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They called him Bulletproof. They said he couldn't die. He's the man who laid, literally, the foundations of our country, the young hero whose story is now being told on the big screen. And the truth is, almost none of it happened the way that you might think. George Washington has a much more fascinating story than anyone ever learns in school. And the new movie barely scratches the surface. And today, you're finally going to meet him. The young man who couldn't afford to go to college, who accidentally started a world war at the age of 22. He. He ran a secret land scheme behind the king's back and spent his whole life building a name from nothing. And somehow, at the end of it all, defeated an empire, built a country from scratch, and still walked away with absolute power. So if you are interested in the truth of who George Washington really was, specifically in his early years, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. Foreign. What's up, people? And welcome back to History Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent, where every single week, we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from all history, from all time, forever. Yes, that is what I do here in my tent every single Wednesday is we try to figure out everything that has ever happened, ever on this planet. And there's stuff happening all the time. I'll be honest. This has been. It's been a lot of stuff. I mean, thousands and thousands of years of things happening all the time. And I'm just one guy with the podcast. Now, before we begin, I just want to say thank you to you, dude, slash, woman, whoever you are, statistically dudes. But I know there's some ladies out there. I want to say thanks to you right now for tuning in, for listening every time you click on an episode comment. Like any of that stuff, you help just the show grow. You help the algorithm. Know that this is a show that is worth watching. And for that, I'm truly grateful that you have chosen to keep the lights on in the tent, keep the fire burning here at the campsite. Now, I also want to give a big thanks to the man in the tent with me today. It's not Christos, unfortunately. He's abandoned us to go on a extravagant Greek vacation. He's probably on, I don't know, a yacht somewhere with millions of models, probably billions. Who knows? So instead, I'm here with my good pal Rafni. Rafni, how are you doing? Good. Thank you. Hell, yeah, dude. The Dominican legend. Yes, sir. Your Rafni how do you. What's like a Dominican phrase that people use? Like querepaque. Queroque. What does that mean? It's like, what's up, yo queroque. I like that, bro. I like having like a little Latin flair in here. You know what I'm saying? A little Caribbean vibe going. Now, before we begin, I just want to say one thing. I'm not a historian. That's. I don't know if anyone's ever accused me of that. I'm just a guy that does stand up comedy and I have a podcast and a wifi connection. So I have done my very best to figure out what's going on, especially in light of the new film. I don't know if you've seen Young Washington. It's hitting theaters and, and there's been mixed reviews. I have not seen it yet, but I've read all about it. A lot of people like it, a lot of people are pointing out some historical inaccuracies. But in, in light of that film, I wanted to go through the real story, the historical version, not the stuff that necessarily is told on the big screen and definitely not the stuff that you were told about in school because oftentimes in school when we're in like seventh grade, you know, American history class, you kind of get the sanitized version. Well, not today. We're going through all the stuff, the good, the bad, and, and the ugly. Now, the story of George Washington begins on February 22, 1732, at a tobacco plantation on Popes Creek in Virginia. This guy was born into the middle tier of Virginia's planter class. He was not poor. I mean, the family, you know, had some land and yes, they did own enslaved people, but they were nowhere near, you know, like aristocracy. They were not like the, the ruling nobility, you could say, of the early colonial states. And the Washingtons, they were workers. They were accustome to life being hard, as many of these, you know, colonial families were. And life and, you know, lavishness was not just handed to them. And remember that because it's going to be central to Washington's entire story. And In April of 1743, when George Washington was just 11 years old, his father died. And with him died George Washington's future. Now, if you've listened to this channel with any regularity, a lot of our stories begin this way almost, maybe not all, but so many of these great men in history, so many of the profound sort of shapers of the world as we know it, typically have a quixotic early life. And George Washington is no different. So many of these, of these early leaders and generals, they have some type of early childhood trauma, which is just an interesting note. We'll come back to that in a second. Now George Washington has two older half brothers that had been sent to England for the finest education that the empire could offer. And old George Washington, he was supposed to be next, he was supposed to be the next one to go on and further his education. But instead the money dried up and that whole plan basically collapsed and his schooling was basically over by his mid teens. And we have an image actually of young Washington, hand popped into a shirt typically seen as a freemasonic sign, which is kind of an interesting thing, kind of shown to be, you know, keeping the secrets of the Masons close to your heart, which is typically when you see people painted in this way, that's usually what it means. I'm not sure if that's exactly what this is, but interesting note. Now when you put him in a room with Jefferson, Adams, Madison, even Alexander Hamilton, those guys were all polished, credentialed intellectuals. They went to college, they got the finest education that they could, and Washington was actually the least educated man among them. And he knew it, everyone kind of knew it. And Washington carried that insecurity and that little chip on his shoulder his entire life. So what does a fatherless teenager with no money and no education do? Well, he has to build himself up from scratch. Now similar to today, but definitely far more pronounced. In the 1700s if your dad dies and you don't have any other claim to money or status, oftentimes your chances for upward mobility were just completely cut off there. So Washington knew that and had to basically make a name by himself. So as a schoolboy, Washington hand copied all 110 rules of civility and decent behavior. This is basically like an old etiquette guide that has like all sorts of like advice on like how to be a gentleman and to be like a noble man. And things in it would be like, I actually have one here. Kill no vermin as fleas, lice, ticks, etc. In the sight of others. So if you're going to like kill stuff, like do it privately, you know, like don't be like a barbarian. Now for George, this was essential. It was basically a blueprint for him because if he wasn't born a gentleman or into the like aristocracy, he would make himself one by learning everything that needed to be learned. And so, you know, a self made gentleman needed to also have a trade. So at 16, Washington became a surveyor. Now, a surveyor at this time was basically a guy who would just walk into the wilderness with chains and a compass and would start mapping land so that it could be claimed and then bought and then sold. But surveying wasn't just a job for Washington. It was kind of a cheat code. You see, Washington saw the frontier before almost anyone else. He knew which land was valuable, where the rivers were running, where the future was going to happen. And surveyors had a habit of grabbing the best land for themselves, obviously, right? They're going out there and they're like, hey, look at all this stuff. I'm going to give this to this people. I'll, you know, get this one settled for these people. But this little plot, I'm going to keep it for myself. Real estate agents do the same thing, you know. So by his early 20s, he already owned thousands of acres. He got the job through a connection that he had from the Fairfax family, which was the closest thing Virginia had to royalty at the time. So if you've seen the movie, you've already seen them. George's beloved older half brother, Lawrence, had married into the Fairfax family. And Lawrence became, like, everything to George. He was a father figure. He was a mentor, and truly was the model of the man that, you know, young George wanted to be. But then Lawrence got tuberculosis, and you can see a picture actually of George Washington right here surveying land, which is kind of what it looked like. It was basically just like a dude out on some rocks with some boots being like, this is land now. In 1751, George actually sailed with his brother to Barbados, hoping that the island air would heal his lungs, which was a common thought at the time. Like, hey, go to, you know, go to the sea, right? Get some sea salt in there, drink some Mai Tais on the beach. And this was actually the only time that George Washington ever left America. But it didn't work. And unfortunately, Lawrence came home and died. And in Barbados, George actually caught smallpox. And he caught smallpox so bad that it nearly killed him and ended up scarring his face for life. But that brush with death came with a hidden gift. It came with immunity. And 25 years later, disease was killing far more American soldiers than British bullets. And smallpox was the deadliest of all of them. But just by by coincidence, Washington himself was safe. Tragically, Lawrence died in 1752. And piece by piece, George started to inherit what his brother left behind, including an estate on the Potomac named after Lawrence's old naval commander, Admiral Edward Vernon. And this place became known as Mount Vernon. You've probably heard of it before. Also, one other thing about Washington's childhood that is pretty important. The most famous story that's ever told about young Washington is that, you know, this whole thing with little George and the hatchet and the cherry tree and father, I cannot tell a lie. That whole thing, it never happened. It was actually invented after Washington's death by a traveling book peddler turned biographer. And we're going to meet him at the end of the episode. And all of that will start to make sense at the end because it might actually be the most influential lie ever told in American history. So at this point, here's where we stand, right? Washington is now 20 years old. He has land, a ton of ambition, and somewhat of like a famous, you know, name that he has to live up to. And he has a massive hole in his life. Two to be exact. One where his father and his brother used to be. All George Washington needed now was a way to climb the ladder, a way to make himself great. And at this time, war was a good way to do it. And George was about to start it himself. So there's a spot in western Pennsylvania where three rivers meet. It's actually today in downtown Pittsburgh. But in the 1750s, it was actually the most dangerous piece of real estate on the planet because whoever held those forks controlled what they call Ohio country. And in the 1750s, everybody claimed it. Literally everyone, like, was like, no, this is ours. Britain, France, two empires that had been at war for literal centuries. The native nations who actually lived there, who had, you know, maybe the most like, legitimate, like blood and soil claim. And then, you know, Virginia's wealthy planters, including conveniently, the Washington family and their friends. And they, through a land venture that they called the Ohio Company, had massive financial stakes in cracking that region open for British settlement. So when the French started building forts in this highly contested Ohio country, Virginia's governor at the time, this guy, Robert Dinwiddie, this was also conveniently, an Ohio Company investor, needed someone to carry an ultimatum 900 miles through the winter wilderness to go tell the French to get the hell out. So a 21 year old major named George Washington was like, I'm gonna do it now. Young Washington was like, pretty pompous. He was very arrogant. And maybe not arrogant, but he had a lot to prove. And so this type of thing was exactly what he wanted to do. He was like, yo, I'm gonna go tell these French to get the hell out of here. And the mission nearly killed him. Twice, actually. A guide reportedly fired a musket at him from point blank range and missed. And then a few days later, he was thrown off a raft into basically a frozen icy river and only survived by dragging himself onto an island and and freezing through the night. When he finally reached the French commander, the man received the ultimatum and kind of just laughed like he poured George a drink and then was like, all right, yeah, we're not going to leave. So Washington just trekked home through the snow, wrote up a journal of the whole adventure and funny enough, Dinwiddie published it. And you can actually read the journal, you can read sort of Washington's own account to get an idea of what his actual mind was like at this time. So overnight, a 22 year old George Washington became famous. His account was reprinted across the colonies and even across the ocean in London. So this fatherless kid finally had a name for himself. He was now known around the colonies as, you know, this young major that was, you know, going to tell the French and was, you know, adventurous and was able to look death in the face. Hey guys, I just want to take a break really quick to tell you about Cash App. I love Cash App. I use it all the time. If you know anything about me, I try to make my life less chaotic because I travel a lot. I got kid, I got a wife, wife, and I'm just doing stuff. I'm buying coffee, I'm just living my life. And Cash app makes it so easy and it just makes my everyday life moments super simple. And the Cash app card is super cool because it's not just a boring debit card. It's not something that your dad got from a Bank in 2002. You can customize it, add it to your digital wallet and boop it everywhere and use it for just everyday spending. If I could pick my perfect Cash App discount, I'd probably do like coffee, airport food, and I even customize my card so it has like a little, you know, camp logo on it. It's pretty sick. If you weren't up to speed already, Cash App is way more than just safe way to send and receive money. With the Cash App card, you unlock perks without all the hidden fees, including discounts on everyday purchases and popular brands you are probably already spending money on. Add your card to your digital wallet to make your money moves easier. Cash App also adds security to your money by declining suspicious card transactions and sending you a notification to make sure the payment is really you. If your card is ever lost or stolen, you can lock it with just one tap right on the App. Spend with confidence with the Cash App card today and new Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use the code CASH APP10. That is CASH APP10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton bank member fdic. Visit Cash App legal podcast for full disclosures. Thank you so much for Cash App for supporting the show. Now let's get back to it. On the Rainy morning of May 28, 1754, Washington, about 40 Virginians and a dozen warriors led by a Seneca leader the British called Half King, his name was actually Tana Grison. They crept toward a small French camp hidden in this sort of rocky glen. And the story is one of the most consequential mysteries in American history. And every account that you read of this contradicts the others. But here's what we basically the shooting started. Who fired first and why, we don't know. And when the smoke cleared, around a dozen Frenchmen were dead or dying, including their commander, this guy named Joseph Colon de Jumove. Now, the French swore that Jumove was a diplomat, an emissary with a very peaceful mission, just like Washington's own mission the year before. And according to several accounts, Jumove wasn't dead. He was just wounded. That is, until 10 of Greason walked over and killed him where he was lying, reportedly splitting his skull with a hatchet while Washington just stood feet away, maybe unable or unwilling to stop it. So what was this? Was this an ambush of a peaceful ambassador? Was it a legitimate skirmish that the French initiated and then the, you know, Virginians just defended themselves? Was Washington in command of a situation or just a rookie in way over his head with a very, you know, kind of garish, you know, kind of vigilante esque, you know, war leader in 10 of Greece. And now historians have fought about this for years, and I think the honest answer is that we'll never actually know. But what we do know is ultimately why it started. You see, Washington fell back and threw up a crude little stockade in this soggy meadow, and he named it with, you know, accuracy, Fort Necessity, because they really needed this to work out. And on July 3, a much larger French force surrounded it and shot his command to pieces in the pouring rain and offered him terms of surrender. And Washington actually surrendered. It would be the only surrender of his entire career. But the situation got worse. The Surrender was written in French, which Washington couldn't read. And his translator, working by candlelight in a rain soaked paper in this dingy little tent, basically talked him through it. And Washington accidentally signed a formal confession to the assassination of Jumonville. So now France had its justification for war. A British soldier confessing to the murder of a peaceful French diplomat. And as a result, Britain had to answer on behalf of this, you know, colonial major. So the fight started in the Pennsylvania woods and ended up on the other side of the world. Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, India and the Philippines. Americans call it the French and Indian war, but the rest of the world calls it the Seven years War. And some historians consider this the true first world war that ever happened because over a million people worldw would actually die in this conflict. The British writer Horace Walpole says that the volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America, quote, set the world on fire. Oh, and coincidentally, the date that Washington signed that humiliating surrender was July 3, 1754, 22 years almost to the day before July 4, 1776. Washington's war was not over, though. The next summer he rode back into those same woods as an aide to the British general Edward Braddock, marching with over 1000 redcoats to take the French fort at the forks of the Ohio. Braddock was at this point, just a career professional, and this was an actual real army. So on July 9, 1755, near the Monongahela river, that army walked into an ambush and was just annihilated. Braddock took a bullet through the chest and nearly two thirds of his force was killed or wounded. One of the worst defeats in the history of the British Empire ever. And in the middle of all this, something happened to George Washington that you would never believe. And it was actually documented in his letters, which is why we know about it. For hours he rode through the killing zone, carrying orders and rallying survivors, organizing the retreat. Two horses were shot dead underneath. George Washington literally killed as he's riding them. And afterwards he found four bullet holes in his coat and, and in his hat. But miraculously, he didn't have a single scratch on him. Native warriors who fought that day were said to have concluded that the man simply couldn't be killed. Washington himself credited, quote, the miraculous care of Providence. And by that he means essentially that some type of higher power, God, the universe, guided and intervened in his protection and saved his life. Certainly a compelling story, and if that happened to you, you'd probably believe the same thing. And a year earlier, after his very first firefight, he had written the line that the movie built its trailer around. And this is the line here. I heard the bullets whistle. And believe me, there is something charming in the sound. It's kind of hard, bro, that. I mean, that could be in, like, a rap song, you know what I mean? Like, yo, I hear the bullets whizzing I love the sound. That's fire. So when that quote actually reached London, King George II reportedly said in response, he would not say so if he had been used to hearing many. So at this point, George Washington was 23 years old. He accidentally started a world war, survived the most infamous massacre of the British, and is the most celebrated soldier in the American colonies at the time, and is revered by, certainly the natives and many of the people who heard the story as some type of superhero that can't be killed. Naturally, he asked for the one thing that he wanted most in the world. He wanted a commission in the actual British army. He wanted to be a redcoat, recognition from the empire that he had bled for. And the British said no, not just to Washington either, but basically to all the colonial officers. You see, in the British system, a colonial commission was second class. So any new British captain automatically just outranked Washington. He pushed for a royal commission again and again, but he was denied every single time. And the message here is pretty unmistakable. Basically, the British are saying, like, hey, you're not one of us. You weren't born in England, you were born in America, you were born in these colonies, and you will never be truly British. You'll fight for the British army, you will fight for the King, but you're never gonna actually be an englishman. So in 1758, Washington resigned and went home to Mount Vernon and basically hung up his sword and was like, you know what? I'm done. And that was gonna be it for old Washington. And here's where most versions of the story kind of skip ahead, including in the movie, they jump from the young soldier straight to the general at the revolution. Like, 17 years in between were just nothing. But those 17 years were actually perhaps the most important pivotal years in all of George Washington's life. Because the man who picked the sword back up in 1775 was not just a retired soldier anymore. He was actually one of the richest men in America. Truly, he had a fortune built on a paper trail of schemes and secret deals and one very specific documentary from the king that Washington decided didn't apply to him. So this is perhaps the real reason that George Washington joined the American Revolution and not to Maybe not the only reason, but definitely a major reason, was the money. And this is where our story kind of leaves the movie behind entirely, because the next chapter of Washington's life isn't a war story. It's actually maybe like the most genius business venture ever. So on January 6, 1759, the 26 year old retired Colonel married Martha Dandridge Custis, a 27 year old widow, mother of two, and coincidentally, one of the wealthiest women in Virginia. Her late husband had died without a will, leaving her control over a third of the colony's great fortunes. I mean, prime land, a small army of enslaved workers, and cash worth millions of dollars in today's money. Was it true love? Most people would say so. Martha joined Washington at his winter headquarters through the Revolution, including Valley Forge. And after his death, she burned nearly all of their letters, leaving only a small number behind. But the marriage also changed Washington's position, like, immediately. He courted Martha and married her within a year of meeting her, gaining control of a large estate and entering, I mean, basically the highest ranks of Virginia society, which is kind of what he always wanted. So we see here how the pattern of his life never really changed. What George Washington could not be born into, he would find a way to become. He would acquire it some way. And over the next 15 years, Washington used his surveying skills and became one of the most aggressive land speculators in the colonies, like point Blank. So during the war, Virginia had promised its veterans western land as a bounty. That was basically, you know, like part of the deal. Like, hey, fight for us, you know, fight for the, you know, the British and we'll give you land and then you'll, you know, be rich forever and you'll be good. And Washington walked away with tens of thousands of acres, including by buying up the claims of his fellow veterans, some of whom went to their graves convinced that he somehow swindled them. I mean, the truth of that, it's difficult to really know. But what we do know is that Washington had tons of land. I mean, by the end of his life, he held around 50,000 acres. I mean, he's not just wealthy, he's one of the largest private landowners in all of America. But there's one problem. It's an empire sized problem. You see, all of this land is not really belonging to the colonies. It all kind of belongs to the king in England. So in 1763, the war with France had finally ended. I mean, basically as much as the French and the English stopped fighting, but it was generally peaceful. And Britain, desperate to stabilize the frontier and avoid another expensive native war, drew a line down the crest of the Appalachian mountain range and declared that no colonial settlements could go beyond this line. They basically were like, hey, we don't want to deal with the natives. They're just absolutely crushing us. They know the land better. So we're going to draw a line right down here, down this mountain range, and you can't go west from that. That is off limits. And this is known as the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Every acre of western land, western land that Washington had claimed and, you know, purchased and kind of maybe schemed for and certainly surveyed for, was now on the wrong side of that land. So what did he do? Old George Washington, what did he do with this law that got passed down from his king? Well, he didn't accept it. And we actually have his letters. In 1767, he wrote to his land agent, this guy, William Crawford, and he basically said that he could never see the proclamation as anything more than, in his words, a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians. Then he instructed Crawford to sneak out and mark off prime tracks for him anyway, in defiance of this ban, and to keep the whole operation, quote, a profound secret. This is not like a myth or like a hit piece. It's not like a. Like a hostile interpretation trying to, like, you know, malign George Washington. I know a lot of people, like, make content. They're like, oh, all the founding fathers were terrible people. They were just people. And oftentimes they did a lot of great things. And they were geniuses that wrote, you know, maybe the most important documents, like the Constitution, Declaration of Independence. But they also had personal interests and they had ego, and they wanted to get rich, just like human beings always do. And that's George Washington in his own handwriting, running, like, a covert land grab against royal policy eight years before the revolution. And the thing is, like, George isn't alone in this. Virginia's entire planter class was doing the same thing. And it went deeper than land. You see, they were drowning in debt to British merchants locked into a rigged trade system where London would basically set the prices and they would take all the profits, and then they would mail back bills to the colonies. And Washington was so fed up with this that he did something almost unheard of. He quit the tobacco business and converted the farms at Mount Vernon to wheat so that he could sell to markets that Britain didn't control. And Raffani actually pulled up the letter here. You can see in Washington's own words, I mean, it's kind of tough to read because my man was sort of scribbling, to be honest with you. But you can see basically exactly what I just said. He is going, you know, under the king's nose to try to control land, which also, if I'm watching, I get it. You're like, yo, King George, I was trying to rock with you. I was trying to fight for you and your boys, and you never gave me a position. You said that I wasn't part of y'. All. So now you're trying to control me. Yo, f that, I'm gonna kind of go on the side and get what's mine. That's his perspective. I mean, is that right? That's up to you to decide. So picture what the 1760s and the 70s felt like to a man in this position. As parliament stacked on the Stamp act, the Townsend act, the T Act, it wasn't one insult. It was three. And it had. You know, it had started to build up over time. And so Washington, his. You know, where he's sitting, you know, in the colonies, he'd been denied British military career. He was locked from western lands that he hoped to acquire. And now he was being subjugated to new taxes imposed by a parliament in which the colonies had no representation. But it would be too simple to describe the revolution as nothing more than just like, a wealthy dude trying to, you know, protect his finances. Washington's letters show that he came to believe that Britain intended to strip the colonies of all their political rights. At one point, he warned that Americans could be made, quote, as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway. Oof. I mean, not a very nice thing to say, but it does give you an idea of his perspective, that he's like, look, the way that we are subjugating human beings here, the English are going to subjugate us in the same way. So we got to get them out of here. He's basically like, you know, a likening himself and the rest of the colonial settlers to a slave mentality. And he's like, we got to do a slave rebellion. Now, of course, they're not slaves. These are very wealthy people at the time. But you can see what he's trying to say in that statement. Now, here's the honest kind of scorecard here, if we will. His principle behind the revolution was legit. So was his ideology and his political concerns. He was like, look, these people are taxing us. They're not representing us. They are telling us what we can and can't do. But then they're not giving us any say in our own lives. Like we're just being ruled in this fiefdom, thousands of miles away from this king, giving them all of our money. And we're left like carrying the bill and actually dying and getting sick, doing all the hard work. But you know, he also is self interested in an enormous way, sitting on potential, you know, millions and millions of dollars that he doesn't have access to because it's on the wrong side of this dividing line. And with that powerful combination, it fully contextualizes Washington's next move. So by 1774, Washington was all in one of the loudest voices in Virginia calling for resistance and a delegate to the First Continental Congress. And when the Second Congress gathered in 1775 after the shooting had already started at Lexington and Concord, Washington walked in wearing his old military uniform. He's the only man in Congress that was dressed for war. And it actually worked. And the politics really worked with it too. So far, this was a New England war. And Congress desperately needed the south to get on board with the cause. A famous, wealthy, battle tested Virginian was the exact answer that they needed. So John Adams nominated him and the vote was unanimous. And on June 15, 1775, George Washington, the man that the British army rejected, became commander in chief of the armies of the United Colonies. And he even refused a salary. He just was like, hey, cover all the expenses. But there was an issue. He was about to fight the most powerful military ever assembled on earth. And the largest force that George Washington had ever commanded was about like 2,000 dudes. Like, he had never actually led a real army in his life. And the truth is, it actually kind of showed because George Washington, the face on the dollar bill, the greatest military hero in American history. If you actually look at the record, he lost more battles than he won, which, I mean, ultimately doesn't matter because he won the important battles that actually matter. But if you look at the totality of his record, it's like, yo, I mean, maybe the British rejecting him, I mean, certainly didn't get the training, but was there a point? Was he not the best general? I mean, according to the record, he didn't win that many battles. And his early revolution performance at times was bad. In the summer of 1776, while defending New York at the Battle of Long island, the Washington was almost nearly annihilated. His army survived because the weather. And sure, you can call it luck. Washington continued to call it divine providence, basically saying, yo, God wants me to win. I Don't know why. I like the sound of bullets. And, you know, homie upstairs is trying to pull us through. So under the COVID of darkness and a crazy morning fog, he ferried 9,000 men across the east river in silence, right out from under the British Navy. So the British woke up basically ready to annihilate Washington and all his boys. And all the trenches were empty. And that escape tells you exactly what kind of General Washington was. He wasn't necessarily, like, a battlefield genius. He wasn't like some type of, like, tactical maverick. He was a survivor. And Washington knew he just had to keep the Continental army alive as long as they kept on surviving, as long as the American army existed, this revolution existed. Now, we did an entire episode on the American Revolution right here on History Camp, and we went through, like, the. The real story and kind of went through some of the myths and why the myths are important. So we're not going to, you know, go through the entire thing today, but three moments from that journey are really important here because each one reveals something really important about Washington, like the man. And the first is in Trenton, December 1776. The rebel cause is, by every rational measure, dead. Like, the army has melted from 20,000 men to, like, a couple thousand. And they were, you know, battling frostbite, and they weren't really paid anything. And most of those people who had enlisted, all of their enlistments expired on New Year's Day. Thomas Paine, marching with them, actually wrote, these are the times that try men's souls. And Washington understood that continuing to retreat would eventually destroy the army. So on Christmas night, during a storm of snow and sleet, he crossed the Delaware, marched nine miles through the darkness, and actually attacked the Hessian garrison at Trenton the following morning. And that victory was followed days later by another at Princeton, after Washington slipped away from a larger British force during the night and left his campfires burning to basically conceal the movement. Neither battle was that enormous, but they were so important, they restored confidence in a cause that had appeared to be dying and convinced soldiers and civilians that the Continental army could survive and even win. The second pivotal moment here is Valley Forge. During the winter of 1777 into 78, the Continental army camped outside Philadelphia while its supply system broke down. Soldiers didn't have adequate food or clothing or shelter really anything. And roughly 2,000 men died during the encampment, not from battle or from bullets, but just from disease and kind of starvation, just from the elements. And Washington's letters from that winter are furious, and they're heartbreaking. But what's important to this story is that Washington stayed with his men while the army endured the winter. A Prussian volunteer named Baron Frederick von Steuben introduced a more consistent system of drilling and discipline. So by the springtime, Washington soldiers were actually better organized and more capable of operating as a true unified army. And the third part of Washington's command receives far less attention. It was his intelligence. Washington relied heavily on spies and coded messages and invisible ink and false reports. And like really carefully planned deceptions, he personally supervised intelligence networks, including the Culpa Ring, which gathered information about British forces in and around New York. Deception also played a really important role in the Yorktown campaign. So in 1781, Washington encouraged the British to believe that he was preparing an attack on New York while American and French troops moved south towards Virginia. There, the French navy prevented General Cornwallis from escaping by sea, while French and American forces surrounded him on land. Yorktown was unquestionably a French American victory. French ships closed the Chesapeake, and French soldiers fought in the siege lines. French weapons and money and military support had sustained the American war effort for years. So Washington's achievement was not winning the Revolution alone. It was preserving and surviving the army long enough for French intervention to basically seal the deal. Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781, which at this point meant the war was effectively over. Somehow, miraculously, the Continental army had survived and lasted long enough, and America had won. Then, on December 23, 1783, he appeared before Congress in Annapolis and resigned. He handed back his commission, surrendered command, and rode home to Mount Vernon, arriving on Christmas Eve. And according to the story, when King George III heard that Washington planned to return to his farm, he replied, if he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world. Like a king, especially of George III's caliber. Couldn't imagine that a guy would basically lead a revolution, basically, you know, like, invigorate these soldiers to survive. And last, and to ward off the greatest military ever assembled, and then just hang it up and be like, yeah, I'm good. Y' all take it. But that's exactly what Washington did. History offers plenty of examples of victorious generals turning military success into political power. I mean, you have, you know, Caesar and Cromwell and Napoleon just a few years later. And the question was, would Washington follow the same pattern? So before we get there and how he ultimately does become president. So let's go through some other things first. After the war, Washington rode home to a plantation where more than 200 human beings were waiting, not for their leader, but for their Master. You see, George Washington became a slaveholder at 11 years old, when his father's will assigned him 10 slaves. And from that day to his last day, he was never not a slaveholder. And by the end of his life, 317 enslaved people lived at Mount Vernon. And the fortune that funded everything else in this episode was also built on their stolen labor. And the paper trail shows exactly how he operated. And if you want to know more about the controversies at Mount Vernon, we did an entire episode on George Washington's maybe more morbid side and the disturbing elements around Washington, many of the people at his time that owned slaves. And you should definitely check out that episode. But for this, it's important to know that when Washington became president, the Capitol was in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania law allowed enslaved people to claim freedom after six continuous months in the state. But Washington quietly rotated his household slaves out of the state before the deadline and then brought them back in order to restart the clock. And we know that it was deliberate because in a letter to his secretary, he ordered the plan, claiming that it would deceive both them and the public. And then, of course, there's the story of Ona Judge. She was Martha Washington's personal attendant. She was young, skilled, trusted. And in 1796, after learning that she would be given away as a wedding gift, she slipped out of the president's house during dinner and escaped New Hampshire. And technically, she was free. But Washington refused to let her go. He enlisted treasury officials and customs officers to find her, while insisting that the effort remain somewhat quiet. She was tracked down, approached multiple times, but she was always able to get away. Alone and nearly penniless, Ona Judge outmaneuvered. I mean, one of the most powerful men in America until the day that he died. She was never captured. And decades later, still legally a fugitive, she said that she never regretted leaving. And then, of course, there's the whole myth around Washington's teeth. By his inauguration, he only had one natural tooth left. And at the time, you know, people were, like, eating sugar like crazy, and they didn't really know oral hygiene. So a lot of people's teeth were rotting out. And Washington was no different. He had one tooth. His dentures, you know, commonly are said to have been made by. Of wood, but they were actually not wood. They were ivory and metal and human teeth. In 1784, Washington's ledger records a payment to enslaved people at Mount Vernon for nine teeth charged to the account of his French dentist. The record does not prove those exact teeth ended up in Washington's mouth. But the transaction is real and recorded in his own books. So that is, unfortunately, the dark side of the ledger. Now, here's the side that makes Washington really complicated rather than, you know, simply just a monstrous person, which oftentimes, when people do episodes on Washington, like I said before, they're always like, oh, he was a great guy. Oh, he was terrible. The reality is he was human. He did a lot of great things. And he also did some terrible things. And he also did some things contextualizing the time that were kind of gray. And by our standards, we're like, how could he do that? But history is a different country, as they say. Now. After the Revolution, Washington's views on slavery seemed to change. His private letters increasingly describe slavery as a moral and economic wrong that should be abolished by law. So he stopped selling enslaved people against their will, though he still didn't free anyone during his lifetime. Then, in his will, Washington did what no other slaveholding founder did. He ordered the 123 people he legally owned to be freed after Martha's death. His estate was also directed to educate the young and support the elderly. And William Lee, his longtime valet, was freed immediately and given a pension. Jefferson didn't do that. Neither did Madison, but Washington did. But even that act had some limitations. Like, he was like, look, I'm. I'm gonna free y', all, but I gotta die first, all right? I'm not gonna just live here alone. I'm not gonna pay people to take care of me. You gotta wait for me to die. And after. The cost could no longer actually affect his lifestyle. And more than half of the enslaved people out at Mount Vernon were tied to the Custis estate, so he could not actually free them because they were technically property of his wife, Martha. Families had formed across those legal categories, which meant that emancipation would also divide them. So what do we do with all this, right? Like, how do we feel about this guy? We have to kind of take both things simultaneously. Washington knowingly kept hundreds of people in bondage and scheme to keep them there. And that's documented. But he also achieved more than most men of his class and at the end, did what his peers refused to do, which is emancipate all those that he could. And neither a fat, like, neither fact, like, erases the other one. It's not like, oh, well, he freed him, so actually, he didn't do anything bad. The truth is, a man can certainly make better choices and still be guilty for what he did wrong. Now, that is just to touch on some of the more Morbid sides of Washington, which, in the interest of history camp, we try to go through all of it. I'm not trying to propagandize anyone, certainly not myself. I want to know the truth, the good and the bad. But before his death, Washington got four years of retirement. Then the country he'd helped create started to fall apart. You know, they emancipated themselves as colonies from the British, and then the states argued, and the government under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to tax or defend or govern anyone. And in 1787, they pulled him back to Philadelphia to preside over the Constitutional convention. And what's interesting is that he barely said a word all summer. The delegates were creating a powerful executive, the very thing that revolutionaries had spent years basically fighting against. They're like, hey, we don't want an executive branch that is too powerful. We don't want another king. But they could take that risk because they knew who would hold the office first. The presidency was designated with Washington in mind, and in 1789, the Electoral College made it official. George Washington was elected president unanimously. And four years later, they did it again. At the time, there was no White House or cabinet or really a precedent for anything, including what to even call him. The Senate furiously debated titles. They were like, okay, well, he's not going to be a king, so let's call him his Highness, the President of the United States and protector of their liberties. The kings were the only model that anyone at the time really had. So Washington settled the matter by embracing the plainest option on the table. He said, just call me Mr. President. And he knew what he was doing. He wrote, quote, I walk on untrodden ground, meaning that he knew that basically everything he did could become the precedent. So the next guy after him, after Washington dies, they'd be like, hey, Washington did that, so why can't we? Every appointment, ceremony and decision that he made would likely shape the office for whoever would come next. So in 1794, when frontier farmers rose in an armed revolt against a federal whiskey tax, Washington, still president and 62 years old, rode out in person at the head of nearly 13,000 militiamen. It was the only time in American history that a sitting president basically led an army toward battle. I mean, especially in his own nation. And the rebellion basically evaporated at the sight of it. Then Washington pardoned the convicted rebels. His second term, though, was. I'll be honest, it was. It was pretty tough. Newspapers called him a monarchist, a traitor, and a senile old man. And at this point, Washington Wanted out. He was like, bro, I never even really wanted to be president. I was just trying to kick out these British people so I could get my money and we could kind of, you know, govern ourselves. I don't really want all this. I don't want a job. So in 1796, Washington published his farewell address. He warned that political parties could, quote, allow cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men to take power from the people. He also warned against tying the young nation to the permanent rivalries of foreign powers. And you can judge for yourself, I mean, how well we've listened to his advice. I'll give you my opinion pretty terribly. I mean, he said in his farewell address, hey, political parties, specifically just two political parties, are going to destroy the nation. And unprincipled men will take power from the people. And tying our nation to the permanent rivalry of foreign powers is going to corrupt our sovereignty. You can judge for yourself, but for me, it's not great. And then he gave the country one final precedent. And for the second time in his life, George Washington surrendered supreme power and went home. He was like, look, I'm like, the first time, like, basically, they kick out the British, they win the revolutionary war, and Washington's like, hey, I'm done. And then they go, no, no, no, you got to come back. And he's like, all right, fine, I'll come back. And then this time, he services two terms and goes, I'm going home. And this two term tradition actually lasted a century and a half. When Franklin Roosevelt broke it, the country placed Washington's example into the constitution. With the 22nd amendment. Washington got two years and nine months at Mount Vernon. Then on a cold December morning in 1799, he rode out to inspect his farms. And this would be his last journey. December 12, 1799. Washington spent five hours on horseback in snow and freezing rain, and he returned late and unwilling to keep his guests waiting. He sat down to basically have dinner with his friends in his wet clothing. And by the morning of the 14th, he could barely breathe. Modern doctors suspect that he had some type of acute epiglolitis. Basically, the tissue above his airway was swelling shut and he was slowly suffocating. So his doctors began treating him. They bled him four times, draining an estimated five pints of blood. This was pretty common at the time. If you had some type of illness especially, they didn't really understand. They kind of had this idea of humors and that you had different volumes of different chemicals in your body more or less. And that by draining out some of the bad blood. It would basically open up some room. Room. So for washing, they drained nearly 40% of his blood in less than a day. And you know, they basically purged him. And they used the full arsenal of 18th century medicine. And you know, they used it on this weak 67 year old man who could barely breathe. And it said that he remained very calm and gave instructions about his will and his papers. And it seemed like he had some knowledge that he was dying. And later that night he felt his own pulse fading away. His final words are, tis well. But of course, for Washington, one fear remained. Washington made his secretary promise not to place him in the family vault until he had been dead for three days. And this is because he had a major fear of being buried alive. This was a fairly common fear at the time that someone would go into a coma and they would get buried and then they would wake up inside a, you know, six feet on the ground, inside a coffin and claw at the top trying to, you know, be saved. Matter of fact, that's why a lot of like old cemeteries will have like a bell over the casket. You've seen that before because they were like, hey, if you're alive, you can just ring the bell and let us know. We'll dig you up. This is actually a picture of Washington on his death, but a very famous painting, sort of haunting in its own way. You see like his family gathered around, pretty sad, his secretaries and doctors trying to heal the old man. And he died between 10 and 11 o' clock on December 14, 1799. Congressman Harry Lee gave the country the line that it would remember forever. First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. And that line was the truth. What's up guys? We're gonna take a break real quick. Cause I wanna tell you about a brand that I actually love. You've probably seen ads for it on Instagram and it's ultra. It's the best. As you already know, I'm super locked in on like fitness and sleep and fasting and all that kind of stuff. And one thing that I care about now is getting energy in focus without feeling like jittery and cracked out and on edge. Like my heart is beating out of my chest. And that's why I reached out to Ultra. Ultra pouches have zero nicotine, zero caffeine pouches that give you clean focus and smooth energy when you need to lock in. And a lot of people think pouches are helping them at the gym, but nicotine is actually a Vasoconstrictor. 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Now ultra is the ultimate guilt free pouch, delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. And new customers can use the code camp C A M P to get 15 off when you go to takeultra.com that's take ultra.com for 15 off with the code camp. And after you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please tell them that Mark and Christos from the campsite sent you. Now let's get back to the show. And now this is where we actually meet this guy, Mason Locke Weems. This is a traveling preacher and a book salesman and one of the most successful myth makers in all of American history. Within months of Washington's death, Weems published a biography on him. And when sales started to slow down, Weems started to add stories about old George. And in the fifth edition came the most famous one. Young George. A hatchet, a cherry tree, and this line of I cannot tell a lie. And there's no evidence that this actually ever happened. A story invented to teach children not to lie became one of the most famous lies in all of American history, which is so ironic. This guy was like, hey, we're gonna. You know, George Washington is like one of our. One of our goats. I'm gonna write a story about how lying is bad. I'll use George to say it. But the whole thing is actually a lie in and of itself, which is an interesting moral question. Can you lie to tell kids not to lie? I don't know. I mean, parents do it all the time. Now, Washington's prayer at Valley Forge. Weems again Kind of fabricated that a little bit. Throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac. Well, the river is nearly a mile wide at Mount Vernon, and silver dollars didn't really exist when Washington was a boy. So here we have some of the big myths. And what's interesting is that a lot of these myths are maybe the only facts that many Americans think they know about our first president. Now we should go back to what we've been talking about kind of abstractly this whole episode. And it is the film of young Washington, the bullets whistling past him, the general who refused to lose, the man who could have been the king, but chose to just go home instead and did it twice. All of that is true. But of course, movies and stories, they need heroes. So they're gonna kind of cut out and simplify all the things that complicate them. The 17 years between Washington the soldier and Washington the general. The land deals, the slavery, the self made gentleman stuff, the order to keep all of this a profound secret. None of it really fits easily in a movie or on a poster in a trailer. And yet it is true. The American Revolution would not have been won without George Washington. Whether his motives were freedom, you know, economic and financial, self serving, or a combination of all of those, he, the uneducated kid with an eye for opportunity, was the poster boy that laid the foundation for this American dream. He was ambitious and hard working and persistent and had insane drive and an ability to survive anything and insane luck. And if you'd asked Washington, certainly some type of divine intervention. And these are the real reasons that Washington should be celebrated and the real reasons behind the movie today. So when you look at the myth of any founding father, don't just settle for the version that confirms what you already believe. The part that makes you feel good, whether it is, you know, he was a terrible guy that, you know, hated black people and he was a slave owner that was just an awful, terrible human being. That's kind of true, but it doesn't take the actual totality of his existence and what he did. And if your side is like, oh, Washington was the greatest man ever and the greatest general and he was the smartest guy and he never lost and he always did what was right and he couldn't tell a lie, that's also not true either. And in my opinion, the truth is always way more complicated and way more interesting than what anyone can fit in a movie trailer. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief synopsis of the true life of young George Washington, the first President of the United States of America. I mean, an interesting guy. I mean, I do think a lot of people, especially now kind of in the modern paradigm, really struggle to contextualize American history. And I think other countries have it easier, you know, because either a lot of the atrocities happened way long ago, you know what I mean? You could just be like, hey, we're French. We've always been French. We've always controlled this land. And it's like there weren't any, there wasn't native people. No, no, no, no, Nothing, nothing like that, you guys. The conquest and the empire building and the, you know, enslavement of people over. No, no, no, come on, don't look at that. It's a lot easier for them to nation build into myth, build around who they are because they have such a blood and soil claim. But for Americans, we are not really indigenous to this land, you know, So a lot of what we have to build on is an idea. And it's this idea of the American dream. It is this idea of if you work hard, you can be anything. And for a lot of people it's kind of difficult to square that. But that's part of the reason why I love America, because I do think that in this place you can become the greatest version of yourself, whatever that may be. And it's not really until I traveled that I was like, man, America's awesome. You can just talk shit about the president and nothing bad happens to you. There's stand up comedians right now in Turkey that are in prison because they said disparaging things about the leader. I think allegedly, I don't know the details, but then you got people over in India that say things and all of a sudden they get locked up. It's like, America is awesome for a lot of reasons and we have a lot of bad stuff, don't get me wrong. But the fact that we are confronting and wrestling with these things, to me is a sign of progress. And we have a lot more problems that other countries don't have because of the way that our nation was created and, and some of the things that we did and a lot of our policies now. But in my opinion, I don't know, I'm proud to live in this nation. I'm proud to be an American. And there's a lot of things that we could do better. But in spite of that, I still think we're doing, I'm doing, I think we're doing a decent job, you know, in the grand scheme of things. But maybe I'm just feeling patriotic because it was just July 4th. I don't know. Rafna, you're an American citizen of Dominican descent. What did you learn from this episode? I learned a lot. George seems pretty iconic. He's an icon. He is. He was really a superhero at some point in a lot of ways. And I think there's an element where it's like, we kind of need myths a little bit. So, you know, I. I kind of do both where I'm like, okay, I want to know the actual truth, every detail, all the good stuff and the bad stuff. But then in my mind, you know, I kind of will accept the myth a little bit because it sort of makes me feel good. But maybe I'm pulling the wool over my eyes. I don't know. I struggle with this stuff. What do you guys think? How do you deal with the legacy of George Washington, the good and the bad? What is your opinion on this, man? And if you've seen the movie, what are the things that the movie got right and what they got wrong? Please drop a comment. YouTube, Spotify. I read all of them, and even if I don't respond to all of them, it'll be helpful to someone. I'm sure someone will respond. So please have a conversation in the comments, and just for my sake, keep it civil. We have, like, a little chunk on the Internet here that not that many people know about. And I love reading the discourse in the comments, and it's like, very kind and supportive. So let's just please try to keep it that way. Also, I got great news for you. If you were interested in religious content, you know, like this type of divine providence that George Washington speaks about, well, we have religion camp. That's where I go through everything from every religion, and I try to figure out what everyone believes. And if you like mysteries and crazy deep dives and all sorts of stuff going on right now, plus interviews with people way smarter than me. Well, great news. We have the main channel, Camp Gagnon. Gagnon is how I pronounce it in America. You can check out that channel. And also we have a secret society. It's called patreon.com Camp Gagnon. You're going to get every episode of this show ad free, plus monthly zooms, plus bonus episodes that never got to the public and early access to a bunch of episodes by going to patreon.com camp gagnon. And it's going to cost you about the price of a cup of coffee. Now, ladies and gentlemen, with all that out of the way, I want to thank you again for tuning in to another episode of History Camp, and I will see you all in the future to talk about the past. Peace. Hey, guys, if you love conspiracies and hypothetical history, well, I want to invite you to check out signal 33. This is a companion pod to our our podcast here at camp. It's made and edited by the same team that runs all of our shows, and I choose the topics every single week. So check it out. Subscribe and start the dialogue in the comment section.