Mary’s ability to protect her interests, voice her opinions, and run the plantation as she saw fit led to her subsequent reputation as a difficult woman. Modern historians, however, are more likely to see her as a strong, independent matriarch intelligent and assertive enough to nurture the untapped potential of a future war hero, entrepreneur, and statesman. Her enthusiasm for riding was pivotal, not only in exercising her son’s nonverbal leadership abilities but also in exposing him to a rare yet influential phenomenon: a responsible, highly effective feminine approach to power. Long after George officially claimed his inheritance, she maintained an active role at the farm until she moved to a nearby townhouse at age sixty-four. (Augustine’s son by a previous marriage, also named Lawrence, inherited the now-more-famous Mount Vernon, which became George’s preferred home base after his beloved half-brother and role model succumbed to tuberculosis at age thirty-four.)
Reports of Mary’s willfulness and short temper, especially later in life, reveal the ongoing frustration of a woman who knew that, no matter how accomplished and successful she became, she would always be a second-class citizen. Like the status of the slaves she oversaw at Ferry Farm, Mary’s status was not changed by a Declaration of Independence declaring all men created equal. Her legendary crankiness, sometimes directed at her increasingly influential son, stemmed from an unsettling combination of pride in George’s accomplishments and jealousy of the opportunities afforded him, especially when she had to ask him for money. The farm she so diligently managed for decades, after all, was never hers.
Still, Mary was truly revolutionary for her time. Historically, men rode, trained, and cared for horses. Women were more likely to travel in carriages. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that a modest but growing number of women began to exhibit some equestrian talent, at first mostly among the upper classes and usually riding sidesaddle. Joan of Arc, Katherine the Great, and Elizabeth I were rare exceptions. So was Mary Ball Washington, a fine rider who some historians believe taught her son how to train horses with a gentler touch. Though reliable documentation is sketchy, we do know that by the age of eighteen she owned three fine mounts, and she raised a number of feisty horses at Ferry Farm, including a sorrel colt that met an unfortunate end at the hands of her ambitious teenage son.
As the story goes, George was hell-bent on emulating Alexander the Great in his legendary horse-taming abilities. Knowing his mother would disapprove of rash and dangerous “training” techniques, he led the spirited, unschooled colt to an undisclosed location and attempted to ride the bucks out of him, cowboy-style. According to Marion Harland’s 1893 book The Story of Mary Washington, “The experiment ended with the death of the fiery horse, who broke a blood-vessel in a futile attempt to dislodge the lad from his back.”
It was Mary Ball Washington, not a farmhand or one of her son’s older half-brothers, who subsequently noticed that the horse was missing. And, in a decidedly tragic, equestrian take on the old cherry tree story, George could not tell a lie. Harland reports that he admitted the facts “promptly and squarely. The widow struggled for a second with the temper she had not lost in passing it down to her child, then replied to the effect that she was sorry the horse was dead, but glad that her boy had spoken the truth.”
Young George learned a grievous lesson that day — namely, that flashy, quick-fix dominance tactics end in destruction as often as glory — and that his own mother might very well know more about horse training than he did. Dealing with this strong-willed, cultured, fair-minded woman, he developed a respect for women as worthy companions and confidants, a then-unique perspective that would inform his marriage and his morale-boosting strategies at Valley Forge decades later. Washington also honed an ever-more-sophisticated version of his mother’s awe-inspiring presence, most notably her ability to convey power, kindness, and integrity simultaneously. Developing that particular combination is common among expert riders. The proudest, most athletic horses seem to demand it.
When George accepted his first officer’s commission at age twenty-two, against his mother’s wishes, no less, Mary Ball Washington’s independent streak, idealism, lucid problem-solving skills, and uncompromising morals were also well entrenched in her son, qualities that would be continuously challenged, and ultimately strengthened, through the unexpected, perplexing, sometimes truly horrific battles to come.
Half King
No matter how seemingly just the cause, war unearths labyrinths of trauma. Unrelated conflicts and tragedies from the distant past can affect the trajectory of current events in unexpected ways as human behavior becomes a minefield of opportunistic reactions to ancient pain.
George Washington learned this the hard way during his first tour of duty. In April 1754, the successful land surveyor and frontiersman gained a position as lieutenant colonel in the Virginia Regiment. Charged with leading 160 troops to help protect settlers in the Ohio Country, he inadvertently found himself exchanging the first shots in what later became known as the French and Indian War.
What seemed a straightforward mission — securing a strategic location where the Ohio Company, a land speculation company, was constructing a fort — turned into an unexpected conundrum when Washington trekked over the Allegheny Mountains, only to discover that more than a thousand French soldiers had already seized the half-built complex, renaming it Fort Duquesne. Alliances between French forces and various Indian tribes were already forming, and Washington’s own closest Indian ally, Tanacharison, was frantically requesting support.
Known as the Half King to local settlers, the fierce warrior chief spoke fluent French. Still, he had good reason to mistrust the Duquesne contingent. As a boy, he’d been taken captive by the French, and while he was later adopted by the Seneca tribe, his early trials had become legendary in the region. Now in his midfifties, Tanacharison openly claimed that the Frenchmen who decimated his family had callously boiled and eaten his father during that tragic childhood encounter.
Washington was in a difficult position, fortless and vastly outnumbered to be sure. Still, what twenty-two-year-old officer could be expected to predict, let alone prevent, the additional havoc wreaked by an older, more experienced warrior’s toxic past? A thousand foreign troops turned out to be the least of his worries as Washington christened his nascent military career with a most dubious distinction: within weeks, he would be praised and vilified on both sides of the Atlantic for overseeing a massacre.
The young lieutenant colonel’s initial strategy seemed reasonable enough. He directed his men to build a makeshift fort near Tanacharison’s camp, rallying whatever Indian allies they could find while waiting for reinforcements. Things quickly got out of hand, however, when the Half King rode up to warn him of a French patrol in the vicinity. On the morning of May 28, a combined force of colonial troops under Washington and a group of Indian allies led by Tanacharison surrounded thirty-two French soldiers encamped in a nearby forest glen.
Shots were fired. Though eyewitness accounts vary regarding which side actually started the skirmish, the French eventually realized they were outgunned and tried to surrender. Wounded yet lucid, their commander, Joseph Coulon de Villiers, sieur de Jumonville, insisted he’d come on a diplomatic mission representing King Louis XV.
Jumonville’s motives were certainly suspect. After all, the French had just challenged English claims on the region by capturing Fort Prince George and renaming it Fort Duquesne. Even so, Washington was reportedly listening to the foreign officer’s words, trying to decipher his intent through translation, when Tanacharison, who fully grasped the Frenchman’s plea for peaceful resolution, walked over to where Jumonville lay. “Thou art not yet dead, my father,” the Half King declared in French. Then he raised his hatchet, split the man’s skull open, grabbed hold of his brain, and washed his hands in the blood-soaked carnage. Washington and his troops watched in horror