George Washington: The Early Years is the first episode in our three part series that focuses on the first president of the United States. This episode brings us through his childhood, his time working as a land surveyor and operating as a colonizer in the larger movement to push indigenous peoples from the land and his beginnings as a young, upstart military leader. We will also discuss the role the Ohio River Valley played for the French and English in their desire to expand power and control in America.
Works Cited:
- Mount Vernon Ladies Association
- American Battlefield Trust
- George Washington and the American Military Tradition by Don Higginbotham
- Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
- Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution by Woody Holton
About SNAFUBAR:
Over the course of each episode, SNAFUBAR will look at stories from military history and particular moments of U.S. military blunders with added context that can be used by and is accessible to a wide range of audiences. The histories we will look at will make clear the degree to which the U.S. is a warful nation, contrary to the myth of a peaceful nation forced into combat. And we’ll try to clarify the degree to which we romanticize and fetishize the military while not really providing the support that service members need for their time in, or for their return.
SNAFUBAR is hosted by Sara Hart, who teaches Religious Studies at Cal Poly Humboldt, and Jeff Crane who is an Environmental Historian and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Research and writing for the show by Liam Salcuni and Roman Sotomayor.
SNAFUBAR is produced by Abigail Smithson and brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
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Transcript:
George Washington: The Early Years
[ Music ]
>> Sara Hart: Digging into history here and military history to boot, what's not to be excited about? Listeners, those of you joining us here in the "SNAFUBAR," welcome. And just to make sure we're all on the same page, we want to start off by introducing to you the show's name. The name is a portmanteau of sorts, an acronym mashup that comes from the military context. So Acronym 1, SNAFU, which means situation normal: all --
>> Jeff Crane: Messed up.
>> Sara Hart: -- messed up.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: And Acronym 2, which is messed up beyond all recognition. So FUBAR. That's right. So we slammed them together, and we find ourselves here in the "SNAFUBAR" where we're going to talk about American military history, America's national myth or story, or traditional narrative. We'll talk about some mishaps, about errors, both strategic and moral. And we'll focus a lot of the time on tension points, on those places where our beliefs and our behaviors don't quite match up.
>> Jeff Crane: There's only a couple of those, right?
>> Sara Hart: We'll come upon them infrequently, but you know, here we are. Like, okay, so history shows us that the U.S., you know, it really has been a warful nation at war for well over 90% of its history, depending on how you count it. But all along, America has had this consistent myth or shared national storyline of being a peaceful nation that's compelled against its will to go to war.
>> Jeff Crane: Why do people keep picking fights with us?
>> Sara Hart: I know, it's forced, we're forced to it. So there's a tension there.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. So we see ourselves as a peaceful and peace-loving nation, but we're at war so much of our history.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, yeah. And here -- okay, and here's another one. Sometimes here in the "SNAFUBAR," we'll look at the ways that our national culture romanticizes, maybe even fetishizes the military, while not always providing the support that service members need to carry out their objectives and not meeting veterans' needs when they return from service, especially when that service involves combat. So you know, there's another tension point. We're over the top in celebrating the military, but we're limited in our support for veterans who are transitioning back into civilian life. My name is Sara Hart, and I teach multidisciplinary humanities classes here at Cal Poly Humboldt.
>> Jeff Crane: Thanks, Sara. And I'm Jeff Crane, historian and college dean, also at Cal Poly Humboldt. Besides being colleagues, Sara and I are friends who have a shared interest in informed and accurate telling of history, especially when it comes to war. Both of us also have a deep investment into veterans' affairs.
>> Liam Salcuni: And I'm Liam Salcuni, lecturer here at Cal Poly Humboldt and researcher and writer for the podcast here. Some of my colleagues, you know, have given me the title of renaissance man, jack of all trades. I kind of do it all.
>> Jeff Crane: Subaltern.
>> Liam Salcuni: Subaltern.
>> Jeff Crane: Also works. No, we really dependent on Liam and his excellent work in research and writing. So before we begin, we'd like to give a shout-out to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association for their incredible digital humanities museum. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association has been preserving and promoting George Washington's Mount Vernon for more than 160 years. And Liam, I think you used a bunch of their digital sources in writing the script, didn't you?
>> Liam Salcuni: Fantastic. A model for the digital humanities movement that we see sweeping across the country.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Let's hear it for those ladies.
>> Liam Salcuni: Absolutely fantastic. Vital to the, you know, production of the script.
>> Jeff Crane: Great, okay. So today we're picking up with none other than George Washington, the Cincinnatus of the West, apotheosized in the Capitol Rotunda, larger than life, father of our nation, and doer of many SNAFUs.
>> Sara Hart: That's right. A myth of a man. And so I'm -- what are we doing here? Are we puncturing the myth? Are we pointing out the idol's clay feet? Is this a Washington roast?
>> Jeff Crane: Well, it is, and it's not. Washington is so well-known, right? You know, in the early -- in the 19th, early 20th centuries, American school children regularly memorized and recited his complete farewell address.
>> Sara Hart: That's -- and it's long, it's like 30 pages or something if you print it out. These kids were for real.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, right? We don't do that anymore; we Google it. Still, Washington is well-known, but at the same time, not really known. So to start with, it is important, essential to get some background to better understand him. We need to move away from the myth of Washington, the hallowed figure, i.e., the father of our country, to more down-to-earth understanding. And this is an intentional innuendo, given the kind of work he did early in his career, and to better understand his really amazing successes and contributions later in his life.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Right? He's an episode of "SNAFUBAR" because boy oh boy, did he find himself in some serious SNAFUs and FUBARs early in his military career, and understanding that helps us to value him even more as the human that he was. You think so?
>> Jeff Crane: I do. And I think also it, it helps us start to situate the whole understanding of SNAFUs, right, and FUBARs in American military history. It gives us a grounding, if you will, or a template. So let's get into understanding him a little bit more. He was born in 1732 into a land and slave owning family of limited means. His father died when Washington was just 11, and Washington was left with the majority of property with his older brother, older half-brother Lawrence. What he did inherit was some land and 10 enslaved humans that remained under his mother's management due to his youth and her need to manage and control the family economy.
>> Sara Hart: Right. Under his mother's management. You know, like this sort of thing can, I think seems surprising to us, to students when we think back to our own time, and we think about how little control women in America were permitted over their own finances, like well into the 1970s. Like, I'm not that old, but my mother would not have been permitted to have her own bank account without a male co-signer until she was in her late 20s.
>> Jeff Crane: I've worked with faculty that when they started their career, could not have their own checking account.
>> Sara Hart: It's just mind-blowing, you know? Like I -- yeah, it's a very different context. And that's 1974, that's like in our living memory, but women didn't have control until then. But this, we're talking 1732, this is the colonial era, and Mary Ball Washington is managing the household, and she was. And it wouldn't actually have been especially rare, it turns out that the story of women, money control in America, it's not a consistent or unidirectional march of progress. It's complicated.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. We won't be doing a lot of narratives about the teleological march of progress in this show. And the fact that it's surprising, I think, helps us understand the degree to which women's roles have been elided throughout American history, or concealed or ignored.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: They're important roles in managing economies the colonial period forward.
>> Sara Hart: Story for another time, though.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. Right? Or maybe another podcast. Suffice it to say, George Washington did not come from the Virginian aristocracy or moneyed wealth. And this was at least part of the reason for his incredibly outsized ambition. We might say he was upper middle class if we were going to use that frame, but he did not hold any power that those in the landed aristocracy [inaudible]. His desire to join the landed gentry drove him for much of his life, as in his desire and need for recognition.
>> Sara Hart: Right. So not landed, but upper middle class. Like he was close enough to see it, close enough to think he could get there. You know, but so much of history's narrative is driven by this kind of personal outsized ambition if we look at it, right, ego. You know, I don't think it makes Washington a demon to air these things. Doesn't, to my mind at least, tarnish his heroism; it makes him human, but it's hard not to see.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. And there are people that [inaudible] in the state. That's for those of you [inaudible] a lot of this conversation about our history and historical figures. So Washington, surveying was his chosen early profession and a critically important one at that.
>> Sara Hart: Okay, let's back up a second. What's a surveyor? That's one of those professions we think we know about, but probably don't actually understand. I don't think I actually understand, at least historically.
>> Jeff Crane: You know, we see him standing there with those tripods looking at each other across the road.
>> Sara Hart: Across the highway, like through their little windows, little apertures.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. Surveyors, you know, of course, we still have surveyors, but they occupied a larger, more important role in the colonization process and conquest of North America. So they worked directly with respective settlers and land companies, speculators, to determine land boundaries. Settlers trying to acquire land had to petition a local land office for survey warrant, which was a sort of contract, instructing the surveyor to make a detailed survey for the prospective buyer. In this way, a formal allotment of land detailed with boundaries, waterways, or other geographically significant markers created a clear map so buyers knew exactly what they were purchasing. These were intelligent, well-known, professional, and highly respected individuals with proximity to wealth and power. So this really was the job for an ambitious young man who wants to be socially mobile.
>> Sara Hart: Okay. Right. So he's getting the lay of the land.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: Good one, Sara.
>> Sara Hart: Thanks. That's what a surveyor does. He's identifying the contours of the territory that can then be sold, right? Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: All in the empire building.
>> Sara Hart: All in the empire building.
>> Liam Salcuni: That's what this is, a cog in the machine.
>> Sara Hart: It makes me think of that dude, Korzybski, philosopher, "The map is not the territory." Remember that phrase, "The map is not the territory"?
>> Jeff Crane: No. I don't know that phrase. You want to explain who that is in the --
>> Sara Hart: He's a philosopher mid-century, but the -- it comes up a lot in the world of religious studies. But the map here -- like the map is not the territory, but the map really here commodifies the territory. It makes it saleable.
>> Liam Salcuni: The obstacle is the way.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. Well, it's the -- what they're doing is they're alienating land and taking away use of [inaudible] rights and land from native peoples, right, by laying these markers and boundaries on top of it, right? This is native land that the colonists are stealing.
>> Sara Hart: Cataloging it to more effectively steal. It also seems like surveying contains some of that idealized spirit of rugged individualism. Am I right? Like going out in the wild frontier and conquering the elements for gain and glory. It's given me some, you know, putting off some heavy settler colonial vibes.
>> Jeff Crane: Ew!
>> Sara Hart: Ew!
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. And frontier is a problematic term, right? And we recognize that as well. But these are the terms in which colonial British thought, and we use that phrase rugged individualism, because we will see that George Washington is a surprisingly rugged fellow. So in 1749, when he was 17 years old, just think about that for a second, 17 years old, Washington secured a post as surveyor of the newly created Culpeper County in Virginia. It is estimated that by 1752, Washington had conducted nearly 60,000 acres of land surveys. Along the way, he secured significant land holdings for himself. This was very important to the young Washington because land was one of the main requisites to becoming recognized in colonial political life. Absolutely essential.
>> Sara Hart: Right. And part of what it took to be recognized in that colonial politics, you know, was well colonizing.
>> Jeff Crane: If we go back to concepts such as vacuum domicilium in English law, which basically means empty land becomes a justification for occupying native lands, surveying is one of the key tools, really, weapons in the colonizing project. Land seizure is one of the central strategies and settler colonialism, and the genocide of native peoples Washington contributed to and benefited from that directly.
>> Sara Hart: Right. And that vacuum domicilium it makes me think also of the Doctrine of Discovery, which is like 1493 from the Pope Alexander VI, which said to colonial powers, you know, you get to it first, and according to the Catholic church, the land is yours. If you're going into the "New World," whoever kind of claims it first, it's yours, so as to avoid Imperial Wars in the so-called New World.
>> Jeff Crane: Trying to track my bulls and my treaties. Is this the Treaty of Tordesillas?
>> Sara Hart: No, this is the -- this is a papal bull called among other things. What would that be in Latin? Et Caetera [phonetic].
>> Jeff Crane: Well, that's actually the name, not you trying to think of the name?
>> Sara Hart: No. That's among other things. So and the Vatican formally repudiated this doctrine in 2003.
>> Jeff Crane: Well, what took so long?
>> Sara Hart: Well, it's a slow-moving.
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, it gets crazier. Well, didn't SCOTUS --?
>> Sara Hart: Yes!
>> Liam Salcuni: They used it in some sort of court case in 2005.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. They cited it as precedent in 2005 in a court case from Upstate New York, and of all of the Supreme Court justices to cite the Doctrine of Discovery as precedent for American law. Which Supreme Court Justice do you think it was?
>> Jeff Crane: Oh God, I don't want to say Clarence Thomas.
>> Sara Hart: You don't? Oh, you want to, you might want to, but it's Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
>> Jeff Crane: Okay, good.
>> Liam Salcuni: No way.
>> Sara Hart: Way. Right? So I mean, this thing has been -- this is all going, really going on by the 18th century. I guess that's where I am, mid-18th century, we're sitting here, there's a lot of vacuum domicilium, there's Doctrine of Discovery. These guys are living by this.
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, yeah. I mean, and the -- you know, now I'm sitting here thinking about William Cronon's "Changes in the Land," and how well he laid out all those English legal principles that are the tools of colonization, conquest, and genocide. So but that's not our story for today.
>> Sara Hart: Right.
[ Music ]
>> Jeff Crane: If you're just tuning in, this is "SNAFUBAR." And I'm Jeff Crane here with Sara Hart and Liam Salcuni. Today, we're talking about the origin story of George Washington, the first president of the United States. By the mid-18th century, the landed aristocracy of Virginia had incrementally climbed to amongst some of the wealthiest people in the colonies, even rivaling some landed aristocratic families back in England. Proving his worth as a surveyor meant Washington could access political or economic opportunities that before may not have been available, making critical connections to powerful people. Land is not only a marker of one's economic status, land ownership came with a sense of gravitas or dignity that enabled individuals to occupy key political appointments and positions. This was really the only way forward for him to ascend into the land-owning gentry class he envied and emulated and to really be a leader in colonial society.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. This is GW, the early years, I'm sort of getting the sense that --
>> Jeff Crane: That's a TV show, GW, the early years, like the rock.
>> Sara Hart: Right. The wonder years, Washington's wonder years.
>> Jeff Crane: "Get away from that cherry tree, kid."
>> Sara Hart: I told you. I'm getting the sense that young Mr. Washington was a wee bit ambitious.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. So much so, it's startling. And that the fact that we're startled by it is because we've been so imbued with the myth of Washington as this sort of granite, marble-like, statuesque figure, right? He's human just like everyone else, right? So in his quest for social mobility and recognition, he also angled hard for military leadership in the events leading to the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years' War. So a very, very ambitious young man, 20 years old, chasing down opportunities far beyond his experience and knowledge. This is, by the way, classic White male, right? He's like, "Oh, yeah, that thing.
>> Sara Hart: "I can do that."
>> Jeff Crane: I can do that." Right? "Sure. Yeah, lead an army into, you know, the forest. Sure."
>> Sara Hart: "No problem."
>> Liam Salcuni: A militia, right, or --?
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, sorry.
>> Sara Hart: I don't need a trained army.
>> Liam Salcuni: Just going in with "Sesame Street."
>> Jeff Crane: Only he had an army.
>> Liam Salcuni: It's like "Sesame Street" walking into the Ohio River Valley.
>> Jeff Crane: "I don't have any shoes, but sure." So he's 20 years old then, but still -- and of course, he would also create an incident that launched the war.
>> Liam Salcuni: SNAFUBAR.
>> Sara Hart: SNAFUBAR. Right, Jeff? And you and I weren't like supremely overconfident when we were 20. Liam, how about you?
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, no. No.
>> Sara Hart: A picture of moderation?
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. I don't know about you, but I was a really soft-spoken youth with very humble opinions.
>> Sara Hart: I bet. I look at you, I think, "A modest upbringing, a modest youth that's like --"
>> Jeff Crane: I grew into my arrogance.
>> Liam Salcuni: I was an old -- the eldest child, so I was a little bit of the -- yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Born arrogant.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: That's --
>> Liam Salcuni: But I was put in check. I have a younger sister, so I was put in check.
>> Sara Hart: Okay. Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: Anyways, Washington was extremely young when tensions increased with France over the Ohio River country and settlement. To be clear, these were longstanding tensions. Both the British and French had firmly established themselves in North America. French explorer Jacques Cartier claimed swaths of North America for the French crown in 1534. The French maintained irregular presence on the continent by establishing trade alliances with neighboring Native American tribes. They were better at this than the English were. They were also locked into the very lucrative fur trade, and alliances with Native Americans was key for this enterprise. The French operated out of key trading hubs in strongholds like Montreal and Quebec. By 1682, French explorer and fur trader René-Robert Cavelier --
>> Sara Hart: Liam --
>> Liam Salcuni: René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.
>> Jeff Crane: Thank you, Liam.
>> Sara Hart: Yes. We'll call him René.
>> Jeff Crane: Claimed what is today called the Mississippi River Watershed, a huge river system that encompasses approximately 1.1 million square miles, including the Ohio River Valley. De La Salle named this -- I say --
>> Liam Salcuni: De La Salle.
>> Sara Hart: De La Salle. De La Salle, De La Salle.
>> Jeff Crane: There's something about French words that just make me feel very provincial, insecure, and a product of the American public education system. He named this whole territory Louisiana after King Louis XIV. Is that right?
>> Sara Hart: XIV.
>> Liam Salcuni: That's it. The Sun King. I mean, talk about a swath of territory.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. And this is why, during this period of history, maps show Louisiana as this giant region, like the whole middle of what we now think of as the U.S. It goes all the way over to like the Rockies. I think there's Montana is included. There's probably some --
>> Jeff Crane: Utah, Colorado.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: It's like almost 30 states, I think, something like that.
>> Sara Hart: It's huge.
>> Jeff Crane: And then all the way back to the Appalachians, yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. It's like mountain range to mountain range. That whole middle part. It is not the little boot-looking thing that we think of today. Right? The young United States purchased this territory from France in 1803, adding huge amounts of lands to the country's borders.
>> Jeff Crane: This is one of Jefferson's great successes, of course. And in direct contravention of what he said we should be doing, right?
>> Sara Hart: Uh-huh.
>> Jeff Crane: But it was --
>> Sara Hart: Cheap.
>> Jeff Crane: -- he wanted an agricultural republic, and he needed land for that. So this is land purchased by Thomas Jefferson. It reflected some pretty dramatic shifts in his thinking about expanding the size of the country, taking on debt. And, you know, it reflects his desire to create an agricultural republic. He was very opposed to Hamilton's vision of an industrial republic. Guess who lost that battle? In fact, it was Napoleon Bonaparte, that one, that guy, in a bid to generate funds for his campaigns against the British, that led to United States acquiring the territory of Louisiana. And I think to kind of understand what's going on, we need to back up a little bit and talk about one element of British colonialism, and that's the English and the Virginia Company, and they founded Jamestown back in 1607. And there's a narrative we tell about America where the Puritans came here for religious freedom and city on a hill. And that's true. But before they got here, and I mean religious freedom for themselves, let's be clear.
>> Sara Hart: Not everyone.
>> Jeff Crane: But before they got here, was a colony established, looking to find gold, to find gems, to enslave indigenous peoples, and get rich. That was the mandate of the Virginia Company. It started 1607.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. It's not as good of an origin story, you know? Religious liberty is a little more inspiring.
>> Liam Salcuni: Not to mention in 1619 that, you know, the slave ships are shortly brought to these colonies after. So it's a shaky beginning to say the least. It's problematic. Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: Problematic. Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: There was also that earlier English colony founded in 1587 in present-day North Carolina, the Roanoke colony, right? But this colony mysteriously disappeared.
>> Jeff Crane: I saw that play as a kid.
>> Sara Hart: Did you?
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. And they just kind of walk into the woods at the end.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, into the sunset.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. It's like, no, they were absorbed by native peoples.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, that's -- right, right. That's most likely the most accepted theory is that they were in need of help, obvs, and joined the nearby Croatoan tribe. Either way, the French are claiming land in 1534. The Brits are here later.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. Right. Exactly. So you know, what we're talking about and the frame we're setting up here is European competition over control of North America as they seize land from native peoples. Since the establishment of Jamestown, the English sought a stronger presence West, English claims for the Ohio River Valley, like the French claims go back as far as the 17th century. By 1609, a second charter, the Virginia Company claimed lands from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific Ocean for the English crown, having no idea what's out there.
>> Liam Salcuni: No idea.
>> Jeff Crane: Lewis and Clark were like, "Oh, what are those things on the horizon? Oh my God, the Rocky Mountains." Right? Rightful ownership over the interior of North America was messy, to say the least, between these conflicting empires, not to mention native sovereignty and tribal claims to territories across the Ohio River Valley, and the rest of the country in which were by and large were relegated to the periphery or extinguished.
>> Sara Hart: Right. And, you know, tensions really began to escalate between the British and the French empires over that Ohio River Valley in 1749 when the French explorer Captain Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville.
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, I'm impressed.
>> Sara Hart: Pretty good? Yeah?
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Laid six lead plates across major tributaries of the Ohio River. And I do want to digress here for a second. Lead plates, these are lead plates.
>> Jeff Crane: Are they raised plates?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, they are inscribed with words. They are made out of lead, and they are buried; they're plaques that are buried. They also, when they buried them, put little tin markers on trees that said something like, hey, there's a lead plate buried nearby, right, so that people would know. And they did this with like much ceremony. Very big ritual.
>> Jeff Crane: Well, you know, there's, as you know, of course, huge ceremonial processes for claiming land. You know, priests, --
>> Sara Hart: They just --
>> Jeff Crane: -- statements of sovereignty.
>> Sara Hart: Right. And I'm impressed by and appreciate the ritualness of it all. But really, these were just like metal plates buried in land that said 100% symbolically.
>> Jeff Crane: And there's one that's in a museum, apparently.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. One of these, right, one of these lead plates is preserved by the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. By 1753, the French are building forts in the Ohio River Valley. So I think that's like the slightly more than symbolic version of this, right? So they found -- we found these buried, there's probably more buried out there, it turns out. They buried these things at tributaries to say we claim everything the river flows towards. Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: Very interesting.
>> Sara Hart: Totally symbolic.
>> Jeff Crane: I did not even know about the lead plates and the tributaries.
>> Sara Hart: What a trip, right?
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: But they do start building forts, eventually, not so much symbolic and more as a counter. You know, theirs was based more on trade, conversion, and alliance with native peoples.
>> Jeff Crane: Yes.
>> Sara Hart: Their version of colonialism. So their position in the Ohio River Valley was weaker.
>> Jeff Crane: That's -- because they did not have the excess population that the British did, right? There was not a -- you know, again, we talk about the Puritans and emphasize the city on a hill and religious freedom, but there were also freeholders, our want to be freeholders, and there was lots of land available. French did not have the same issue. Word reaches Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie. He's also a major investor in the Ohio Company of Virginia. The Ohio Company of Virginia is a land speculation and trading company started by wealthy planters from the Colony of Virginia. Again, this story of land speculation is one that is not as well-known, right? Lawrence Washington, the older half-brother of George Washington, was a founding member. The company relayed information to its investors about lucrative land prospects and trading opportunities. The Ohio Company and its intents were driven by a need to establish a stronger British presence in the Ohio River Valley, a challenge to French claims and activities in this region. And this is where Washington comes in. Later in 1753, Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie sends the young George Washington on a mission to assert British claims over this disputed territory. So it's not just colonial, right? We can say, oh, the colonial project, the British, but the British colonial subjects that are running the Virginia Colony are speculators that are trying to secure the air control and access to land that they can sell for profit. Right? So when a --
>> Sara Hart: What disputed territory, claiming land grabbing? What are you saying, Jeff?
>> Jeff Crane: And Capitalism, oh my. Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Capitalism, ooh.
>> Jeff Crane: Probably one of our truest stories, right? Yeah, one thing is certain for the English and French, this is contested space for future settlement, wealth-making also. And France was making moves to build forts and settle this region, even while English landowners sought opportunities to speculate through land sales in the region. It's not a well-known fact that colonial planners were heavily reliant on land speculation as a financial strategy. And it would be a significant part of Washington's financial strategy himself. Same for Jefferson and many others who struggle with the inconsistent commodity prices and debt throughout the colonial period. Woody Holton explains this really well in his book, "Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution," where he states, "Nearly all of the best-known Founding Fathers from Thomas Jefferson and George Washington in Virginia to Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris in Pennsylvania, dreamed of vastly enhancing their wealth by speculating in western land."
>> Sara Hart: "Go west, young man." And all the while, right, pressure for land access with ongoing immigration and strong population growth, the English were settler colonialists, and their numbers were growing. All that was steadily building up in the English colonies. The French did not have a strong settler colonial model, is what I'm hearing you saying. Theirs was based more on trade, conversion, and alliance with native people, so --
>> Jeff Crane: That's correct. Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. So their position in the Ohio River Valley is just weaker.
>> Jeff Crane: Except that they have such better relationships with native peoples than the British do.
>> Sara Hart: Relationality.
>> Jeff Crane: So we're going to see some of that here, yeah.
>> Sara Hart: As a strength, not for this.
[ Music ]
>> Jeff Crane: If you're just joining us, this is "SNAFUBAR." I'm Jeff Crane here with Sara Hart and Liam Salcuni. And today, we are discussing the early career of George Washington. So yeah, I hope y'all enjoyed that deep context detour. We're academics, we believe in context. Right? So we're going to -- we're winding our way back to Washington. And he became well known in Williamsburg, Virginia, for his work as a surveyor. His reputation grew, he accrued wealth, he accrued land. And he lobbied to replace his brother Lawrence, who died of tuberculosis in 1752, as adjutant general. This was a military position for which Washington had no experience. What could go wrong? He was awarded though the Southern District of Virginia, a relatively low-prestige position.
>> Sara Hart: Wait, wait. So now he's a military leader? Based on what?
>> Jeff Crane: Well, just hold on there, sir. It gets better. This is George Washington and in his maybe we call it callow youth, he aggressively pursues prestige. He petitioned his patrons, particularly Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie, to support him in requesting a transfer to a richer, more important district. This position paid 100 sterling pounds a year, and he was given the rank of Major Washington. He wrote to Dinwiddie at the time, "Could I presume, Your Honor, had not in view a more deserving person, I flatter myself I should meet with the approbation of the Gentlemen of the Council." And to quote historian Ron Chernow, who's an important source for this podcast, his eminently readable biography of Washington, "The young Washington could be alternately fawning and assertive appealingly, modest and distressingly pushy. While he knew the social norms, he could never quite restrain, much less conceal the unstoppable force of his ambition." And we give some more examples as we go forward. This is clearly true.
>> Sara Hart: The unstoppable force, this guy. Really intentional and clearly imagined professional pathway he has from a young age, but like flexible enough to adapt to this ever-changing context he's living in. Right? The picture of Washington is getting a little clearer here.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, adapt. If by adapting, you meaning seeing the opportunities and going after them. Is that what you mean?
>> Sara Hart: Yes, yes, opportunistic.
>> Jeff Crane: Sure.
>> Sara Hart: Okay.
>> Jeff Crane: Opportunistic. Well, that's, again, as tensions mounted between the English and French, Washington saw his opportunity to stand out amongst his military peers. Dinwiddie, as we point out earlier, was a primary investor in the Ohio Company, and he's seeking to preserve access to land and the fur trade. He convinces the British government to give him the authority to build a series of forts in the Ohio River Valley. And there's that example we were talking about of self-interest, economic self-interest, and the government, how they're intertwined, which is also a story of America. Washington then would assume an important role with stupendous SNAFUBAR opportunities.
>> Sara Hart: Stupendous.
>> Jeff Crane: But first, first --
>> Sara Hart: So he's heading to Ohio. And where is this Ohio? Columbus? Dayton? Cleveland?
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, yeah. Cleveland, they're already playing baseball there with the appropriately named baseball team. So let's do some geographical table setting. The Ohio River Valley is a fertile collection of lands interspersed with navigable, rushing rivers, encompassing what is presently parts of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Southeastern Pennsylvania.
>> Sara Hart: Okay.
>> Jeff Crane: So fertile lands, forests, resources, rivers are crucial for both transport of goods and also building grain and wood mills and iron foundries as we get into early manufacturing and later, later, good bit later industrialism. The abundance of natural resources and likelihood of further Virginian settlement west made the Ohio River Valley a highly desirable location for investors like Dinwiddie.
>> Sara Hart: Okay. And I'm just guessing if I know anything about this period, the French were not simply going to allow this to slip away while enjoying a nice Bordeaux with some stinky cheese. I mean, they had buried all those engraved lead plates.
>> Jeff Crane: "But I have this café au lait and this warm croissant. What am I supposed to do?" It's the worst French accent ever.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yes.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. No, all my accents come basically from "Monty Python's the Holy Grail," so I'll try to control myself here. There's no law of loss between the French and English, right? They're in regular, constant conflict in this period. Early 1750s, the French had begun building a series of forts, bolstering their control, also working really hard and nailing down their alliances with the native communities of the region.
>> Sara Hart: Right. The Shawnee, the Delaware Lenape, the Miami, the Haudenosaunee, right?
>> Jeff Crane: Nice, nice.
>> Sara Hart: With the Senecas most in this region. Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: Yep.
>> Sara Hart: Yep.
>> Jeff Crane: And indigenous peoples were already living there, firmly established thousands of years. There's movement between those groups, but a lot of the movement we think of is actually triggered by the arrival of Europeans, an introduction of diseases and weapons, and trade goods. So native peoples get a raw deal, for sure, even as they are actively seeking alliances to try to hold onto their territories or even enlarge their own power and trade networks, for example, the Iroquois were very powerful in this regard. The French already had a secure position up and down the St. Lawrence River in Canada. In fact, many of the largest French settlements are situated in close proximity to rivers, Montreal, Quebec, due to the heavy reliance on trade with native peoples and the primary transport system of canoes. And the French colonial project relied heavily on the presence of rivers as a means to move these goods and resources. The French are trying to add the Ohio River Valley into an already existing global colonial structure, making this Ohio River Valley part of its economic trading system, trying to hold onto it. And for them, this is also a key point of connectivity between Montreal and Quebec and French Louisiana, and St. New Orleans, right?
>> Sara Hart: Right.
>> Jeff Crane: So they're trying to hold on, as Sara pointed out earlier to, you know, roughly 2/3 of the continent.
>> Sara Hart: It sounds like they were trying to create a French colonial enterprise that would not only be successful in what we call North America, but would also wall off the English from expanding further west.
>> Jeff Crane: That's exactly what they're doing.
>> Liam Salcuni: Precisely. And they're also buffered in the western side by, you know, the Spanish empires there. So you have, it's a --
>> Sara Hart: Sandwiched.
>> Liam Salcuni: -- collapsing -- yeah, the empires are upon North America from all over.
>> Jeff Crane: No, that's exactly right. And of course, down in the southwest and Florida and other areas, you had the Spanish, right, all contesting, California, the northwest.
>> Sara Hart: Colonial expansion is also a buffer against other colonial expanders. Okay.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. So it's a global competition of empire, right? And it's not just North America. And so the French actions have triggered Dinwiddie and other investors, and the British colonial government, he gets the approval to build the forts in disputed territory. And Washington, remember the part about the "unstoppable nature of his ambition" --
>> Sara Hart: I've been missing that part.
>> Jeff Crane: -- having -- we would say he was very entrepreneurial. [laughter] If he was in academics and the dean where he's like, "I need you to be more entrepreneurial."
>> Sara Hart: Yes.
>> Jeff Crane: So Washington, having learned of this order to build forts, travels quickly to Williamsburg to offer to serve as a special envoy. And he's demonstrating his selflessness and his loyalty to his fellow constituents.
>> Liam Salcuni: "Please let me serve, please."
>> Jeff Crane: "Let me serve." And Ron Chernow notes, "His prompt resolve demonstrated his courage and confidence and suggested no ordinary craving for success." Now, that is a great sentence, right? I mean, let's give Chernow some credit here for having a verbal shiv capacity.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, he's great.
>> Sara Hart: No ordinary.
>> Jeff Crane: His prompt resolve, courage, confidence. And then, oh yeah, this guy is super ambitious, right? Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. He's got an extraordinary craving for success. Very gentle, Chernow. So this -- but this is not the Washington we typically know or celebrate. This is not some granite countenance of dignified restraint, high character, mature leadership. Right? I mean, I'm taking -- talking the image here, but also often true.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. He was obsessed with his reputation. He would check in with people all the time. During the Constitutional Convention --
>> Sara Hart: How did I look? How do I look?
>> Jeff Crane: -- he went through every single faith's church in Philadelphia. No, I mean, he would check in. It was like, if I do this, when he was getting criticized for having a team of white horses, he got self-conscious. But, yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: He's like networking at an actor's gala in L.A., but in Colonial Virginia, you know, is like he's on stage.
>> Sara Hart: "Does this team of white horses make me look fat?"
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: Keeping up with the Washingtons. Keeping up with the Kardashians. Keeping up with the Washingtons.
>> Jeff Crane: Somebody lock this guy up here.
>> Sara Hart: Okay, okay. But who -- so the guy is a little -- he's reading the Vogue of the era, he's paying attention to the Kardashians on the block, but who's not a knucklehead when they're young, right? Like --
>> Jeff Crane: I wasn't.
>> Sara Hart: -- you -- well, other than Jeff, Jeff was never a knucklehead. [laughter] How about if we can say that he burned with a fire distinct from others?
>> Jeff Crane: God, who wrote that? Oh, wait, I did.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah. [laughter]
>> Jeff Crane: Oh.
>> Sara Hart: Well, he would learn to moderate and control it later. I mean this, it had to be central to the success over his life like that -- and a good deal of amazing luck. But the guy was ambitious, burning, energetic.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. No, I mean, he burned with a fire, right? And yeah, some people might say fortune. I'm going to go ahead and say luck, especially when we get to like the campaign with Braddock, for example.
>> Liam Salcuni: I mean, that it's --
>> Jeff Crane: I don't know how he stayed alive.
>> Liam Salcuni: Now, four horses shot out from underneath him, you know.
>> Sara Hart: And wearing last year's fashion.
>> Liam Salcuni: And wearing last year's, yeah, the socks and buckles were last, you know.
>> Jeff Crane: We're not making fun.
>> Liam Salcuni: But he probably, he persevered, he persevered.
>> Jeff Crane: We're not making fun of George Washington.
>> Sara Hart: No.
>> Jeff Crane: We're trying to understand him as a complex human being.
>> Sara Hart: Right. And we can note too that we look at folks like Washington in this era, backwards through a prism defined by Americanness. Even when I teach, even when I'm in my historical mode, and I sort of know this, I'll slip, you know, and say Americans --
>> Jeff Crane: I do it all the time. I'm like, "Sorry, British."
>> Sara Hart: Sorry, British colonials, British citizens. We have to remember that Dinwiddie, Washington, and others, these guys were all pawns in a British imperial colonizing machine.
>> Jeff Crane: But also helped drive it, right?
>> Sara Hart: Right. Okay, so they were pawns and maybe gears, maybe self-activated gears. They pursued their own self-interest for sure.
>> Liam Salcuni: Absolutely.
>> Sara Hart: But really, they did so all in the context of British expansionist goals.
>> Jeff Crane: And also, supremely proud to be British, which they considered to be the best political economic system in the world. We have to know that to better understand how hard it was to have that revolution.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. No. And it'll be a couple of decades from where we are now before they even start imagining themselves as anything other than British.
>> Jeff Crane: Right. Bloody well right. We got a bloody right to say.
>> Liam Salcuni: Good show, Jeff. Good show.
>> Jeff Crane: All right. So in that sense, and amazingly enough, on October 31st, 1753, Dinwiddie and his council entrusted the 21-year-old -- I think of myself at 21 years old, I think I still wanted to be a cowboy gunfighter. So I mean, clearly, he's much more involved human than I am at 21. They entrust this 21-year-old with a perilous mission to secure British land and stop French military expansion. Just ponder that for a second, folks. I mean --
>> Sara Hart: Twenty-one.
>> Jeff Crane: -- think about yourself at 21 and being told, "Go out there and stop the French Empire," right? So the orders given to Washington stated that if the French were found building forts, they were to be asked to leave.
>> Liam Salcuni: Oh, yeah. There you go, Georgie.
>> Jeff Crane: "Good sir."
>> Liam Salcuni: "Excuse me."
>> Sara Hart: "Pardon me."
>> Jeff Crane: "I see you hammering."
>> Liam Salcuni: "A spot of tea."
>> Jeff Crane: If they did not the order stated, "We do hereby strictly charge and command you to drive them off by force of arms," signed by King George II.
>> Sara Hart: So polite.
>> Jeff Crane: But I mean, look, I mean, we are going to take time to talk about bad orders, right?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, we are.
>> Liam Salcuni: We get there, we get there.
>> Sara Hart: Bad vague military orders and the damage that they do.
>> Jeff Crane: We cannot wait to talk about Custer and his bad orders.
>> Sara Hart: Custer, I know, Little Bighorn, right? Who knows what else? Maybe a whole episode on bad orders, bad policy, and SC-68, maybe.
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, God.
>> Sara Hart: I know. We'll be doing that, we will. But so many bad orders in American military history. And thinking of Custer since you mentioned him, let's take just a second to discuss Native Americans, U.S. history. It's complex, it's messy, and oftentimes overlooked in the wider context of American history, and it's super relevant right now in this story.
>> Jeff Crane: Although the looming conflict between the British and the French appears to be simply a clash of two European empires, it was very much centered on establishing relationships with native peoples to further European economic prospects. Native peoples of this region were both aware of and experiencing the threat from both nations and sought to use alliances to preserve and expand their territories and their access to resources, European trade goods, weapons, and everything else. So there's a certain level of agency here for native peoples that we don't often think about. The French has stronger relationships with native peoples, as we point out earlier. And many of the indigenous people of the Ohio River Valley were remnants of communities that had already been destroyed by British colonialism, east of the Appalachians, that had moved west and joined indigenous peoples of the Ohio River Valley, and had their own feelings about the British.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. The British, and profiting at the expense of local populations. Maybe something about the power of market capitalism.
>> Jeff Crane: They call that creative destruction now, is that what they would call that?
>> Sara Hart: Creative destruction.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Okay.
>> Jeff Crane: It's a destructive force for sure. And this becomes abundantly clear when examining the exchanges between Washington and Tanacharison, who was also called "Half-King" by the British. This name presumably was used to define his role as that of a spokesman for the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois on the Ohio. Tanacharison was a Mingo Seneca leader and representative of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which was called the Iroquois by the French.
>> Sara Hart: Right. Colonialism works in just so many ways, and one really apparent one is this anglicization or anglification of native names and customs. And we do this with -- we've done this with places too, right? We've seen it in our own time. Of course, we can think, you know, Alaska's Mount Denali. It's cultural erasure when -- however, you slice it, lighting or reorganizing the meaning and significance attached to certain practices and people.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. So like Drew Lopenzina in his book, "Red Ink: Native Americans Picking Up the Pen in the Colonial Period." I give him a shout-out; he's my buddy, but it's a great book. He's a significant scholar. He explains this illusion of culture and language effectively replacing the words, replacing the terms, and then claiming that they did not have a language of their own, written language of their own.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. I mean, and we see a similar thing with Metacom, the chief of the Wampanoag, who accepted the name King Philip to appeal to English settlers. I mean, the renaming, the erasure, it's disrespectful as hell and intentionally so.
>> Liam Salcuni: Even Iroquois is a Francophone word.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: Which I did not know.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: Thank you, Liam, for your research.
>> Liam Salcuni: Haudenosaunee is it captures the Six Nations in that area.
>> Jeff Crane: Right, right. So Washington and Tanacharison met to deliberate on the French presidents and the Ohio River Valley. The Half-King, as they called him, hated the French because, according to him, the French had cooked and ate his father. Due to this, he felt obliged to sign the Treaty of Logstown in 1752 with the British as a warning to the French against settling and building forts in his territory.
>> Sara Hart: Okay, that's good history, but we're just going to roll by the whole ate his father thing? Are we going to do that?
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, like I -- we were looking into this, right?
>> Sara Hart: Okay. I would also.
>> Liam Salcuni: And I was getting really into the granules, and I couldn't find really strong contemporary references for Tanacharison's claims here. This is something that Tanacharison allegedly said. And in history, like so many disciplines, it's important to be critical, right? Read against the grain of the stuff you come across.
>> Sara Hart: So we're not clear on the status of the cannibalism here, but we do know we are clear, one thing is for certain: Washington is clearly in over his head, right? And he indeed pursued alliances with Tanacharison. He needs the support of the natives in this region, perhaps even more than they need an alliance with the British, really.
>> Liam Salcuni: Tanacharison absolutely works Washington. Absolutely.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. No, this is Washington is in over his head. We need to flag this because to say he's against the French because they ate his father is to undermine the degree to which, in fact, he was being politically savvy. He works Washington, like Liam says. He seeks to entrap the British in an alliance that would lead to defeat of the French and preservation of Seneca control of their portion in the Ohio River Valley. In "The Dominion of War," by Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, the authors write, "The Delaware, Shawnees, Mingo, Senecas, and other native tribes who lived in the Allegheny and Ohio River Valleys numbered more than 2,500 by the mid-1740s. Having fled westward to escape the growing numbers of land-hungry Pennsylvanians, they had every reason to believe that their location between the French and British empires would make it possible to pursue strategies similar to those of the Abenakis, the Iroquois, the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokees. They would play off one imperial power," we use that term, playing off system, "against another to ensure their access to trade goods, stimulate the giving of diplomatic gifts. And by the creation of judicious counterbalancing alliances with both European powers free themselves from Iroquois domination." So this is a long quote, I get it, but we really want to capture the sense to not only are the native peoples building alliances with Europeans to try to preserve their land against Europeans, but also against expanding native confederations, right?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure Americans always understand, or that our K-12 sort of classic history always teaches us the degree to which native peoples also engaged in political intrigue, shifting alliances, complex motivations to serve their interest, or at least protect that which remain to them after the diseases and the warfare and the colonialism and all of that.
>> Liam Salcuni: Absolutely. There's not this sort of passivity; they're in fact agents in this. And it's sometimes Tanacharison knows that Washington needs this alliance more than he necessarily needs to align with Washington.
>> Jeff Crane: Absolutely.
>> Liam Salcuni: There is this counterbalancing that's going on here.
>> Jeff Crane: No, that's absolutely correct. And while the curriculum has gotten better at teaching this, I have known in my career teaching, when I hear from other students about other classes, that sometimes native history is not being represented well. I think we do this better at Cal Poly Humboldt. It helps that we have a very active and dynamic Native American studies program and scholars and faculty, if for no other reason than we have to think about, you know, if I'm going to -- because for me, like I'm doing a podcast and I think, well, my faculty colleague from Native American Studies is going to listen to it is like, "You just did a whole thing and you did not talk about native, you know, political strategies and agency," right? So there's room -- there's been improvement, but there's a lot of ways we can continue to do this better. In Washington's journeys with Explorer Christopher Gist and Tanacharison and a handful of other natives, they learned more about the French plans for expansion and securing their control of the region. At a trading post, French officers drank alcohol and talked openly about French aspirations to "take possession of the Ohio," according to Washington. Washington abstained, I could see him like maybe pouring his wine on the ground, who knows, paid close attention, and then later wrote --
>> Liam Salcuni: Try to play it cool.
>> Jeff Crane: -- "The wine, as they dosed themselves pretty plentifully with it, soon banished the restraint, which at first appeared in their conversation and gave license to their tongues to reveal their sentiments more freely."
>> Sara Hart: Credit to Washington for some sober spy crap.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, right?
>> Liam Salcuni: Twenty-one, 22 years old, like taking notes.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. He's just like, "This isn't so hard. I'll just be the one person in the room that doesn't get drunk and see what they say." So yeah, we're never in doubt of Washington's intelligence. This guy is smart, maybe a bit sly. But again, how smart do you have to be to say, "I won't drink and see if they'll get drunk and if they'll give us information." But credit to George Washington, right? So after some rough travel through snow and over remarkably difficult terrain that led him to Fort LeBoeuf, looking at his journey more closely, it's remarkable that Washington even made it out alive. This is one of the things, too. He is traveling through some really challenging landscapes. He writes in his journal of this expedition, that, "At eleven o'clock we set out for the fort and we're prevented from arriving there till the 11th by excessive rains, snows, and bad traveling through many mires and swamps, which we were obliged to pass, to avoid crossing the creek, which was impossible, either by fording or rafting, the water was so high and rapid." It's stunning the amount of physical challenges they had to overcome. You could spend a lot of time on that, right?
>> Liam Salcuni: Read the whole thing. It is, I think, at one point, they're crossing a river, and he falls into this freezing, cold, icy water.
>> Jeff Crane: It's got chunks of ice floating down.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah. And he's like -- I mean, that alone, if you're in the wilderness and I know from like backpacking, you know, when the weather takes a turn, I mean, not really this, you know, to this extent, but like --
>> Jeff Crane: The rugged individualism is what you're referring to.
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, it's like --
>> Jeff Crane: Can I make it to three miles to my car?
>> Liam Salcuni: Right, I know, I got to make it. I mean, just the hike up to the Founders parking lot like --
>> Sara Hart: Right. Okay. So I mean, this is good. I wonder how much we consider the physical prowess and the hardiness when we think about historical leaders like this, right? And it reminds me of the Greenough statue, right, from 1841, Washington, sort of half-naked and wearing nothing but a toga, looking like a really ripped Zeus.
>> Jeff Crane: Shredded dude.
>> Sara Hart: Shredded.
>> Jeff Crane: I got my soul on yoga.
>> Sara Hart: The shredded father of our nation, father shred. The statue was too promiscuous for the Capitol Rotunda, it turned out, clutch your pearls. So they moved it outside, where it turns out people were similarly scandalized, generated much outrage, and eventually moved it into the Smithsonian Castle, where anything goes.
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, my goodness.
>> Liam Salcuni: And now it's like just in the basement of the castle.
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, is it?
>> Sara Hart: Oh.
>> Liam Salcuni: I don't know. Well, it's --
>> Jeff Crane: I want to see shredded George Washington.
>> Sara Hart: Well, everything fun happens in the basement.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. I mean, anyone who's like -- we teased Liam a little bit, but if you've spent time backpacking and you've done cross-country travel, you have some understanding, right? You're crossing logs, you're crossing creeks. It's physically demanding. So it was rough to say the least. So he delivers a message to the commander of this crude post for LeBoeuf, and he tells them that they're supposed to abandon the territory. While there, he just happens to notice 220 birch and pine canoes along the creek prepared for military operations.
>> Sara Hart: So like a French river navy, you know? I wonder how many men each canoe could carry. They're taking advantage of river travel and the skill sets of their native allies for sure.
>> Jeff Crane: And that's, they need the natives for this.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Right? Navigable rivers only if you're skilled. And several hundred soldiers and natives could travel in 220 canoes. This is what we know. The French commander rejected the order from Washington. "No, thank you, sir." After weeks of rough travel, the likelihood of peaceful resolution seemed a little bleak. And you know, he must have thought like, "Who is this punk?"
>> Jeff Crane: Did he fake it? He's like, "Oh, aw, bless your heart. Do you not see my 220 canoes and what they signify?" Yeah. No, I think a lot of people were like, "Who is this guy?"
>> Liam Salcuni: "You're not that guy, pal. You're not that guy."
>> Jeff Crane: And where's the self-confidence coming from? But the Journal of Major George Washington, the details this 900-mile journey was sent to London by Dinwiddie and published there, making him a celebrity of sorts in the British Empire, even though he isn't even 22 years old yet. Following all this, Washington is able to secure permission to create and train a unit of, get ready for it, 100 militia.
>> Sara Hart: Oh.
>> Jeff Crane: Which is, what's that like, 20 canoes? [laughter] To participate in the upcoming campaign and then another 100 militia, we're going to keep saying militia with some significance, join them. And at the same time, Washington lobbied for promotion, was able to secure the rank of lieutenant colonel before setting forth with his military folks. At the same time, during all of this, he's finding opportunities to complain bitterly about the low level of pay for his recent mission.
>> Sara Hart: Shocking. So he's getting what he wants in terms of fame and recognition, right? He's been seeking this; this is important, but at the same time, he's frustrated because he's not making enough money. Does this reflect a demanding nature or of the reality of the economy of his household? Like that, he really did need to be paid more in order to do this work. And, you know, so now he's a military man in charge of a small detachment. Let's see where Washington goes on his journey next.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. And I think salary is a signifier status, right? But we could get into the whole thing about his household economy, but that's not the point of this podcast, so we won't. So now we're at the prelude to the Seven Years' War, spring 1754.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, don't you mean French?
>> Jeff Crane: World in tension.
>> Sara Hart: French and Indian War? You mean the French and Indian War, right?
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, I'm American. How about you?
>> Sara Hart: Right?
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. Yeah, so it's a global conflict, right? We in America have called it the French and Indian War, and because it was the British fighting against French and Indians, although there were Indian allies with the British as well. But it is a global conflict, and it's important to note that. So George Washington is in charge of militia. He did not gather up and lead spit-and-polished British troops. So if in your head, folks, you're thinking of, you know, these scarlet-suited men with high hats and well-trained discipline in the battlefield, this is not these people. He didn't even recruit experienced militia soldiers. This was a motley crew of marginal folk with limited resources and experience, right? As he wrote to Dinwiddie, "They are loose, idle persons that are quite destitute of house and home. And I may truly say many of them are of clothes," meaning destitute of clothes, right? He didn't exaggerate; they didn't always have a full outfit of clothes. "Many did not have shoes. They did not have weapons, and they certainly did not have military experience." This is the militia we're talking about at this time.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. And we're talking about it with a little bit of class rhetoric. Snobby, snobby GW. He's so sensitive about his reputation. I mean, he sees himself as being on stage. His public role is kind of a spectacle, and every moment is an opportunity to gain recognition amongst his well-connected peers and their wider audience. And this ragtag militia makes him look bad.
>> Jeff Crane: Well, and one of the fundamental mistakes in American society, and I will just go ahead and throw it in here, one of the reasons we're having the problems we are in this country today is we do not talk about class in American history and American society. He's clearly classist, and we shouldn't think otherwise, right?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: He's -- you know, that's just the reality of that era. So he's now being forced to work with folks that he sees as beneath him that are not prepared, and this will be a frustration for him. All right. So he's going to learn the hard way. This is one of the great ways to learn, right, the hard way. One hundred and sixty poorly trained, poorly equipped militia. Dinwiddie sends Washington a west into the Ohio, telling him not to initiate hostilities, but to respond to French force, "You are to restrain all such offenders and in case of resistance, make prisoners of or kill and destroy them."
>> Liam Salcuni: It's a terrible order.
>> Jeff Crane: It's another broad, unclear order, which he does not have the capacity to enforce. Again, I'm pretty sure he reported the 220 canoes, right?
>> Sara Hart: Right.
>> Liam Salcuni: That's correct.
>> Jeff Crane: So and they're technically in a truce, so this is going to go well. Is it?
>> Sara Hart: No. Washington may have played a big part in the events leading up to the French and Indian War.
>> Jeff Crane: May have.
>> Liam Salcuni: May have.
>> Jeff Crane: Whoops.
>> Sara Hart: We can't ignore the other elephant in the room, right?
>> Jeff Crane: Spoiler alert. Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: The British were operating on excruciatingly vague orders. I mean, that's just true. In a military context, bad or unclear orders engender miscommunication, logistical failures, and often death. And who's partially to blame for these bad orders? Who's got a huge stake in the Ohio Company and land speculation in the Ohio River Valley? We've got, drumroll, Robert Dinwiddie.
>> Jeff Crane: Dinwiddie.
>> Liam Salcuni: Dinwiddie.
>> Sara Hart: So military and economic motives are really intertwined here.
>> Jeff Crane: So are we letting Washington off the hook here? Is that what we're doing?
>> Sara Hart: He's, you know, he's --
>> Jeff Crane: Are we shifting blame?
>> Sara Hart: Well, we'll get to blaming him. So he is the mediary in this project of empire building. He's got his own agency.
>> Jeff Crane: Few key points to consider here. For starters, there's much more riding on Washington's career than his previous venture in 1753. A great deal had changed in a year for the young Washington. He'd not only proved his loyalty and ambition to see the Ohio River Valley come under British leadership, but he'd also demonstrated his toughness and determination. He'd gained some celebrity status through the publication of his journal. And so he's compensated with rank and recognition more than the 22-year-old colonial Virginia would've been used to.
>> Sara Hart: More than maybe he was even ready for.
>> Liam Salcuni: Totally.
>> Sara Hart: Totally.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Twenty-two years old.
>> Jeff Crane: That's it for this episode of "SNAFUBAR." And we apologize for the cliffhanger, but not really.
>> Sara Hart: Not really.
>> Jeff Crane: Will Washington march on the French? Will he make an epic mistake that starts the war? And will he find true love in the forest of Western Pennsylvania? Yes to the first two and who knows to the third. I'm Jeff Crane.
>> Sara Hart: And I'm Sara Hart. See you soon in the "SNAFUBAR."
>> Liam Salcuni: And I'm Liam Salcuni. Have a great night, folks, with keeping up with the Washingtons.
>> Sara Hart: You've been listening to "SNAFUBAR," a Cal Poly Humboldt production, brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Our team includes me.
>> Jeff Crane: And me.
>> Abigail Smithson: Abigail Smithson, Producer.
>> Liam Salcuni: Liam Salcuni, Writer, Researcher.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Roman Sotomayor, Writer, Researcher.
>> Abigail Smithson: You can find more information about "SNAFUBAR" on khsu.org.
>> Speaker 1: Produced at Cal Poly Humboldt.
[ Birds chirping ]