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.

Washington’s commanding bearing, careful dress, and poised carriage impressed contemporaries in parlors and on battlefields. At Mount Vernon, he and Martha hosted large numbers of guests with polished, restrained hospitality. He cultivated his image and reserve, opening himself up only to trusted intimates. Physically formidable, he showcased strength, horsemanship, hunting prowess, and excelled at dancing. He frequented the theater and favored refined entertainments, while exacting high standards for etiquette and elegance. The chapter also shows his self-fashioning as a gentleman and his continued cordial ties with the Fairfax family, including Sally, now safely within social friendship.

Williamsburg provided Washington his most visible pre-Revolutionary stage: He campaigned for the Burgesses (outmaneuvering Adam Stephen), cultivated elite manners, and navigated public life alongside Martha. He endured a severe malaria bout, sought relief at Berkeley Springs, and resumed duties. The chapter surveys his parish leadership and measured, Enlightenment-tinged faith, strong commitments to religious tolerance and charity, and a strict personal code. It also traces his efforts to rein in common Tidewater vices—especially gambling—while maintaining moderation in drink and expecting sobriety and order from those he employed.

Washington’s postwar world tightened under British debt policy: The Proclamation of 1763, the Stamp Act, and Townshend duties. He expanded into land schemes (Dismal Swamp, the Mississippi Land Company) and pushed west despite imperial restraints, while shifting Mount Vernon from tobacco to wheat and building a diversified, semi-self-sufficient enterprise (mill, fishery, weaving, blacksmithing). Politically, he moved from grievance to leadership—backing nonimportation, corresponding with George Mason, and helping craft Virginia’s boycott. He also pursued officers’ bounty lands on the Ohio and Great Kanawha and began envisioning Potomac navigation to link the interior to Atlantic trade.

Washington’s household centered on Martha’s disciplined management while their daughter, Patsy, endured worsening epilepsy and died suddenly in 1773, prompting deep grief and an inheritance that cleared Washington’s debts. Washington struggled to educate his stepson Jacky Custis under tutors Magowan and Boucher. Jacky soon left King’s College to marry Nelly Calvert in 1774. Washington dutifully provided for his demanding mother, relocating her to Fredericksburg, and sat for Charles Willson Peale’s portraits. With resources freed, he began Mount Vernon’s major expansion—cupola, pediment, and grand piazza—balancing private retreat with public hospitality.

Washington moved from guarded protest to open militancy after the Tea Party and Coercive Acts. He helped adopt the Fairfax Resolves (nonimportation, call for a congress, and suspending imports of enslaved persons), chaired county committees, and supported aid to Boston. Elected to the First Continental Congress, he backed the Continental Association while disavowing independence. At home, he organized militias and funds munitions. His letters to the Fairfaxes sharpened his constitutional arguments. In early 1775, the Virginia Convention named him a delegate again; he vowed his “life and fortune” (184) to the cause.