As Washington switched from tobacco to other crops, the move had profound repercussions for his slaves. Since tobacco was more labor intensive than wheat or corn, its elimination led to a surplus of field hands. For the rest of his life, Washington grappled with the dilemma of having too many slaves, whose numbers only increased through normal population growth. At the same time he increasingly trained his slaves to perform a multitude of skilled tasks, producing a workforce of artisans proficient in diverse crafts. One Scottish visitor observed that Washington “has everything within himself—carpenters, bricklayers, brewers, blacksmiths, bakers, etc. etc.—and even has a well-assorted store for the use of his family and servants.”²³ The skills possessed by his enslaved craftsmen were extremely impressive. According to Washington’s editors, one slave named Isaac “constructed carts, wheels, plows, harrows, rakes, wheelbarrows, and other implements,” while another slave, Tom Davis, was a “skilled bricklayer, who also harvested grain, painted exteriors, hung wallpaper, cut grass, and worked at Washington’s fishery.”²⁴

To instruct his slaves, Washington imported indentured servants from Europe, many of them former convicts, who labored for a period of years, and their employment contracts obligated them to teach their trade to slaves they supervised. So pervasive were these arrangements that a full quarter of Mount Vernon’s slaves qualified as skilled workers, and Washington farmed them out to other planters for extra income. While indentured servants weren’t subject to the same punishing regimen as slaves, they felt their bondage strongly, and many ran away before their term expired. Just as he did with runaway slaves, Washington advertised for their return, and his notices show a minute knowledge of these hired hands. When William Orre escaped in 1774, Washington described him as “a well-made man about 5 foot 10 inches high and about 24 years of age. He was born in Scotland and talks that dialect pretty much. He is of a red complexion and very full-faced, with short, sandy-colored hair and very remarkable thumbs, they being both crooked.”²⁵

WHEN WASHINGTON ATTENDED the House of Burgesses in the spring of 1767, the furor over the Stamp Act had temporarily subsided. During this sleepy, uneventful session, Washington received one of the two surviving letters written to him by Martha. It shows her as a warm and affectionate if uneducated wife. The note reads in its entirety: “My Dearest: It was with very great pleasure I see in your letter th[at] you got safely down we are all very well at this time but it still [is] rainney and wett I am sorry you will not be at home soon as I expe[ct]ed you I had reather my sister would not come up so soon, as May wou[ld] be [a] much plasenter time than April we wrote to you las[t] post as I have nothing new to tell you I must conclude my self your most Affcetionate Martha Washington.”²⁶

Having failed to learn its lesson with the Stamp Act, Great Britain again provoked colonial discontent in 1767 with the Townshend Acts, which placed duties on paint, glass, paper, and tea and buttressed the power of royal officials by freeing them from reliance on colonial assemblies for money. Hardening its stance toward the restive colonists, the Crown dispatched the HMS Romney to Boston, where radicals had a chance in May 1768 to ponder the political message carried by its fifty guns. In September British warships disgorged two regiments of redcoats, who marched through town to the beat of fife and drums and then pitched tents on the Common in a show of strength designed to intimidate local protesters.

Of late Washington’s attendance in Williamsburg had been haphazard, and he missed the debate in the burgesses that included vehement denunciations of the Townshend duties. The legislators cloaked their plea to the king in obsequious language, appealing to his “fatherly goodness and protection,” but the royal heart remained unmoved.²⁷ Reflecting their tough position, officials in London sent to Virginia a new governor, Lord Botetourt, a peer of the realm with secret instructions to dissolve the Virginia assembly if it persisted in willful opposition to imperial wisdom. For all their ire over the Townshend duties, the burgesses still couldn’t resist the allure of an honest-to-goodness British aristocrat, and on November 2, 1768, Washington and fellow burgesses flocked to a festive welcoming dinner for the royal governor.

One can argue plausibly that the events of the winter of 1768-69 converted George Washington from a rich, disaffected planter into a rabid militant against British policies. Had he died before that winter, he would have left no real record of distinction, aside from youthful bravery in the French and Indian War. That winter changed everything, and he began to evolve into the George Washington known to history. Moving beyond the disputes over self-advancement that had preoccupied his younger, insecure self, he suddenly seemed a larger figure in the nascent struggle against British injustice. All his seething frustration in seeking a royal commission during the war; all his vocal disaffection with Robert Cary and Company; all his dismay over British policies that handicapped him as a planter and real estate speculator—these enduring complaints now crystallized into splendid wrath against the Crown.

That winter Parliament grew so disgruntled over colonial protests against its tax policy that it was proposed (though never executed) that the ringleaders be shipped to England and tried for treason under an old statute dating from Henry VIII’s reign. As word of this proposal spread, so did protest against the mother country. In early April Washington received a packet from Dr. David Ross of Bladensburg, Maryland, containing news of associations being set up in Philadelphia and Annapolis to boycott nonessential British imports as long as Parliament persisted in foisting unfair taxes on the colonies. The packet included plans for a comparable Virginia association, drawn up by a nameless writer. Washington sent it to his friend and neighbor George Mason, who turned out to be the author. A tall, bookish man trained in the law, Mason was more scholarly and less sociable than Washington. He inhabited a Georgian mansion called Gunston Hall, just south of Belvoir, which was in turn just south of Mount Vernon.

On April 5, 1769, Washington sent Mason a remarkable letter that gave both his private and his public reasons for supporting a boycott of British goods. Doubtless thinking of his own plight, he said a boycott would break the onerous cycle of debt that trapped many colonists, purging their extravagant spending. Before this the average colonial debtor was too weak to break this habit, “for how can I, says he, who have lived in such and such a manner, change my method? . . . besides, such an alteration in the system of my living will create suspicions of a decay in my fortune and such a thought the world must not harbor.”²⁸ Washington provided here a key insight into the psychology of debt: fear that any attempt at a more frugal existence would disclose the truth about a person’s actual wealth.

In the letter, Washington made clear that his opposition to arbitrary taxation had much to do with setting a precedent against further mischief. Just as the British assumed the right to taxation, so “they may attempt at least to restrain our manufactories, especially those of a public nature.”²⁹ Striking a militant tone, Washington suggested that he had moved beyond petitions and now preferred direct action, although not yet arms. He suddenly found a clear, spirited voice of protest, one that spoke of abstract rights instead of just personal advancement or economic necessity. “At a time when our lordly masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something shou[l]d be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors.” In considering the best means to effect this, he balked at spelling out the treasonous word arms. “That no man shou[l]d scruple or hesitate a moment to use a—ms in defense of so valuable a blessing . . . is clearly my opinion. Yet a—ms, I wou[l]d beg leave to add, should be the last resource.”³⁰ Noting the futility of sending more fawning petitions to the king, he said the only recourse was to starve British trade and manufactures.