Gumption (3 page)

It also didn’t hurt his chances of landing a choice, wealthy bride in the form of one Martha Custis. Given our country’s current population, I suppose I would have surmised that the colonists were not opposed to procreating, or “cultivating tubers,” but I was not prepared for Chernow’s report of an early mail order made by the newly wed Washingtons to a London apothecary: four ounces of Spanish fly! Also recorded in their possession were the books
Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom
, by Daniel Defoe, and
The Lover’s Watch: or, The Art of Making Love
, by Aphra Behn. Right on, George and Martha! Spill the wine!

Sadly, these titillating helpmeets did nothing to aid the Washingtons in producing any offspring of their own. A 1751 bout with smallpox is thought to have possibly rendered the baby-maker of our country’s father ironically sterile. It certainly could not have been for lack of desire upon the part of George, since he could not have spoken of Martha in a more lascivious manner than he did in this favorite
phrase of approbation: “Virginia ladies pride themselves on the goodness of their bacon.” I don’t know about you, but I can think of few more boner-inspiring turns of speech.

In any case, Washington was by now one of the most well landed of the Virginia elite, with a young family and a plantation to manage. These responsibilities must have weighed quite heavily when he was called upon to serve in the growing conflagration of the Revolution. Sure, he had political aspirations, but the fact that he left his wife and their collective household of children from her previous marriage, as well as other family strays, not to mention the thousands of acres of farmland in his care, impresses deeply. Martha’s ability to remain steadfast as well, during all of Washington’s extremely dangerous campaigns into the woods or onto the battlefield, is equally laudable. There must have been gumption in the Mount Vernon water supply.

Upon reexamination, the overall cause of the Revolutionary War is one of the aspects of Washington’s history that struck me in a much more resounding way. These colonists under British rule, on a new continent some thirty-four hundred miles from England, were receiving news and commands from England that were three months old by the time they hit their front porches, which would have been frustrating in the kindest of circumstances, and these were anything but.

Let me just nutshell where we’re at for you: In the early 1770s the asses of the thirteen American colonies were growing unbearably chapped thanks to the taxes being imposed upon them by the British Parliament. I suppose England, wielding the strongest military on the planet at that time, thought little to nothing of possible repercussions to their bullying. After all, what were the colonies going to do,
put together a ragtag bunch of militiamen and throw a tiny revolt? How precious!

In what has to be one of the most infamous cases of royal myopia on record, Mother England lost her opportunity to count the Grand Canyon, the Walmart and Sam’s Club empires, and the Disney theme parks among her holdings. If King George had only been able to quell the British ego just enough to deal reasonably with the colonists instead of electing to suppress them like an insubordinate child, then instead of delicious coffee-based drinks and jazz-compilation CDs, all those lucrative Starbucks franchises would likely be serving tea and crumpets today.

When our Congress elected to form a Continental army and unanimously agreed to post George Washington at its head, they undertook what was, on paper, an incredibly foolhardy quest. With very little budget and no training, our forefathers had decided to fight their way clear of England’s tyranny—or die trying. The catalyst that led to this unlikely and dangerous course of action was the simple realization of undeniable human rights that had occurred to these great thinkers in what has come to be known as the Age of American Enlightenment. The self-evident truths of an individual’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that these trailblazers had apprehended would no longer let them rest under the onerous hand of monarchist rule. This, to me, is the moment in our history when the corncrib of gumption was fully stocked. I am so grateful that these farseeing men had the temerity to make this moral choice even when the life-threatening odds were stacked against them.

Washington himself was scared shitless by the task in front of him,
and with good reason. Just because he was the clear choice in the colonies to lead a military force doesn’t mean the population as a whole had any business engaging in a war with an accomplished international power like England. Nonetheless, lead them he did.

It was at this juncture in Chernow’s biography that I was struck with an intense feeling of empathy for Washington, perhaps because he was approximately my age, forty-four, when the conflict began, or perhaps because Chernow had imbued him with such a textured humanity. Having been a sometime leader of men and women myself by now (in a much, much tinier way), as a director or producer or supervisor of a team of carpenters for the stage or a shopful of woodworkers, I was able to imagine myself much more effectively in his shoes thanks to the explicitly described conditions of the conflict.

Speaking of shoes, frequently Washington was the only one wearing any at all, as his troops were so underfunded as to exist in constant want of the bare minimum of clothing and footwear. Despite his consistent hectoring for funds, Washington received only very rare aid from the citizenry whose freedoms he was sworn to defend. To add to this indignity, many of the colonists sold their food or offered their lodgings to the British troops, because the lobsterbacks had hard cash with which to purchase such luxuries. And this wasn’t just through one winter, folks. This deplorable treatment lasted for several winters. Nature’s four seasons can be beautiful on the East Coast, but they’re lovelier by far if one is wearing pants.

When the details of this situation settled upon me, my once distant and cold admiration for our first president was refueled with a strong sense of the here and now. If I consider the dilemmas that face
our modern populace, it’s hard to reconcile any degree of complaint with the hardships that these brave and long-suffering soldiers endured. Sure, it sucks when your airplane sits on the tarmac for an unexpected forty-five minutes, making you late to Austin, meaning you’ll miss the eight fifteen showing of
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
at the Alamo Drafthouse, where you can enjoy a pint of Guinness and a sausage with your film. It sucks big time, I agree, but compared to sleeping in the wintry elements with little on your back but a potato sack, and an empty belly to boot, it seems rather bearable.

The Revolutionary War was filled with occasions of fortune’s ebb and flow, but my adulation for Washington was most replenished by this turn of events: In the fall of 1776, the American troops were badly defeated by British general William Howe in his successful campaign to capture Manhattan. Washington managed to limp away across New Jersey with his life intact, but the coming winter and recent string of defeats had the future prospects of the Continental army looking rather bleak. Despite the idealistic goals of the dwindling American forces, surrender must have been looming heavily as the only remaining recourse for our George.

Fortunately for us, George had another idea. He and his men staged a surprise attack on Christmas Day of 1776, stealing across the Delaware River to whup the Hessian army stationed in Trenton, New Jersey, capturing a thousand Hessians. Thus, the historical image to which I had clung, of those redoubtable wildcats rowing their boats across the icy river, turned out to be damn accurate as a representation of the unquenchable spirit of American gumption!

As you may have by now gleaned, we won. Washington realized
going into the war that he had one hell of a tough row to hoe, and so he masterfully created in himself an heroic figure behind which the colonists could rally. As the author and journalist Garry Wills has noted, “Before there was a nation—before there was any symbol of that nation (a flag, a Constitution, a national seal)—there was Washington.” According to Chernow, as Washington arrived at each town, he would exit his carriage and climb astride a horse, knowing that the people wished to picture him upon a horse, lending a little bit of theater magic to his creation of, really, our first superhero.

Naturally, when we emerged from the other side of this long and bloody conflict as the victors, Washington was fully deified and likely could have written his ticket to claim whatever power he chose as the clear “King of America.” Certainly no one expected his next move, which was to
resign
his commission as commander in chief in order to return to his home at Mount Vernon. Trying to imagine another political leader before him or since who would hand over the keys to the kingdom just as his or her greatest power was realized is pretty impossible. For this, especially with the winning reason of returning to his farm and family, I am quite gratified in my choice of Washington for this first chapter. King George III agreed with me, when he exclaimed upon hearing the news of this noble demurral, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

As our rough-and-tumble American forces were eventually handing the British their finely candied asses, the nuances of the Constitution—the document which would provide the cornerstone of our new government’s foundation—were also being hammered out. In his lifetime, Washington frequently voiced his consternation
over the conundrum that slavery embodied and how the language about the freedoms of the individual that fills the Constitution was obviously hypocritical. He was aware, fully aware, that all slaves deserved to be freed, on principle, but was unable to bring such a liberation to fruition in the chaotic morass that was our fledgling United States. His own household, if not his state of Virginia, and really the whole enchilada, his misgivings assured him, would come to crumbling ruin if he freed his slaves.

The Marquis de Lafayette was instrumental in voicing this particular complaint, urging the new American government to enact a manumission setting free all those held in slavery. His passion went a long way toward inspiring the leaders of America’s Revolution, for he had determined, as he wrote to his wife, that “the happiness of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind.”

Despite the number of esteemed thinkers who shared his enlightened view, it proved to be more than two generations before the Emancipation Proclamation would be enacted. Washington was the only significant slaveholder among the Founding Fathers to grant his slaves their freedom in his will upon the occasion of his wife’s death. While this act deserves credit, it also strikes me as passing the buck to his inheritors; the problem was too messy for him to tackle, but here you go, kids. Good luck! Despite the apparent deflection of responsibility, I suppose it was better done than not.

The stark division of opinions over the issue of slavery was only one of the many issues on the table for the crafters of the Constitution, which makes its ultimate completion and subsequent ratification all the more miraculous. Again, I point to the example of modern
legislation, wherein it seems to take years just to craft a clause about one small tax law in one obscure bill. The fact that all the politicians from all thirteen of the colonies were able to agree
enough
to set this ship a-sail is simply astonishing. As Washington himself averred, “It approached nearer to perfection than any government hitherto instituted among men.”

Another quality I have come to admire more and more in George Washington is the near-perfect neutrality that he exhibited over the course of his political career. He was known for patiently hearing out, sometimes to the point of infuriating his peers, each side of an argument until he felt that he could draw his own considered opinion. Certainly he would have had his own agenda, as would any human being, but more often than not his intentions seemed to rest in whichever direction was best for the common good. Regarding the Constitution, as he told James Madison, “the appearance of unanimity . . . will be of great importance.”

So adept was he at satisfying all sides of the issues at hand that Washington remains our only president to date who has received 100 percent of the electoral votes, on the occasion of each of his two terms. To imagine a modern president tallying even 75 percent of those votes today is purely unfathomable. Even in these early days of America’s inception, Washington was surrounded by virulent politicking on the parts of Madison, Jefferson, Monroe, Hamilton, and anyone else who could get a leg up. There was plenty of dirty pool being played, including backdoor deals and smear campaigns in the press, even then. It seems to me that without Washington’s impartial
demeanor, this great “American experiment” could well have foundered on its moorings before it ever left the harbor.

Thinking about his approach points out to me my own extreme laziness in scrutinizing political issues. My attitude to begin with—that most politicians are full of shit—doesn’t help, but it’s a hard piece of information to get around and impossible to disprove. For candidates to achieve any high office in our state or federal legislature, they are required to make loud, ambitious public promises during their campaigns, which can never be completely fulfilled, even by the greatest humanitarian intentions. Therefore, we’re starting off our relationship with each prospective leader on the wrong foot, a foot of mistrust.

This insubstantial beginning is then quickly exploited and exacerbated by the sources from which most of us derive our news of the world, be it politics or foreign policy or which teenage pop star had her bikini on backward yesterday, “news items” that have all come to hold equal weight in today’s media. In any given election, when I’m on top of it, I talk to my friends about the bullet points and I look up information online to inform myself about bill initiatives, and I usually end up very confused. Few bills or amendments are ever so cut-and-dried as to lend themselves to a clear “right” or “wrong” answer. (And this is the best-case scenario, when I’m not buried under a writing deadline, or twelve-hour shoot days, or both, in which case I lazily just leave it all until the last minute.)