & IV, 1,336 pp.)—Douglas Southall Freeman —Scribner ($ 15).

Just before Christmas 1758, George Washington, 26, late colonel of militia in the French & Indian War, went home to Mt. Vernon. He had fought well; now he could settle down to the life he was meant for, the easy rounds of a well-to-do Virginia planter. He married a comely widow named Martha Custis, took on the responsibility of two stepchildren, and began thinking about improving his estate and buying more land.

A Virginian described him in a letter: “Straight as an Indian, measuring 6 ft. 2 in. in his stockings, and weighing 175 Ibs.. . . His frame is padded with well-developed muscles, indicating great strength. His bones and joints are large … A pleasing and benevolent tho a commanding countenance . . .” Impressive looking, but not obviously stamped with greatness.

This is the point at which Pulitzer Prizewinner Douglas Southall Freeman (R. E. Lee, Lee’s Lieutenants) picks up Vol. Ill of his definitive biography. Like Freeman’s first two volumes, it contains more facts about Washington than anyone has ever squeezed between boards before, and more than most readers are likely to digest. Originally planned for six volumes, the work has swollen to eight. Biographer Freeman expects to finish in 1954, ten years after he began.

Wine from Lisbon. Pastoral, warm, gracious—so flowed life in Mt. Vernon. Washington overextended himself in land and fell in debt for a while. But he skillfully rotated his crops at Mt. Vernon, grew wheat when others were growing tobacco, and kept on prospering. He was able to ride in a coach & six and to lay down in his cellar pipes of fine Madeira and the “best Lisbon wine.”

He had his share of parental troubles. Patsy Custis was a sick girl, subject to fits —she died at 17. Young John Custis, spoiled by a worshiping mama, ran to laziness; he preferred race horses and fancy clothes to studying at King’s College in New York. With grim patience, his stepfather tried to set the boy right.

Washington won a seat in Virginia’s House of Burgesses, but he had little gift for shining. He was a poor speaker and slow in debate; his prose was clubfooted. But he was a solid man whose word was respected. When New England patriots began to roar about the British Stamp Act, he urged caution. He hoped for a compromise even after the fighting began —and he was man enough to admit his original doubts later, after he saw that the revolution would have to be fought to the end.

Keeping his camera at a respectful distance, Freeman has photographed Washington’s 16 years of peace in such overwhelming and sometimes indiscriminate detail that Vol. Ill often makes sluggish reading. But when he plunges into the war in Vol. IV, and takes Washington through the winter at Valley Forge, he writes with steam and fire. A bit pedestrian as a portraitist of character, Freeman handles military matters with rousing zest and precision.

Lesson from Lord Howe. “Remember,” said a tearful Washington to Patrick Henry, “what I tell you now: from the day I enter upon the command of the American armies, I date my fall, and the ruin of my reputation.” It seemed, for a time, that he was right. Lacking the experience to command an army, Washington often blundered during the first years of the war. In the battle of Long Island he was outclassed and taught a lesson by the British under Lord Howe; his prolonged hesitations cost the Americans New York.

These were his months of travail. Plagued by shortages of food, ammunition and clothing, his army paralyzed by short-term enlistments, his officers inexperienced and often rank-crazy, his pleas for discipline and help ignored by the Continental Congress, Washington kept the revolutionary army together through the binding power of his will. With experience, he became an able commander, but on the whole, says Freeman, Washington was “one-tenth field commander and nine-tenths administrator. His prime duty was not to kill the British but to keep the American army alive.”

News from Versailles. His contemporaries began to sense a rare man. Wrote shrewd Abigail Adams to her husband John: “You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of General Washington, but I thought the half was not told me. Dignity with ease and complacency, the gentleman and soldier, look agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feature of his face.” And later, from the army’s Morristown camp, another lady marked his lighter attractions. On the days when there was no bad news, she wrote, Washington would go riding in the evening and become a “chatty, agreeable companion—he can be downright impudent sometimes—such impudence, Fanny, as you and I like . . .”

Vol. IV of George Washington ends in the spring of 1778, with the army breaking camp at Valley Forge. The terrible winter was over, but would there be another summer of running away from stronger British forces? Washington had full reason to think so until the messenger arrived, that afternoon of April 30, with news from Versailles: France had recognized the United States of America, and the revolution had a friend in the world.