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

saw it, he was the senior officer of the regiment who had almost single-handedly managed the entire operation to acquire the land. In effect, he deserved what he took. And everyone who questioned his integrity on any matter involving his own self-interest triggered internal explosions of seismic proportions. 31
    The other sour note came from Washington himself. As different governors in Virginia and different ministries in London came and went, different interpretations of British policy toward the American interior also came and went. The core issue was the Proclamation of 1763, which in one version rendered all of Washington’s western claims null and void, all his time and energy wasted, because London had declared that the entire Ohio Country was off-limits to settlement. Washington, of course, regarded this version of British policy as a massive delusion that was also wholly unenforceable. The British monarch could proclaim whatever he wished, but the practical reality was that thousands of colonial settlers were swarming across the Alleghenies every year, establishing their claims, not by any legal appeal to colonial or British authority, but by the physical act of occupying and cultivating the land: “What Inducements have Men to explore uninhabited Wilds but the prospect of getting good Lands?” he asked. “Would any Man waste his time, expose his Fortune, nay life, in search of this if he was to share the good and the bad with those that came after him. Surely no!” Washington believed there was a race going on for the bounty of half a continent. If he were to play by British rules, which refused to recognize the race was even occurring, others who ignored the rules would claim the bounty. His solution, elegantly simple, was to regard the restrictive British policies as superfluous and to act on the assumption that, in the end, no one could stop him. 32
    Several biographers have looked upon this extended episode of land acquisitions as an unseemly and perhaps uncharacteristic display of personal avarice, mostly because they are judging Washington against his later and legendary reputation for self-denial, or against some modern, guilt-driven standard for treatment of Native Americans. In fact, Washington’s avid pursuit of acreage, like his attitude toward slavery, was rather typical of Virginia’s planter class. He was simply more diligent in his quest than most. And his resolutely realistic assessment of the Indians’ eventual fate was part and parcel of his instinctive aversion to sentimentalism and all moralistic brands of idealism, an instinct that deservedly won plaudits in later contexts, as disappointing as it was in this one.
    Two more telling and less judgmental points have greater resonance for our understanding of the different ingredients that would shape Washington’s character. The first is that he retained his youthful conviction that careers, fortunes, and the decisive developments in America’s future lay in the West, on a continental stage so large and unexplored that no one fully fathomed its potential. This was a prize worth fighting for. The second is that the interest of the American colonies and the interest of the British Empire, so long presumed to be overlapping, were in fact mutually exclusive on this seminal issue. Constitutional niceties did not concern him. The more elemental reality was that the colonies needed to expand and grow, and the British government was determined to block that expansion and stifle that growth.
    Once again there was a personal edge to that conviction. In 1774, Washington learned that Earl Hillsborough, secretary of state for the American colonies, had ruled that land grants to veterans of the French and Indian War promised in the Proclamation of 1763 would be restricted to British regulars. Washington greeted the news with contempt: “I conceive the services of a Provincial officer as worthy of reward as a regular one,” he observed, “and can only