Washington [47]
Once herded into service, the men deserted in droves, taking clothing and arms with them. Washington responded by clapping deserters into chains, throwing them into a “dark room,” and flogging them vigorously. The only way to avert costly desertions, Washington avowed, was to “terrify the soldiers from such practices.”9 In October 1755 he and Dinwiddie lobbied the Virginia assembly for a bill to permit the death sentence for mutiny, desertion, and willful disobedience. Although Washington wasn’t a martinet, neither was he squeamish about meting out harsh punishment. His policy was to be tough but scrupulously fair, and his inflexible sense of justice didn’t shrink from applying lashes to deserters. In 1756 he decreed the death penalty for one Henry Campbell, whom he labeled “a most atrocious villain” who “richly merits an ignominious death.”10 Campbell had not only deserted but encouraged seven others to do so. Washington made a point of hanging people in public to deter others. His frontier experience only darkened his view of human nature, and he saw people as motivated more by force than by kindness. “Lenity, so far from producing its desired effects, rather emboldens them in these villainous undertakings,” he told Dinwiddie.11 Washington’s methods, seemingly cruel to modern eyes, were standard practice in the British Army of his day.
Washington remained a stickler for discipline, which he identified as “the soul of an army,” and he encouraged military discipline even in private matters.12 Scornful of Virginia’s licentious culture of gambling, whoring, and drinking, which was especially disruptive in an army, he set down strict moral standards for his men, and his use of corporal punishment gradually expanded. Unwilling to tolerate swearing, he warned that offenders would receive twenty-five lashes for uttering an oath, with more severe punishment reserved for second offenses. He was so upset by men “incessantly drunk and unfit for service” that he ordered fifty lashes for any man caught drinking in Winchester gin shops.13 As an antidote to such behavior, Washington lobbied for the appointment of a regimental chaplain. “Common decency, sir, in a camp calls for the services of a divine,” Washington informed the Governor’s Council, stating that such an appointment “ought not to be dispensed with, although the world should be so uncharitable as to think us void of religion and incapable of good instructions.”14
With a sovereign faith in leadership by example, Washington believed that courage and cowardice originated from the top of an army. As he wrote during the American Revolution: “This is the true secret . . . that wherever a regiment is well officered, the men have behaved well—when otherwise, ill—the [misconduct] or cowardly behavior always originating with the officers, who have set the example.”15 Like his mother, Washington tended to stint on praise, reflecting his stoic belief that officers didn’t need encouragement since they were simply doing their duty. When he offered praise, he was careful to direct it not at individuals, but at the regiment as a whole.
In his correspondence at the time, Washington comes across as a young man who couldn’t step back, laugh at himself, or leaven responsibility