Michael Parenti Enthusiast

A man stopped at a book cart in Ann street Saturday to look over the cheap paper editions that it contained, says the New York Times. He picked up a copy of "Les Miserables." As he did so a tramp touched him on the shoulder and said: "I beg your pardon, sir, but will you purchase that for me?" A gruff "no" was the reply, but the tramp was not to be easily got rid of. "I enjoy reading, sir," he said, "and have much leisure time. The newspapers do not satisfy me. Their stories are not written by masters. They are superficial they are not from the heart they have no particular object in view. Hugo had no equals and so no superiors." The tramp spoke hurriedly, as though unwilling to let his forced hearer escape his plea. He wanted the book, and to indicate that he was not of the lowest order of tramp he said: "To paraphrase Caesar, all gall is divided into three parts—the bitterness of the world, of the flesh and of the devil. I have experienced the first, am experiencing the second, and hope for something better than the third. I am a tramp, an outcast—you can see that—but I have been a gentleman—as the world uses the word and at times I can momentarily forget that I belong to the Brotherhood of Adversity. But even these months are getting rarer and yet more rare. But why bother you with this? "Purchase for me this cheap copy of 'Les Miserables.' Jean Valjean was one of the brotherhood; Fantine was another; the book contains many others, and I wish to read it again. I have read it four times and have passed it on. I will do so again, for it contains much that by contrast makes an outcast's life seem easy, and, although you may doubt me, while to an extent it embitters us, it in the end elevates us, only to a slight degree it is true, but it has a beneficient effect, and that, no matter how slight, is something." The man addressed, wishing to terminate the appeal, and being more or less impressed by the tramp's words and manner, picked the volumes from the cart, paid for them, handed them to the tramp and walked away. The fellow of the Brotherhood of Adversity said: "I am much obliged to you, sir. Humph! He cannot even wait to be thanked for a kindly act because the beneficiary is a tramp. Curious thing is human nature."

In the fall of 1770, George Washington traveled westward, his first western trip since the Seven Years’ War. With his land agent William Crawford, his plan was to float farther down the Ohio than he’d ever been. He had yet another idea for gaining land there.

This latest scheme of Washington’s was especially shrewd. It was based on an old and nearly forgotten deal, made back in the early 1750s, when Governor Dinwiddie had been trying to enlist Virginia troops for the Seven Years’ War. Few had wanted to sign up, so Dinwiddie had offered bounty land: 200,000 acres on the south side of the Ohio.

That offer was made only to soldiers, not officers. The land, once conquered, was to be divided among the soldiers in lots with sizes to be determined by officers’ review of the soldiers’ performance in the field. Given all the restrictions on expansion, nothing had ever come of the deal.

But as soon as the Fort Stanwix Treaty [a treaty with the Six Nations Confederacy giving up land in what is now Kentucky] opened those lands to settlement, Washington pounced. Framing the offer as if it had been made not only to soldiers but also to officers, he mentioned the old bounty-land deal to the new governor; then he wrote a class-action petition on behalf of himself and all Virginia war veterans, both officers and soldiers. The petition proposed that an initial survey be made at public expense—the privates being too poor to afford it—in regions down the Ohio where, though Washington didn’t mention it, Crawford had already been secretly identifying the best land on his behalf. Virginia responded by allotting the petitioners the 200,000 acres, thus acquiescing passively in Washington’s shoehorning the officer class into the original grant. All claimants were to file through Washington, Virginia ordered, and he was appointed, at his own suggestion, to hire a surveyor on behalf of Virginia. Not surprisingly, he chose Crawford.

So with his partner Dr. James Craik, Washington was now going west to meet up with Crawford and look over the grant. Following the old route toward the Ohio headwaters, they climbed into the Alleghenies and arrived at the Great Meadows, the scene of Washington’s formative defeat after the death of Jumonville. Washington decided to buy the place. Arriving at Fort Pitt, they found the post on the point staffed only skeletally now, in keeping with the British hope for withdrawal. The party dined with the commander and a few Pittsburgh notables before setting off in canoes with Crawford and an escort of two Indians and an interpreter. Floating downstream, Washington closely observed the fine-looking, silt-rich bottomland on both banks of the river.

Back in Virginia, he met with the former officers of his old regiment. They voted to have Crawford make detailed surveys and proposed dividing the land by rank. The privates, with whom the original deal had been exclusively made, would get only four hundred acres each. Officers’ portions were set by rank: corporals five hundred acres, sergeants six hundred, cadets twenty-five hundred, subalterns six thousand, and Washington and the other two field officers fifteen thousand each. At Mount Vernon, Crawford and Washington then spent days going over the surveys, and Washington presented the results to the governor and council, who approved the work in full, including what had now swelled to over twenty thousand acres in Washington’s name: he’d bought up some of the others’ claims.

Only later, when some of his fellow officers and their agents made their own trips down the river, and located the lands they’d been granted, did they see what had gone on. Crawford and Washington had laid out the lots so that Washington’s holdings took almost all of the river frontage. Indeed, his tracts were almost all bottomland—flat, along the rivers, both fertile and easy to plant—what Washington called the cream of the country. The others got only a mile and a half of frontage. Their tracts then ran back from the river almost five miles into the woods. By Virginia law, no grant of Crown land could have frontage anywhere near as long as Washington’s, but Crawford had neglected to take the standard surveyors’ oath of office. He thus avoided committing perjury when submitting the work.

The other officers, furious, naturally hoped to have the surveys voided. Big events in global history conspired to defeat their expectations. As tensions between Americans and the Crown rose to a new pitch, George Washington would find indispensable roles to play, and in the aftermath of all that followed, Virginia would end up certifying all of his land claims and surveys, against all objections.