Free His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis Page A

the main source of Martha’s appeal was initially more economic than romantic, there is reason to believe that the relationship soon developed into an intimate and mutually affectionate bond of considerable affinity. We cannot know for sure—matters of this sort can seldom be known for sure—because Martha destroyed their private correspondence soon after her husband’s death. (Only three letters between them survive, compared to over a thousand between John and Abigail Adams, the most fully revealed marriage of the age.) But later efforts to suggest that Washington’s marriage lacked passion, and that the slogan “George Washington slept here” had promiscuous implications, have all been discredited by most scholars.
    The fact that they had no children of their own is almost certainly not a sign that they were sexually incompatible, but rather that Washington himself was most probably sterile. Although these are not the kind of questions we can answer conclusively, and it is possible that Martha lost the capacity to conceive after delivering her last child, it is more likely that the man who would become known as the “Father of his Country” was biologically incapable of producing children of his own. As for the suppressed feelings for Sally Fairfax, all the evidence indicates that everyone behaved themselves. Sally and George William Fairfax were the closest neighbors and became good friends of George and Martha, the most frequent guests at Mount Vernon, intimate accomplices in the hurly-burly of the ambitiously genteel social life within the Northern Neck. It seems likely that both Martha and George William realized that their respective partners had a past, but the longer no one mentioned it, the more it became history. 4
    As a stepfather, Washington was dutiful and engaged, especially when it came to Jackie, whom he wanted to receive the kind of classical education that he had missed. In fact, the boy was raised with all the advantages and privileges that Washington himself had been denied: his own personal servant; a private tutor who resided at Mount Vernon; the newest toys and finest clothes, all ordered from London; his own horses and hounds for foxhunting. The only item Jackie was denied was adversity, and the predictable result began to surface soon after he went to study Latin and Greek with Jonathan Boucher, first at Fredericksburg and then Annapolis. “His mind is a good deal relaxed from Study,” Washington admitted to Boucher, “& more than ever turned to Dogs, Horses & Guns.” Boucher wrote back to apprise Washington that it was worse than he knew: “I must confess to You I never did in my Life know a Youth so exceedingly indolent or so surprisingly voluptuous: one wd suppose Nature had intended Him for some Asiatic Prince.” 5
    If Jackie had been his own son, perhaps Washington would have raised him differently. But he consistently deferred to Martha on all final decisions concerning the children. He was their guardian; she was their parent. He was to provide, but not to decide. So off Jackie went to King’s College (now Columbia) in New York—the College of William and Mary was not good enough for him—where he lasted only a few months. In 1773, at age nineteen, he announced his decision to marry Eleanor Calvert, the daughter of Benedict Calvert, a descendant of Maryland’s founding family. Under prodding from Martha, Washington acquiesced, then did everything he could to establish Jackie and Nelly in proper style on one of the inherited Custis estates. Poor Jackie predictably failed at managing his plantation and died young, in 1781, just when Washington was sealing American victory in the American Revolution at nearby Yorktown. 6
    Patsy’s story was even sadder than Jackie’s. Even as a little girl she began to experience seizures that only worsened with time and eventually took the form of almost weekly epileptic fits. The latest London dolls and toys were ordered for her every year,