The Making of George Washington

Ben Wilson
I'm gonna show you how great I am. This would have tiny shower. I just wanna say from the bottom of me heart, I'd like to take this chance to apologize to absolutely nobody.

Hello, and welcome to how to take over the world. This is Ben Wilson. This is episode one on the life of George Washington, the great american general and statesman and the first president of the United States of America. George Washington is really one of the great leaders of all time. He was able to lead the US through a revolutionary war against the most powerful empire on earth and come out victorious.

And he came out universally beloved. That's one of the things that I think is so interesting about George Washington is in his own lifetime. And afterwards, there was this ecstatic outpouring of almost worshipful devotion towards him. People just loved George Washington so much. He was like more myth than man.

In fact, if you go to the capital of the United States, which is called Washington, and you go to the Capitol building and look at the interior of the rotunda, you will see a fresco called the apotheosis of Washington. And it depicts George Washington sitting as a God in judgment of America. And that's interesting to me. What kind of person inspires that kind of devotion that verges on worship? What did he do?

How did he do it? That's what I want to explore on this episode. This episode will focus on his life from his birth up until the eve of the American Revolution. My sources are Washington a Life by Ron Chernow and George Washington the forge of experience by James Thomas Flexner. And you can find links for both of those in the show notes.

So with all that said, let's get into it. This is the making of George Washington. Before we get into it, one thing you will, of course, know about George Washington, if you have ever seen a quarter or a dollar bill, is that he was clean shaven. If you want to keep it looking sharp and tight like George Washington, you need Henson shaving. Henson Shaving is a family owned aerospace parts manufacturer that has made parts for the International Space Station and Mars rover.

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That's 100 free blades. When you head over to Henson shaving, that's hensonshaving.com takeover and use code takeover George Washington was born on February 11, 1732, at 10:00 a.m. In Westmoreland County, Virginia. Virginia was the largest and most prosperous of Great Britains southern american colonies, and the Washingtons were an aristocratic family. They were well to do, but not quite at the very top of the social or economic ladder.

Here is what Flexner writes about the Washington family in his biography. Although no Washington ever sat in the Virginia equivalent of the House of Lords, the king's council, they often married above themselves. They continued important enough so that when they produced a transcendentally able psion, no eminence was considered in that semi aristocratic society beyond their rightful reach. So, no, the Washingtons were not at the very top of Virginia society, but they were high enough that it wouldnt be a surprise that the most powerful man in America would come from their ranks. So a rags to riches story this is not George soon showed himself to be a very strong and distinctive personality.

He was much like his father, who was described as, and I love this quote, a blond giant, fabulously strong but miraculously gentle. Similarly, Flexner describes George Washington as, quote, imbued with both sweetness and animal power. Okay, so I love that description, sweetness and animal power. And that leads to this very special charisma. If you've ever been to the gym and you've had the biggest guy in the gym be nice to you, tell you like, hey, man, nice shoulders.

Or like, hey, do you need help with that? Or it's like this great feeling to have the big dude be kind to you. And that's George Washington. He has this animal power. He's enormous.

He's somewhere between six foot and six'three, very tall for the time. And he's got this incredible strength. He's thick, strong, wide shouldered, long limbed. And he has, you know, this beautiful auburn hair and light grayish blue eyes. And one of the things people talk a lot about from his early life is just how strong he was.

He was like the Schwarzenegger of his time. Strongest man in America. There's one story that I love that shows what a gifted athlete he was. So this is from the Flexner biography. He says, we get a vivid picture from an account where Peele, that's the guy who's writing, and several other gentlemen were pitching the bar during his stay at Mount Vernon.

Pitching the bar is just a game of throwing a metal bar as far as you can. Like, really simple game. Who can throw it the furthest? And so they're playing this game, and Washington appeared, quote, and requested to be shown the pegs that marked the bounds of our effort. Then, smiling and without putting off his coat, held out his hand for the missile.

No sooner did the heavy iron bar feel the grasp of his mighty hand. Than it lost the power of gravitation. And whizzed the air, striking the ground far, very far beyond the utmost limits. We were indeed amazed as we stood around all stripped to the buff and short sleeves rolled up. And having thought ourselves very clever fellows.

While the colonel, on retiring, pleasantly observed, when you beat my pitch, young gentlemen, I'll try again. Okay? So, in other words, these guys are playing a game of throwing an iron bar as far as they can. They're all stripped down to their shirts, sleeves rolled up. They're sweaty.

And George comes out and says, let me see that thing doesn't warm up, doesn't take off his coat, just heaves the bar, crushes their best throw and walks away. He was like a mythic man, genuinely of heroic stature and physical abilities. And it's not just brute strength. He had a grace to him as well, an athleticism. He was a very gifted horse rider and a very gifted dancer.

Mentally, George Washington was not well educated, but he was intelligent. He received a rudimentary education in reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as culture and history. He was expected, like his father and his older brothers to be educated at the Appleby grammar school in England. But when George Washington was eleven years old, his father died, which eliminated the possibility of him going to England for economic reasons and because he was now needed to help run things on the estate. He was always a little embarrassed by this lack of education, especially compared to some of his peers who were very well educated.

But like I said, just because he wasn't well educated doesn't mean that he wasn't intelligent. I think sometimes his intelligence is discounted or overlooked. And Chernow has a good theory on why. He writes, Washington has suffered from comparisons with other founders, several of whom were renowned autodidacts. But by any ordinary standard, he was an exceedingly smart man with a quick ability to grasp ideas.

He seized every interval of leisure to improve himself and showed a steady capacity to acquire and retain useful knowledge. Okay, so, yes, especially later in life, he was constantly surrounded by geniuses like Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams. All of these guys probably had iqs of 140 or above. And Washington was clearly not that intelligent. But he was still brilliant.

And that was evidenced in his military and political career and in his business career, as we shall later see. But just because he didn't have, like Franklin, level of intelligence doesn't mean he wasn't smart. He was very smart. One of the other things that he becomes known for very early in life, and this is something that's not widely known, this was a discovery, for me at least, is he was exceptionally well dressed. There's a story where he writes out a 152 word description of a coat he wants made for him from a tailor.

And he writes to this tailor and writes a very detailed description of exactly how he wants the coat cut down to how many inches apart the buttonholes should be, and everything. He believed, as Chernow writes, that a man's apparel was an outward sign of inner order. Okay, I like that a lot. A man's apparel is an outward sign of inner order. So I really need a clothing or apparel sponsor to go here.

Too bad this is a missed opportunity. Maybe next time. But throughout his life, that is one thing that George Washington was known for. He was fashionable and exceptionally well dressed. So, as I said, as a young man, he's only eleven and his father dies.

And when that happens, his older brother inherits much of the plantation, much of the land ownings that the Washingtons had, and the rest, that is kind of George's portion actually goes to his mother because he's underage. His mother was very strong willed, and she actually refused to give up this portion of the inheritance for a long time, which was disastrous for George because she turned out to not be a very good businesswoman. She's very strong willed, but not very capable when it came to managing the estate. And his mother is a very interesting character. She's very independent, very hard, very exacting, very religious, kind of grasping.

She always undercut and downplayed her son's achievements. It's kind of sad. She lived to see him become president of the United States. She lived a long time, and still this did not satisfy her. You know, she was just one of those kind of hypercritical mother types.

So with no father to kind of show Washington the ropes, he needed guidance and mentorship, and he found that in two places. The first was his older brother Lawrence, with whom he was very close. And then just a couple of months after Washington's father died, Lawrence married a woman named Anne Fairfax, and she was the oldest daughter of William Fairfax. The Fairfax family was the wealthiest family in Virginia. They were both extremely wealthy and extremely well connected.

So again, that is George Washington's older brother. Lawrence marries a Fairfax girl. Her name's Anne Fairfax, and her father is the richest man in Virginia, William Fairfax. And so this marriage kind of pulls George into the Fairfax orbit. He's able to meet them, and he immediately makes an impression.

They really like him. So he becomes best friends with a boy named George, William Fairfax and then eventually develops this kind of surrogate father relationship with William Fairfax himself. Part of this kind of surrogate father, surrogate son thing is George's best friend, George William Fairfax. William Fairfax's son is, like, not that bright. He's fine.

He's a good guy, but he's just a little dull. Whereas George Washington is strong, strapping, intelligent, ambitious. And so William Fairfax really takes a liking to George Washington. And so they have this strong mentor mentee relationship. He does two important things for George Washington initially.

The first is he introduces him to the world of the ancient Romans. So George Washington becomes obsessed with Caesar, Alexander the Great, the stoics. He reads Caesar's commentaries, he reads Seneca. He reads Plutarch's lives. And when he was older, he would order busts of Caesar and Alexander the Great and a few other great generals and conquerors.

So that kind of gives him his pattern of life. Like a Roman of old, he is obsessed with public renown, Flexner writes. He explained that his motive was the hope of meriting the love of my country and the friendly regard of my acquaintances, Washington subscribed to the stoic conception which he thus phrased in 1781. The confidence and affections of his fellow citizens is the most valuable and agreeable reward a citizen can achieve. And this is, of course, a pattern with the greats.

They are obsessed with other greats who came before them. Napoleon was obsessed with Caesar. Caesar was obsessed with Alexander the Great. Steve Jobs idolized Edwin land. Thomas Edison idolized Michael Faraday.

And for young George Washington, he took his inspiration from great statesmen of old, like Caesar and Alexander, and also from more immediate examples, like William Fairfax. The other thing William Fairfax does for George Washington is open doors, and the first door he opens for him is to get him as a job as a surveyor. And so a surveyor is someone who goes out and surveys. Yes, surveys the land, maps. It sets it out, lays out lots, looks at where the property lines are, things like that.

Today, no offense to any of my listeners who are surveyors. It's not like a super prestigious job, but at the time, it was, and it was very important. And so George Washington is now the youngest surveyor in Virginia history at the tender age of 17. It's also a position that is laden with opportunity, because if you're someone who wants to acquire land, well, now you're seeing where the land is. You're literally surveying it.

You can see where the valuable land is, what turns a profit, what doesn't. So it's a very good position for George to be in, and he does, in fact, not only serve as a surveyor, but he starts trading on his own account. Right. As a young man, he rapidly starts acquiring land and adding it to the family estate. And throughout all of this surveying and acquiring, he's also acquiring more and more friends and a good reputation as someone who is both friendly and reliable.

Flexner writes, George Washington charmed with that sweetness that was part of his character. Although it has vanished from his legend, the adjective most often applied to him by those who knew him as a young man was amiable. Okay, so he's very amiable. He's just making friends everywhere he goes. And so that combination of amiability, friendliness, along with competence means that a lot of people want to help him out, right?

If you got someone who you like and who you also think that you can trust, then you want to do favors for them, because it's going to reflect well back on you. So not just William Fairfax now, but he starts to get other wealthy and powerful patrons with these powerful connections. They pay off when he is given another very important appointment. At this point, the United States was really only settled on the east coast. So you have the coast, then you have some civilization, and then you have these hills and mountains, and beyond that is the Ohio river valley.

And the Ohio valley is at this point really sparsely settled. There's almost no one there, mostly wilderness. But at this point in time, in the late 17 hundreds, people are just starting to go over the hills and set up farms and settlements. But there's a problem in that you have the French, who are settled in Canada, who also think that they have a claim to this Ohio area. And so there's some conflict between the british colonists like Washington and these French, who are mostly trappers, hunters and traders.

And so the French are starting to cause problems. They're allying with the Indians, and there are some minor conflicts. And so someone needs to go and make contact with the french troops in the area and say, hey, what's going on here, guys? We see you building a fort, establishing a presence, making contact with Indians. We want to make sure everything's clear here because we have the right to settle this land.

You don't. So they need someone to go through the wilderness, which is unsettled. There are no roads to go, contact the French, and open diplomatic contact. And George Washington is given this diplomatic appointment to go out into the wilderness, find the French, and deliver a diplomatic letter. He's given this appointment because people like him.

He's reliable, but also because he's been a surveyor. So he's sort of been out on the frontier already. He's a good woodsman. He knows how to hack it out there in the wilderness. So it's a dangerous journey.

There are Indians, wild animals, half frozen rivers and difficult terrain. But Washington is able to find the french fort, make contact, and deliver the message. Crucially, when he's in the french fort, he tries to count the number of troops. That was pretty difficult, right? You're looking at men and they're kind of milling around, and so did I already count that guy?

And some of them are indoors and some of them are going in and out. So he's like, I can't get an accurate count. So he tells his companion to go down to the river and count the number of canoes so canoes don't move. They're just sitting there. They're easy to count.

And so that gives them a more accurate picture of the french forces in the area. It's a very clever bit of quick thinking from George to give him valuable intelligence that he can bring back to the colonial government on the way back, he and his companion, who crucially knows French, served as a translator. They are shot at by an indian and almost die when they try to cross a half frozen river. And an ice floe nearly capsizes the raft that theyre on. But they manage to make it back, and Georges performance is widely hailed as nothing short of spectacular.

Flexner writes, reading the journal today, one is impressed with the greenness of the young man and the cockiness. There is no hint that at any moment he felt he had come up against anything he could not understand and could not handle. And he did handle everything, however bludgeringly at times, he moved forward with dauntless energy, got where he was supposed to go, delivered his message, came home successfully through stupendous hardships. Taken by itself, the physical vitality displayed was on the level of genius. Well, the message that he brings back from the French is not helpful.

They basically tell the British, no, man, we belong here, and you guys can buzz off as far as we're concerned. So the british colonials gear up for conflict and start raising troops. And George Washington, even though he's very young, 21 years old at this point, is tapped to lead the troops of Virginia. And why is he chosen at such a young age with no military experience? Here's what Ron Chernow writes.

He says, how could young George Washington have snared this prestigious commission? At the time, few Virginians were seasoned in frontier warfare, creating a simple lack of competitors. Washington confirmed that he was picked to go. Quote, when I believed few or none would have undertaken it. Some practical reasons made Washington an excellent choice.

He knew the western country from surveying, had the robust constitution to survive the winter woods, was mostly unflappable, had a mature appearance and sound judgment, and was a model youth with no tincture of rowdiness in his nature. So they tap Washington to lead the Virginia militia, but he actually doesn't want to do it at first. He says, I must be impartial enough to confess it is a charge too great for my youth and inexperience. But he says he would be interested in the lieutenant position, the second in command. He says, with my own application and diligent study, I could in time render myself worthy of the position if under a skilled commander or man of sense.

So I think that's actually a really smart approach. Right? You're not doing yourself any favors if you take a position that you're not ready for. So get yourself a good mentor and put yourself in a place to succeed. And so that's what happens.

He's appointed second in command with a general over him. However, the guy who they appoint as the head of the army is old and fat and slow. And so in the meantime, George Washington has to take command while this other general makes his way to the troops. And the course of events are such that things start happening. And so he has to command in the absence of this other general.

And actually, the. The other general, this guy catches a disease and dies on the way. So he's, like, weeks or months in transit, and then he dies. And so even though George Washington doesn't want to be the guy, the leader of the Virginia troops, that's what ends up happening anyway. And now he's the man.

He's the leader. So even though George Washington has all these hangups, all these trepidations about being the commanding general, he shows no hesitation in leading his men. He's one of the most aggressive people that I have ever read about. And so you think, you know, it's this uncertain diplomatic environment. All these troops are green, are fresh.

Virginia has not been at war at all. There's been frontier fighting with Indians. There are no experienced soldiers, though. So, like, he's the blind leading the blind, but what does he do? He just goes straight out and attacks a superior french force.

He just starts marching right towards them. And so they're marching, and he actually hears about some french troops marching towards him. And so he takes out an advanced scouting detachment, and he actually stumbles on the French before he's ready. So the French fire on them, but Washington regroups his troops, and they fire back. And Washington actually gets the better of the French.

And he likes this first taste of war. He loves battle. He writes back to his brother, I heard the bullets whistle, and believe me, there is something charming in the sound. So Washington's forces win this engagement, but as they're winning, they hear the French, you know, screaming out. They're throwing up their hands, and they surrender.

And when George Washington goes to talk to them, the French say, hey, we're a diplomatic detachment. We were coming just to talk to you guys. We weren't here to fight. And Washington doesn't really believe this. He's like, well, then why did you fire on us first?

You know? But they say, no, no, no. This is a big misunderstanding. We have diplomatic papers. And so you guys actually have been shooting and killing diplomats, which is big, international.

No, no. And Washington says, yeah, I don't believe you. And so he takes the survivor's prisoner and goes back to his little fort that he has constructed in the forest. Now, Washington may or may not have been wrong in firing on these french soldiers. Maybe they really were being deceptive.

Okay, they had these diplomatic papers in case they got caught in a bad situation, but really they were coming to fight the British. That's what he believed. And that may have been true, or it may have been what they said. They were just marching toward the British in order to deliver a diplomatic message. And they were totally surprised to see these british guys and they accidentally fired.

And, you know, stuff happens. But what happens next is definitely not an accident. The French attack this little fort that Washington has constructed, and he actually does a terrible job. This fort is badly positioned and not nearly strong enough to be defensible. And so what unfolds next is essentially a horror movie.

Imagine they are just huddled up in the cold weather awaiting this attack from a far superior french force. And this is what unfolds. A bullet zinged into the fort and then another. Even after the lead had become a downpour, he could see no enemy, only powder smoke drifting upward from every little rising tree stump, stone and bush. Virginians, in what had been planned as safe positions, leaped and fell.

The artillerymen were driven from their swivels. Anguished cries and bellowing signaled that the horses and beef cattle were going down under the constant galling fire. Crouching low, Washington shunted his men to spots that seemed to promise protection. But as soon as they revealed their location by firing over the ramparts, enemy bullets came in among them. Now, as he tried to encourage his men, Washington was slipping on blood.

But the casualties were episodic. A slumped form here, a man crawling there. And the nightmare was able to drag on for hour after hour with enough colonials still upright to hold the attackers at musket range. After a few hours, one third of his men, more than a hundred, were dead, gasping out their lives or contorted with various wounds.

And so here at the edge of the world, in the middle of nowhere, with musket balls from unseen enemies falling all around them, it seemed that all these men were going to die in this fort. But then rescue came, like a ray of sunshine out of heaven. The french commander, a man named de Villiers, put up a flag of ceasefire and asked to come talk. He offers Washington papers of surrender on very lenient terms. Great.

The Virginians will be allowed to retreat with all military honors, a total ceasefire. And there are basically no conditions on them other than a very simple apology. And Washington was too young and inexperienced to realize the trap that was being laid for him. That simple apology was a huge mistake. It was essentially an admission that the British had known that the french force they had initially encountered and beaten was a diplomatic mission and that they had assassinated them.

Now, that was not true, but that was what he was admitting to in cleverly disguised language in this treaty. This would set off a diplomatic crisis that would result in what came to be known as the Seven Years War, which was essentially the first truly global war with major fighting on five continents and millions of deaths. And George Washington had set it off by signing this poison pill contract. Flexner writes concerning that little skirmish, Voltaire was to write, such was the complication of political interests that a cannon shot fired in America could give the signal that set Europe in a blaze. Washington had indeed shed the first blood in the Seven Years War, a conflict which, according to Frederick of Prussia, cost the lives of about 853,000 soldiers, plus civilians, by the hundreds of thousands.

And even more damningly, Flexner goes, on the european diplomatic level, Washington had prejudiced the moral position of the whole british empire at the eve of a world war. A french poet exclaimed, the assassination of Jumonville is a monument of perfidy that ought to enrage eternity. While an english writer stated in a pamphlet published in both London and Boston that the articles of capitulation Washington had signed at Fort Necessity were the most infamous a british subject ever put his hand to. Okay, so, disastrous decision by Washington. And I highlight this story because if you think that you have failed, that you have done something so stupid, a mistake so egregious, that you don't feel like you can come back from it, just remember that George Washington accidentally started a world war and put his nation in a compromised position at the start of it.

If he can come back from that, you can overcome whatever little hurdles that you face. I mean, it is amazing. You know, if George Washington had died the next year, he would be known not as a great man, but as the idiot who started the seven years war and put Britain in a bad position. In so doing, so, truly, anything can be overcome. And so, in the context of colonial Britain, of Virginia, this kicks off a low level of conflict across the american frontier.

So you had all these colonials, all these. You want to call them Americans, but they all consider themselves british subjects at the time. There's no independence yet we can call them Americans, all these Americans who had started to settle in these frontier regions, and now the French ally with the native Americans in that area, the Indians. They're called Indians at the time. So we'll just call them that.

And the Indians had a pretty simple viewpoint, which was, we're going to ally with whoever is not going to take our land. And so the French, their approach was not to settle and not to farm so much. They mostly, as I said earlier, sent in trappers and traders and hunters. You know, they extract some resources, but they can get along pretty well with the Indians. They don't kick them off their land.

Whereas the British, the Americans, the colonials are coming to settle. Okay, so the Indians correctly intuit we can coexist with the French, but the British, if their policy continues, they're going to lead to our extermination. And so they ally with the French and they start this low level conflict in which they are going and raiding all these outlying settlements. And so I know people get very emotional. They want to talk about the morality of who's right in conflicts like this.

Colonialism. Yeah. Gets people feeling all sorts of ways. Let me just say that I feel that kind of everyone is right in this conflict. Like, from the american perspective, you have all these settlements and Indians are coming over in the middle of the night, and they are indiscriminately murdering men, women, children.

They're raping, they're killing people in horrible, torturous ways. And so, of course, you sympathize with these poor american settlers, most of whom are poor, who are just trying to scratch out a living on the american frontier. And then at the same time, from the indian perspective, they are 100% correct that as soon as these colonists settle this region, it's going to lead to their expulsion, which does eventually happen. And so what they're doing, which is burning and destroying these settlements, is the only thing they could do to delay that process by any period of time. And so, to be honest, I sympathize with everyone involved.

Everyone is right from their perspective. Obviously, you can get deeper into it than that, but I'll leave it there. So Washington is kept in charge of the Virginia troops, with the charge to go stop all of this conflict to the extent that he can. The problem is he can't stop it. He has very few troops and hundreds of miles of frontier that he's supposed to be protecting.

And the Indians can just attack wherever they want. They don't have to hold any territory. They just attack, kill, burn, and then they can melt back into the woods. So Washington sets about building forts, raising local militias, and defending settlers wherever he can. And he's doing an okay job.

You know, he's delaying them a little bit. He's saving some lives. But the fact of the matter is they are slowly losing the frontier to the French and Indians. And so eventually the British say, okay, we need to send in some professionals here to help. The situation is getting out of control.

So they send some british regular troops and some british commanders, the regular british army from England, to come help take care of this situation. And so Washington says, great. I didn't want to be in charge anyway. I'm excited to serve under someone and learn from him. And so the british general that is sent, his name is Braddock, and they actually get along really well.

Washington does not mind being replaced. He wants to be replaced, and he's eager to learn from Braddock as much as he can. They have a great relationship. And so Braddock comes and he says, the problem here is the French. It's the French who are arming the Indians.

They're uniting them, coordinating them. So we need to clear out all these french troops and especially take their base of operations, which is at a place called Fort Duquesne. And so there's our mission. Take Fort Duquesne. And like I said, this is wilderness frontier area.

It's heavily wooded, so they actually need to cut a road to Fort Duquesne. And so they slowly start building this road, and they eventually realize that they are not going to be able to build it all the way to Fort Duquesne in time before winter sets in. Uh, Fort Duquesne, by the way, is located in what is today Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So they're not going to make it, and they decide to forget the road, uh, for the last little bit. They're just going to travel light and make a lightning attack on Fort Duquesne.

So the journey through the woods goes fairly well. They're very anxious the entire time, looking for french and indian snipers, but nothing happens. Eventually, they're less than a mile from the fort, and they think, great, we're almost there, when all of a sudden, Washington looks up to see his vanguard, his scouts sprinting toward him and screaming. Flexner writes about what happens next.

Bullets filled the air, striking particularly the officers who towered conspicuous on horseback as they rode in circles, hitting the men with the flats of their swords. Washington's horse sank under him. He leapt clear as a riderless horror. Reared by, he caught it and sprang up again. A strange yank on Washington's coat made him look down.

There were bullet gashes in it. He pushed his way to Braddock, whose normally red face was brick colored and whose voice was hoarse from shouting. Having finally caught the distraught general's attention, Washington offered to head the provincials and engage the enemy in their own way, but Braddock refused. Braddock fell wounded from his horse, as did orm and another of his aides. Washington's second horse faded away from under him, and his hat was carried off by a bullet.

So as you can hear, the British are being slaughtered. They are a conventional fighting force, tightly grouped, that is surrounded by a guerrilla force of fighters hiding behind trees. So they're trying to fire back, but it's like they're firing into the abyss. They can't see anyone, let alone hit them. As Flexner mentioned, the officers are the first to go because they're so conspicuous on their horses.

And so actually, all the officers who outrank Washington are shot and either wounded or killed, including Braddock, who sinks into a coma. It's Washington himself who leads the retreat and saves at least some of the men. This battle sounds, again, like something out of a horror movie. There's no enemy, just the dark forest and death. And it was like a horror movie to Braddock.

So he is shot and falls into a coma. Washington gets him out in the retreat, and when Braddock wakes up, he thinks he's still in a horror movie. Flexner says, quote, he proved to have one ruling. To get out of the forest. He ordered that everything which could not immediately be moved be destroyed, irreplaceable ammunition detonated, wagons burned, cannons smashed.

Then the whole army set out passionately for civilization.

So in other words, he wakes up and he says, let's get out of this haunted death forest as quickly as we possibly can. Now, despite being a part of this total disaster of an attack, Washington's reputation actually improves. He becomes known as a war hero in the british colonies. And that's for two reasons. One is his physical bravery.

You know, all these men tell these stories of Washington riding around on his horse, having multiple horses shot out from under him and just getting a new one. His coat is shot through, his hat is shot through, and yet somehow he survives untouched. And so it seems like this man is touched by God. And the other thing is, you may have caught this in the passage that I read. Braddock is marching like a regular army.

He keeps the men clumped together like a classic european fighting force. And George Washington actually says, give me my men and let us fight them in this guerrilla way. You know, let us go in the trees and do what they're doing. You know, fight fire with fire. And Braddock says, no.

And so it was recognized that Washington had the better and smarter strategy, and he was kind of stymied by the rigid british way of fighting. So for those reasons, he's still popular. Flexner writes. Benjamin Franklin wrote from Pennsylvania, everybody seems willing to venture under your command. In Washington's home colony, a minister wondered from the pulpit whether Providence had not preserved the heroic youth in so signal a manner because he was destined for some important service of his country.

Even regular soldiers praised him. Mister Washington, his friend Orm wrote, had two horses shot under him and his clothes shot through in several places, behaving the whole time with the greatest courage and resolution. And there's another quote that I think sums up what he was able to accomplish, what showed that he was a good leader while he led the troops from Virginia, even though you know he's often leading them in defeat. It says brashness, greenness, all the concomitants of inexperience may be outgrown. And Washington had exhibited to a superlative degree a quality that is inborn, the ability to lead men.

As the war unrolled, the colonial soldiers, hardly trained at all, and members of no continuing establishment displayed a dismaying tendency to flee from their own shadows. His soldiers marched into the howling forests, and although badly supplied and often unpaid, built roads, fought a superior force and died under his orders. So in other words, like, yeah, maybe that's a low bar, right? But the conditions are horrible. I want you to imagine.

Put yourself in George Washington's position. There's no colonial army. These are not professional troops. They've never been drilled. They have not been trained.

Most of them come with little or no supplies. Some of them don't even have guns, and they're not under military discipline. So if they don't like what George Washington has to say, they can just go home. And if they don't want to fight in this battle, they cannot fight in this battle. He has no power of capital punishment.

He can't punish desertion. It's not a real army. And despite these circumstances, unique to everyone in the british colonies, he alone is able to get people to fight and die for him, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. He's able to do something to stem the tide of these indian attacks. It might not be much, but he's the only one doing anything.

And he shows leadership and bravery even in the midst of these defeats. And so he's a military hero in part because he's one of the only people, one of the very, very, very few people who has accomplished anything in this frontier fighting. And so after these disasters, he's still in charge of the Virginia troops. And he says, look, we need to reform some things around here. And he sets about trying to turn the Virginia militia into an actual professional fighting force.

And so it's worth looking at what his approach was to this. How does he do it? How does he lead? When he's finally given the kind of tools that he wants and needs in order to form an actual professional fighting force, the first thing he does is professionalize. So one of his contemporaries writes, method and exactness are the forte of his character.

And so that was the first thing. Method and exactness. Drill the troops, get the details down. Another thing is, he's very good at finding and maintaining talent. So he has this really big emphasis on merit.

And this is at a time when much of the british army based their promotions on connections. Whose son are you? Who do you know? Who's willing to vouch for you? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

And Washington, on the other hand, had a big focus on merit, on ability. I shall make it, Washington announced, the most agreeable part of my duty, to study merit and reward the brave and deserving. I assure you, gentlemen, that partiality shall never bias my conduct, nor shall prejudice, injure any. But throughout the whole tenor of my proceedings, I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to reward and punish without the least diminution.

Another thing he does that is a hallmark of great leaders, from Steve Jobs to Napoleon, is that he tends to reward and praise the unit and not the individual. So mostly he takes the blame or the credit for himself. But when there is stuff to merit out, when there is special recognition to be had, either positive or negative, he gives it to the unit. So here's what Flexner writes. When reporting to his superiors, he usually did not eulogize or blame his subordinates unless he wished what he said to lead specifically to promotion or its opposite.

This kept the lines of power within the regiment leading up to Washington as its head. Captain John Rutherford wrote his colonel that he altogether depended on him for protection and was sensible that as far as justice is on my side, I may depend on your favorite. In his letters to his officers, Washington criticized when he considered that necessary, but rarely included individual praise. From day to day, even in battle, he assumed that each man or detachment would do his best for all. And so if he phrased a compliment, it was to the regiment as a whole.

Pride in the regiment, rather than individual pride, was what Washington sought to inculcate. And one other thing to point out, there is another thing that is common of great leaders, which is that typically, they're not big on positive reinforcement. They have high expectations, and if you meet them, that is the status quo. If not, you'll be reprimanded, and you have to go truly above and beyond to merit praise. And that is an environment that is aggressive and not always easy, but leads to very high performance.

Okay, well, despite this professionalization of the Virginia militia, there's just no way that they're going to be able to win this warm. And the turning of the tide actually comes with the election of William Pitt. He becomes prime minister back in England, and he's very active, and he's controlling the grand strategy. And so this turns the tide. He sends a new commander to take over for George Washington.

And this new british commander comes in and says, okay, we're going to attack Fort Duquesne again, and we're not going to screw it up this time. He wants to build a new road on a different route to attack Fort Duquesne. And Washington argues very strongly against this. He wants to go back to the Braddock road and finish building that. And he really stakes his reputation on the idea that this new road is a bad idea and it's going to lead to failure, and they should be doing the road that he had started with Braddock.

So what ends up happening is he's overridden. This new general builds the new road. Over the course of months, they get very close to Fort Duquesne, and then once they're close enough to attack, they go to attack, and they find that the French have evacuated and burned the fort to the ground. George Washington is confused. He doesn't understand what happened.

You know, he had been ambushed and had this incredible defense put up against him the last time he had attacked. And now they melted away like it was nothing. And that's because he didn't understand the grand strategy of what was happening. So, as I mentioned, this prime minister, William Pittsburgh, very sharp guy, one of the great prime ministers in british history, and he realizes that where George Washington is fighting, the Ohio Valley is dependent on the Great Lakes region for their supplies and their communications. So the French have their region of Canada, what is now Quebec, and they have some forts up there.

And so french supplies, when they come, they come through the great Lakes and into those forts, and then they make with their way down the allegheny river and the Ohio river to Fort Duquesne. And so he realizes, well, we don't have to do all this forest fighting if we just use our superior navy and cut them off. In this Great Lakes region, they're not going to be able to get supplies and communications down to Fort Duquesne, and they're going to be forced to leave. So that's exactly what happens. They cut off communications, they cut off supplies.

That's why when they build this new road and the French see them coming, they just take off before they even find a battle. They are low on food, they're low on supplies, and they have no communication, so they don't know what's happening, so they don't want to stick around and fight. Now, look, Washington might have been right, you know, concerning the two roads. Maybe the Braddock road was way better than the new road they built, and if the French actually had been able to stand and fight, it would have gone horribly for the British. That doesn't really matter.

He's got egg on his face. The strategy that he said wouldn't work. It did work. It doesn't really matter that it's, you know, for a reason that has nothing to do with him. It's still just embarrassing.

Flexner writes, after five arduous years as Virginia's leading soldier, George Washington returned in January of 1759 to civilian life with bitterness, resentful of injustice, stung with a sense of unmerited failure. He was not to serve again in any military capacity for 17 years. Okay? And that was something I didn't realize going in, that George Washington was only a soldier for five years, and then there's a 17 year gap on his resume before he comes back. But in the meantime, he goes back to Mount Vernon, which is his estate, and he lives the life of a country gentleman farmer.

And he's quite good. He's good socially. He's good politically, and he's good at just the business side of farming. He uses powers of observation and extensive record keeping and experimentation to improve his yield. He has a fairly simple but very analytical approach.

So, for example, one visitor to Mount Vernon talks about his operations and says everything he does is by method of system. He keeps a journal where he records everything. He is a model of the highest perfection. So what does it actually mean? So, for example, he takes soil from six different parts of his estate, up on the hills, down in the valleys, over here, over there, different corners, different areas, and he pots them all.

And then he plants four different kinds of crops in all these different soils, and then he observes them to see what grows best where. So, you know, maybe hay grows really well in this soil, and tobacco grows really well in this soil, and corn grows really well in this soil. And so then he shuffles where he's growing what, based on what responds best to certain soils. So that gives you an idea of the type of analysis that he's doing to make sure he's getting the best yield. He lives a quite simple but very disciplined life.

Here's what Chernow writes about his routine. He said Washington benefited from the unvarying regularity of his daily routine and found nothing monotonous about it. Like many thrifty farmers, he rose before sunrise and accomplished much of his work while others still slept. Prior to breakfast, he shuffled about in dressing gown and slippers and passed an hour or two in his library, reading and handling correspondence. He also devoted time to private prayers.

Before Billy Lee, that's one of his slaves, laid out his clothes, brushed his hair, and tied it in a queue. Washington liked to examine his stables before breakfast, inspect his horses, and issue instructions to the grooms. Then he had an unchanging breakfast of corn cakes, tea, and honey. You know, one thing you can see is that George Washington is a man of routine. His routine was very important to him to function optimally when he was at home.

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So again, go to try miracle.com takeover and use code takeover to claim free towels. And 40% off. Thank you to miracle made for sponsoring this episode. So Washington, he's really analytical, but one thing that he can't wrap his mind around is the price that is paid for his tobacco. And that's because he has a single buyer.

So you have the single merchant from England who comes to basically all the tobacco growers in Virginia, and they sail up these rivers and they basically can dictate to the Virginians what price they are going to buy the tobacco at. It's classic power law stuff. And so George Washington is not happy with this at all. He's always writing to them, being like, why is it this amount? I feel like I'm not getting paid enough.

And they have cornered the market information, so there's not really anything he can do. And rather than accepting this, George Washington says, you know what? I'm going to try something different. I'm going to experiment with different crops. And so he starts growing wheat and corn.

And one of the reasons that that's good is because he can sell to local buyers. And so he's able to see where prices are at, what people are buying for, why the prices are what they are. And so he starts growing wheat and corn, selling it to other american farmers. And that is much more profitable than his tobacco business had been. He increases the profitability of the farm quite a bit.

You know, he had been in debt. Basically every farmer was in debt. You read about these really wealthy Virginians, even people like Thomas Jefferson, are just chronically in debt to british lenders. And Washington was on that path as well. You know, he comes back from the army, he starts farming.

He's going deeper and deeper into debt to the british banks until he says, no, I'm going to try this new strategy. Start selling locally wheat and corn. And then his debt gets reduced year over year, every single year, as he's able to create this really profitable farm. So he's acquiring more and more land because of this profitability and because he also makes a very intelligent decision. And he gets married to a very wealthy widow named Martha.

She had this huge estate that she had inherited from her now deceased husband. And look, that was a happy coincidence. He didn't marry her for her money necessarily. He loved her. They got along really well.

It was a great and pretty interesting partnership and marriage, but yes. So whereas his previous companion was basically his mom, who always tried to cut him down to size, Martha was very supportive, very loving. They had a very intimate relationship. And she's also a really great partner for his social ambitions. She's a great hostess, and they love to host.

They're very social. They always have people over for dinner. Anytime it's just them at dinner, they talk about how lonely they feel because they just basically almost always have other people over. He also inherits two stepchildren, and they're part of his social life as well. He's a great father to them.

He likes playing with them, and they loved him very much, but they're very social. And he has this unique approach to making friends and developing relationships. As he's hosting all these people at his farm. Heres what Ron Chernow writes. He says Washington was an excellent host of a certain sort.

He was congenial without being deeply personal, friendly without being familiar, and perfected a cool sociability that distanced him from people even as it invited them closer. He never felt the urge to impress people. As John Marshall wrote, he had no pretensions to the vivacity which fascinates and to the wit which dazzles. He knew the value of silence, largely kept opinions to himself, and seldom committed a faux pas. Okay, so he is still friendly, but now he's kind of reserved as well.

He doesn't disclose more than is necessary. Chernow also writes later, quote, his reserve, if not impenetrable, was by no means lightly surrendered. He was habitually cautious with new people and only gradually opened up as they passed a series of loyalty tests. Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, he advised his nephew, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, he said, because Washington never invited people readily into his confidence.

It had a nearly irresistible appeal when he did so. He uses this popularity and these social connections to create a political career. So he joins the House of Burgess, which is the lower house of the Virginia parliament, essentially the House of Representatives, or the House of Commons in the american or british system, his approach is to only speak on important matters. So often he doesn't even show up for debates or voting on matters. He only shows up and speaks out on things that he thinks are critical.

He revealed his attitude about this in advice he gave to his nephew in 1787. He wrote, speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents and in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject. Never exceed a decent warmth, and submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial style, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust. Okay, so I like that approach.

Speak simply and powerfully about only important topics, and that way people get used to taking what you have to say very seriously. Chernow writes, there was a gravitas about the young Washington, a seriousness of purpose and a fierce determination to succeed that made him stand out in any crowd. And I like that description. I actually think that word seriousness really captures one of the things that made Washington so significant. There's an essay by an investor named Kathryn Boyle that I really like.

It's called on seriousness, and she says that something that we lack in today's day and age is seriousness. Here's a quote from her article. She says, seriousness is the maniacal belief in a project greater than oneself. It's anchored by a type of sacrifice and solemnity that went out of vogue in the United States at the end of the Second World War. If you're pinpointing a time when America became less serious, it's around the same time when America began sacrificing communal responsibility in favor of individual pursuits.

Though it's unfair to pin everything on the boomers, the concept of finding oneself did not exist during the german blitz. She goes on to identify irony as the antithesis of seriousness. I don't think irony was as much a concern during Washington's time. For him, the antithesis probably would have been something more like frivolity. Regardless, irony is what we have to worry about today.

And I like this quote that Katharine Boyle gives from David Foster Wallace. This is great. Listen to this. Irony and cynicism were just what the US hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That's what made the early postmodernists great artists.

The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them, so we can see the flaws in hypocrisies and duplicates the virtuous always triumph. Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father. Sure, sarcasm, parody, absurdism, and irony are great ways to strip off stuff's mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked and once the unpleasant realities, the irony diagnoses, are revealed and diagnosed, then what do we do? Irony is useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion debunking in the US has been done and redone.

Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady is bunk, and just say no is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism becomes an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working towards redeeming what's wrong because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving.

There's some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who's come to love his cage. Okay, so I. I think that's another great lesson from Washington. He was serious about his commitment to the United States. He was sincere about his desire to serve his fellow citizens.

He was sincere in his military service. Even in an age that was sincere, he was particularly sincere and earnest. One other thing to talk about is George Washington's philosophy and religious beliefs, which he was developing a lot during this period of time. People often refer to George Washington as a deist, and a deist is someone who believes that there was a God who created the universe, but that he doesn't interfere in human affairs. And I think that's kind of accurate.

But George Washington was not a committed deist in the way that, say, Thomas Jefferson was. Like, Thomas Jefferson really got deep into the philosophy, and he rejected the divinity of Jesus Christ. I don't think George Washington really rejected these religious ideas so much as he just didn't care. Like, he was a man of action, and it just wasn't interesting to him. There's a great quote.

Someone had sent him a sermon and said that it was extraordinary and he should read it, and he sent it to someone else. And here's what he said. I presume it is good coming all the way from New Hampshire, but do not vouch for it, not having read a word of it myself. So, like, you know, he went to, he believed in church as a social practice. He didn't go to church any more than was strictly necessary for him.

He was just very practical, and I don't think he thought much about this stuff. Flexner writes, quote, in 1793, Washington thus summarized the religious philosophy he was evolving during his Mount Vernon years. How happenings would terminate is known only to the great ruler of events. And confiding in his wisdom and goodness, we may safely trust the issue to him without perplexing ourselves to seek for that which is beyond human ken, only taking care to perform the parts assigned to us in a way that reason and our own consciences approve of. So those were his religious beliefs in terms of his philosophy.

He had this stoic detachment, this acceptance of fate. He called it providence. And actually, his philosophy was very similar to that of Napoleon Bonaparte. Both were extremely brave. Both had this stoic, laconic acceptance of whatever happened.

Whatever happened was the will of destiny for Napoleon and of providence for Washington. They used the two different words in almost exactly the same way, and it created the same effect, the same philosophical outlook. You know, somewhat paradoxically, this acceptance of providence or destiny in both cases did not lead either man to be resigned to events, but to be extremely active. I think that sort of Zen acceptance of events combined with that determination to do everything in one's power within the course of that cosmic or divine will, leads to very powerful outcomes. I just think that's so interesting that they saw it the same way, that there is this great providence, this great destiny, and that we can't control it and we should accept it.

But within that context, we should do everything that we can to make sure that we are performing our part as admirably within that philosophy. Washington wrote, it is assuredly better to go laughing than crying through the rough journey of life. And so, again, I think that describes this sort of detachment, right, of, it's a rough journey. There's not too much we can do about it, but you have to go through it anyway, so you might as well laugh. So, for 17 years, that is Washington's course.

He is a gentleman farmer. He is extremely successful, he's renowned, he's well known, he's well liked, but his life has no particular course. It doesn't seem like he's destined for anything. Earth shaking. And then in the early 1770s, you start to hear rumblings of revolution.

I won't tell you the full history of the american revolution, but this essentially starts because of some taxes that the British were imposing. It's funny, they were actually lowering their taxes, but the taxes were so widely flouted, the Americans were paying essentially zero in taxes. They were just. They were smugglers. They weren't paying any of this stuff.

And so the british government said, look, we're going to lower these taxes, but we're going to step up enforcement a ton, and you guys are going to actually have to start paying. And so this makes the Americans mad because it is effectively a tax race. And also it starts to get them thinking, well, how come we don't get a vote on any of this? How come parliament gets to vote? What happens to us?

It gets the rallying cry of taxation without representation, which people don't like. And so anyways, this revolutionary fervor starts to develop. Now, Washington's natural disposition was to be pro british. Remember, he's mixed up with the fairfaxes. They're good friends of his.

And their claim to all this land in Virginia was based on royal decree and was opposed by many locals. So he has his lot kind of in with the Fairfax because he's got a natural disposition to be pro British. For that reason, he had also served in the british army and had lobbied hard to be a part of, you know, not just the Virginia militia, but to be considered an actual british soldier. So for those reasons, you know, he should be a loyalist, you would think. But he actually goes along with the revolution.

He hesitates to make up his mind at first, but there is another local farmer who he's friends with named George Mason, and he has these conversations with George Mason, and that does a lot to persuade him to the revolutionary side. And so one of the first things he does that shows his pro independence turn is that he and George Mason together draw up a proposal for a sort of boycott of british goods. As some of this stuff is happening, and they propose it to the Virginia legislature, and it is adopted, it doesn't really work out. It wasn't super well designed. Boycotts are always hard to carry out, but it shows signs that he's thinking about this stuff and he's willing to put his name toward the cause of independence.

Things really start to heat up in Massachusetts. It was really Massachusetts that kind of dragged the rest of the colonies into this revolution. It was New England in general, but especially Massachusetts was the center of revolutionary foment. And so there start to be serious conflicts between Massachusetts and british soldiers, and this really starts to heat up. So they call together a continental congress.

So they asked for representatives from every colony to form this little congress to talk about, okay, what are we going to do? How are we going to respond to british aggression? What are our demands? You know, how are we going to navigate this diplomatic crisis? At first, this congress is not called together specifically for declaring independence, but they just want to figure out what to do.

And as they meet in this continental congress, things continue to go downhill in Massachusetts. And now, for the first time, you're starting to have actual battles between british forces and kind of locally organized militias. And so everyone can kind of see we need some sort of force. They would prefer still a negotiated settlement if they can come to one. But in the meantime, they need to prepare for independence.

And then as the situation deteriorates, they realize, okay, actually, it's more than likely that we're going to have to fight, that we're going to have to declare independence. And so these forces are going to be really important. Washington is elected to the Continental Congress, is a member there, and does not want to be commander in chief of these forces. So Chernow writes, no desire or insinuation of mine. Washington was to write, drew the command his way.

Indeed, he seems actively to have tried to avoid the command, inducing his friend and fellow Virginia delegate Isaac Pemberton to argue publicly for another candidate. Despite the fact that Washington is actively lobbying not to be the commander in chief of continental troops, he is, in fact, elected commander in chief. He's elected because he's the only one, a, with the experience, b, who's from Virginia. Again, New England was the ones that really want to be independent, and so they have to offer some concessions to the southerners if they want them to come along. And so one of those things is, hey, let's let a southerner lead this army.

And also Washington. You know, the fact that he didn't want it and he had this impartiality made him really attractive to a lot of people. There's actually another consideration, which was the wealthiest people in the colonies did not want independence and were not on board with this movement. And that actually disturbed a lot of members of the continental Congress. They wanted this to be, you know, not a rabble rousing, low class revolution.

They wanted this to be something that united all Americans. And so there was really concern that the wealthiest Americans were not on board with this revolution. Now, George Washington was very wealthy, and somehow his wealth got kind of exaggerated at the Continental Congress. There were rumors flying that he was the wealthiest man in Virginia. That was not true, but he was very wealthy.

And so they loved George Washington for that reason, too, that he was a sign that, look, we can get some of these very wealthiest people in America to support the revolution as well. And so, you know, there's just a mix of factors. People loved George Washington, and so it starts to become clear he's the guy. And so on the actual day, here's what happens. Quote.

Washington, who knew what was likely to take place, stayed away. Probably he sat alone in his lodgings. His name, so Adams believed, was put in nomination by Thomas Johnson of Maryland. The official minutes read resolved that a general be appointed to command all the continental forces raised or to be raised for the defense of american liberty, that $500 a month be allowed for his pay and expenses. The Congress then proceeded to the choice of a general by ballot when George Washington, Esquire was unanimously selected.

In all history, no general had ever been more strangely and momentously commissioned. Far from stepping to the head of a constituted force, the commander in chief was the only man, no rifleman having yet been enlisted, actually to be enrolled in the continental army. Not by any direct vote or broad decision had Congress brought the 13 colonies into the war then being waged in New England. But by the act of elevating Washington, there was no nation to fight for. The Declaration of Independence lay more than a year in the future.

There was, except for intangibles, grievances, and resented atrocities. Only Washington. I think that is an amazing fact. Just imagine that there was no army. There was no nation.

There was no constitution. There was no declaration of independence. There was nothing. There was only George Washington and an army to come at a future date. And so for a time, George Washington stood alone against the greatest empire on the earth.

Chernow writes of this moment, George Washington was already becoming more than a mere man. He was the face and form of an amorphous cause. As Gary Willis has noted, before there was a nation, before there was any symbol of that nation, a flag, a constitution, a national seal, there was Washington. Washington is somewhat horrified. He's not sure that he can do it.

He's not sure what the future will bring. He wrote to a friend, burwell Bassett, I can answer for but three things. A firm belief in the justice of our cause, close attention in the prosecution of it, and the strictest integrity. If these cannot supply the place of ability and experience, the cause will suffer, and more than probable my character along with it. I am now embarked on a tempestuous ocean from whence perhaps no friendly harbor is to be found.

Found. He would turn out to be right about that.

So tune in next time to hear about the coming storm, the revolution, and George Washingtons presidency after. Spoiler alert, America wins. But before we go, a few takeaways, just a few reminders of things that we talked about. Number one, be a serious person. Take yourself seriously.

Believe in something. Don't mask everything with irony. Have the courage to be sincere. Number two, decisiveness and speed. Those are hallmarks of Washington's approach.

Number three, you have to understand the broader context of what you are involved in. That comes from some of Washington's mistakes early on when he did not. So don't make the same mistakes as Washington and try to understand more than just your part of what you're involved in. Number four, be careful with your words and what you speak on. That was when Washington secrets all of his words carried a huge weight of significance.

And that really increases your impact when you can do that. Next, have physical presence. You know, I am not a physical specimen like George Washington was. Few of us are. But you can still work on it, right?

You can work out. You can improve your fitness. You can improve your looks. You can dress extremely well as George Washington did. You can do whatever you can to improve and increase your physical presence.

Next point, take inspiration from the greats. If you want to be like George Washington, keep listening to how to take over the world. He took inspiration from Caesar, from Alexander the great, and from some of those greats who were nearer to his own time and place. Next, make the right connections by being reliable and friendly. And that's all I got for you.

I'll see you on part two. Until next time, thank you for listening to how to take over the world.

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The Making of George Washington

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Episode Chapters

1: Early Life and Education

2: Military Beginnings

3: Character and Leadership

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