The delegates deferred the final vote until the next day, when they passed a resolution “that a general be appointed to command all the continental forces raised, or to be raised, for the defense of American liberty.”²² In the ensuing debate, the only credible argument leveled against Washington was that the New England troops deserved one of their own. But with both John and Sam Adams placing his name in nomination, Washington was the tailor-made compromise candidate. “In the meantime,” recollected John Adams, “pains were taken out of doors to obtain a unanimity and the voices were generally so clearly in favor of Washington that the dissenting members were persuaded to withdraw their opposition.”²³ Washington was nominated by Thomas Johnson of Maryland and elected unanimously, initiating a long string of unanimous victories in his career.

Washington didn’t learn of his appointment until the Congress had adjourned for the day, and suddenly he encountered delegates who saluted him as “General.” In a twinkling, his world had changed forever. He was feted by delegates at a midday dinner, with Thomas Jefferson, thirty-two, and Benjamin Franklin, sixty-nine, lifting glasses in a postprandial toast to “the Commander in Chief of the American armies.” Washington, deeply moved, sat there abashed. As Benjamin Rush remembered, Washington “rose from his seat and with some confusion thanked the company for the honor they did him. The whole company instantly rose and drank the toast standing. This scene, so unexpected, was a solemn one. A silence followed it, as if every heart was penetrated with the awful but great events which were to follow the use of the sword of liberty which had just been put into General Washington’s hands by the unanimous voice of his country.”²⁴ True to form, Washington devoted the evening to a committee impaneled to draw up army regulations. In his diary on that epochal day, Washington wrote simply: “Dined at Burns’s in the field. Spent the even[in]g on a committee.”²⁵ Even in the privacy of his diary, Washington feared any show of unseemly ambition.

On Friday morning, June 16, John Hancock officially announced that George Washington had been chosen “General and Commander in Chief of the army of the United Colonies.”²⁶ Washington stood humbly at his seat during his reply. There was to be no chest-thumping from the new commander; this wasn’t the Man on Horseback that every good republican dreaded. “Mr President,” he said, “tho[ugh] I am truly sensible of the high honor done me in this appointment, yet I feel great distress from a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust. However, as the congress desire it, I will enter upon the momentous duty and exert every power I possess in their service and for the support of the glorious cause.” Washington’s speech was rife with disclaimers; he had long ago perfected the technique of lowering expectations. “But, lest some unlucky event should happen, unfavorable to my reputation,” he went on, “I beg it may be remember[e]d by every Gent[lema]n in the room that I this day declare, with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I [am] honoured with.” Then he made the proudly aristocratic gesture he had already practiced during the Braddock campaign—he waived the proposed salary of five hundred dollars a month: “As to pay, sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to have accepted this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happi[ness], I do not wish to make any profit from it. I will keep an exact account of my expenses; those I doubt not they will discharge and that is all I desire.”²⁷

Washington wanted to show that his motives were spotless, that he was a true gentleman and could be trusted with great power, and the delegates applauded his generosity. As John Adams declared, “There is something charming to me in the conduct of Washington. A gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent, leaving his delicious retirement, his family and friends, sacrificing his ease and hazarding all in the cause of his country.”²⁸ James T. Flexner dismisses the apparent generosity behind Washington’s renunciation of a salary: “Financially, the distinction proved to be only a bookkeeping one, as he received in expenses what he would have received in salary.”²⁹ But Washington’s gesture captured people’s imaginations and confirmed that this revolution was something new under the sun. Even the London newspapers were thunderstruck, one writing that Washington “is to attend to the hazardous duty allotted him from principle only. A most noble example and worthy of imitation in Great Britain.”³⁰

While some of Washington’s humility can be traced to political calculation, it also reflected his frank admission that he lacked the requisite experience to take on the British Empire. It was both a gratifying and a terrifying moment for a man who was such a bundle of confidence and insecurity. Preoccupied, as always, with his sense of personal honor—his calling card as a gentleman—he feared disgrace as well as failure. When he ran into Patrick Henry after his appointment, an emotional Washington seemed full of foreboding. “Remember, Mr. Henry, what I now tell you: from the day I enter upon the command of the American armies, I date my fall, and the ruin of my reputation.”³¹ Henry said that Washington’s eyes were full of tears—one of many times when, under stress, he betrayed his underlying emotions.

In accepting this appointment, Washington was haunted by the uncertain fate of his wife, who would be left alone and might become the target of British raids. In the wake of Patsy’s death and Jacky’s wedding, Martha Washington was already in a lonely, vulnerable state of mind. To be deprived now of her husband might knock the emotional props from under her. For three days Washington couldn’t bring himself to write to her. Then on June 18 he sat down with trepidation to inform her of his extraordinary appointment:

My Dearest, I am now set down to write to you on a subject which fills me with inexpressible concern and this concern is greatly aggravated and increased when I reflect on the uneasiness I know it will give you . . . You may believe me . . . when I assure you in the most solemn manner that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity . . . it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service . . . it was utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment without exposing my character to such censures as would have reflected dishonor upon myself and given pain to my friends.³²

The editors of Washington’s papers note that twenty years earlier Washington had marshaled almost identical arguments in writing to his mother, invoking force majeure in justifying his participation in the French and Indian War. But in this letter, even as he told Martha to summon her fortitude, his protective emotions surged to the fore. “I shall feel no pain from the toil or the danger of the campaign,” he told her. “My unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness I know you will feel at being left alone.”³³ He wondered whether she might feel safer in Alexandria or staying with close friends. It must have been sobering to Martha, who had already lost one husband, to learn that Washington had asked Edmund Pendleton to draft a new will for him.

For many years Martha’s attachment to her son had been problematic for George Washington, but he now found solace in the thought that Jacky might care for her. On June 19 he informed Jacky of his appointment and told him that “my great concern upon this occasion is the thoughts of leaving your mother under the uneasiness which I know this affair will throw her into.” He asked Jacky if he and his bride Nelly could stay full time at Mount Vernon, “when I think it absolutely necessary for the peace and satisfaction of your mother.”³⁴ That same day Washington wrote to his brother-in-law, Burwell Bassett, and inquired whether he and Martha’s sister, Anna Maria, could visit Mount Vernon or take Martha into their home. Although he had assured Martha that he would “return safe to you in the fall,” he now told Bassett, much more candidly, that “I have no expectations of returning till winter and feel great uneasiness at [Martha’s] lonesome situation.”³⁵ Washington noted that he had exchanged his Mount Vernon coach for his riding horses as he traded peacetime paraphernalia for wartime matériel. Again he expressed his inadequacy for the job. “I can answer but for three things: a firm belief in the justice of our cause; close attention in the prosecution of it; and the strictest integrity. If these cannot supply the places of ability and experience, the cause will suffer.”³⁶