George Washington (1984): From Surveyor to General
In this election year, I am gravely concerned about the continuance of American democracy. These United States seem more divided than they have since the American Civil War, with partisanship and political extremism on the rise, and nakedly fascistic rhetoric bandied about willy-nilly by major party candidates. In the troublous times that face this nation, I think it is important to look back upon our history to the leaders (and ordinary citizens) who embody the best spirit of America’s democratic traditions, particularly as the knowledge many Americans have about them is often made up more of a fabric of apocryphal stories and hoary fables than real history. Perhaps if we know the stories of these great Americans, we can invoke their spirits and virtues, as John Quincy Adams does the founding fathers at the end of Steven Spielberg’s Amistad (1997).
However, few people are willing to sit down with a dry history text or biography in this hurried and technology-obsessed age. How to solve this conundrum? One possible solution has been to combine history with entertainment, specifically in the form of historical films and television series. One excellent but oft-overlooked production which takes us back to before the United States was even founded is George Washington (1984). This epic six-and-a-half hour long miniseries, based on the biographies by James Thomas Flexner, chronicles the life of the “father of his country” from boyhood (the first scene shows him being taught to fight by his half-brother Lawrence; cherry trees are not even mentioned) to his resignation of his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in 1783. Washington is ably played throughout this series by Barry Bostwick, perhaps best known for his role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), who portrays him with sufficient forcefulness (and height, sometimes seeming to tower over the other characters and occasionally needing to duck to avoid hitting his head on doorframes; Washington was considered something of a giant in his time). The series is also noteworthy for often shooting at or near actual historical locations, in Virginia and Pennsylvania; even the forests have a distinctly east-coast to mid-Atlantic feel, often reminiscent of the Appalachian woods I know well.
Along the way, the series covers parts of Washington’s life which most people do not know about, such as his first job as a surveyor charting the lands managed by William Fairfax (William Prince), the father of his half-brother’s wife. George is assisted in this endeavour by Fairfax’s son George William (generally called Will due to the confusion inherent in two Georges, and played by David Dukes—remember this name!), who becomes a good friend of Washington’s, although their relationship is complicated by Washington’s feelings for Will’s wife Sally (Jaclyn Smith, one of the original Charlie’s Angels) and the Fairfaxes’ Loyalist political views. Another of George’s companions is an impressively-bearded mountain man named Caleb Quinn (Lloyd Bridges, the “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit [insert drug here]” guy from Airplane! (1980)), whom George meets during his surveying job and who becomes something of a Sancho Panza-like figure to him (reminiscent of Lincoln’s coonskin cap-wearing sidekick Efe Turner (Eddie Collins) in John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)) as he embarks on his early military career.
That military career is initially none-too-successful, as although Washington successfully completes a mission to meet with the French (Viggo Mortensen, Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, makes a brief appearance as a French Lieutenant here), he later helps spark the French-and-Indian war when his unit attacks a French encampment and kills an officer acting as a diplomat, and is later forced to surrender at Fort Necessity and admit responsibility for the “assassination,” much to the annoyance of colonial governor Robert Dinwiddie (José Ferrer). (Kelsey Grammer also shows up as one of Washington’s aides). Washington accompanies General Edward Braddock (James Mason) on an ill-fated campaign against the French in the Ohio Valley, and then leads a Virginia regiment as part of an attempt to capture Fort Duquesne. However, the French had already burned the fort and retreated, denying Washington the victory that he felt would restore his reputation; frustrated, he decides to end his military career and marries a wealthy widow named Martha Custis (Patty Duke Astin), also raising her children as his own. However, revolution looms on the horizon, hastened by the fiery rhetoric of Patrick Henry (Harry Groener); this is where the first two-and-a-half hour long episode ends.
The second episode begins with the increasing tensions as war draws nearer, and the personal tragedy that strikes George and Martha when her daughter Patsy (Elva Josephson) dies during one of the epileptic seizures that plagued her through her short life. Later, it introduces or focuses more on such familiar historical characters as John Adams (Hal Holbrook, who has also played Abraham Lincoln), his cousin Sam Adams (Richard Fancy), and Washington’s neighbor George Mason (Richard Kiley). Upon the outbreak of war, John Adams convinces Washington to become Commander-in-Chief of the colonial forces, assisted by Generals Horatio Gates (Jeremy Kemp), Charles Lee (no relation to the famous Virginia Lee family; played by John Glover), Nathanael Greene (Scott Hylands), Artemas Ward (Brad Sullivan), and John Stark (Robert Stack, who coincidentally was also in Airplane!).
He also meets an ambitious young Connecticut officer named Benedict Arnold (Stephen Macht) and able bookkeeper-turned-artilleryman Henry Knox (the one the fort in Kentucky is named after, played here by Farnham Scott). After besieging Boston and driving the British out, the colonial army occupies New York City. However, they suffer a defeat on Long Island at the hands of the British and their Hessian mercenaries, and cross the East River to Manhattan in the dead of night to escape. This is where the second, one-and-a-half hour long episode closes.
The third episode begins with the crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton. (For more detail on this event see The Crossing (2000), although the miniseries is more historically accurate in one respect by correctly portraying the battle as taking place during a snowstorm, which helped the attacking colonists).
It also introduces John Laurens (Kevin Conroy, voice of animated Batman), Alexander Hamilton (Robert Schenkkan, who was in a couple of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes and is also an award-winning playwright and screenwriter), and the Marquis de Lafayette (Philip Casnoff).
During Washington’s time at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, he suspects General Gates and Major General Thomas Conway (Nicolas Surovy) of attempting to convince Congress to replace him (this is portrayed in the miniseries as a conspiracy in rather more concrete terms than it likely was in reality). However, Washington is not replaced and does not resign. Winter at Valley Forge is also brutal for Washington’s soldiers; there is a brief subplot about a soldier who has his foot amputated due to frostbite. Charles Lee, after spending some time living it up with General Howe (Patrick Horgan) and the British, is eventually returned to the Americans, but then retreats at the Battle of Monmouth, causing Washington to take command and rally the retreating Continental Army, after which he relieves Lee of command. (The Battle of Monmouth sequence also features a brief appearance by “Molly Pitcher”).
Meanwhile, Benedict Arnold, now a General, has a new wife named Peggy Shippen (Megan Gallagher). (The backstory of this relationship is dramatized in Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor (2003), which also explores Arnold’s motivations for his eventual betrayal). Arnold attempts to betray West Point to the British, but is foiled.
After a quickly squelched mutiny, the series moves on to the final battle of the Revolutionary War, Yorktown, which ends when American and French battalions under the commands of Alexander Hamilton and the Count of Deux-Ponts (simplified to Lafayette in the series) make a daring night raid on the two furthest forward British redoubts. Their capture leaves the British position untenable, and they are forced to surrender, upon the occasion of which (in accordance with the possibly apocryphal story) the British play “The World Turned Upside Down” (not the one from Hamilton, though this incident is what the musical’s song refers to)—this is further embroidered by Lafayette ordering the American fife-and-drum corps to play “Yankee Doodle.”
After the war ends, Washington calms soldiers angry about not being paid by congress, possibly preventing a military challenge to congressional authority. He eventually resigns his role as commander-in-chief after an emotional farewell to his officers in Fraunces Tavern, and finally returns home to Mount Vernon (and the waiting arms of Martha) on Christmas Eve of 1783.
All of this may seem more like a military hagiography than a compelling drama; such an opinion is perhaps valid, but for all its focus on major historical events and (relative) fidelity to historical fact, the personality and character of George Washington as a man is not completely obscured, and is in fact quite strongly established in the first episode. He is not portrayed as perfect, or even necessarily very successful, with an early career marked by blunders and military failures, some of them his own. Washington’s father Augustine had had four children from a previous marriage, who received more formal education and inherited the best properties upon his death; perhaps due to being slightly underprivileged in comparison, George also comes off as somewhat socially awkward, or at least initially unknowledgeable about the social conventions of his day (For example, Sally Fairfax teaches him fan language, which he was hitherto unaware of, at a ball).
During the revolution, Washington lost more battles than he won and spent much of his time in retreat, although this is perhaps more forgivable as the Continental Army was outnumbered and largely untrained, at least until the Prussian General Friedrich von Steuben (Kurt Knudson) drilled them into shape. One of the best qualities demonstrated by Washington in this period of his life is his perseverance: his unwillingness to quit in the face of personal tragedy and illness, professional failure, overwhelming odds, and opposition from both enemies and ostensible allies.
This miniseries does gloss over some of Washington’s racial views, such as by having him advocate for blacks to be allowed to serve in the Continental Army (in reality, he eventually allowed them to serve after the British promised freedom to slaves fighting for them, but he was not initially in favor of it). He also probably did not run out to stop a wagonload of slaves from being sold (as depicted here). Washington did come to believe that trade in slaves was wrong (particularly as it broke up families), and eventually grew to disapprove of slavery as an institution; he provided in his will for his own slaves to be freed when he and Martha both died. However, he did not publicize his feelings, as he thought (correctly) that the issue might divide the country.
One of the seeds of Washington’s dedication to the revolutionary cause, as depicted in this miniseries, is his realization that even those he considered upper-class as a youth are subservient to the British. For instance, most of the lands managed by his relations through marriage, the comparatively wealthy Fairfaxes, actually belong to their relative Lord Thomas Fairfax (Trevor Howard). Throughout his early military career he is also looked down at by British officials for his lack of training in continental martial strategy, a tendency which continues even once the revolution begins, as various other officers and members of Congress question his leadership or even suggest he be replaced with a more experienced European officer (such as General Gates). In this series, Washington is shown as completely losing his patience with this sort of treatment when confronted with British veteran Charles Lee’s uncommunicated retreat at Monmouth.
Perhaps even more important than his guidance of the Continental Army through the revolution was Washington’s voluntary resignation as commander-in-chief. King George III reputedly stated that if Washington resigned, he would be “the greatest man in the world.” With this act, Washington proved (for the first time) that he did not intend to set himself up as a king or dictator. This would be proven again when he stepped down as president, a job which he did not even desire, but was unanimously elected to anyway once he agreed to come out of retirement. Washington’s willingness to lay down power and peacefully transfer it back to Congress or to future presidents set an important precedent for the United States, one seldom duplicated in other countries immediately after their revolutions (such as France, or even the Commonwealth of England).
George Washington will return in George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation.