f he does not, I should be glad to take a
poll, if I thought my chance tolerably good." His friend Carlyle,
Washington wrote, had "mentioned it to me in Williamsburg in a bantering
way," and he begged his brother to "discover Major Carlyle's real
sentiments on this head," as also those of the other prominent men of the
county, and especially of the clergymen. "_Sound_ their pulse," he wrote,
"with an air of indifference and unconcern ... without disclosing much of
_mine_." "If they seem inclinable to promote my interest, and things
should be drawing to a crisis, you may declare my intention and beg their
assistance. If on the contrary you find them more inclined to favor some
other, I would have the affair entirely dropped." Apparently the county
magnates disapproved, for Washington did not stand for the county.

In 1757 an election for burgesses was held in Frederick County, in which
Washington then was (with his soldiers), and for which he offered himself
as a candidate. The act was hardly a wise one, for, though he had saved
Winchester and the surrounding country from being overrun by the Indians,
he was not popular. Not merely was he held responsible for the massacres
of outlying inhabitants, whom it was impossible to protect, but in this
very defence he had given cause for ill-feeling. He himself confessed that
he had several times "strained the law,"--he had been forced to impress
the horses and wagons of the district, and had in other ways so angered
some of the people that they had threatened "to blow out my brains." But
he had been guilty of a far worse crime still in a political sense.
Virginia elections were based on liquor, and Washington had written to the
governor, representing "the great nuisance the number of tippling houses
in Winchester are to the soldiers, who by this means, in spite of the
utmost care and vigilance, are, so long as their pay holds, incessantly
drunk and unfit for service," and he wished that "the new commission for
this county may have the intended effect," for "the number of tippling
houses kept here is a great grievance." As already noted, the Virginia
regiment was accused in the papers of drunkenness, and under the sting of
that accusation Washington declared war on the publicans. He whipped his
men when they became drunk, kept them away from the ordinaries, and even
closed by force one tavern which was especially culpable. "Were it not too
tedious," he wrote the governor, "I cou'd