I was younger than you are now when I was given my first command. I led my men straight into a massacre. I witnessed their deaths firsthand. I made every mistake, and felt the same rise in me, and even now I lie awake, knowing history has its eyes on me.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Colonel William Fairfax, a landowner in Virginia, was the first man who tried to help Washington secure a commission in the British military - the effort failed because Washington’s mother stopped it. Later, Fairfax’s cousin, Lord Fairfax, hired Washington to do survey work in the Shenandoah Valley and farther west.
Though he was not the oldest son, his oldest brother died when the was only twenty. Because of this, Washington inherited Mount Vernon and was able to gain his brother’s place in Virginia’s militia. He was like Hamilton at this young age, desperately longing for a way to prove his merit and worth through military action and glory.
Washington’s first experience with a battle was a disaster. Out by the construction site of Fort Duquesne, in French Territory, Washington learned from members of the Six Nations that the French were advancing on them. Making the mistake of presuming they were spies or going to attack, Washington led four dozen men to attack. It was never determined who fired first - Washington’s men or the French, but there was certainly an exchange of gunfire. Approximately fourteen Frenchmen lay dead or wounded while Washington’s men hardly was touched. The members of the Six Nations who accompanied Washington slaughtered the wounded French, scalping them. Washington did nothing to stop it.
Washington always claimed the Frenchmen were spies, and defended his actions. He even wrote that he was not scared, “I can with truth assure you,” he wrote to his brother Jack, “I heard bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.”
Not long later, Washington’s men had trouble again, losing as many as a third of their soldiers in a fight against the French. Washington was forced to surrender. For a while, he was humiliated.
Sources: the following sources were used - the collected letters/writings of Alexander Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton the Revolution, Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton, The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton by Allan McLane Hamilton, Hamilton by Richard Syllia, and Charles Cerami’s book called Young Patriots. In addition, War of Two by John Sedgwick and Washington and Hamilton by Tony Williams were used throughout. The book Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tilar J. Mazzeo was used for information about Elizabeth Hamilton.
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