Bunker Hill

that equaled, if not exceeded, what prevailed in the British army. He designed his own distinctive uniforms that ultimately led to the regiment being called “the Blues.” After just a year of defending the colony’s frontier, the Blues had become the toughest, best-trained group of soldiers in America. “If it should be said,” he wrote Governor Dinwiddie, “that the troops of Virginia are irregulars, and cannot expect more notice than other provincials, I must beg leave to differ and observe in turn that we want nothing but commissions from His Majesty to make us as regular a corps as any upon the continent.”
    By that time, the focus of the French and Indian War had shifted to the north, and Washington and his regiment toiled in relative obscurity. But in 1758 he finally got his chance to step into the limelight. General John Forbes had been ordered to venture to the region where Washington’s military career had begun and take Fort Duquesne. Forbes proved surprisingly receptive to almost all of Washington’s ideas and suggestions; unfortunately, the young colonel’s frustrations with the British military establishment had reached the point that he was unable to contain his resentment. Surly and recalcitrant throughout the planning of this arduous campaign, he seemed almost disappointed when after hacking their way through the wilderness the British army discovered that the French had burned and fled the fort, thus giving Forbes a well-deserved, if anticlimactic, victory. Soon after, Washington announced his retirement from the military.
    Some have speculated that Washington’s petulant behavior during the Forbes campaign could be attributed to something besides the hurt he felt at being denied a commission in the British army. In 1758 he was on the verge of marrying the wealthiest widow in Virginia, Martha Custis. Unfortunately, he’d also managed to fall in love with his best friend’s wife, Sally Fairfax. But just as he had helped to assuage his frustrations with the regular army by creating a regiment that was “more British than the British,” he contained his unruly passions for the beautiful and aristocratic Sally by marrying the woman who enabled him to attain the wealth and social standing to which he’d always aspired.
    In the years ahead, the New York statesman Gouverneur Morris came to know Washington well. Like the painter Gilbert Stuart, Morris recognized that “boiling in his bosom [were] passion[s] almost too mighty for man.” Washington was destined to become one of the foremost generals of his age, but “his first victory,” Morris maintained, “was over himself.”
    As was to become clear in the months after his arrival in Boston, that victory had not yet been entirely won.
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    On July 20, 1775, James Thacher, a twenty-one-year-old physician from Plymouth, got his first glimpse of the army’s new commander. “I have been much gratified this day with a view of General Washington,” he recorded in his journal. “His Excellency was on horseback, in company with several military gentlemen. It was not difficult to distinguish him from all others; his personal appearance is truly noble and majestic; being tall and well proportioned. His dress is a blue coat with buff-colored facings, a rich epaulette on each shoulder, buff under dress, and an elegant small sword; a black cockade in his hat.”
    All agreed. No one looked better than Washington on a horse. He was six foot two, large-boned with thigh muscles that gave him, one observer remembered, “such a surpassing grip with his knees, that a horse might as soon disencumber itself of the saddle, as of the rider.” If there was a visceral power about Washington, there was also an undeniable elegance. The Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush claimed that Washington had “so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people. There is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chamber by his side.”
    Washington had spent most of the last two decades as one of Virginia’s wealthiest plantation owners, managing several hundred slaves, experimenting with crops, and gradually expanding his home at Mount Vernon into one of the most impressive residences on the Potomac. He was accustomed to living with a sophistication and grace that was difficult for the average Yankee to comprehend. Underwhelmed by the first house selected for him by