Original subtitles

Turn and run, you cowards!

Washington is, without question,

the greatest hero and leader in American history,

but he's a stranger.

I, George Washington, do solemnly swear...

People see him more as a monument than a person.

But you can't understand him

unless you acknowledge that he was human.

That I will faithfully execute the office

of President of the United States.

And when we understand the man behind the myth,

it actually becomes empowering and inspiring for us,

because he's not as distant.

Long live George Washington, President of the United States.

When I look at Washington, I see a leader.

He could have been king, but that was not him.

He wasn't interested in power. He had power.

The world has never seen the last stage of perfection

to which human nature is capable of attaining.

Hear, hear!

I see a man who gave himself to service.

We must give them something to fight for, something inspiring.

Something happened to Washington

that made him think... "I have to do this."

I see a husband. -It is exquisite.

And I see a slaveholder.

American history is not a fairy tale,

so I think it's a mistake to think of him

as entirely virtuous.

If we truly want to know that man,

then we have to look at everything, warts and all.

Washington's not a frozen image.

He changes from moment to moment in his life.

He evolves.

Despite all his flaws, Washington was the one man

that made this country possible.

What makes this a nation?

Two things-the Constitution and George Washington.

Washington was not born great.

He took a journey toward greatness.

Keep moving.

We march through the night if necessary.

In 1754, the man who will one day become

the father of his country is an American colonist

wearing British red.

He's in command for the first time

on a mission to serve his king, George II.

Lieutenant Colonel Washington, sir. Over the ridge,

the Half King and his men, sir. -Good work. Fall in line.

Washington is the colonel of Virginia Regiment by age 22.

He hasn't led men in battle at all.

He has no experience.

Washington's here to help the British Empire

defend its claim on a strategic piece

of the frontier.

The forks where three rivers meet

will one day be called Pittsburgh,

but now the Ohio country is land claimed

by both Britain and France,

and the native nations who live there.

There are many different tribes in this area.

There's a very complicated political alignment

between various tribes and between the French

and the-and the British.

They wanted traders to come in because traders brought

lots of things that Indian people wanted and needed.

But what Indian people he Ohio country wanted

was to preserve their own independence,

and they wanted to preserve their own land.

And to assure

their own control of the region, it's always better

to be able to play off the different European nations

against each other.

Washington's goal is to reach the forks before the French do

and convince them to leave the Ohio country peacefully.

But in this land of shifting alliances,

his only chance to succeed is to secure the help

of the Half King, an ambassador of the six Iroquois nations,

who at this point is a friend to Britain.

The Half King is an accomplished warrior,

and he's now a statesman and a diplomat.

This was his world,

and Washington was coming into it.

You English are welcome here.

We have pushed on for many miles.

My men need rest.

Get them water.

We have meat.

Thank you.

We received word on our way here-

the French have beaten us to the forks.

They're already underway.

They are much closer. -Closer?

A few miles. I will show you.

How well armed are they?

Have they made clear their intentions?

These French, they have bad hearts.

They are here to fight. -What makes you say-

You wait, and the French may come first.

Then...

my people will not help you.

We have endured a grueling march.

My men need rest.

If it is as you say, I will choose a course of action.

Only a handful of non-Indian guys

knew enough to negotiate the treacherous waters

of Indian politics and international politics

in the Ohio country,

and George Washington was not one of them.

You will lead us to them.

We know the place.

Washington is trying to make a career for himself

in the military,

and he feels like if he fails on this mission

that his career is over.

As a young man, 21, 22, he really wanted

to earn a name for himself.

To understand where

George Washington's intense ambition comes from,

it's really helpful to look at his family history.

Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done,

on Earth as it is in Heaven.

The adversity for him begins with the death of his father.

He was 11 years old.

He's now the head of his household,

and so George is supposed to be educated in London

like his two older half-brothers.

That's not happening anymore.

Washington as a young man is sort of second-tier gentry.

He's not one of the great, wealthy families of Virginia.

He was very sensitive about the fact

that he didn't have advanced schooling.

The education of George Washington

was experience rather than schooling.

John Adams went to Harvard.

Thomas Jefferson went to William & Mary.

George Washington went to war.

There must be 20.

32.

We do outnumber them.

They do not know we're here.

Surprise is ours.

My order- -This is no time for waiting.

You must see it.

I see the opportunity.

This is his first major command.

He doesn't really know what he's doing,

but he does not want to go back to Virginia empty-handed.

No war has yet been declared

between France and Great Britain,

but all it's going to take is one spark

to set the tinderbox alight.

I will give the command.

Fire!

Charge!

Washington almost immediately loses control.

He's become a spectator.

Stop! Do not shoot!

Aah!

This is the moment that causes the French and Indian War.

This is the war that led to the American Revolution.

When the Half King kills Jumonville,

the French commander, in front of his eyes,

what had looked like a victory

now looks like a tragic fiasco.

Jumonville's mission was the same as Washington's-

send a message to the competition

to clear out of the Ohio country.

The letter that the French are trying to deliver claimed

that they were actually a diplomatic party

delivering a message

to the British governor of Virginia.

So Washington essentially attacked a diplomatic party.

Take the survivors as prisoners.

Treat them fairly.

For it's time we departed.

This is an era that's very strict

about following the rules of warfare.

George Washington's just breached those rules.

It's one of the most shocking moments of his life-

a moment where he could get in very big trouble indeed.

"Honorable sir.

"I shall begin with assuring you that nothing was farther

from my intention..."

Washington wastes no time scrambling

to protect his reputation.

On the day after the battle,

he writes three separate letters to his superior,

Virginia Lieutenant Governor, Robert Dinwiddie.

"These officers pretended they were coming on an embassy,

"but the absurdity of this pretext is too glaring.

They were sent as spies."

His first instinct is to justify what he did,

to suggest that it was the Frenchman's fault

not being clear that he was on a diplomatic mission.

"The sense of the Half King is they designed to come to us

in a hostile manner."

"If the French prisoners tell you any differently,

don't believe them. We had to do this."

Then he follows up almost immediately

with another letter to this effect.

"Since writing the other letter,

"I have still stronger presumption,

indeed, almost confirmation, that they were sent as spies."

The notion is this is a man who can't lie-

you know, Washington never lies. Of course he lies.

He's an ambitious young guy who overreaches on occasion,

and, um, he's lucky.

Some of these things could have derailed him.

He's lucky that he didn't get killed.

When he's young, he's undisciplined,

and he doesn't quite understand the ways of the world,

and so he writes letters to Dinwiddie

that he later very much regrets.

Taking care of your reputation-

for Washington, that was exceedingly important.

Washington wants to live up to the values instilled in him

as a young boy growing up on a Virginia tobacco farm.

George Washington, like Barack Obama,

like Gerald Ford, was raised by a single mother,

and that's often overlooked in how that impacted him.

Come on, George.

Yes, Mother, coming.

Mary Ball Washington was a strong woman

who was very focused, very business-like.

She was ambitious. She was savvy.

She managed her estate very carefully.

Heaven knows how she handled all of that, but she did.

And she played such an important role in his life

to give him that structure of character, of competence,

and believing in yourself.

She passed to Washington

a very kind of a hard-headed realism,

teaching him strict self-discipline

and being very tough on himself.

She doesn't give him time to putter around

and waste the years dreaming.

He learned pretty early

he was gonna have to depend upon himself.

I think he wanted to separate himself from his childhood,

and he had the strength of will to do it,

partly because he saw what it took his mother to survive.

Washington's pinned his hopes on advancing

up the ranks in the military,

even though colonists can only serve in the provincial forces

and aren't eligible for commissions.

He's determined to become a British officer.

Washington's trying to impress his higher-ups

within the British Empire.

He hopes it's gonna go on up the chain

and will reach powerful people in London

who will be impressed with what he's doing.

But George Washington recognizes

that the showdn with the French has only just begun.

They're certainly not going to take this defeat lying down.

Fort Duquesne is not that far away.

He knows that there are hundreds more French troops there,

and they're going to come after him.

As Washington prepares for the counterattack,

he's reinforced by 100 British regulars,

giving him a total of 400 men to face the French revenge.

He builds a fort that he names Fort Necessity

to suit the desperation, as he sees it, of the moment.

It's about 50 feet in diameter.

I mean, that's like the size of your lawn.

He's put it in the worst possible position.

He has not cleared the field of fire.

The French and their Native American allies

will be able to fire down into the fort with impunity.

This is not really a fort.

It looks much more like a death trap.

But he's still kind of cocky,

despite everything that he's gone through.

And he's very confident that he's going to succeed.

"I shall expect every hour to be attacked

"and by unequal numbers, which I must withstand.

Let them come what hour they will."

Fire!

And reload!

Keep your positions!

When the ex-French and their Native allies strike...

Aah!

...they hit with overwhelming firepower.

Hold your line!

Aah!

Washington and his men are essentially trapped.

Uhh!

The French have total control over the situation.

And fire!

Reload!

They're determined to punish Washington...

to embarrass him...

and possibly to kill him.

Hold your line!

Fire!

And reload!

Hours into an assault by the French

and their Native American allies,

22-year-old George Washington...

Keep your positions!

...is confronting the cost of his inexperience in command.

Aah!

Hold your line!

Turn back and fight!

The men themselves,

they have no reputations to defend.

So when it gets to a point of crisis...

...they're not going to listen to him.

Hold your ground.

Keep your position, soldier!

Uhh!

The powder is wet. Their guns are failing.

Another few minutes,

and George Washington would have been dead.

And then all of a sudden, there's an extraordinary

fortuitous opportunity to end that fight.

Hold your fire!

The chance for a parlay to end this battle

is a saving grace.

Well, the French don't want the full-fledged war.

Allowing Washington and his soldiers

to live and to go back to Virginia,

having been embarrassed by defeat,

is the best possible result of this confrontation.

While Washington and his men survive,

the price is signing an official surrender.

Washington doesn't speak French.

Read it to me.

"As our intention had never been to trouble, uh...

"uh, the peace, uh, between, uh,

the peace and the good harmony between the two princes..."

His translator is a Dutchman

who speaks some French and English,

but not enough to alert his commander

to exactly what he's signing.

"But only to revenge the killing,

which has been done on one of our officers."

The documents of surrender demand

that Washington confess

that he has assassinated Ensign Jumonville,

to being a war criminal.

"We grant the English commander to, uh,

return with his garrisons peaceably into his own country."

He's in over his head.

He never expected that he would have to surrender,

and so he's ill-prepared for that particular moment.

Take it.

Washington's name at this point will be

associated with ignominy and embarrassment,

not with grit, feats of military accomplishment.

It will take months for Washington to learn the truth

about what he signed.

In the meantime, he's determined

to make sure this defeat doesn't threaten his dreams

of becoming a British officer.

Washington writes an account

that appears in the colonial newspapers,

and in that whole account,

there's not one word of surrender.

"The French called to parlay.

"We agreed that each side should retire,

that we should march away with all the honors of war."

Of course, it didn't happen that way at all.

And, yet, he becomes a folk hero

in the eyes of many Virginians.

He had a sort of cunning

and a kind of understanding about how things operated,

how society operated, how the world operated

that I think served him well.

Washington is a tremendously savvy political figure.

He's great at protecting his reputation,

and he has friends who know how to do it.

Governor Dinwiddie and the men of the House of Burgesses

pass a resolution thanking Washington

for his good conduct.

They wipe out

much of the embarrassment and humiliation

that Washington had gotten himself into.

But the farther you go from Williamsburg, Virginia,

the less of a hero he is.

Eventually, the French will publish

these articles of surrender.

They will announce to the world

this young American officer has confessed

to assassinating a French officer.

If you think about it, "assassin" in English and French

are pretty much the same, but he was desperate.

I think he was afraid.

And yet Washington denied

that interpretation of the capitulation

for the rest of his life.

"That we were willfully or ignorantly deceived

"by our interpreter in regard to the word 'assassination',

I do aver and will to my dying moment."

In London, the Lords in charge are saying,

"If we let this behavior stand, we'll lose all North America.

"We need professional British soldiers.

e need professional officers.

We can't rely on people like this guy Washington."

As a result, British command

reorganizes the Virginia Regiment

and makes its American officers, regardless of rank,

subordinate to even the lowest of British officers.

The changes not only dash

Washington's hopes of advancement,

they effectively demote him

from lieutenant colonel to captain.

Washington resigns in protest.

Washington resigned, and he writes this great letter,

in which he says, "How could a man allow himself

"to be demoted for no good reason?

"It was from the advice of my friends and my own honor

"that I declined, not because I didn't wish

to be in the military anymore."

"I shall have the consolation of knowing

"that I have hitherto stood the heat and brunt of the day

"and that I have the thanks of my country

for the services I have rendered it."

He's got to be wondering if he has a future.

He's convinced that he's never going to command troops

in action again.

Seven months after quitting the Virginia Regiment,

George Washington is back in uniform,

this time as a volunteer.

The American frontier is engulfed

in a war for control of the continent,

and the Ohio country is ground zero.

It means we're not alone.

Be on your guard.

Despite his missteps,

Washington is now one of Virginia's

most experienced frontier fighters,

and he's been tapped to serve as an aide

to British General Edward Braddock.

Braddock's a veteran commander,

but a veteran of European wars.

And so he doesn't know what he's doing

once he gets into North America,

which is a different environment.

The British, they didn't know how to fight

in the forest conditions.

Washington is willing to go as an aide-de-camp

because it carries some respect,

and Braddock apparently gave him some indication

that he could expect a military commission.

Braddock and 2.400 British regulars

are cutting a road through more than 100 miles

of dense wilderness to move scores

of cannon, horses, and men into place

for an attack on Fort Duquesne,

the stronghold the French completed at the forks

after Washington's defeat at Fort Necessity.

The forks of the Ohio

were seen as almost the key to the continent.

Whichever imperial power controlled that

controlled access to the interior of the continent.

I do not have time for this.

Break down another wagon. -Yes, sir.

General Braddock, another delay?

Cannot be helped.

Perhaps if we did not stop to level every molehill

or erect a bridge over every brook.

It is this terrain of yours. -Sir...

But we shall level it out yet.

Sir, with respect, I have fought the Indians.

Our line is too extended.

They could cut our forces in two before we could even

martial our defense.

These savages may be a formidable enemy

for your raw American militia, but upon the King's regular

and disciplined troops, it is impossible

that they will make an impression.

Of course, sir. -We have nothing to fear.

Head out and inspect the rear guard.

Report back to me within the hour.

Sir.

Over the next five weeks, the army pushes slowly

toward Fort Duquesne, traveling in a long column

with Washington and Braddock just a quarter mile

behind the advance guard.

Once they crossed the Monongahela River,

he thinks, "Okay, that's job done.

We'll just sweep the fort apart."

Suddenly, chaos erupts.

French Canadian troops have hit the front

of the British column.

The advance guard. We are under attack.

Forward! -Make ready!

Washington warned the Redcoats were vulnerable to an ambush.

Forward!

Now he has to face the hellfire.

23-year-old George Washington

and the British force he's advising

are caught in an ambush.

Stay in line!

The British are trapped, surrounded by enemy fire-

the French from the front and their Native American allies

from the tree line on both flanks.

Hold fire!

Aah! -Uhh!

Get back in line!

As an aide-de-camp, he's not in charge of anything.

Look to your officers!

He can deliver messages. He is responding

to the orders of General Braddock.

But he doesn't have any troops under his command.

Hold the line!

Uhh!

Washington has two horses shot out from under him,

three bullet holes through his coat,

but he's not scratched.

Where's General Braddock? Where is General Braddock?!

General Braddock?

Within a very short period of time

every single British officer

has been either killed or wounded.

General Braddock, sir.

We need to get you to safety.

Leave me. -But, sir...

Save those men that can be saved. Order a withdrawal.

We can get you clear. -Order a withdrawal.

But to whom am I to relay the command, sir?

The command... is yours.

This is the opportunity

that Washington's been waiting for-

to prove himself in command.

In this moment of almost complete breakdown,

he is able to compose himself and to give the orders

that would enable this army to start its retreat.

Fall back! Fall back!

Fall back! Fall back!

Washington organizes a rear guard

to provide cover while he mounts a general retreat,

narrowly saving Braddock's force from annihilation.

But the British battle losses are severe.

In just three hours of fighting,

nearly 1.000 of some 1.500 troops

are killed or wounded, including 63 officers.

"The dead, the dying,

"the groans, lamentations, and cries along the road

of the wounded for help..."

"...were enough to pierce a heart of adamant."

Washington's never seen anything like this.

I mean, this is destruction of human life

on a colossal scale.

Nobody who is ever going into battle

comes out of the battle the same way.

When you see blood in front of you,

when you see body parts laying all over,

you realize this is no longer a game. This is the worst.

This is the worst.

When he's young, he wants to be in battle.

It's romantic. It's where he can prove his valor.

And those things sort of fall away

after the Battle of Monongahela.

He will never be again that naive young man

who sees war as an adventure.

In the aftermath of the battle,

Washington's family receives a report of his death.

Days later, he writes his brother.

"As I have heard a circumstantial account

"of my death and dying speech.

"But by the all-powerful dispensations of providence,

"I have been protected beyond

all human probability and expectation."

Washington developed the notion

that somebody was looking over him,

that he should have died, and he attributes this

not to God but to providence.

He believes that because those forces have saved him,

that history's on his side.

We should all be grateful

that he was the one who had the luck.

What would have happened to us if he had been killed

by one of those bullets?

With Braddock's death, Washington's most promising path

to a British officer's commission is thwarted.

But he emerges from the battle a war hero.

Newspapers and broadsides and tavern talk

throughout America become filled with discussions of Washington.

"Do you know that it was an American

who led those troops off the field?"

Washington had joined the Braddock campaign

with a view to reclaiming, rebuilding his reputation.

Ironically, that happens.

Because one of the things the colonists can take from this

is the unmistakable courage of George Washington.

At that stage, the Virginians need a hero,

and he's the available candidate.

Would you humble me with a dance?

It would be my pleasure.

Watching Washington in public settings,

everybody is rapt because they have not seen anybody

with his size, his strength.

Washington is tall for his time. He's around 6'2",

the look of an natural athlete, someone you would see

on the basketball court today or the football field.

First impression is, "Oh, my God.

This guy is impressive."

Historians are always talking about how great he was

on the dance floor, in the ballroom,

and all the women write about it all the time.

Later on, Abigail Adams, when she writes

about seeing George Washington for the first time,

I mean, it could be in a romance novel.

"The gentleman and soldier look agreeably blended in him.

"He's a temple, sacred by birth

and built by hands divine."

The thing about George Washington

was his self-control.

It wasn't as if he didn't have emotion.

Underneath him were seething real passions that gave

a crackle, an intensity to his physical presence.

It added to his charisma.

Thank you.

It doesn't take a lot to see that this is a human being

who is a compressed spring that's about ready

to release itself onto the American scene.

As the French and Indian War intensifies on the frontier...

...he'll get his chance.

The Colonies need a leader to stem the carnage.

And the name on everyone's lips...

...is George Washington.

By the spring of 1756,

the American frontier is a war zone,

as the French deploy their Native American allies

to ramp up attacks on British settlers.

The destruction of Braddock's army is

such a powerful blow that there's a real skittishness

amongst the British.

So what's happening is that the British frontier

is being rolled back.

There's a huge highway into the heart of settlement.

That road that's built to attack Fort Duquesne

now is unprotected.

There's no troops there, and so they're unable,

really, to stop Native American incursions.

Hundreds of people are dying.

Hundreds of people are being taken captive.

This is just sheer terror.

And that's what Washington has to deal with.

There is no order,

no way to predict where they will strike next.

I could have a thousand more men,

and it would make no difference.

Washington's been lured back to the ontier

by Governor Dinwiddie

and is now a colonel in the Virginia Regiment.

He's tasked with protecting more than 300 miles

of rugged terrain,

and he has fewer than 1.200 untrained and ill-equipped men

that he now has to make into soldiers.

Look at them.

No discipline at all.

And we've had two more desertions last week.

This must change.

After the Battle of the Monongahela,

Washington begins to think about the fundamentals

of running a military force.

And the lesson that we as Americans

need to learn is that we need to be more professional.

And so he knew what it was to have discipline

in an organization,

and he was not a softie. He was a disciplinarian.

He would have people punished.

He's always watching to see whether you're on time

and whether you're working hard.

If you're in the military unit and you're a deserter,

even if he knows you and likes you,

he has no compunction about stringing you up,

no second thoughts.

"I luckily caught two deserters.

"James Thomas, one of them, always behaved himself

"with great sobriety, honesty, and diligence.

"The other criminal, Henry Campbell,

"is a most atrocious villain and richly merits

an ignominious death."

He can't tolerate desertion.

For the rest of the soldiers in the unit,

it's a betrayal of your colleagues

on your left and your right,

'cause then they can't count on you.

Halt.

Thomas.

There will be no more offenses.

Washington tempered those severe punishments with mercy.

He would often do it at the last minute

when all the soldiers of that unit

would be there to witness the punishment.

Proceed.

You're sending the signal to the soldiers

who didn't desert that our commander

is a merciful commander.

Just don't do this sort of thing.

He's a tough taskmaster,

and he tells you what he wants you to do,

and if you don't do it

just the way he wants you to do it,

he's not happy.

He's not, um, hail-fellow well-met.

He is a man of high standards

and expects you to meet those standards,

and if you don't, it will reflect on him.

Aim.

Fire!

Second row, aim!

Now fire!

Washington is learning how to lead,

and he's learned on the battlefield,

and he's applying those lessons now with the Virginia Regiment.

This musket is everything to you.

Lift up, pull back, and you are ready.

Now let's see you again.

Faster!

Come on, you rabble, faster!

Aim.

And fire!

Better, but we need to be quicker!

This is life and death!

The bayonet.

Detach and fix.

Right. Let's see it.

His command of the Virginia Regiment

is the shaping experience for his role

as a military commander.

It becomes an elite unit

that is like the Rangers or the Special Forces.

The British have to acknowledge-

and they do, openly-

that Washington has created for the first time

in the history of America

a provincial force that is worthy of respect,

that's every bit as good

as what the British put into the field.

And yet he can't seem to get them recognized

as a proper regiment.

He can't get them officers' commissions

in the British established regiments in North America.

He thinks they've earned this.

That Americans should be treated as second class subjects

is anathema to him.

Washington wants to prove to the British

that his regiment is ready for a bigger mission,

what he sees as the only way to get control of the frontier-

an attack on the French stronghold,

Fort Duquesne.

But when his commander Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie

refuses to give him the go-ahead,

Washington's willing to risk anything,

even insubordination.

In his early 20s as a young officer,

he was not at all

the George Washington we think of.

He was stubborn.

He was hasty.

He's the kind of guy

you wouldn't want to go up against

in terms of willpower.

Once he sets his mind to something,

it's going to happen.

Pardon me. Can you tell me where I might find Lord Loudoun?

Colonel George Washington's come to Philadelphia uninvited

to meet the most powerful military man on the continent.

John Campbell, Lord Loudoun, the Scotsman-

he has been appointed commander-in-chief

of British forces in North America,

and he comes to Philadelphia, and George Washington thinks,

"Aha! This is my moment.

"I'm the colonel of the Virginia Regiment.

"I need to convince him

"of all the extraordinary work we've done

and convince him that we need to go on the offensive."

Washington is looking for an acknowledgment

from the British

that Americans are equal members of the empire,

equally worthy of respect.

It's incredibly audacious for Washington,

this junior officer, to come in there

and try to speak to the commander-in-chief

about what their strategy should be.

It would be like a junior officer

going to speak to the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

My Lord.

Your persistence, Colonel Washington,

affords you a few moments.

Be brief.

I have come to discuss affairs in the Ohio country.

With which I am well acquainted.

Of course, my Lord,

but I do feel we are missing an opportunity.

And I fear confusion. From the surface,

it would seem you're about to question

my military strategy.

I would never dare question your abilities, my Lord.

But I know these lands.

I have traveled them, fought upon them.

If we were to launch a direct attack-

Is it a provincial trait to say

that you do not question something

and then proceed to question it?

No, my Lord.

Then let me ask you.

As a self-proclaimed expert on this land,

what is your opinion of our present strategy-

my strategy?

Sound, my Lord.

Then you would do well to mind your orders.

Dismissed.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, my Lord.

Washington is an idealistic young man.

He sees things as they should be.

And he doesn't understand why other people

don't see things the same way.

"To Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie,

"Honorable sir, we can't conceive that being American

"should deprive us

"of the benefits of British subjects.

"We are defending the King's dominion,

"and there can be no sufficient reason given

"why we, who spend our blood and treasure

"in defense of the country,

are not entitled to equal preferment."

And this isn't the overambitious George Washington.

This is a long frustration that had been developing

over a long period of time.

He tries to work his way

through the British political and military bureaucracy

in order to get what he believes is right,

and instead, he finds himself falling into a quicksand pit

as the British stop him from accomplishing

what he wants to accomplish.

More than a year later, the British plot an attack

on Fort Duquesne, using the exact strategy

Washington suggested to Loudoun.

The campaign pushes France to finally abandon its claim

to the Ohio country, ending the fighting

between France and Britain in the region.

But Washington gets neither the credit

nor the officer's commission he was seeking.

His response to that was not to feel

that he had been rejected, but that they were stupid.

They were allegedly his superiors.

He felt superior to them.

Washington resigns.

Never again to wear British colors.

Never to become a British officer.

That dream is dead.

If the British government

had simply said to George Washington,

"You want a commission in the British Army?

"We'll give you a commission

in the British Army."

That might very well have done it,

because then his professional loyalties

would have been with this institution of British Arms.

For him, it was a matter of honor.

And we can date from that moment, I think,

the birth of the rebel George Washington.

His military ambitions behind him,

Washington forges a new path forward.

It begins with a political win-

a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses.

And it continues at the altar.

I will.

And you, Martha, wilt thou obey him?

The marriage to Martha is the single most important event

in his early life, and it makes everything else possible.

...love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health.

I will.

Now I pronounce you husband and wife.

You may kiss the bride.

So not many love stories start with dysentery,

but this one does.

He needed to go to the capital to see a doctor

to get certain medicines, and through that,

he was somehow connected with Martha Custis.

They met a few times. It was a few weeks,

a few months, and then all of a sudden,

she's ordering a dress.

At 27 years old,

Martha was in a unique position in early America.

Her first husband had died, and his male relations had died.

So she had control of a huge estate,

and she didn't have to report to anyone.

She was a catch because of the fortune she brought.

He was a catch because he was a stud.

The union of George the folk hero

and Martha, the wealthy widow,

transforms Washington's fortunes overnight.

He becomes a loving stepfather to Martha's two children-

4-year-old Jackie and 2-year-old Patsy.

And he expands the estate he inherited from his family-

a place called Mount Vernon.

When he first acquires Mount Vernon,

it's about 2.000 acres.

When he dies, it's 8.000 acres, contiguous

along the Potomac River.

Martha brings to the marriage several thousand acres of land

along with 84 enslaved people who make it all run.

In Virginia, the key was to get land,

but land is worthless without labor,

and slavery was the dominant form of labor

in the Atlantic world at that time.

Washington inherited his first slaves as a child.

And over the course of his lifetime,

he's buying and selling enslaved people.

He's growing his wealth-

growing as a farmer, growing as a slaveholder.

George Washington in the 1760s was not necessarily thinking

about posterity or about the future.

That would happen much later in his life.

I believe that he, along with many others,

knew that slavery was wrong.

Yet it was also crucial to financial success.

The Washingtons are now among the Virginia elite.

It's an exclusive club, and they're expected to keep up.

Washington and Martha dress very well.

They dress their servants very well.

They are doing their very best to appear to belong

to Virginia's governing elite, their top 1%.

Hello, dearest. -Hello, husband.

I have something for you.

Oh, George.

It is exquisite.

Not as lovely as the woman who will wear it.

Thank you.

Now... there are letters on your desk.

Always. -Hmm.

With a new family, a growing estate,

and a position of high social standing,

Washington's dreams are beginning to be realized.

What is it?

But the life he's building...

is in jeopardy.

"It might possibly answer very little purpose

"were I to enter into a minute detail

"of the reason that have caused me to fall so much

"in arrears to you.

"Missed chances rather than misconduct

have been the causes of it."

After five years of marriage,

the Washingtons are deeply in debt.

They owe upwards of a quarter million

in today's dollars.

"I shall now beg leave to inform you

"in terms equally sincere and direct

"that it is not in my power to make remittances

"faster than my crops will furnish me with the means.

"It is but an irksome thing to a free mind

to be any ways hampered in debt."

In Virginia society, the vast majority of planters

were relatively cash poor.

They owned their wealth in land.

They owned their wealth in enslaved people,

and then Washington gets paid basically maybe once a year,

as an agriculturalist, maybe twice a year.

The worst fear he has is ruining Martha

and the hopes of Martha's children.

That is good, George.

Calm, measured.

Thank you.

Perhaps next year's crop will fare better.

I cannot continue to balance our fortunes

on a thing as fickle as tobacco.

He grows tobacco and sends tobacco

to his consignor in London,

then that person uses that money

to purchase the items that Washington has requested.

And they charge whatever they want for it,

the same way that they pay you

whatever they want for the tobacco,

and so he's stuck in this... vicious cycle.

No matter how hard he works,

no matter how much tobacco he grows,

it always turns out that he's further in debt.

Even very wealthy planters like Washington

chronically were in debt, and this is critical.

They weren't in debt

to Pennsylvania merchants or New York merchants.

They were in debt to English merchants.

Washington's view is that

the entire planter class of Virginia, him included,

has been caught in this economic trap

that these capitalists over there

are sucking the blood of all of us.

We rotate in a 7-year cycle.

Number one and two will move from tobacco to wheat.

Under pressure from British creditors,

Washington responds by revolutionizing

how Mount Vernon does business.

He's a man of his era. He's an Enlightenment figure.

He thinks that human beings could make the world

a better place than they've inherited,

that we don't have to do things

the same way they've always been done.

Green manures in number 3.

Number 4 and 5 will be gourd seed and corn.

That should produce two or three ears per stalk.

We tend to always think about George Washington

as a president, as a general, but I think that if you

asked him who he was, especially prior to all of that,

he would tell us

he was a Virginian, and he was a farmer.

He becomes a great innovator in agriculture.

He develops the rotation of crops.

He's drawing on a lot of English methods

that are cutting edge at the time,

and he tries to incorporate this into Mount Vernon.

I want all this implemented by the end of the season.

Good.

Now let us check on the progress of the treading barn.

Washington also sells grain and milled flour locally,

pioneering one of America's first homegrown industries.

By the 1770s, his G. Washington brand

is considered one of the finest in the Colonies.

He's transitioning to wheat farming

and ultimately flour production as a way to get out

of the British system, which essentially is stealing

his profits from his point of view.

You know, he imagines a different future,

and that's really the whole experiment

that we end up being a part of in the whole Revolutionary era.

But by far, Washington's greatest opportunity

to build wealth is to redouble his lifelong pursuit

of America's most valuable resource-land.

His ambitions were not particularly political

for a very long time in his life.

But he always had a strong sense of himself.

He wanted to become a land owner.

He didn't want to be poor.

Owning land- and if you were Southerner,

sadly, owning people-

were basically the indicators of success.

In Great Britain, the Washingtons

could not have owned property. It went to noblemen.

And when they came over in the 1600s,

they came for land. They didn't mess around.

And this is in his blood. The Washingtons are land-hungry.

Further back.

A little more.

George Washington, at age 14,

picks up surveying instruments

and teaches himself to survey.

And surveying was a hugely important job

in early America.

George Washington is earning his own money

and purchasing his own land by age 17.

The whole point of the West was

to acquire title to land

but hold onto it, and in 10 or 20 years,

as the American population grew,

that land would become more valuable.

To your right! Come on, guys!

And this was the basis

for more fortunes in American history

than any way of making money.

If you had land, even if you are an ordinary person,

if you have plots of land, you can grow your own food.

You had what would be called independence.

So for Washington, having lots of land was important.

But his goals are about to be derailed.

In 1763, a new royal proclamation

poses a direct threat to Washtington's investments.

To avoid another expensive war on the frontier,

King George III bans colonists from buying or settling land

in the West.

What it does, essentially, is to run a boundary

down the crest of the Appalachian Mountains.

Everything west of the Appalachians

is Indian country, and that land

is off-limits to British subjects.

This just upset the plans of Washington

and every other American who was thinking of the West

as, by this time, almost an American entitlement.

He owns about 60.000 acres of land that he's acquired

through a service for the British

in the French and Indian War, but in principle, it's saying,

that all the land you have out there is worthless.

So having had his ambition

to be a great military man frustrated

by British prejudice against the provincials,

the rules seemed to indicate that the British

looked on Americans as second-class subjects.

So if the British Empire isn't good for you militarily,

and it's not good for you economically,

what else is there?

This proclamation kicks off a decade of crackdowns

on colonists' ambitions.

It's followed by a slew of new taxes-

taxes that will help Britain pay off its debt

from the French and Indian War.

Boston was at the cutting edge of opposition

to British law, starting with the Stamp Act.

Everything that's paper- currency, newspapers,

all being taxed.

This was a new kind of tax on goods that were in the Colonies

as opposed to things that were being imported.

That shift, it alarmed Americans.

No more taxes! No more taxes!

The colonists adopted boycotts

in which they would not consume British goods.

The colonists are sending petitions.

There's troops sent up to Boston.

Will the Americans come to blows over this?

The Boston Massacre.

American colonists killed by British fire.

We then have events like the Boston Tea Party,

which is a protest against a tax on tea.

And then the Intolerable Acts...

Punishment for the Boston Tea Party...

...strike America like the blow of a hammer.

The British have revoked the charter of Massachusetts.

They've closed the Port of Boston.

People in other colonies are very much watching

what's going on there, and they're thinking,

"That could happen here."

The cause of Boston now

becomes the cause of all America.

And that's when we see George Washington

become a reluctant revolutionary.

Washington considered himself to be British.

He wanted to be a part of that Imperial world.

But when that fell apart, it's the kind of thing

where you could only hate something

that you had loved a lot.

You could argue that the British Empire

slowly built the man who would destroy them

from the inside out.

Thank you for coming.

It is so great everybody's here.

Thank you. We need all the support we can get.

More than 50 delegates from 12 of the 13 colonies

are gathering for the first time

to plan resistance to the British crackdown

on their rights.

The Colonies had never been, before this period,

very good at doing things together.

I mean, they really are independent units.

They only manage to act in concert

when they're threatened.

And the idea is if we coordinate our response,

it will be more effective.

The British won't be able to pick us off one by one.

Billed as the First Continental Congress,

it's a who's who of future revolutionaries,

including Sam Adams, John Jay, Patrick Henry,

and Massachusetts' own John Adams.

Mr. Washington.

We're all glad you made the journey.

John Adams.

Mr. Adams, your fine work and reputation precede you.

It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

I'm sure you're well aware,

but your presence here does carry a great weight.

I'm honored to represent Virginia.

We in Massachusetts are gratified

to have the Colonies assembled for our cause.

Now we shall see if all are ready to speak with one voice.

I'm well acquainted with the British disregard

for their own laws.

These unjust policies cannot stand.

We are agreed upon that, Mr. Washington.

I look forward to discussing these matters.

And I loorward to taking action.

Order.

Washington is a believer that the British Empire

intends to enslave the American population.

He sees an orchestrated plot in the sense that

we no longer have control over our own domestic policy.

The delegates are divided on how to proceed.

While some want to keep petitioning Parliament,

others are pushing for more radical action.

The colonists are demanding their rights,

and actually initially, trying to use the system

that's in place to get their rights...

sending petitions, traditional protests,

doing the things you do as a colonist

to express your needs and your demands.

Finally, the Congress agrees to an all-colony boycott

of British goods-a move designed to pressure Britain

to repeal their taxes and remove troops from Boston.

Though "revolution" is still not a word uttered publicly,

Washington is not convinced it can be avoided.

"More blood will be spilt on this occasion

"if the Ministry are determined to push matters to extremity.

"No such thing is desired by any thinking man

in all North America."

It became pretty clear early on

that Great Britain was not going to back down,

and that they were not going to meet the demands

that the colonists put forth, and although that was

always a frightful prospect, to go to war,

it's pretty clear that that was likely to be the answer.

The following spring, Washington's fears are realized

at Lexington and Concord.

Lexington and Concord shocked Americans.

That really stunned them. What does that mean

if your own government now is firing upon you?

Until this point, most colonists

were willing to say, "If you could just wind back the clock,

then all will be well."

All these people, including Washington,

reached some point when they thought,

"You know, we just cannot remain part

"of the British Empire.

We can't do it."

By the time the Second Continental Congress

convenes three weeks later,

the time has come to put down the quill

and pick up the sword.

The question is, who will lead the charge?

We need a military figure to go up to corral events

and really become a commander of some kind of an army,

whatever that army is gonna be.

And they need somebody

who will both be reliable politically,

somebody who won't be at risk of trying to make himself

a military dictator,

but somebody who has the basic skills and knowledge

to lead an army.

It's a pretty short list of men in North America

who meet both of those requirements.

The most eager of the candidates

is John Hancock,

a prominent Boston businessman turned politician.

In many ways, he's the anti-Washington.

John Hancock is a very vain man.

He's somebody who is pretty shallow,

somebody who is a showboat,

somebody who does not understand his limitations.

One of the most experienced is Horatio Gates,

a British-born veteran who'd served on the frontier,

married an American and decided to stay.

He has held the king's commission.

He has been a commissioned officer.

He's seen fighting,

perhaps even more than Washington has.

But Gates was not a Virginian,

and a lot of people, including John Adams,

understood that Virginia, which was the largest colony

at the time, needed to be invested in the war cause,

and the best way to get Virginia invested

was to put a Virginian at the very top.

It's important to Washington to be able to tell himself

that he's not ambitious.

It's important for him to be able to say,

"I'm not campaigning for this job."

That complicated cocktail of public projection,

of balancing private ambition with the greater good,

was something that Washington did as brilliantly

as any American ever did.

I mean, there wasn't a large number of folks

with the kind of stature that he had.

If not him, who?

Washington, one of Virginia's delegates

to the Second Continental Congress,

shows up wearing a military uniform.

It reminds people he has military experience.

If you need a commander, look no farther.

He is going to have to build this army

in effect from himself down

by appearing to be a man of confidence

even when almost nobody else has confidence in the cause.

Washington fell in love with the country

that was being created,

and he was prepared to fight for it and die for it.

That is all for now.

"My dearest, I am now sat down to write you on a subject

"which fills me with inexpressible concern

"when I reflect upon the uneasiness

I know it will give you."

"It has been determined in Congress

"that the whole army raised for the defense

"of the American cause shall be put under my care

"and that is necessary for me to proceed immediately

to Boston to take command of it."

Some two decades after he was denied

a British officer's rank,

George Washington becomes commander-in-chief

of an army in revolt against the empire he once served.

He passionately believes in the cause.

He believes that as a virtuous man,

he must set all of his skills, all of his abilities,

all of his resources

at the service of his countrymen,

but he recognizes whoever leads this army

is more likely than not to lose his life,

to lose his fortune, and to lose his reputation.

This is not a position of glory.

Washington always defined greatness

as a willingness to do things not for yourself

but for others, and so every fiber of his being

said he must do this.

"I shall rely confidently on that providence

"which has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me,

"not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall.

"I shall feel no pain from the toil

or the danger of the campaign."

He knows his whole life is gonna change,

and the letters he writes home shows his own emotion.

This is a moment when the normal screen

or the curtain around Washington opens

and you get to see who he really is.

"My unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness I know

"you will feel at being left alone.

"I beg of you to summon your whole fortitude

"and resolution and pass your time

"as agreeably as possible.

"I shall add nothing more at the present

"but to assure you that I am with the most unfeigned regard,

your affectionate George."

When Washington arrives in Boston in July 1775,

there's little fanfare.

With him is the man who will serve alongside him

for the duration of the war.

His name is William Lee,

though Washington calls him Billy.

Lee doesn't have an official military rank.

He's Washington's enslaved valet.

Washington purchased William Lee in 1768.

He's probably someone that knew Washington

better than almost anybody.

Billy and Washington had an intimate relationship

in that Billy would comb his hair in the morning

and put out his clothes and all this other stuff.

He's known for organizing

George Washington's life, his papers.

William Lee, unlike the majority

of other 18th century enslaved people,

has been in some ways given

a little more than a footnote in history.

Billy Lee, as we've come to think about him,

is one of the heroes of the American Revolution.

My belongings arrive from Mount Vernon, Billy?

Yes, sir.

They promised me an army.

Does this look like an army to you?

No, sir.

It does not.

It's been a long journey, sir. Perhaps you should rest.

No, Billy, this is no time for a rest.

See to the horse. -Yes, sir.

Washington's orders from the Continental Congress

are to force the occupying British troops out of Boston.

When he gets up to Massachusetts, it confirms

it confirms all of his most desperate thoughts

about the militias- they come and go as they please,

they don't want to be under the discipline

of a regular army.

I mean, they're guys with guns.

It was not a trained army. It was a militia.

We have this vision of the American Revolution

as we had an army and they had an army.

We didn't have an army. We had a lot of state militias.

Washington's major problem is to recognize

that he's inherited a mob,

and that he wants to do for it what he had done for the-

the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War-

make them into a real corps of professional soldiers.

He has to figure out how to join these people together

in some kind of a way in which they can fight

this great empire.

Washington was expecting 20.000 men

and 10 tons of gunpowder.

There is a fraction of both.

Trying to put together an army overnight is impossible.

It took the British Army a century.

I mean, like, where do you dig the latrines?

Where do the hospitals go?

These are all, like, things that are routinized

inside a British manual. We have none of that.

And we just got a bunch of guys who basically showed up to fight

for a few days and figure they're gonna go home.

Where is your commanding officer?

Get me your commanding officer now!

Once a headstrong and untested young soldier,

Washington now takes command of his army

21 years to the day after his crushing defeat

at Fort Necessity.

Hold your lines!

He's taken on a task that he knows is going to be

perhaps impossible to defeat the British Army and Navy,

and he's there to do it, and he's committed.

And if you command the army that declares war on the Empire,

you better win.

Because if you don't,

there's no telling what's gonna become of you.

Next time on "Washington"...

If they captured him in New York,

they would have put his head on a spit,

and that's all you would remember

about George Washington.

We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die.

Are these the men with whom I'm to defend America?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident."

The Declaration is a rallying cry,

but it was an act of treason.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Bloody fools.

Washington really needed to convince the American people

that they could fight the British.

We must go on the offense.

There are a great many risks.

This night will become one of our great national myths.

Charge!

This is our land, and we will defend it.

This was found hidden in his boot.

Arnold has betrayed not only Washington

but his country.

Go.

Get him.

Now.

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