In the mid-1700s, any traveler of a certain class knew he was welcome to a bed and hot meal at George Washington’s Virginia estate, Mount Vernon. But contrary to customs of the time, Washington didn’t want his guests “ravishing” the property’s slaves. As one Major William North wrote to a friend, “Will you believe it? I have not humped a single [one] since I am here.”
The one visitor who dared test Washington’s resolve felt the general’s wrath. An artist staying at Mt. Vernon brought an assistant who tried to accost a young girl who was working in the house one morning. When she screamed, Washington came roaring out of his boudoir, his face only partially shaven and body partly-clothed. Sussing out the situation, Gen. Washington immediately sent the assistant flying down the stairs with one thunderous kick.
As Maurizio Valsania writes in “First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity” (Johns Hopkins University Press), “The mystery of George Washington lies here: the civilized man could, on occasion, turn into a very straightforward and reckless male, himself a ‘barbarian.’”
George Washington was no myth — just a man, warts and all. Even if he heroically defended the honor of one slave girl, it’s believed he enjoyed the sexual favors of others. There was even a rumor that he had a secret system for rating the erotic abilities of his enslaved conquests.
Washington wanted children, but he and Martha couldn’t conceive. The widowed Martha had four children with her first husband, so the infertility likely resulted when a sexually transmitted disease (i.e. gonorrhea or syphilis) rendered the general infertile. It’s thought Washington might have been stricken when he lost his virginity to a “Ciprian dame” (a prostitute) when he visited other ladies-of-the-night on a youthful trip to Barbados, or by sleeping with an unknown number of the women he “owned.”
Washington was a man of his times, both civilized and savage. He was interested in fashion and had his suits made by the finest London tailors. He wore corsets to keep his back straight and his belly out, as all genteel men in polite Virginia society did. He powdered his hair. He even enjoyed dancing a minuet.
But Washington could be brutal, too. As a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia Regiment in 1754, he fired the first shot in what would become the French and Indian War and led a “bloodbath” at Jumonville in Pennsylvania. He didn’t flinch after that battle, when the Iroquois chieftain allied with the Virginians scalped the French commander, split his head in two with a hatchet, and then pulled out the man’s brains to wash his hands in them.
His defense could be seen in a letter written to the Delaware Nation in 1779, when he wrote: “I am a warrior.”
The dueling sides of Washington’s personality could be seen in his Revolutionary War career, too. He wanted his soldiers to act with honor, banning their card-playing, cursing, or even bathing naked any place they might be seen. “The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army,” Washington told his fighters.
And if the soldiers strayed, the idealistic Washington responded with absolute severity. Misbehavior could lead to severe punishments, including up to 1000 lashes for deserters. The general even signed the death warrants of some 14 men court-martialed and sentenced to die — he ultimately commuted most of the executions, but two men were hung from gallows 40 feet high. “I want to make an example of some of them,” Washington reportedly said.
When starving canines began overrunning the Continental Army’s camps to try to steal their supplies, Gen. Washington’s callousness was clear: He told his soldiers to “hang all stray dogs.”
Washington was a principled man who strived to live by some of the 110 maxims he’d copied as a boy from the book “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation,” such as: “Be not hasty to believe flying Reports to the Disparagment of any.” But he was a slave owner, too — and a harsh one at that.
One British visitor to Mount Vernon claimed Washington treated his slaves “with more severity than any other man,” while as president in 1793 he signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act. That allowed slave owners to pursue their fleeing “property” over state lines and made it a federal crime for anyone trying to help.
Upon his death in 1799, George Washington freed all 123 slaves that personally belonged to him. It was perhaps his only saving grace as a slave owner — or a case of too little, too late.