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he would accept such a setback, he wrote indignantly, “must entertain a very contemptible opinion of my weakness.”50 Quite predictably, he decided to resign from the army in October rather than tolerate such a blow to his standing. But with his wilderness forays having confirmed his love of a military life, he said his resignation wasn’t meant “to gratify any desire I had to leave the military line. My inclinations are strongly bent to arms.”51 If the whirlwind events had been hard on the tender ego of the ambitious young Washington, the carnage at Fort Necessity hadn’t shattered his courage or altered his resolution to pursue a military career. For a young man without enormous inherited wealth, the military remained a sure path to colonial advancement. Washington must have had a premonition that his military retirement was only temporary, for in late October he ordered from London some costly items for a resplendent uniform: a gold shoulder knot, six yards of gold regimental lace, twenty-four gold embroidered loops, a rich crimson military sash, four dozen gilt coat buttons, and a hat adorned with gold lace.52 The young officer seemed to know that the world had not heard its last of him.

CHAPTER FIVE

Shades of Death

EVER SINCE THE DEATH of Lawrence Washington, George had known he had an outside chance of someday becoming lord of Mount Vernon if Lawrence’s widow, Ann, and daughter, Sarah, predeceased him. Then, in yet another of the improbable transformations that eerily propelled his life ever upward, the occupancy of Mount Vernon came unexpectedly within his grasp. Six months after Lawrence’s death, Ann remarried and moved to Westmoreland County, and two years after that, on December 10, 1754, little Sarah Washington died. A week later Ann rented Mount Vernon to George Washington along with its eighteen resident slaves—a tremendous bonanza for the twenty-two-year-old. By the terms of the lease, he was required every Christmas to ship his sister-in-law fifteen thousand pounds of tobacco, packed in fifteen hogsheads, placing him under considerable pressure to manage the estate profitably.

The Mount Vernon house had not yet attained its later magnificence, so visitors singled out the natural setting for their poetic effusions. “The house is most beautifully situated upon a very high hill on the banks of the Potomac and commands a noble prospect of water, of cliffs, of woods and plantations,” wrote one clergyman.1 Unlike that of its later and more famous incarnation, the entrance stood on the river side, attesting to the extensive commercial traffic then churning along the Potomac down below. In those days, one could also see thousands of wild ducks gathering on the surface of the water.

As Washington had suspected, his respite from military service proved short-lived. On February 20, 1755, Major General Edward Braddock dropped anchor off Hampton Roads, soon to be accompanied by two smartly dressed regiments of British redcoats. To this British Army veteran, an officer of the Coldstream Guards, had been assigned the task of ejecting the French from Fort Duquesne and blunting their thrust into the Ohio Valley. Washington rushed off a politic greeting to the general. After making inquiries, Braddock learned that Washington possessed an unmatched familiarity with the frontier. Whatever his misgivings about Washington’s conduct at Fort Necessity, Braddock wanted him as an aide-de-camp. On March 2 Captain Robert Orme, a slim, dashing aide to the general, sent a letter to Mount Vernon, inviting Washington to join the general’s personal staff. Judging from the latter’s reply, it seems that his bruised feelings of the previous fall were quickly assuaged by the general’s flattering attention. “To explain, sir,” he wrote, “I wish earnestly to attain knowledge of the military profession,” adding that no better chance could arise “than to serve under a gentleman of General Braddock’s abilities and experience.”2

Washington hinted that personal problems might hinder acceptance of the post. In fact, he was overwhelmed by the