Washington [93]
One wonders whether this detailed list simply reflected Washington’s compulsive record keeping or whether it was a way to monitor a perceived moral failing. In 1783 he wrote to his nephew Bushrod and inveighed against gambling as one of many snares that trip up unsuspecting youths, his florid language suggesting that he knew about gambling from personal experience or close observation. “It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, and father of mischief. It has been the ruin of many worthy families, the loss of many a man’s honor, and the cause of suicide. To all those who enter the list, it is equally fascinating. The successful gamester pushes his good fortune till it is overtaken by a reverse. The losing gamester, in hopes of retrieving past misfortunes, goes on from bad to worse.”37
Washington had a far better record in controlling other urges. After a period in which he smoked his own tobacco in long-stemmed clay pipes, he seems to have forsworn the habit altogether. His swearing was so infrequent that people commented on it when it happened. Even though he took several glasses of wine with dinner, this was considered acceptable in an age of immoderate alcohol consumption. He once complained that Williamsburg’s social life was a continual round of dinners and that “it was not possible for a man to retire sober.”38 After the Revolutionary War, he told one visitor with evident relief that Virginians were “less given to intoxication; . . . it is no longer fashionable for a man to force his guests to drink and to make it an honor to send them home drunk.”39
Whether hiring overseers or appointing army officers, Washington insisted upon sobriety and saw no greater sign of weakness than a man’s inability to control his drinking. Alcoholism was a chronic problem that he had to combat among the hired help at Mount Vernon. On one occasion he capitulated to the drinking of a talented gardener whose sprees he agreed to tolerate so long as the man confined them to certain holidays. In his employment contract, Washington stated that he would be given “four dollars at Christmas with which to be drunk four days and four nights; two dollars at Easter, to effect the same purpose; two dollars at Whitsuntide to be drunk for two days; a dram in the morning and a drink of grog at dinner at noon.”40 It was typical of Washington’s thoroughness to pin down such an agreement in writing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A World of His Own
IN 1763 the end of the French and Indian War appeared to foreshadow a halcyon season of peace and prosperity for the colonies, but the troubled aftermath sowed the seeds of conflict twelve years later. The national debt of Great Britain, inflated by military spending, had swollen to a stupendous 130 million pounds, with annual interest payments of 4.5 million pounds engrossing more than half the national budget. To shift this tax burden to its North American subjects, the British government introduced a stamp tax and other hated measures that