Washington: A Life

In 1759 Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, gaining wealth, enslaved persons, and social standing that enabled him to settle at Mount Vernon and enter the House of Burgesses. He assumed guardianship of Jacky and Patsy Custis, managed complex estate obligations, and cultivated a genteel household while ordering fashionable goods from London. Dealings with British businesses bred frustration and debt, sharpening his skepticism toward imperial commerce. Publicly modest and politically methodical, he preferred influence over oratory. The marriage was childless but stable, anchoring his transition from soldier to prominent planter‑legislator.

For six early marital years, Washington concentrated on tobacco, expanding acreage and experimenting with crops, but thin soils, droughts, and disease hurt yields and deepened his debt to London factors. In cultivating tobacco he made heavy use of the labor of enslaved persons: He enslaved more people, pursued runaways, sometimes sold recalcitrant individuals to the Caribbean, yet generally avoided breaking up families and invested in medical care and smallpox inoculation. Mount Vernon’s five dispersed farms complicated family life for enslaved persons. Washington enforced discipline through overseers while refining systems, schedules, and meticulous records. He prized order—“system in all things”—and ran the estate with rigorous, clockwork regularity.