George Washington was a man who benefited enormously from the death of people he loved. That is an odd sentence, but undoubtedly true. Without the death of his father, elder brother, elder brother's wife and children, and Martha's daughter from her first marriage there is simply no way that Washington becomes the man we know him to be.
What the death of each provided was not some psychic boost, of course, but financial. Washington was only born into marginal privilege. He was ambitious and dedicated and a workhorse, but there is only so much one can do without means, especially in as rigorously hierarchical a world as colonial Virginia. It was the untimely deaths of each of the people above that gave Washington the means to lead the life of a gentleman planter, inherit Mount Vernon and turn it into the now famous landmark, dress in the highest fashion, and ultimately earn a seat on the Continental Congress that eventually catapulted him to the commanding generalship of the Continental Army.
In one of those odd turns of providence, then, it was the suffering he endured and the deaths of those he loved that paved the way for Washington to become General Washington and then President Washington. What was painful for a season catapulted him to his ultimate calling.
This world is a strange place.
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