As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter........
George Washington is the first American and will always be the definition of an American, even if Americans have no comprehension of who this gentleman was.
This gentleman shockingly was British, and a loyal subject of the Crown. He was a son of the colonial age and in his Virginia, the capital of Williamsburg was a village of a ruling house and a college. Norfolk, the sea port, was a town of 7000.
Virginia was then a equal division of half a million people. Half white and half slave. The population was scattered out on farms and plantations, with gathering spots.
News would arrive from the north once a week and traverse from the south, once a month.
Virginians were an agrarian and cottage people. They went not to sea, but grew what they could glean in farming for the crop of tobacco.
It was a settlement of civilization. To the west, over those haunted mountains were savages and beasts. Virginia was at the birth and youth of George Washington, a land of scattered farms and isolated lives.
There was not a District of Columbia. There was instead a swamp, much akin to the duck swamps which were what was New York.
Roads were through woods and down rivers. Virginia was like some Red Ridinghood fairytale.
No one came to Virginia from the mother country nor to see what was there. Strangers were few, and they amounted to Yankee pedlers and trappers from across the mountains bringing in their packs of furs.
When news came it was distant and old, from the English ships which came to dock.
The planters though were the nation of Virginia. It was not the plantation with all of it's later conditioned response of envious evil from the masses, but the planter had cleared out the wilderness and there through hardships imported crops, livestock, slaves and spouses who in numbers died, with only those surviving the American germ, rose from rude shelters to the white painted houses and shanties which became a planters village in a self sustaining planter state within the state of rugged individualism.
Virginians were cavaliers. They raced horses, hunted, had cock fights, fox with hounds, fished and rode horse over their estate. When they complained to the Crown for education and religion, the stern reply was, "Damn your souls! Grow tobacco!!!!"
There were no schools in George Washington's Virginia.
There was no government, but the House of Burgesses, which served at the whim of the Crown. They were able to govern themselves and did well and were passionate in their politic.
Virginians stayed at home. That was their life. They were hospitable to strangers and kind to their slaves. Their world began and ended as far as their eyes could behold the wilderness horizon.
A Virginian was a indentured servant, both convict and redeemed. They were farmers. They were hunters, traders and merchants who were the freemen.
Lawyers were seldom seen or heard with doctors fewer still, and the educated class was of the clergy.
The Viriginia clergy, made their way by planting their own lands and reaping the harvest. They were the companions of the planters and drank, played, hunted, shot, warred, fought and lived as Americans in not the most decent of manners, but in a way which guided the restless American wild masses.
They were the aristocracy of the soil, English and Hugeunot in race. They had come to an American wilderness and by God's Grace survived long enough to become a people.
This is the place which George Washington was formed.
It will surprise all that George Washington's real name was Wessyngton. His line from England was that of the north ruled by Saxons and Danes. His Norman progenitor was Sir William de Hertbern who in the 12th century took the name De Wessyngton in England.
These Normans were a fruitful and successful race being men of the crown and conflict. They were knights and gentlemen.
In America, the line would be John Washington, arriving in the New World to escape Puritan poverty in the old. John would be a Soldier, surveyor and planter. He would produce a son named Lawrence, who upon his second marriage to Mary Ball, produce a son on February 11th, 1732 at Bridges Creek, the Washington estate.
That son would be George Washington.
President Washington's parents were devoted to each other. Lawrence was affectionate and loving. He managed his estate well. On the death of Lawrence, Mary Washington, became the matriarch governing the family, and she was a strong woman, of great sense and business prowess.
Her favorite book was Hale's, Moral and Divine Contemplations.
Her attributes were ascribed with the word very, in very sober minded, very silent and very dignified. The young Mother, now a widow, would become the public persona of George Washington.
"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."
George Washington was the primest of male virtue in being faster, stronger and more powerful than other boys. In his planter's world, tempered by his Mother's virtue, was studied in his education in the learning of self control.
Afforded all license and strength, the boy George Washington would become the Virginian who possessed the virtue of being able to guide himself with God, Truth and Honesty.
"He expressed his sense of his own insufficiency for the task before him, and said that as no pecuniary consideration could have induced him to undertake the work, he must decline all pay or emoluments, only looking to Congress to defray his expenses."
Henry Cabot Lodge. George Washington
agtG
