The popular image of George Washington as unapproachable and rather grim comes largely from his later years, when he'd had time to develop his stoicism and was, frankly, pretty miserable and in constant pain.

His stoicism only partly masked his staggering ambition -- seriously, I love the guy, but you did not want to come between him and HIS DUE, unless your ambition was to become a blot on the ground (really, only Jefferson had the personal weight to stand up to Washington and survive -- I think Jefferson was dead wrong to do so, but I can't deny that TJ was able to pull it off).  But his stoicism did mask, or perhaps even trivialize, his doubts, his uncertainties, and, quite naturally, his personal feelings.  And he was highly emotional by temperament (and not above throwing temper tantrums in private, even into his Presidency, a position that gave him more than ample opportunity to feel frustrated and despairing).

His marriage to Martha was characterized by a deep friendship and understanding, and I'd say that he probably couldn't have done better for himself in his choice, even if Martha hadn't been the richest catch in Virginia.  But there was a particular woman in his life before Martha, Sally Fairfax, whom Washington called "the passion of my youth."

Unfortunately, Sally Fairfax was Mrs. Fairfax -- and married to Washington's best friend.  There's no proof one way or the other whether anything tangible beyond flirtation passed between Washington and Sally Fairfax, but I am inclined to doubt it.  Even as a young man, Washington valued self-control and self-mastery (although these eluded him frequently); and while he was quite capable of rationalizations, I think that "cuckolding my best friend" remained well outside the sphere he would have permitted himself.  Nothing could have come of an affair, in Washington's worldview, other than the affair itself -- an insufficient justification for a little of the old felix culpa, because a wholly personal and transitory one.

But whether he renounced Mrs. F. before dallying with her or after, renounce her he certainly did.  More than perhaps any other trait (even that amazing ambition), it was this ability to swallow or sublimate his personal desires that characterized the man, and elevated him.  He wasn't the best general in the world, although he had some fine moments; he wasn't a flaming genius, although he was bright enough (intellectually, he was nowhere near Hamilton, Jefferson, or Madison -- probably not even Adams).  But what he could do, and what he did do, was suck it up when he had to.  Rather than that silly "I cannot tell a lie" pap (puh-leeze -- Washington lied PLENTY), this is the intrinsic, and rare, honesty that defined him.

And, despite that Washington was a patrician, this was and remains a virtue within the grasp of every human being -- it hangs on choice, not talent.  While Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison pulled each other's pigtails over what the American nation would say yes to, Washington quietly demonstrated that human beings could also say no.  No, Washington would not torture prisoners.  No, Washington would not persecute the English and Loyalists once the war was finished.  No, Washington would not silence the press, even when the press attacked him viciously and relentlessly.

No is easy to overlook and to underestimate.  But its presence in our national aegis is an incomparable gift.

The reasons behind the Boston Tea Party were, as usual with the Revolution, a bit of a tangle.  Of course, we didn't like taxes in general.  And a primary issue was England's right to tax us at all -- but equally offensive was the weighting of the tea tax, with a functional result that tea from London's pet East India Company would be cheaper than our illegally smuggled tea.  Which added up to basically a bribe to pay their tax, and a sharp flick of the nose to colonials who made their money smuggling (translation:  John Hancock).  That the reasons behind the Tea Party were a bit muddied remained reasonably irrelevant until...

...We had our own federal government, and we still didn't wanna pay no taxes nowhen nohow.  Our freshly hatched government was gasping for funds, and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton decided that whiskey would be a fine thing to tax.  Pennsylvania moonshiners thought otherwise, and they took up their rifles in opposition. 

Washington slapped them down fast and hard.  The basic argument being:  yes, that government didn't have the right to tax you.  But this government does.

Tax time!  Of course this was a bit of an issue in the Revolutionary War.  And if we have to pay taxes now that we have the right to vote for our representatives directly, we have only our own rhetoric to blame.  ^_^

The Mother Country, meantime, suffered some confusion that among the "English liberties" we demanded was direct representation in Parliament, since such representation wasn't exactly the general rule in England at the time.  Further areas of perplexity:  was it all right for England to pay for our infrastructure, social services, and defense, but magically not all right to try to recoup some of those losses?  Stop muddying the waters and start giving us more face!

Taxation was more a flash-point symbol than a genuine issue in and of itself; Ben Franklin himself dithered on the matter, first reading the mood of his countrymen utterly wrongly (no surprise, he'd been living in London for ages) and positing that only a particular type of tax was offensive.  Nope!  Turns out all of them were!

What was at issue was self-determination, not how many taxes can dance on the head of a pin.

Of course, we didn't like taxes then, and we don't like them now, which made taxation a particularly tasty rallying cry.  But practically the first matter on the docket when Washington came to power was losing some of that depressingly cavernous echo in the federal coffers.  And that meant taxes.  Oh well!