foxhunting (an athletic equestrian sport that involves racing cross-country and leaping over fences with packs of baying hounds), Washington’s postwar and postpresidency “retirement” routine at Mount Vernon involved rising with the sun and literally rousting many of his own workers. After providing meticulous instructions on a variety of farm tasks and repairs, he ate a light breakfast at seven o’clock and then spent a good six hours in the saddle. In His Excellency: George Washington, Joseph J. Ellis describes him riding around the farm, “ordering drainage ditches to be widened, inspecting the operation of a new distillery he had recently commissioned on the premises, warning poachers that the deer on his property had become domesticated and must not be hunted, inquiring after a favored house slave who had recently been bitten by a dog.”
What historians consistently fail to mention about his daily schedule (no doubt because Washington himself didn’t discuss it much) concerns when and how he trained his horses, who would have needed years of careful development to reach the level of expertise under saddle that Chastellux reported, let alone exhibit the courage under fire Washington’s favored war mounts possessed. The general trusted those horses with his life, and they proved worthy of his confidence in so many subtle yet remarkable ways. When he returned to the mansion around two o’clock each afternoon, Ellis reveals, “no one needed to take the reins off his horse. Washington simply slapped him on the backside and he trotted over to the barn on his own. (Horses like men, seemed disposed to acknowledge his authority.)”
That authority rested to a great extent on Washington’s instinctual understanding of the leader’s role as educator rather than dictator. He cultivated trust, courage, and devotion as much as he commanded it. It’s a crying shame he didn’t write a book on horse training, but the art form, being almost exclusively nonverbal, probably eluded his efforts to describe it in the brief journal entries he had time to record at the end of the day. Washington was too busy building an agricultural empire at Mount Vernon, fighting a revolutionary war, and negotiating the parameters of the very first U.S. presidency. Still, his success in all of those realms was without a doubt tied to his profound mastery of the human-equine relationship. As Thomas Jefferson later complained when he and Washington became political rivals, the persistent image of the elder statesman on horseback always seemed to trump the most eloquent speeches and persuasive intellectual arguments anyone else devised in opposition. Without saying a word, the man radiated dignity and power.
And there was no arguing with him. Not because he wouldn’t listen — Ellis describes a crucial element of his presidential style as “leading by listening.” He’d spend hours, even days, letting people speak their piece, sometimes to the chagrin of younger, more action-oriented members of his entourage. Once he considered the options and came to a strong conclusion, however, he had no problem herding large groups of people around with the infectious combination of poise, courage, energy, and conviction he exhibited in launching his twelve-hundred-pound war charger into a bloody battle with a thousand shoeless, half-dressed men running behind him.
This frustrated intellectually based idealists like Jefferson and James Madison to no end. The fact that Washington didn’t talk a whole lot made them even crazier. As Ellis observes, “He possessed a nearly preternatural ability to remain silent while everyone around him was squirming under the social pressure to fill the silence with chatty conversation. ([John] Adams later claimed that this ‘gift of silence’ was Washington’s greatest political asset, which Adams himself so envied because he lacked the gift altogether.)”
Washington’s influence would forever remain a mystery to men with little horse sense, men who sat in chairs debating ideas while their colleague became “first in war and first in peace,” literally riding through the richly nuanced, wholly nonverbal realms of that crucial “other 90 percent.”
Empathy and Equality
As civilization progressed toward the Age of Reason, it became increasingly out of fashion, taboo even, for people to acknowledge animals as sentient beings, let alone companions, colleagues, or, heaven forbid, influences on human leadership potential. Add to this Washington’s own penchant for keeping his feelings and thoughts under wraps until he was ready to make an official public statement on the many controversial topics of the day, and you begin to understand why little is written about the relationship he had with his most loyal and revered equine companions Old Nelson and Blueskin. At a time when most horses were not afforded palliative care, the fact that Washington’s mounts were well nourished in retirement speaks volumes about how highly our first president regarded these four-legged war heroes.
In 1795, John Hunter, an English visitor to Mount Vernon, made the following casual yet telling observation in a letter to a friend:
When dinner was over, we visited the General’s stables, saw his magnificent horses, among them “Old Nelson,” now twenty-two years of age, that carried the General almost always during the war. “Blueskin,” another fine old horse, next to him, had that honor. They had heard the roaring of many a cannon in their time. “Blueskin” was not the favorite on account of his not standing fire so well as venerable “Old Nelson.” The General makes no manner of use of them now. He keeps them in a nice stable, where they feed away at their ease for their past services.
This brief glimpse illuminates subtle yet important elements of Washington’s philosophy. As he matured, his immense powers of influence, courage, endurance, and motivation were enhanced by an ever-widening, ever-deepening sense of compassion and appreciation for the contributions of others that crossed cultural, racial, and species boundaries. In Washington’s world, respect for the intelligence of all life trumped concern for social norms and historical precedent, manifesting as a sort of empathy-in-action capable of sensing and tapping potential in unexpected places. Short-term gain became increasingly subservient to long-term goals, in terms of not just profit but also behavior, as Washington actively modeled how members of a free society would be expected to treat their colleagues and subordinates, even those who currently ranked as enemies or possessions.
Most soldiers and farmers, after all, considered a bullet to the head a humane, economically prudent way to retire an arthritic workhorse. Yet Washington’s very survival during the war depended on choosing the best horse for the job, relying on that one animal in a million whose capacity for heroism matched his own. Seeing his prospective mounts as interchangeable machines to be used and discarded without conscience could actually have been fatal.
During the Battle of Monmouth Court House, for instance, his second in command, Charles Lee, panicked and began to lead a frantic retreat against firmly expressed orders. Washington relieved the man on the spot. Then, as Ellis observes, he rallied his troops to attack on more favorable terrain “while calmly sitting astride his horse in the midst of a blistering British artillery barrage.” Old Nelson showed more courage and poise under fire than a highly experienced senior general like Lee, and Washington treated his loyal charger as an equine officer worthy of reward for exceptional service.
From there, the general’s attitude toward “Negro slaves,” “Indian savages,” and the uneducated, often destitute immigrants who became his soldiers evolved as well. People who showed real talent, integrity, courage, and dedication were given positions of responsibility acknowledging their gifts and experience, regardless of race, religion, or social standing. Washington’s valet, a slave named Billy Lee (no relation to the aforementioned senior general), assumed command of the servants and valets for all Washington’s officers during the very same Battle of Monmouth Court House, leading them on horseback to safer positions behind the action. An exceptional rider himself, Lee also served as Washington’s huntsman during peacetime fox hunts. In his memoirs, Washington’s stepgrandson George Washington Parke Custis described Lee’s formidable skills: “Will, the huntsman, better known in Revolutionary lore as Billy, rode a horse called Chinkling, a surprising leaper, and made very much like its rider, low, but sturdy, and of great bone and muscle. Will had but one order, which was to keep with the hounds; and, mounted on Chinkling. . . this fearless horseman would rush, at full speed, through brake or tangled wood, in a style at which modern huntsmen would stand aghast.”
Lee had no trouble keeping up with Washington throughout the eight-year war, ready to hand over a spare horse or telescope in the thick of battle,