A Powerful Mind: The Self-Education of George Washington
328
A Powerful Mind: The Self-Education of George Washington
328Hardcover
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Overview
His formal schooling abruptly cut off at age eleven, George Washington saw his boyhood dream of joining the British army evaporate and recognized that even his aspiration to rise in colonial Virginian agricultural society would be difficult. Throughout his life he faced challenges for which he lacked the academic foundations shared by his more highly educated contemporaries. Yet Washington’s legacy is clearly not one of failure.
Breaking new ground in Washington scholarship and American revolutionary history, Adrienne M. Harrison investigates the first president’s dedicated process of self-directed learning through reading, a facet of his character and leadership long neglected by historians and biographers. In A Powerful Mind, Harrison shows that Washington rose to meet these trials through a committed campaign of highly focused reading, educating himself on exactly what he needed to do and how best to do it. In contrast to other famous figures of the revolution—Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin—Washington did not relish learning for its own sake, viewing self-education instead as a tool for shaping himself into the person he wanted to be. His two highest-profile and highest-risk endeavors—commander in chief of the Continental Army and president of the fledgling United States—are a testament to the success of his strategy.
Adrienne M. Harrison is a former assistant professor of history at the United States Military Academy. Her work has been published in Oxford Bibliographies.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612347257 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Potomac Books |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2015 |
| Pages: | 328 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Adrienne M. Harrison is a former assistant professor of history at the United States Military Academy. Her work has been published in Oxford Bibliographies.
Read an Excerpt
A Powerful Mind
The Self-Education of George Washington
By Adrienne M. Harrison
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Board of Regents of the University of NebraskaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61234-725-7
CHAPTER 1
Pursuing Useful Knowledge
The sun was just beginning to peek through Ferry Farm's windows at the dawn of a new day, but thirteen-year-old George Washington was already up and hard at work at a small table by the bedroom window. As his younger brothers Samuel and John Augustine still lay sleeping nearby and the first of the sun's rays stretched through the neatly curtained windows and across the small table, the future father of his country busily copied word for word a translation of an old guidebook for princely behavior that a French Jesuit priest wrote called The Rules of Civility. Such a project was no small undertaking for the boy, but little by little he was determined to press on to the end; so he kept scratching at the paper with his quill, careful to keep his ink-stained fingers off the paper. By the time he was finished, young Washington's manuscript consisted of 110 rules for how to properly conduct himself as a respectable member of society. He took pride in his work, for he would rely on these maxims to guide him throughout a long career in the public light.
Washington's youthful act of copying out this antiquated French courtesy manual is almost as well known as Parson Weems's wholly invented cherry tree episode. Parents and teachers of young students have also used the real episode of the teenage Washington working at his desk as an example to study hard and/or as an admonition to behave properly; however, few have spent any time trying to work out why exactly Washington worked so hard. Some chalk it up as an early testament of Washington's future greatness, an example of the sober, ambitious adolescent grooming himself for the spectacularly public life he was destined to lead. Others perhaps take a dimmer view of this episode and see it as an example of Washington's obsessive need for self-control and as a sad attempt by a less than intelligent and socially awkward youth to act normally in the presence of his betters in the desperate hope of attracting the attention of powerful patrons. The reality between these extreme interpretations is somewhere in the middle. Washington was ambitious and, yes, even a little desperate to transcend the social station he was born into. However, his solitary act of copying a courtesy manual word for word into a commonplace book offers an insight into how seriously he took the act of reading, studying, and internalizing the material that he considered to contain useful knowledge. This chapter examines why he developed a taste for reading material that yielded practical knowledge that he could use immediately. To answer this question, it is necessary to probe Washington's biography and explore where his rigid mentality came from by penetrating the heart of his lifelong self-fashioning project and revealing how his unique pursuit of useful knowledge helped him refine his sense of self.
Washington's Childhood and Early Life
When Washington was eleven years old, his father, Augustine, died and left his widow, Mary Ball Washington, the single parent to six young children. Whatever emotional toll his father's death took on the young Washington has been lost to history. Washington apparently remembered little of his father, scarcely referring to him in his later writings, and there is no evidence that testifies to how the young boy grieved. The significance of Augustine Washington's death, however, can still be considered profound for three reasons. First, Washington lost his father at a particular stage of adolescence when he needed his father's guiding hand to steer him to maturity. Second, as Augustine's widow never remarried, it meant that Washington and his siblings were raised by a single mother; so the children needed a positive male role model to introduce them into the patriarchal society of the time. Finally, and most critical, the death of Augustine Washington aborted all plans to further his sons' formal educations.
With Augustine Washington's death in context, it is therefore possible to trace the origins of George's self-fashioning back to his mother. Mary Ball Washington set about the task of rearing her children with an intensity uncommon in eighteenth-century women; she sought to instill in her children deference and well-regulated restraint. Toward the end of his life, long after his fame had reached beyond American shores, Washington is said to have remarked, "All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her." Those who knew her described Mary Ball Washington as a force of nature; her trademark stiff personality and iron will were traits that her famous son inherited. A relative and childhood friend of George's recalled: "I was often there with George, his playmate, schoolmate, and young man's companion. Of the mother I was ten times more afraid than I ever was of my own parents. She awed me.... I could not behold that remarkable woman without feelings it is impossible to describe. Whoever has seen that awe-inspiring air and manner so characteristic in the Father of his Country, will remember the matron as she appeared when the presiding genius of her well-ordered household, commanding and being obeyed."
One particular area that Mary Ball Washington maintained command over was her eldest son's education. Washington was educated at local schools and for a brief period by a private tutor while he was living in the home of his older half-brother Lawrence. The time spent under the direction of this tutor was the closest that the young Washington would ever come to a classical education, for he was schooled in the "principles of grammar, the theory of reasoning, on speaking, the science of numbers, the elements of geometry, and the highest branches of mathematics, the art of mensuration, composing together with the rudiments of geography, history, and the studies which are not improperly termed 'the humanities.'" Furthermore, he received instruction "in the graceful accomplishments of dancing, fencing, riding, and performing the military exercises," in all of which he gained conspicuous proficiency in a remarkably short time. A university education, however, was financially out of the question, and with little hesitation, Mary Ball Washington squelched Lawrence's plans to train her son for an officer's career in the Royal Navy.
To supplement her children's educations, Mary Ball Washington read aloud to them from the Bible and from several anthologies of sermons on a daily basis. Most if not all of these books would go to George, who retained them in his private library for the rest of his life. These daily catechisms were meant to inspire piety in the Washington children and to underscore the central place religious texts occupied in an orthodox, moral life. Mary Ball Washington was equally spartan with regard to her treatment of her children's accomplishments. Throughout her long life, she made a habit of deriding her eldest son's achievements, never appearing to exhibit the least bit of parental pride. The contradictory versions of the highly embellished stories of Washington's relationship with his mother as told by the likes of the Marquis de Lafayette and Parson Weems were fabrications designed to obfuscate the imperfections in Washington's personal history in favor of an idealized image of Mary Ball Washington and were advanced at a time when the concept of republican motherhood was shaping women's roles in the new nation. Mary Ball Washington's parenting style was to leave an indelible mark on her eldest son, who throughout his life was incredibly thin skinned and painfully fearful of criticism.
Washington's Early Reading
Thus with his mother's discipline to guide him, the youthful Washington devoted considerable time in his daily routine to reading and self-improvement, and in so doing he cultivated what would become a lifelong habit of seeking out instructional books first and, to a secondary degree, books for pleasure, such as travel narratives and literature. One of his earliest notes in his childhood commonplace books recorded that he read "the reign of King John and in the Spectator read to No. 143." These schoolboy commonplace books offer a few glimpses of what Washington the student was like. Although they are small and limited in scope, these notebooks reveal fleeting glimpses into the workings of one of the most difficult to penetrate minds in American history. The most important message embedded in his early writings is not their content, which reflects the typical lessons children across the colonies were learning; rather, it is the artistry and care with which he committed these lessons and notes to the pages. Just as he would demonstrate on a much larger and grander scale with Mount Vernon as an adult, the young Washington enjoyed connecting beauty and utility. The neatness of Washington's early reading notes signifies a serious approach to his studies that is reflective of the discipline his mother instilled in him.
From childhood Washington harbored ambitions to circulate in the most elite social circles and serve in the highest levels of the military and government, so he set out early to acquire the requisite knowledge to achieve those goals. Not only did he copy the Rules of Civility, but capitalizing on his natural mathematical ability, Washington also taught himself how to conduct land surveys using his father's instruments and books borrowed from William Fairfax. Learning how to conduct land surveys paid several important dividends to Washington. First, he developed an appreciation, and indeed a hunger, for land. Acquiring profitable real estate would be one of his lifelong passions. Second, he gained the skills necessary to earn a living, which was essential for an ambitious youth with little inheritance and no benefactor. Next, once he established himself as a reputable surveyor, he was able to reach out to some of the wealthy landowners of Virginia who could use his services and in the process could become his patrons. Finally, he learned patience and perseverance in reconnoitering land by spending days at a time in the wilderness, experiences that greatly hardened his constitution and prepared him for the military life he wanted so badly to lead.
Without his father to guide him, the upwardly mobile Washington earnestly sought to gain the attention of a surrogate who could usher him into Virginia society. Through Lawrence and, even more important, Lawrence's in-laws, the Fairfaxes, Washington slipped into the mix of provincial Virginian high society. His imposing physical size made him hard to miss in crowded ballrooms. He was graceful, especially on the dance floor, and he quite literally danced his way into the attentions of the rich and powerful. Because of his natural shyness, lack of formal education, and perpetual fear of ridicule, however, he shied away from learned conversations, observed much, and preferred to speak only when he was sure of himself.
Just as the ambitious young man was beginning to make his way into the world of Tidewater society, he was dealt another crushing blow: Lawrence died in 1752 after a long and painful struggle with tuberculosis. Lawrence's death was no doubt harder for the younger Washington to bear than the death of their father, for not only was Washington older and better able to grasp the ways in which death affected the lives of those left behind but also Lawrence had been his younger brother's savior, hero, and mentor throughout his formative teen years. In his will Lawrence bequeathed to his heartbroken younger brother three lots in Fredericksburg and the remote hope that if he were to outlive Lawrence's widow, Anne, and infant daughter (as long as she died without issue), he would inherit the clear title to Mount Vernon and the lands connected to it. This bequest was small comfort to Washington, who felt both the emotional and practical loss of a beloved older brother and mentor. Although he could take comfort that Lawrence's father-in-law, William Fairfax, would step into the role of benefactor and Lawrence's brother-in-law George William Fairfax would breach the emotional gap as a reliable best friend, Washington surely knew that it was time that he seriously made a name for himself in the world. He lobbied for and received a commission as an adjutant in the Virginia Regiment, one of Lawrence's old posts, and he became a member of a newly organized Masonic Lodge in Fredericksburg, rising quickly to Master Mason. Additionally he continued to conduct land surveys, accumulating handsome profits.
Washington First Enters Public Life
Now twenty-one years old, Washington finally began climbing the daunting social ladder, one rung at a time. He still needed an opportunity to impress the powerful men of Virginia who had noticed him only long enough to commission him. After all, military officers who earned no laurels typically failed to achieve lasting fame, for Virginia society was teeming with men who styled themselves as colonels. Washington had his opportunity to make a name for himself when the French invaded the Ohio Territory, lands that Virginia's Ohio Company traditionally claimed for the British crown. In October 1753 George II ordered the Virginians to construct forts along the Ohio River and to send an emissary to determine if the French were in fact trespassing on British soil. If they were, the men were to drive them out by force of arms. The prospect of traveling from Williamsburg to the French fort near what is now Pittsburgh in the winter was nothing short of frightening in the three-mile-per-hour world in which Washington lived, but with what would become a typical disregard for physical danger, he leaped at the chance to deliver his king's ultimatum. Robert Dinwiddie, Virginia's lieutenant governor, chose Washington probably because no one else stepped up to volunteer for such a dangerous mission; however, really no one was more qualified than Washington was. All those years of surveying experience taught him valuable lessons about how to navigate difficult terrain and survive in the wilderness, and he was physically very strong. The journey was harrowing, and Washington escaped death on at least two occasions. On the return leg of the trip, an Indian guide turned on him and fired a musket at near-point-blank range but missed. The unscathed Washington wisely opted not to hunt his attacker down and instead pushed ahead at a blistering pace to avoid any further attacks by other hostile Indians. As he and his guide, Christopher Gist, tried to cross a rushing river on a hastily built raft, Washington fell in and almost froze to death. Washington survived, however, and his mission was successful on a number of levels. On an immediate, practical level, Washington successfully made the British government's ultimatum clear to the French command present in the disputed territory. On a strategic level, after Washington's safe return to Williamsburg he confirmed the assumptions that the British and colonial governments were making about French intensions: they were certainly planning to stay, thus making war probable. With the murky situation cleared up, the would-be belligerents no longer had to guess what the other was thinking.
On a personal level, this mission made Washington famous. He kept a detailed record of his journey — complete with rich descriptions of the lands that he crossed, the French fortifications he visited, and all the details of his narrow escapes — and gave the record to Dinwiddie upon returning to Williamsburg. Dinwiddie immediately had it published in both Virginia and London to advertise the severity of the crisis on the frontier, and in so doing he made Washington a celebrity. Washington was given a day to prepare and submit the manuscript, and he evidently felt pressured. Although not uncommon for authors at that time, he made a point to write the advertisement for the book himself. He apologized "for the numberless Imperfections of it" and emphasized that he had "no leisure to consult of a new and proper form to offer it in, or to correct or amend the diction of the old, neither was I apprised ... that it ever would be published." The text of the journal offers evidence that Washington did not intend for it to be published. Many of the entries appear hastily written while others read like minutes of a meeting. Moreover, he makes frequent use of abbreviations, and the sentence structure is halting. Despite Washington's apparent fears that his work would be ridiculed for its amateurish prose, the book was widely read, frequently reprinted on both sides of the Atlantic, and often quoted. At the age of twenty-two, the young man whose prospects had previously been uncertain was an internationally published author and was newly promoted to lieutenant colonel and second in command of the Virginia Regiment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Powerful Mind by Adrienne M. Harrison. Copyright © 2015 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. Pursuing Useful Knowledge
2. Provincial Reading
3. Revolutionary Reading
4. Presidential Reading
5. A Legacy Library
6. A Place for Secluded Study
Conclusion
Suggestions for Further Reading
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index