The Power of Friendship and Love: Personal Relationships in Revolutionary America

The tremendous success of Hamilton: An American Musical illustrates how both academic scholars and popular audiences alike remain fascinated with the lives and accomplishments of our Founding Fathers. One of the most compelling aspects of Hamilton is Lin-Manuel Miranda's careful attention to how the bonds of friendship and love shaped Alexander Hamilton's political career. The play presents a vision of early national political history that is deeply rooted in personal relationships.

Like Hamilton, the books under review share an interest in exploring the power of friendship and love in early national America. Flora Fraser's dual biography of George and Martha Washington provides a well-researched, engaging account of the nation's first couple. This is a more challenging undertaking than one might imagine, since Martha Washington burned the couple's letters to each other, denying future researchers access to key source materials. To reconstruct the contours of the Washingtons' marriage, Fraser relies upon a variety of primary sources, including George and Martha's writings to other individuals, various observers' descriptions of the couple, and Mount Vernon estate records.

Fraser begins her story in 1758, on the eve of George Washington's marriage to the widow Martha Dandridge Custis. At the time of his marriage, Fraser suggests, George was still pining for his neighbor, Sally Fairfax, and was perhaps more taken by Martha's wealth than swayed by romance. Fraser implies, however, that the "capable, sensible Martha was smitten by Washington" (p. 29). Married in early 1759, the couple made their home at Mount Vernon, where Martha skillfully enacted her role as a genteel hostess. The Washingtons had no children together, but Jacky and Patsy, Martha's two surviving children from her first marriage, lived with them at Mount Vernon. The couple experienced exasperation with Jacky's lack of attention to his studies and heartache over Patsy's declining health and early death, but the Washingtons' life at Mount Vernon before the Revolutionary War, according to Fraser, was generally amiable, social, and prosperous.

The first fifteen years of the Washingtons' married life serve as prelude to Fraser's main emphasis on the war years. George Washington spent much of the war away from his beloved Mount Vernon. In 1774, when he first set off to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Martha remained behind, ready, according to one observer, "to make any sacrifice" for the patriot cause (p. 97). Martha's wartime sacrifice included repeated trips away from Mount Vernnon to join her husband's encampments, where she often met with uncomfortable lodgings and cramped quarters. These frequent travels and visits were sometimes taxing for Martha, but they always "lightened Washington's mood" (p. 241).

As she traveled, Martha recognized that she took on a new identity. She was now "Lady Washington," a public role with patriotic and political implications (p. 132). Martha's repeated willingness to forgo the comforts of her home served as a vivid embodiment of the sacrifices required in wartime. Martha helped create a sociable environment that brought warmth and conviviality to officers, troops, and foreign visitors, along with renewed confidence in the war effort. Aided by Martha's skills, General Washington's wartime dinners succeeded in conveying "exactly the degree of confidence in the commander" that was needed both on and off the battlefield (p. 215).

After devoting twelve chapters to the war years, Fraser breezes through George Washington's two terms as President in just three short chapters. This brisk treatment is to be lamented, since this was a period of profound social and political importance for the young nation. The President's social practices set precedent for the republican court, and here too, Martha's skills as hostess were essential. Her modest, unassuming persona infused...