The Washingtons: George and Martha “Join’d by Friendship, Crown’d by Love.” by Flora Fraser (review)

Until the publication of biographer Flora Fraser’s The Washingtons: George and Martha “Join’d by Friendship, Crown’d by Love,” the relationship between George and Martha Washington has received little scholarly consideration. While letters written by both Washingtons to friends, family, and acquaintances survive in large numbers, their letters to one another, with the exception of a handful, do not. After the death of President Washington in 1799, Martha destroyed the bulk of their correspondence, which must have been voluminous, as the couple often found themselves separated by war and political necessity. Thus, from the outset of her project, Fraser faces an enormous challenge in getting to the heart of the relationship between George and Martha. Relying on letters written by the couple to others, as well as Washington’s account books, Fraser pieces together a picture of a marriage initially based on friendship that grew into one of mutual respect and love.

In 1758 George Washington began courting Martha Dandridge Custis, who had been widowed and left with two young children in 1757. While both were in their mid-twenties, George and Martha occupied slightly different rungs on the socioeconomic ladder of colonial Virginia. Martha’s husband had left her and her two children a large fortune and a great deal of property, including over four hundred slaves. While Washington had made some land purchases on the frontier, until the death of his sister-in-law, Anne Fairfax Washington, he would not hold the title to Mount Vernon. The match thus represented a step up for Washington and helped grant him entrance into the upper echelons of colonial society. When the couple married in 1759, Fraser suggests, they joined together as friendly companions, not as passionate lovers.

However, over the next forty years, a close bond developed between the couple. They came to rely on one another and to find pleasure in each other’s company. During the 1760s and 1770s, the couple weathered the changing fortunes wrought by the growing divisions between Britain and the colonies. Using George Washington’s communications with his agent in London and the records of Mount Vernon, Fraser documents how the boycott of British goods affected the couple’s lives. During the Revolutionary War, Martha joined General Washington at winter quarters whenever she could, spending the rest of the year at Mount Vernon to ensure that it ran as smoothly as possible. When George became the nation’s first president, Martha helped him navigate the difficult role of determining appropriate behaviors for the president and his first lady. Childless themselves, George and Martha mourned the loss of Martha’s daughter Patsy as a teenager and her son Jacky as a young adult, but also they celebrated the births of Jacky’s children and grandchildren. Ending the book with George’s unexpected demise just a year and a half after the couple’s retirement from the public realm and then Martha’s rapid decline and her death, Fraser clearly shows that the bond between the couple had only strengthened with time.

Fraser also takes us into the political and social realm of the colonial world and then into the new nation. From documenting the tensions in the House of Burgesses as the colonies moved toward war, to describing the suffering of General Washington’s soldiers in Valley Forge, to explaining the political divisions between the Federalists and the Antifederalists in the newly formed United States, to exploring debates over the issue of slavery, Fraser sets the story of George and Martha firmly into its appropriate context. Her work serves, then, as both an examination of the private relationship between the Washingtons and an exploration of the rapidly changing world of the eighteenth century, appropriate for a popular audience and scholars alike.