Washington and Caesar

They were well kept and their leather gleamed with solid worth; their master read most of them, whether to farm or make war. He had been a soldier, and now he was a farmer—head bent over a careful drawing of a drainage canal in the Great Dismal Swamp as he laboriously traced out his plans for further drainage. The Great Dismal was a watery fortress built by nature on the south coast of Virginia to keep farmers at bay. It would take more slaves, more effort, and more money to drain the swamp and till the ground, but the result would be thousands of acres of prime farmland reclaimed from the wilderness right on the coast, where cargoes would fetch the best price. The plan had started almost ten years before; it had never quite succeeded or failed, and its demands seemed to increase every year, no matter how much effort the original investors expended.

He was a farmer, and yet he planned his assault for the year on the Great Dismal like a soldier: considering each drainage ditch an approach sap on nature’s fortress swamp; marshalling the forces of slaves and pressed labor available to the investors; planning against the day when the scheme would turn a profit and the siege would end.

He was a farmer, and all his thoughts were on the coming planting, on drainage and foaling, water tables and wheat prices, and the extent of the herring run, and yet none of his heroes had ever excelled as farmers. They had all been soldiers, soldiers of the type that won their fame for the glory of their arms and not for the kingdoms that they built; indeed, Charles, Alexander and Frederick shared a failure to build very much at all. But they were his chosen companions in his library, as his pen gradually worked its way into the defenses built by nature to keep the European farms at bay in the Great Dismal Swamp, where ten years of labor had yet to yield a single crop. He looked at his new network of ditches without confidence, laid his pen carefully in a ready holder to avoid inking the map, scattered some sand on it, and rose.

A house slave appeared instantly, looking expectant, but Washington waved him away.

“I’m going out to the dogs, Jack.”

“Yes, suh.”

“Build up the fire, if you please.”

“Yes, suh.”

He walked out through the library hall and around the drive to the kitchen, nodding courteously to the cook, the maid, and the little black girl who helped with the kitchen and was clearly terrified by his appearance so late at night. He paused for a moment and looked at the stars, missing the child streaking by him down toward the deer park, bound for the kennel to warn the young man there that Master was headed that way, so that he was pleasantly surprised to find Caesar up, with a small rushlight in the kennel, sitting with Old Blue.

“She still in a bad way, Caesar?”

“She bin bettah…better, sir.”

Her coat was not as dull as it had been, though, he noted, and she had her head in the boy’s lap, looking at him with some interest.

“She eating?”

“Eats a little, if’n I feed it to her slow.”

“She’s a good dog—used to be the best in the pack.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’d like to shoot tomorrow.”

“How many dogs, sir?”

“Just a pair. You work hard on your speech, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Washington smiled, though the subject didn’t really please him very much. He had worked hard to sound English when he joined Braddock’s staff; Lord Fairfax had helped him lose the provincial speech that might have marked him. Slaves who spoke too well, though—that was another matter.

“You did a very good job on the hunt. Here’s a crown. That’s a quarter of an English pound. Spend it wisely.”

Delighted smile, deep bow, genuine admiration. “Thank you, suh! Thank you, sir.” The black face beamed with pleasure and willingness to please, but Washington noticed that in his flurry of spirits, Caesar’s pronunciation had slipped, which was to be expected.

“But I desire you to take care, Caesar. You can be overfamiliar. Do you understand me?”

“No, sir.” The light went out. Washington had never been good at admonition; he was too cold, and it always came out as criticism without leniency. It had hurt him with his regiment.

“You should not smile at me, or at Mr. Lee, as if we were your familiar friends.”

The boy looked hurt and confused. He’d recover.

“Talk to Queeny, boy. Tell her what I said. Both things. You are a good hunter, and you can have a good life here. But you must know your place.”

“Yes, sir.”

Washington thought of clasping his shoulder, but he didn’t. A slave should not need comforting when the Master had spoken to him. Washington tried to regulate his slaves in the tradition of the ancients. His firmness would not have offended Epictetus, he was sure.

4 (#ulink_b659133e-6bc8-522f-a9e4-a7fc4bbc2dab)

Mount Vernon, Virginia, late January 1774

“Coward! Drunkard! That he would dare…”

Washington’s voice trailed off as he realized that his angry words had been audible throughout the house and that the girl who had been tending the fire was now cowering in the corner. He colored in embarrassment, and within a moment Martha appeared from the back stairs and their own apartment just above, her pretty face a picture of concern.

“Hush there, husband. You’ll wake the neighborhood.”

He all but stuttered his apology; it shamed him to be so uncontrolled in front of his wife. His hand was still clenching the letter and his knuckles were white. He opened his hand as he realized how he must look, and the letter fell free to the desk.

“I think you should tell me, my dear.”

“Nothing. I was a fool. Apologies.”

“Nonsense, my dear. No one shouts in that manner at half past ten on a winter’s night unless moved beyond the capacity of the human frame to resist.”

Portraits never did her justice; she was uncommonly pretty, even now, a little thing with an elegant carriage and a firmness of purpose. He could dislike her when she was an overprotective copy of his own mother, but when she was like this, she was the woman he wanted, his partner.

“Do you recall my mentioning George Muse?”

“He admitted to cowardice at Fort Necessity, I believe. I expected to hear his name—we don’t number so many cowards among our acquaintance.” She smiled.

Her turn of phrase, so much wittier than he could manage, made him smile through his anger, as she had known it would, and he saw her relax as if she had expected more difficulty. It struck him that she was handling his temper, that he was being managed and that he could resent it but didn’t. He knew in that moment that he had shouted the words to get her to come to him. And she had come.

“He has had the effrontery to send me a perfectly odious letter, suggesting that my interest in the veterans’ grants in Ohio is all self-interest—that I have attempted to cheat him and others of my former officers. Utter rot. It sticks in my craw, madam.”

She turned her head slightly, at the pistols in the case on the desk.

“Washingtons don’t fight Muses, my dear.”

He looked confused for a moment. Then he saw it. She thought the cleaning of the pistols went with the letter.

“I won’t fight him unless he calls me. But I’ll write him such a letter, and make my feelings plain. To bear such an affront is beyond me. I’m speechless.”

“You are not, dear. Come to bed.”

“I think I will read, madam, if only for a bit.”