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Title: The True George Washington
Author: Paul Leicester Ford
Release Date: May 8, 2004 [eBook #12300]
[Most recently updated: January 23, 2022]
Language: English
Produced by: John R. Bilderback and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRUE GEORGE WASHINGTON ***
[Illustration]
The True George Washington
by Paul Leicester Ford
Author of “The Honorable Peter Stirling”
Editor of “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson” and
“The Sayings of Poor Richard”
“That I have foibles, and perhaps many of them, I shall not deny. I
should esteem myself, as the world would, vain and empty, were I to arrogate
perfection.”
—_Washington_
“Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in
malice.”
—_Shakespeare_
1896
BY
J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
_Tenth Edition_
Electrotyped and Printed by J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO
WILLIAM F. HAVEMEYER,
IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE AUTHOR TO HIS COLLECTION
OF
WASHINGTONIANA.
Contents
Note
CHAPTER I.—FAMILY RELATIONS
CHAPTER II.—PHYSIQUE
CHAPTER III.—EDUCATION
CHAPTER IV.—RELATIONS WITH THE FAIR SEX
CHAPTER V.—FARMER AND PROPRIETOR
CHAPTER VI.—MASTER AND EMPLOYER
CHAPTER VII.—SOCIAL LIFE
CHAPTER VIII.—TASTES AND AMUSEMENTS
CHAPTER IX.—FRIENDS
CHAPTER X.—ENEMIES
CHAPTER XI.—SOLDIER
CHAPTER XII.—CITIZEN AND OFFICE-HOLDER
INDEX
List of Illustrations with Notes
MINIATURE OF WASHINGTON. By JAMES SHARPLESS
Painted for Washington in 1795, and presented by him to Nelly (Calvert)
Stuart, widow of John Parke Custis, Washington’s adopted son. Her son
George Washington Parke Custis, in whose presence the sittings were
made, often spoke of the likeness as “almost perfect.”
MEMORIAL TABLET OF LAURENCE AND AMEE WASHINGTON, IN SULGRAVE CHURCH,
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
The injury of the effigy of Laurence Washington and the entire
disappearance of the effigy of Amee antedate the early part of the
present century, and probably were done in the Puritan period. Since
the above tracing was made the brasses of the eleven children have been
stolen, leaving nothing but the lettering and the shield of the
Washington arms.
BETTY WASHINGTON, WIFE OF FIELDING LEWIS
Painted about 1750, and erroneously alleged to be by Copley. Original
in the possession of Mr. R. Byrd Lewis, of Marmion, Virginia.
JOHN AND MARTHA CUSTIS
Original in the possession of General G.W. Custis Lee, of Lexington,
Virginia.
MINIATURE OF ELEANOR PARKE CUSTIS
From the miniature by Gilbert Stuart, in the possession of her
grandson, Edward Parke Lewis Custis, of Hoboken, New Jersey.
FICTITIOUS PORTRAIT OF WASHINGTON
The lettering reads, “Done from an original Drawn from the Life, by
Alex’r Campbell of Williamsburg in Virginia. Published as the act
directs 9 Sept’r 1775 by C. Shepherd.” It is the first engraved
portrait of Washington, and was issued to satisfy the English curiosity
concerning the new commander-in-chief of the rebels. From the original
print in the possession of Mr. W.F. Havemeyer, of New York.
COPY SHEET FROM YOUNG MAN’S COMPANION
The sheet from which Washington modelled his handwriting, and to which
his earliest script shows a marked resemblance. From the original in
the possession of the author.
LETTER TO MRS. FAIRFAX
Showing changes and corrections made by Washington at a later date.
From original copy-book in the Washington MSS. in the Department of
State.
PORTRAIT OF MARY PHILIPSE
From the original formerly in the possession of Mr. Frederick Philipse.
PORTRAIT OF MARTHA CUSTIS
Alleged to have been painted by Woolaston about 1757. It has been
asserted by Mr. L.W. Washington and Mr. Moncure D. Conway that this is
a portrait of Betty Washington Lewis, but in this they are wholly in
error, as proof exists that it is a portrait of Mrs. Washington before
her second marriage.
SURVEY OF MOUNT VERNON HILLS
Made by Washington as a boy, and one of the earliest specimens of his
work. The small drawing of the house represents it as it was before
Washington enlarged it, and is the only picture of it known. Original
in the Department of State.
MOUNTAIN ROAD LOTTERY TICKET
From the original in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
FAMILY GROUP
Painted by Edward Savage about 1795, and issued as a large engraving in
1798. The original picture is now in the possession of Mr. William F.
Havemeyer, of New York.
DINNER INVITATION
The official invitation while President, from the original in the
possession of the author.
DANCING AGREEMENT
This gives only the first few names, many more following. The original
was formerly in the possession of Mr. Thomas Biddle, of Philadelphia.
BOOK-PLATE OF WASHINGTON
This is a slight variation from the true Washington coat of arms, the
changes being introduced by Washington. From the original in the
possession of the author.
SURVEY OF WAKEFIELD
Washington’s birthplace. The survey was made in 1743, on the property
coming into the possession of Augustine Washington (second) from his
father, with the object of readjusting the boundary-lines. Original in
the possession of Mr. William F. Havemeyer, of New York.
WASHINGTON FAMILY BIBLE
This record, with the exception of the interlined note concerning Betty
Washington Lewis, is in the handwriting of George Washington, and was
written when he was about sixteen years old. Original in the possession
of Mrs. Lewis Washington, of Charlestown, West Virginia.
MINIATURE OF MRS. WASHINGTON
By an unknown artist. From the original in the possession of General
G.W. Custis Lee, of Lexington, Virginia.
EARLIEST AUTOGRAPH OF WASHINGTON
On a fly-leaf of the volume to which this title belongs is written,
“This autograph of Genl. Washington’s name is believed to be the
earliest specimen of his writing, when he was probably not more than 8
or 9 years of age.” This is a note by G.C. Washington, to whom
Washington’s library descended. Original in the possession of the
Boston Athenaeum.
RULES OF CIVILITY
First page of Washington’s boyish transcript, written when he was about
thirteen years of age. Used here by courtesy of Mr. S.M. Hamilton and
“Public Opinion,” who are preparing a fac-simile edition of the entire
rules.
LIFE MASK BY HOUDON
Taken by Houdon in October, 1785. From the replica in the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.
TITLE-PAGE OF JOURNAL OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1754
Of this first edition but two copies are known. From the original in
the Lenox Library.
PRESIDENTIAL HOUSE IN PHILADELPHIA
Philadelphia offered to furnish the house for the President during the
time Congress sat in that city, but Washington “wholly declined living
in any public building,” and rented this house from Robert Morris.
Though it was considered one of the finest in the city, Washington
several times complained of being cramped.
[Illustration: SHARPLESS MINIATURE OF WASHINGTON, 1795]
Note
In every country boasting a history there may be observed a tendency to
make its leaders or great men superhuman. Whether we turn to the
legends of the East, the folk-lore of Europe, or the traditions of the
native races of America, we find a mythology based upon the acts of man
gifted with superhuman powers. In the unscientific, primeval periods in
which these beliefs were born and elaborated into oral and written
form, their origin is not surprising. But to all who have studied the
creation of a mythology, no phase is a more curious one than that the
keen, practical American of to-day should engage in the same process of
hero-building which has given us Jupiter, Wotan, King Arthur, and
others. By a slow evolution we have well-nigh discarded from the lives
of our greatest men of the past all human faults and feelings; have
enclosed their greatness in glass of the clearest crystal, and hung up
a sign, “Do not touch.” Indeed, with such characters as Washington,
Franklin, and Lincoln we have practically adopted the English maxim
that “the king can do no wrong.” In place of men, limited by human
limits, and influenced by human passions, we have demi-gods, so
stripped of human characteristics as to make us question even whether
they deserve much credit for their sacrifices and deeds.
But with this process of canonization have we not lost more than we
have gained, both in example and in interest? Many, no doubt, with the
greatest veneration for our first citizen, have sympathized with the
view expressed by Mark Twain, when he said that he was a greater man
than Washington, for the latter “couldn’t tell a lie, while he could,
but wouldn’t” We have endless biographies of Franklin, picturing him in
all the public stations of life, but all together they do not equal in
popularity his own human autobiography, in which we see him walking
down Market Street with a roll under each arm, and devouring a third.
And so it seems as if the time had come to put the shadow-boxes of
humanity round our historic portraits, not because they are ornamental
in themselves, but because they will make them examples, not mere
idols.
If the present work succeeds in humanizing Washington, and making him a
man rather than a historical figure, its purpose will have been
fulfilled. In the attempt to accomplish this, Washington has, so far as
is possible, been made to speak for himself, even though at times it
has compelled the sacrifice of literary form, in the hope that his own
words would convey a greater sense of the personality of the man. So,
too, liberal drafts have been made on the opinions and statements of
his contemporaries; but, unless the contrary is stated or is obvious,
all quoted matter is from Washington’s own pen. It is with pleasure
that the author adds that the result of his study has only served to
make Washington the greater to him.
The writer is under the greatest obligation to his brother, Worthington
Chauncey Ford, not merely for his numerous books on Washington, of
which his “Writings of George Washington” is easily first in importance
of all works relating to the great American, but also for much
manuscript material which he has placed at the author’s service.
Hitherto unpublished facts have been drawn from many other sources, but
notably from the rich collection of Mr. William F. Havemeyer, of New
York, from the Department of State in Washington, and from the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. To Mr. S.M. Hamilton, of the former
institution, and to Mr. Frederick D. Stone, of the latter, the writer
is particularly indebted for assistance.
THE TRUE GEORGE WASHINGTON
I
FAMILY RELATIONS
Although Washington wrote that the history of his ancestors was, in his
opinion, “of very little moment,” and “a subject to which I confess I
have paid very little attention,” few Americans can prove a better
pedigree. The earliest of his forebears yet discovered was described as
“gentleman,” the family were granted lands by Henry the Eighth, held
various offices of honor, married into good families, and under the
Stuarts two were knighted and a third served as page to Prince Charles.
Lawrence, a brother of the three thus distinguished, matriculated at
Oxford as a “generosi filius” (the intermediate class between sons of
the nobility, “armigeri filius,” and of the people, “plebeii filius”),
or as of the minor gentry. In time he became a fellow and lector of
Brasenose College, and presently obtained the good living of Purleigh.
Strong royalists, the fortunes of the family waned along with King
Charles, and sank into insignificance with the passing of the Stuart
dynasty. Not the least sufferer was the rector of Purleigh, for the
Puritan Parliament ejected him from his living, on the charge “that he
was a common frequenter of ale-houses, not only himself sitting dayly
tippling there … but hath oft been drunk,”—a charge indignantly denied
by the royalists, who asserted that he was a “worthy Pious man, …
always … a very Modest, Sober Person;” and this latter claim is
supported by the fact that though the Puritans sequestered the rich
living, they made no objection to his serving as rector at Brixted
Parva, where the living was “such a Poor and Miserable one that it was
always with difficulty that any one was persuaded to accept of it.”
Poverty resulting, John, the eldest son of this rector, early took to
the sea, and in 1656 assisted “as second man in Sayleing ye Vessel to
Virginia.” Here he settled, took up land, presently became a county
officer, a burgess, and a colonel of militia. In this latter function
he commanded the Virginia troops during the Indian war of 1675, and
when his great-grandson, George, on his first arrival on the frontier,
was called by the Indians “Conotocarius,” or “devourer of villages,”
the formidable but inappropriate title for the newly-fledged officer is
supposed to have been due to the reputation that John Washington had
won for his name among the Indians eighty years before.
[Illustration: TABLET TO LAURENCE WASHINGTON AND HIS FAMILY IN
SULGRAVE CHURCH]
Both John’s son, Lawrence, and Lawrence’s son, Augustine, describe
themselves in their wills as “gentlemen,” and both intermarried with
the “gentry families” of Virginia. Augustine was educated at Appleby
School, in England, like his grandfather followed the sea for a time,
was interested in iron mines, and in other ways proved himself far more
than the average Virginia planter of his day. He was twice
married,—which marriages, with unconscious humor, he describes in his
will as “several Ventures,”—had ten children, and died in 1743, when
George, his fifth child and the first by his second “Venture,” was a
boy of eleven. The father thus took little part in the life of the lad,
and almost the only mention of him by his son still extant is the one
recorded in Washington’s round school-boy hand in the family Bible, to
the effect that “Augustine Washington and Mary Ball was Married the
Sixth of March 17-30/31. Augustine Washington Departed this Life ye
12th Day of April 1743, Aged 49 Years.”
The mother, Mary Washington, was more of a factor, though chiefly by
mere length of life, for she lived to be eighty-three, and died but ten
years before her son. That Washington owed his personal appearance to
the Balls is true, but otherwise the sentimentality that has been
lavished about the relations between the two and her influence upon
him, partakes of fiction rather than of truth. After his father’s death
the boy passed most of his time at the homes of his two elder brothers,
and this was fortunate, for they were educated men, of some colonial
consequence, while his mother lived in comparatively straitened
circumstances, was illiterate and untidy, and, moreover, if tradition
is to be believed, smoked a pipe. Her course with the lad was blamed by
a contemporary as “fond and unthinking,” and this is borne out by such
facts as can be gleaned, for when his brothers wished to send him to
sea she made “trifling objections,” and prevented his taking what they
thought an advantageous opening; when the brilliant offer of a position
on Braddock’s staff was tendered to Washington, his mother, “alarmed at
the report,” hurried to Mount Vernon and endeavored to prevent him from
accepting it; still again, after Braddock’s defeat, she so wearied her
son with pleas not to risk the dangers of another campaign that
Washington finally wrote her, “It would reflect dishonor upon me to
refuse; and _that_, I am sure, must or _ought_ to give you greater
uneasiness, than my going in an honorable command.” After he inherited
Mount Vernon the two seem to have seen little of each other, though,
when occasion took him near Fredericksburg, he usually stopped to see
her for a few hours, or even for a night.
Though Washington always wrote to his mother as “Honored Madam,” and
signed himself “your dutiful and aff. son,” she none the less tried him
not a little. He never claimed from her a part of the share of his
father’s estate which was his due on becoming of age, and, in addition,
“a year or two before I left Virginia (to make her latter days
comfortable and free from care) I did, at her request, but at my own
expence, purchase a commodious house, garden and Lotts (of her own
choosing) in Fredericksburg, that she might be near my sister Lewis,
her only daughter,—and did moreover agree to take her land and negroes
at a certain yearly rent, to be fixed by Colo Lewis and others (of her
own nomination) which has been an annual expence to me ever since, as
the estate never raised one half the rent I was to pay. Before I left
Virginia I answered all her calls for money; and since that period have
directed my steward to do the same.” Furthermore, he gave her a
phaeton, and when she complained of her want of comfort he wrote her,
“My house is at your service, and [I] would press you most sincerely
and most devoutly to accept it, but I am sure, and candor requires me
to say, it will never answer your purposes in any shape whatsoever. For
in truth it may be compared to a well resorted tavern, as scarcely any
strangers who are going from north to south, or from south to north, do
not spend a day or two at it. This would, were you to be an inhabitant
of it, oblige you to do one of 3 things: 1st, to be always dressing to
appear in company; 2d, to come into [the room] in a dishabille, or 3d
to be as it were a prisoner in your own chamber. The first you’ld not
like; indeed, for a person at your time of life it would be too
fatiguing. The 2d, I should not like, because those who resort here
are, as I observed before, strangers and people of the first
distinction. And the 3d, more than probably, would not be pleasing to
either of us.”
Under these circumstances it was with real indignation that Washington
learned that complaints of hers that she “never lived soe poore in all
my life” were so well known that there was a project to grant her a
pension. The pain this caused a man who always showed such intense
dislike to taking even money earned from public coffers, and who
refused everything in the nature of a gift, can easily be understood.
He at once wrote a letter to a friend in the Virginia Assembly, in
which, after reciting enough of what he had done for her to prove that
she was under no necessity of a pension,—“or, in other words, receiving
charity from the public,”—he continued, “But putting these things
aside, which I could not avoid mentioning in exculpation of a
presumptive want of duty on my part; confident I am that she has not a
child that would not divide the last sixpence to relieve her from real
distress. This she has been repeatedly assured of by me; and all of us,
I am certain, would feel much hurt, at having our mother a pensioner,
while we had the means of supporting her; but in fact she has an ample
income of her own. I lament accordingly that your letter, which
conveyed the first hint of this matter, did not come to my hands
sooner; but I request, in pointed terms, if the matter is now in
agitation in your Assembly, that all proceedings on it may be stopped,
or in case of a decision in her favor, that it may be done away and
repealed at my request.”
Still greater mortification was in store for him, when he was told that
she was borrowing and accepting gifts from her neighbors, and learned
“on good authority that she is, upon all occasions and in all
companies, complaining … of her wants and difficulties; and if not in
direct terms, at least by strong innuendoes, endeavors to excite a
belief that times are much altered, &c., &c., which not only makes
_her_ appear in an unfavorable point of view, but _those also_ who are
connected with her.” To save her feelings he did not express the “pain”
he felt to her, but he wrote a brother asking him to ascertain if there
was the slightest basis in her complaints, and “see what is necessary
to make her comfortable,” for “while I have anything I will part with
it to make her so;” but begging him “at the same time … to represent to
her in delicate terms, the impropriety of her complaints, and
_acceptance_ of favors, even when they are voluntarily offered, from
any but relations.” Though he did not “touch upon this subject in a
letter to her,” he was enough fretted to end the renting of her
plantation, not because “I mean … to withhold any aid or support I can
give from you; for whilst I have a shilling left, you shall have part,”
but because “what I shall then give, I shall have credit for,” and not
be “viewed as a delinquent, and considered perhaps by the world as [an]
unjust and undutiful son.”
In the last years of her life a cancer developed, which she refused to
have “dressed,” and over which, as her doctor wrote Washington, the
“Old Lady” and he had “a small battle every day.” Once Washington was
summoned by an express to her bedside “to bid, as I was prepared to
expect, the last adieu to an honored parent,” but it was a false alarm.
Her health was so bad, however, that just before he started to New York
to be inaugurated he rode to Fredericksburg, “and took a final leave of
my mother, never expecting to see her more,” a surmise that proved
correct.
Only Elizabeth—or “Betty”—of Washington’s sisters grew to womanhood,
and it is said that she was so strikingly like her brother that,
disguised with a long cloak and a military hat, the difference between
them was scarcely detectable. She married Fielding Lewis, and lived at
“Kenmore House” on the Rappahannock, where Washington spent many a
night, as did the Lewises at Mount Vernon. During the Revolution, while
visiting there, she wrote her brother, “Oh, when will that day arrive
when we shall meet again. Trust in the lord it will be soon,—till when,
you have the prayers and kind wishes for your health and happiness of
your loving and sincerely affectionate sister.” Her husband died “much
indebted,” and from that time her brother gave her occasional sums of
money, and helped her in other ways.
Her eldest son followed in his father’s footsteps, and displeased
Washington with requests for loans. He angered him still more by
conduct concerning which Washington wrote to him as follows:
“Sir, Your letter of the 11th of Octor. never came to my hands ’till
yesterday. Altho’ your disrespectful conduct towards me, in coming into
this country and spending weeks therein without ever coming near me,
entitled you to very little notice or favor from me; yet I consent that
you may get timber from off my Land in Fauquier County to build a house
on your Lott in Rectertown. Having granted this, now let me ask you
what your views were in purchasing a Lott in a place which, I presume,
originated with and will end in two or three Gin shops, which probably
will exist no longer than they serve to ruin the proprietors, and those
who make the most frequent applications to them. I am, &c.”
[Illustration: MRS FIELDING LEWIS (BETTY WASHINGTON)]
Other of the Lewis boys pleased him better, and he appointed one an
officer in his own “Life Guard.” Of another he wrote, when President,
to his sister, “If your son Howell is living with you, and not usefully
employed in your own affairs, and should incline to spend a few months
with me, as a writer in my office (if he is fit for it) I will allow
him at the rate of three hundred dollars a year, provided he is
diligent in discharging the duties of it from breakfast until
dinner—Sundays excepted. This sum will be punctually paid him, and I am
particular in declaring beforehand what I require, and what he may
expect, that there may be no disappointment, or false expectations on
either side. He will live in the family in the same manner his brother
Robert did.” This Robert had been for some time one of his secretaries,
and at another time was employed as a rent-collector.
Still another son, Lawrence, also served him in these dual capacities,
and Washington, on his retirement from the Presidency, offered him a
home at Mount Vernon. This led to a marriage with Mrs. Washington’s
grandchild, Eleanor Custis, a match which so pleased Washington that he
made arrangements for Lawrence to build on the Mount Vernon estate, in
his will named him an executor, and left the couple a part of this
property, as well as a portion of the residuary estate.
As already noted, much of Washington’s early life was passed at the
homes of his elder (half-) brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, who lived
respectively at Mount Vernon and Wakefield. When Lawrence developed
consumption, George was his travelling companion in a trip to
Barbadoes, and from him, when he died of that disease, in 1752, came
the bequest of Mount Vernon to “my loveing brother George.” To
Augustine, in the only letter now extant, Washington wrote, “The
pleasure of your company at Mount Vernon always did, and always will
afford me infinite satisfaction,” and signed himself “your most
affectionate brother.” Surviving this brother, he left handsome
bequests to all his children.
Samuel, the eldest of his own brothers, and his junior by but two
years, though constantly corresponded with, was not a favorite. He
seems to have had extravagant tendencies, variously indicated by five
marriages, and by (perhaps as a consequence) pecuniary difficulties. In
1781, Washington wrote to another brother, “In God’s name how did my
brother Samuel get himself so enormously in debt?” Very quickly
requests for loans followed, than which nothing was more irritating to
Washington. Yet, though he replied that it would be “very inconvenient”
to him, his ledger shows that at least two thousand dollars were
advanced, and in a letter to this brother, on the danger of borrowing
at interest, Washington wrote, “I do not make these observations on
account of the money I purpose to lend you, because all I shall require
is that you return the net sum when in your power, without interest.”
Better even than this, in his will Washington discharged the debt.
To the family of Samuel, Washington was equally helpful. For the eldest
son he obtained an ensigncy, and “to save Thornton and you [Samuel] the
expence of buying a horse to ride home on, I have lent him a mare.” Two
other sons he assumed all the expenses of, and showed an almost
fatherly interest in them. He placed them at school, and when the lads
proved somewhat unruly he wrote them long admonitory letters, which
became stern when actual misconduct ensued, and when one of them ran
away to Mount Vernon to escape a whipping, Washington himself prepared
“to correct him, but he begged so earnestly and promised so faithfully
that there should be no cause for complaint in the future, that I have
suspended punishment.” Later the two were sent to college, and in all
cost Washington “near five thousand dollars.”
An even greater trouble was their sister Harriot, whose care was
assumed in 1785, and who was a member of Washington’s household, with
only a slight interruption, till her marriage in 1796. Her chief
failing was “no disposition … to be careful of her cloathes,” which
were “dabbed about in every hole and corner and her best things always
in use,” so that Washington said “she costs me enough!” To her uncle
she wrote on one occasion, “How shall I apologise to my dear and
Honor’d for intruding on his goodness so soon again, but being sensible
for your kindness to me which I shall ever remember with the most
heartfelt gratitude induces me to make known my wants. I have not had a
pair of stays since I first came here: if you could let me have a pair
I should be very much obleiged to you, and also a hat and a few other
articles. I hope my dear Uncle will not think me extravagant for really
I take as much care of my cloaths as I possibly can.” Probably the
expense that pleased him best in her case was that which he recorded in
his ledger “By Miss Harriot Washington gave her to buy wedding clothes
$100.”
His second and favorite brother, John Augustine, who was four years his
junior, Washington described as “the intimate companion of my youth and
the friend of my ripened age.” While the Virginia colonel was on the
frontier, from 1754 to 1759, he left John in charge of all his business
affairs, giving him a residence at and management of Mount Vernon. With
this brother he constantly corresponded, addressing him as “Dear Jack,”
and writing in the most intimate and affectionate terms, not merely to
him, but when John had taken unto himself a wife, to her, and to “the
little ones,” and signing himself “your loving brother.” Visits between
the two were frequent, and invitations for the same still more so, and
in one letter, written during the most trying moment of the Revolution,
Washington said, “God grant you all health and happiness. Nothing in
this world could contribute so to mine as to be fixed among you.” John
died in 1787, and Washington wrote with simple but undisguised grief of
the death of “my beloved brother.”
The eldest son of this brother, Bushrod, was his favorite nephew, and
Washington took much interest in his career, getting the lad admitted
to study law with Judge James Wilson, in Philadelphia, and taking
genuine pride in him when he became a lawyer and judge of repute. He
made this nephew his travelling companion in the Western journey of
1784, and at other times not merely sent him money, but wrote him
letters of advice, dwelling on the dangers that beset young men, though
confessing that he was himself “not such a Stoic” as to expect too much
of youthful blood. To Bushrod, also, he appealed on legal matters,
adding, “You may think me an unprofitable applicant in asking opinions
and requiring services of you without dousing my money, but pay day may
come,” and in this he was as good as his word, for in his will
Washington left Bushrod, “partly in consideration of an intimation to
his deceased father, while we were bachelors and he had kindly
undertaken to superintend my Estates, during my military services in
the former war between Great Britain and France, that if I should fall
therein, Mt. Vernon … should become his property,” the home and
“mansion-house farm,” one share of the residuary estate, his private
papers, and his library, and named him an executor of the instrument.
Of Washington’s relations with his youngest brother, Charles, little
can be learned. He was the last of his brothers to die, and Washington
outlived him so short a time that he was named in his will, though only
for a mere token of remembrance. “I add nothing to it because of the
ample provision I have made for his issue.” Of the children so
mentioned, Washington was particularly fond of George Augustine
Washington. As a mere lad he used his influence to procure for him an
ensigncy in a Virginia regiment, and an appointment on Lafayette’s
staff. When in 1784 the young fellow was threatened with consumption,
his uncle’s purse supplied him with the funds by which he was enabled
to travel, even while Washington wrote, “Poor fellow! his pursuit after
health is, I fear, altogether fruitless.” When better health came, and
with it a renewal of a troth with a niece of Mrs. Washington’s, the
marriage was made possible by Washington appointing the young fellow
his manager, and not merely did it take place at Mount Vernon, but the
young couple took up their home there. More than this, that their
outlook might be “more stable and pleasing,” Washington promised them
that on his death they should not be forgotten. When the disease again
developed, Washington wrote his nephew in genuine anxiety, and ended
his letter, “At all times and under all circumstances you and yours
will possess my affectionate regards.” Only a few days later the news
of his nephew’s death reached him, and he wrote his widow, “To you who
so well know the affectionate regard I had for our departed friend, it
is unnecessary to describe the sorrow with which I was afflicted at the
news of his death.” He asked her and her children “to return to your
old habitation at Mount Vernon. You can go to no place where you can be
more welcome, nor to any where you can live at less expence and
trouble,” an offer, he adds, “made to you with my whole heart.”
Furthermore, Washington served as executor, assumed the expense of
educating one of the sons, and in his will left the two children part
of the Mount Vernon estate, as well as other bequests, “on account of
the affection I had for, and the obligation I was under to their father
when living, who from his youth attached himself to my person, and
followed my fortunes through the vicissitudes of the late Revolution,
afterwards devoting his time for many years whilst my public
employments rendered it impracticable for me to do it myself, thereby
affording me essential services and always performing them in a manner
the most filial and respectful.”
Of his wife’s kith and kin Washington was equally fond. Both alone and
with Mrs. Washington he often visited her mother, Mrs. Dandridge, and
in 1773 he wrote to a brother-in-law that he wished “I was master of
Arguments powerful enough to prevail upon Mrs. Dandridge to make this
place her entire and absolute home. I should think as she lives a
lonesome life (Betsey being married) it might suit her well, & be
agreeable, both to herself & my Wife, to me most assuredly it would.”
Washington was also a frequent visitor at “Eltham,” the home of Colonel
Bassett, who had married his wife’s sister, and constantly corresponded
with these relatives. He asked this whole family to be his guests at
the Warm Springs, and, as this meant camping out in tents, he wrote,
“You will have occasion to provide nothing, if I can be advised of your
intentions, so that I may provide accordingly.” To another
brother-in-law, Bartholomew Dandridge, he lent money, and forgave the
debt to the widow in his will, also giving her the use during her life
of the thirty-three negroes he had bid in at the bankruptcy sale of her
husband’s property.
The pleasantest glimpses of family feeling are gained, however, in his
relations with his wife’s children and grandchildren. John Parke and
Martha Parke Custis—or “Jack” and “Patsey,” as he called them—were at
the date of his marriage respectively six and four years of age, and in
the first invoice of goods to be shipped to him from London after he
had become their step-father, Washington ordered “10 shillings worth of
Toys,” “6 little books for children beginning to read,” and “1
fashionable-dressed baby to cost 10 shillings.” When this latter shared
the usual fate, he further wrote for “1 fashionable dress Doll to cost
a guinea,” and for “A box of Gingerbread Toys & Sugar Images or
Comfits.” A little later he ordered a Bible and Prayer-Book for each,
“neatly bound in Turkey,” with names “in gilt letters on the inside of
the cover,” followed ere long by an order for “1 very good Spinet” As
Patsy grew to girlhood she developed fits, and “solely on her account
to try (by the advice of her Physician) the effect of the waters on her
Complaint,” Washington took the family over the mountains and camped at
the “Warm Springs” in 1769, with “little benefit,” for, after ailing
four years longer, “she was seized with one of her usual Fits & expired
in it, in less than two minutes, without uttering a word, or groan, or
scarce a sigh.” “The Sweet Innocent Girl,” Washington wrote, “entered
into a more happy & peaceful abode than she has met with in the
afflicted Path she has hitherto trod,” but none the less “it is an
easier matter to conceive than to describe the distress of this family”
at the loss of “dear Patsy Custis.”
[Illustration: JOHN AND MARTHA PARKE CUSTIS]
The care of Jack Custis was a worry to Washington in quite another way.
As a lad, Custis signed his letters to him as “your most affectionate
and dutiful son,” “yet I conceive,” Washington wrote, “there is much
greater circumspection to be observed by a guardian than a natural
parent.” Soon after assuming charge of the boy, a tutor was secured,
who lived at Mount Vernon, but the boy showed little inclination to
study, and when fourteen, Washington wrote that “his mind [is] … more
turned … to Dogs, Horses and Guns, indeed upon Dress and equipage.”
“Having his well being much at heart,” Washington wished to make him
“fit for more useful purposes than [a] horse racer,” and so Jack was
placed with a clergyman, who agreed to instruct him, and with him he
lived, except for some home visits, for three years. Unfortunately, the
lad, like the true Virginian planter of his day, had no taste for
study, and had “a propensity for the [fair] sex.” After two or three
flirtations, he engaged himself, without the knowledge of his mother or
guardian, to Nellie Calvert, a match to which no objection could be
made, except that, owing to his “youth and fickleness,” “he may either
change and therefore injure the young lady; or that it may precipitate
him into a marriage before, I am certain, he has ever bestowed a
serious thought of the consequences; by which means his education is
interrupted.” To avoid this danger, Washington took his ward to New
York and entered him in King’s College, but the death of Patsy Custis
put a termination to study, for Mrs. Washington could not bear to have
the lad at such a distance, and Washington “did not care, as he is the
last of the family, to push my opposition too far.” Accordingly, Jack
returned to Virginia and promptly married.
The young couple were much at Mount Vernon from this time on, and
Washington wrote to “Dear Jack,” “I am always pleased with yours and
Nelly’s abidance at Mount Vernon.” When the winter snows made the siege
of Boston purely passive, the couple journeyed with Mrs. Washington to
Cambridge, and visited at head-quarters for some months. The arrival of
children prevented the repetition of such visits, but frequent letters,
which rarely failed to send love to “Nelly and the little girls,” were
exchanged. The acceptance of command compelled Washington to resign the
care of Custis’s estate, for which service “I have never charged him or
his sister, from the day of my connexion with them to this hour, one
farthing for all the trouble I have had in managing their estates, nor
for any expense they have been to me, notwithstanding some hundreds of
pounds would not reimburse the moneys I have actually paid in attending
the public meetings in Williamsburg to collect their debts, and
transact these several matters appertaining to the respective estates.”
Washington, however, continued his advice as to its management, and in
other letters advised him concerning his conduct when Custis was
elected a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. In the siege of
Yorktown Jack served as an officer of militia, and the exposure proved
too much for him. Immediately after the surrender, news reached
Washington of his serious illness, and by riding thirty miles in one
day he succeeded in reaching Eltham in “time enough to see poor Mr.
Custis breath his last,” leaving behind him “four lovely children,
three girls and a boy.”
Owing to his public employment, Washington refused to be guardian for
these “little ones,” writing “that it would be injurious to the
children and madness in me, to undertake, _as a principle_, a trust
which I could not discharge. Such aid, however, as it ever may be with
me to give to the children especially the boy, I will afford with all
my heart, and on this assurance you may rely.” Yet “from their earliest
infancy” two of Jack’s children, George Washington Parke and Eleanor
Parke Custis, lived at Mount Vernon, for, as Washington wrote in his
will, “it has always been my intention, since my expectation of having
issue has ceased, to consider the grandchildren of my wife in the same
light as my own relations, and to act a friendly part by them.” Though
the cares of war prevented his watching their property interests, his
eight years’ absence could not make him forget them, and on his way to
Annapolis, in 1783, to tender Congress his resignation, he spent sundry
hours of his time in the purchase of gifts obviously intended to
increase the joy of his homecoming to the family circle at Mount
Vernon; set forth in his note-book as follows:
“By Sundries bot. in Phila. A Locket £5 5 3 Small Pockt. Books 1
10 3 Sashes 1 5 0 Dress Cap 2 8 Hatt 3 10
Handkerchief 1 Childrens Books 4 6 Whirligig 1 6 Fiddle 2
6 Quadrille Boxes 1 17 6.”
Indeed, in every way Washington showed how entirely he considered
himself as a father, not merely speaking of them frequently as “the
children,” but even alluding to himself in a letter to the boy as “your
papa.” Both were much his companions during the Presidency. A frequent
sight in New York and Philadelphia was Washington taking “exercise in
the coach with Mrs. Washington and the two children,” and several times
they were taken to the theatre and on picnics.
For Eleanor, or “Nelly,” who grew into a great beauty, Washington
showed the utmost tenderness, and on occasion interfered to save her
from her grandmother, who at moments was inclined to be severe, in one
case to bring the storm upon himself. For her was bought a “Forte
piano,” and later, at the cost of a thousand dollars, a very fine
imported harpsichord, and one of Washington’s great pleasures was to
have her play and sing to him. His ledger constantly shows gifts to her
ranging from “The Wayworn traveller, a song for Miss Custis,” to “a pr.
of gold eardrops” and a watch. The two corresponded. One letter from
Washington merits quotation:
[Illustration: ELLANOR (NELLY) CUSTIS]
“Let me touch a little now on your Georgetown ball, and happy, thrice
happy, for the fair who assembled on the occasion, that there was a man
to spare; for had there been 79 ladies and only 78 gentlemen, there
might, in the course of the evening have been some disorder among the
caps; notwithstanding the apathy which _one_ of the company entertains
for the ‘_youth_’ of the present day, and her determination ‘Never to
give herself a moment’s uneasiness on account of any of them.’ A hint
here; men and women feel the same inclinations towards each other _now_
that they always have done, and which they will continue to do until
there is a new order of things, and _you_, as others have done, may
find, perhaps, that the passions of your sex are easier raised than
allayed. Do not therefore boast too soon or too strongly of your
insensibility to, or resistance of, its powers. In the composition of
the human frame there is a good deal of inflammable matter, however
dormant it may lie for a time, and like an intimate acquaintance of
yours, when the torch is put to it, _that_ which is _within you_ may
burst into a blaze; for which reason and especially too, as I have
entered upon the chapter of advices, I will read you a lecture from
this text.”
Not long after this was written, Nelly, as already mentioned, was
married at Mount Vernon to Washington’s nephew, Lawrence Lewis, and in
time became joint-owner with her husband of part of that place.
As early as 1785 a tutor was wanted for “little Washington,” as the lad
was called, and Washington wrote to England to ask if some “worthy man
of the cloth could not be obtained,” “for the boy is a remarkably fine
one, and my intention is to give him a liberal education.” His training
became part of the private secretary’s duty, both at Mount Vernon and
New York and Philadelphia, but the lad inherited his father’s traits,
and “from his infancy … discovered an almost unconquerable disposition
to indolence.” This led to failures which gave Washington “extreme
disquietude,” and in vain he “exhorted him in the most parental and
friendly manner.” Custis would express “sorrow and repentance” and do
no better. Successively he was sent to the College of Philadelphia, the
College of New Jersey, and that at Annapolis, but from each he was
expelled, or had to be withdrawn. Irritating as it must have been, his
guardian never in his letters expressed anything but affection,
shielded the lad from the anger of his step-father, and saw that he was
properly supplied with money, of which he asked him to keep a careful
account,—though this, as Washington wrote, was “not because I want to
know how you spend your money.” After the last college failure a
private tutor was once more engaged, but a very few weeks served to
give Washington “a thorough conviction that it was in vain to keep
Washington Custis to any literary pursuits, either in a public Seminary
or at home,” and, as the next best thing, he procured him a cornetcy in
the provisional army. Even here, balance was shown; for, out of
compliment and friendship to Washington, “the Major Generals were
desirous of placing him as lieutenant in the first instance; but his
age considered, I thought it more eligible that he should enter into
the lowest grade.”
In this connection one side of Washington’s course with his relations
deserves especial notice. As early as 1756 he applied for a commission
in the Virginia forces for his brother, and, as already shown, he
placed several of his nephews and other connections in the
Revolutionary or provisional armies. But he made clear distinction
between military and civil appointments, and was very scrupulous about
the latter. When his favorite nephew asked for a Federal appointment,
Washington answered,—
“You cannot doubt my wishes to see you appointed to any office of honor
or emolument in the new government, to the duties of which you are
competent; but however deserving you may be of the one you have
suggested, your standing at the bar would not justify my nomination of
you as attorney to the Federal District Court in preference to some of
the oldest and most esteemed general court lawyers in your State, who
are desirous of this appointment. My political conduct in nominations,
even if I were uninfluenced by principle, must be exceedingly
circumspect and proof against just criticism; for the eyes of Argus are
upon me, and no slip will pass unnoticed, that can be improved into a
supposed partiality for friends or relations.”
And that in this policy he was consistent is shown by a letter of
Jefferson, who wrote to an office-seeking relative, “The public will
never be made to believe that an appointment of a relative is made on
the ground of merit alone, uninfluenced by family views; nor can they
ever see with approbation offices, the disposal of which they entrust
to their Presidents for public purposes, divided out as family
property. Mr. Adams degraded himself infinitely by his conduct on this
subject, as Genl. Washington had done himself the greatest honor. With
two such examples to proceed by, I should be doubly inexcusable to
err.”
There were many other more distant relatives with whom pleasant
relations were maintained, but enough has been said to indicate the
intercourse. Frequent were the house-parties at Mount Vernon, and how
unstinted hospitality was to kith and kin is shown by many entries in
Washington’s diary, a single one of which will indicate the rest: “I
set out for my return home—at which I arrived a little after noon—And
found my Brother Jon Augustine his Wife; Daughter Milly, & Sons Bushrod
& Corbin, & the Wife of the first. Mr. Willm Washington & his Wife and
4 Children.”
His will left bequests to forty-one of his own and his wife’s
relations. “God left him childless that he might be the father of his
country.”
II
PHYSIQUE
Writing to his London tailor for clothes, in 1763, Washington directed
him to “take measure of a gentleman who wares well-made cloaths of the
following size: to wit, 6 feet high and proportionably made—if anything
rather slender than thick, for a person of that highth, with pretty
long arms and thighs. You will take care to make the breeches longer
than those you sent me last, and I would have you keep the measure of
the cloaths you now make, by you, and if any alteration is required in
my next it shall be pointed out.” About this time, too, he ordered “6
pr. Man’s riding Gloves—rather large than the middle size,”… and
several dozen pairs of stockings, “to be long, and tolerably large.”
The earliest known description of Washington was written in 1760 by his
companion-in-arms and friend George Mercer, who attempted a
“portraiture” in the following words: “He may be described as being as
straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two inches in his stockings,
and weighing 175 pounds when he took his seat in the House of Burgesses
in 1759. His frame is padded with well-developed muscles, indicating
great strength. His bones and joints are large, as are his feet and
hands. He is wide shouldered, but has not a deep or round chest; is
neat waisted, but is broad across the hips, and has rather long legs
and arms. His head is well shaped though not large, but is gracefully
poised on a superb neck. A large and straight rather than prominent
nose; blue-gray penetrating eyes, which are widely separated and
overhung by a heavy brow. His face is long rather than broad, with high
round cheek bones, and terminates in a good firm chin. He has a clear
though rather a colorless pale skin, which burns with the sun. A
pleasing, benevolent, though a commanding countenance, dark brown hair,
which he wears in a cue. His mouth is large and generally firmly
closed, but which from time to time discloses some defective teeth. His
features are regular and placid, with all the muscles of his face under
perfect control, though flexible and expressive of deep feeling when
moved by emotion. In conversation he looks you full in the face, is
deliberate, deferential and engaging. His voice is agreeable rather
than strong. His demeanor at all times composed and dignified. His
movements and gestures are graceful, his walk majestic, and he is a
splendid horseman.”
Dr. James Thacher, writing in 1778, depicted him as “remarkably tall,
full six feet, erect and well proportioned. The strength and proportion
of his joints and muscles, appear to be commensurate with the
pre-eminent powers of his mind. The serenity of his countenance, and
majestic gracefulness of his deportment, impart a strong impression of
that dignity and grandeur, which are his peculiar characteristics, and
no one can stand in his presence without feeling the ascendancy of his
mind, and associating with his countenance the idea of wisdom,
philanthropy, magnanimity and patriotism. There is a fine symmetry in
the features of his face, indicative of a benign and dignified spirit.
His nose is straight, and his eye inclined to blue. He wears his hair
in a becoming cue, and from his forehead it is turned back and powdered
in a manner which adds to the military air of his appearance. He
displays a native gravity, but devoid of all appearance of
ostentation.” In this same year a friend wrote, “General Washington is
now in the forty-seventh year of his age; he is a well-made man, rather
large boned, and has a tolerably genteel address; his features are
manly and bold, his eyes of a bluish cast and very lively; his hair a
deep brown, his face rather long and marked with the small-pox; his
complexion sunburnt and without much color, and his countenance
sensible, composed and thoughtful; there is a remarkable air of dignity
about him, with a striking degree of gracefulness.”
In 1789 Senator Maclay saw “him as he really is. In stature about six
feet, with an unexceptionable make, but lax appearance. His frame would
seem to want filling up. His motions rather slow than lively, though he
showed no signs of having suffered by gout or rheumatism. His
complexion pale, nay, almost cadaverous. His voice hollow and
indistinct, owing, as I believe, to artificial teeth before his upper
jaw, which occasions a flatness.”
From frequent opportunity of seeing Washington between 1794 and 1797,
William Sullivan described him as “over six feet in stature; of strong,
bony, muscular frame, without fullness of covering, well-formed and
straight. He was a man of most extraordinary strength. In his own
house, his action was calm, deliberate, and dignified, without
pretension to gracefulness, or peculiar manner, but merely natural, and
such as one would think it should be in such a man. When walking in the
street, his movement had not the soldierly air which might be expected.
His habitual motions had been formed, long before he took command of
the American Armies, in the wars of the interior and in the surveying
of wilderness lands, employments in which grace and elegance were not
likely to be acquired. At the age of sixty-five, time had done nothing
towards bending him out of his natural erectness. His deportment was
invariably grave; it was sobriety that stopped short of sadness.”
The French officers and travellers supply other descriptions. The Abbé
Robin found him of “tall and noble stature, well proportioned, a fine,
cheerful, open countenance, a simple and modest carriage; and his whole
mien has something in it that interests the French, the Americans, and
even enemies themselves in his favor.”
The Marquis de Chastellux wrote enthusiastically, “In speaking of this
perfect whole of which General Washington furnishes the idea, I have
not excluded exterior form. His stature is noble and lofty, he is well
made, and exactly proportionate; his physiognomy mild and agreeable,
but such as to render it impossible to speak particularly of any of his
features, so that in quitting him you have only the recollection of a
fine face. He has neither a grave nor a familiar face, his brow is
sometimes marked with thought, but never with inquietude; in inspiring
respect he inspires confidence, and his smile is always the smile of
benevolence.”
To this description, however, Brissot de Warville took exception, and
supplied his own picture by writing in 1791, “You have often heard me
blame M. Chastellux for putting too much sprightliness in the character
he has drawn of this general. To give pretensions to the portrait of a
man who has none is truly absurd. The General’s goodness appears in his
looks. They have nothing of that brilliancy which his officers found in
them when he was at the head of his army; but in conversation they
become animated. He has no characteristic traits in his figure, and
this has rendered it always so difficult to describe it: there are few
portraits which resemble him. All his answers are pertinent; he shows
the utmost reserve, and is very diffident; but, at the same time, he is
firm and unchangeable in whatever he undertakes. His modesty must be
very astonishing, especially to a Frenchman.”
British travellers have left a number of pen-portraits. An anonymous
writer in 1790 declared that in meeting him “it was not necessary to
announce his name, for his peculiar appearance, his firm forehead,
Roman nose, and a projection of the lower jaw, his height and figure,
could not be mistaken by any one who had seen a full-length picture of
him, and yet no picture accurately resembled him in the minute traits
of his person. His features, however, were so marked by prominent
characteristics, which appear in all likenesses of him, that a stranger
could not be mistaken in the man; he was remarkably dignified in his
manners, and had an air of benignity over his features which his
visitant did not expect, being rather prepared for sternness of
countenance…. his smile was extraordinarily attractive. It was observed
to me that there was an expression in Washington’s face that no painter
had succeeded in taking. It struck me no man could be better formed for
command. A stature of six feet, a robust, but well-proportioned frame,
calculated to sustain fatigue, without that heaviness which generally
attends great muscular strength, and abates active exertion, displayed
bodily power of no mean standard. A light eye and full—the very eye of
genius and reflection rather than of blind passionate impulse. His nose
appeared thick, and though it befitted his other features, was too
coarsely and strongly formed to be the handsomest of its class. His
mouth was like no other that I ever saw; the lips firm and the under
jaw seeming to grasp the upper with force, as if its muscles were in
full action when he sat still.”
Two years later, an English diplomat wrote of him, “His person is tall
and sufficiently graceful; his face well formed, his complexion rather
pale, with a mild philosophic gravity in the expression of it In his
air and manner he displays much natural dignity; in his address he is
cold, reserved, and even phlegmatic, though without the least
appearance of haughtiness or ill-nature; it is the effect, I imagine,
of constitutional diffidence. That caution and circumspection which
form so striking and well known a feature in his military, and, indeed,
in his political character, is very strongly marked in his countenance,
for his eyes retire inward (do you understand me?) and have nothing of
fire of animation or openness in their expression.”
Wansey, who visited Mount Vernon in 1795, portrayed “The President in
his person” as “tall and thin, but erect; rather of an engaging than a
dignified presence. He appears very thoughtful, is slow in delivering
himself, which occasions some to conclude him reserved, but it is
rather, I apprehend, the effect of much thinking and reflection, for
there is great appearance to me of affability and accommodation. He was
at this time in his sixty-third year … but he has very little the
appearance of age, having been all his life long so exceeding
temperate.”
In 1797, Weld wrote, “his chest is full; and his limbs, though rather
slender, well shaped and muscular. His head is small, in which respect
he resembles the make of a great number of his countrymen. His eyes are
of a light grey colour; and in proportion to the length of his face,
his nose is long. Mr. Stewart, the eminent portrait painter, told me,
that there were features in his face totally different from what he
ever observed in that of any other human being; the sockets for the
eyes, for instance, are larger than what he ever met with before, and
the upper part of the nose broader. All his features, he observed, were
indicative of the strongest and most ungovernable passions, and had he
been born in the forests, it was his opinion that he would have been
the fiercest man among the savage tribes.”
Other and briefer descriptions contain a few phrases worth quoting.
Samuel Sterns said, “His countenance commonly carries the impression of
a serious cast;” Maclay, that “the President seemed to bear in his
countenance a settled aspect of melancholy;” and the Prince de Broglie
wrote, “His pensive eyes seem more attentive than sparkling, but their
expression is benevolent, noble and self-possessed.” Silas Deane in
1775 said he had “a very young look and an easy soldier-like air and
gesture,” and in the same year Curwen mentioned his “fine figure” and
“easy and agreeable address.” Nathaniel Lawrence noted in 1783 that
“the General weighs commonly about 210 pounds.” After death, Lear
reports that “Doctor Dick measured the body, which was as follows—In
length 6 ft. 3-1/2 inches exact. Across the shoulders 1.9. Across the
elbows 2.1.” The pleasantest description is Jefferson’s: “His person,
you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his
deportment easy, erect and noble.”
How far the portraits of Washington conveyed his expression is open to
question. The quotation already given which said that no picture
accurately resembled him in the minute traits of his person is worth
noting. Furthermore, his expression varied much according to
circumstances, and the painter saw it only in repose. The first time he
was drawn, he wrote a friend, “Inclination having yielded to
Importunity, I am now contrary to all expectation under the hands of
Mr. Peale; but in so grave—so sullen a mood—and now and then under the
influence of Morpheus, when some critical strokes are making, that I
fancy the skill of this Gentleman’s Pencil will be put to it, in
describing to the World what manner of man I am.” This passiveness
seems to have seized him at other sittings, for in 1785 he wrote to a
friend who asked him to be painted, “_In for a penny, in for a Pound_,
is an old adage. I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painter’s
pencil that I am now altogether at their beck; and sit ‘like Patience
on a monument,’ whilst they are delineating the lines of my face. It is
a proof, among many others, of what habit and custom can accomplish. At
first I was as impatient at the request, and as restive under the
operation, as a colt is of the saddle. The next time I submitted very
reluctantly, but with less flouncing. Now, no dray-horse moves more
readily to his thills than I to the painter’s chair.” His aide,
Laurens, bears this out by writing of a miniature, “The defects of this
portrait are, that the visage is too long, and old age is too strongly
marked in it. He is not altogether mistaken, with respect to the
languor of the general’s eye; for altho’ his countenance when affected
either by joy or anger, is full of expression, yet when the muscles are
in a state of repose, his eye certainly wants animation.”
[Illustration: FIRST (FICTITIOUS) ENGRAVED PORTRAIT OF WASHINGTON]
One portrait which furnished Washington not a little amusement was an
engraving issued in London in 1775, when interest in the “rebel
General” was great. This likeness, it is needless to say, was entirely
spurious, and when Reed sent a copy to head-quarters, Washington wrote
to him, “Mrs. Washington desires I will thank you for the picture sent
her. Mr. Campbell, whom I never saw, to my knowledge, has made a very
formidable figure of the Commander-in-chief, giving him a sufficient
portion of terror in his countenance.”
The physical strength mentioned by nearly every one who described
Washington is so undoubted that the traditions of his climbing the
walls of the Natural Bridge, throwing a stone across the Rappahannock
at Fredericksburg, and another into the Hudson from the top of the
Palisades, pass current more from the supposed muscular power of the
man than from any direct evidence. In addition to this, Washington in
1755 claimed to have “one of the best of constitutions,” and again he
wrote, “for my own part I can answer, I have a constitution hardy
enough to encounter and undergo the most severe trials.”
This vigor was not the least reason of Washington’s success. In the
retreat from Brooklyn, “for forty-eight hours preceeding that I had
hardly been off my horse,” and between the 13th and the 19th of June of
1777 “I was almost constantly on horseback.” After the battle of
Monmouth, as told elsewhere, he passed the night on a blanket; the
first night of the siege of York “he slept under a mulberry tree, the
root serving for a pillow,” and another time he lay “all night in my
Great Coat & Boots, in a birth not long enough for me by the head, &
much cramped.” Besides the physical strain there was a mental one.
During the siege of Boston he wrote that “The reflection on my
situation and that of this army, produces many an uneasy hour when all
around me are wrapped in sleep.” Humphreys relates that at Newburg in
1783 a revolt of the whole army seemed imminent, and “when General
Washington rose from bed on the morning of the meeting, he told the
writer his anxiety had prevented him from sleeping one moment the
preceeding night.” Washington observed, in a letter written after the
Revolution, “strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that it
was not until lately I could get the better of my usual custom of
ruminating as soon as I awoke in the morning, on the business of the
ensuing day; and of my surprise at finding, after revolving many things
in my mind that I was no longer a public man, or had any thing to do
with public transactions.”
Despite his strength and constitution, Washington was frequently the
victim of illness. What diseases of childhood he suffered are not
known, but presumably measles was among them, for when his wife within
the first year of married life had an attack he cared for her without
catching the complaint. The first of his known illnesses was “Ague and
Feaver, which I had to an extremity” about 1748, or when he was
sixteen.
In the sea voyage to Barbadoes in 1751, the seamen told Washington that
“they had never seen such weather before,” and he says in his diary
that the sea “made the Ship rowl much and me very sick.” While in the
island, he went to dine with a friend “with great reluctance, as the
small-pox was in his family.” A fortnight later Washington “was
strongly attacked with the small Pox,” which confined him for nearly a
month, and, as already noted, marked his face for life. Shortly after
the return voyage he was “taken with a violent pleurise, which …
reduced me very low.”
During the Braddock march, “immediately upon our leaving the camp at
George’s Creek, on the 14th, … I was seized with violent fevers and
pains in my head, which continued without intermission ’till the 23d
following, when I was relieved, by the General’s [Braddock] absolutely
ordering the physicians to give me Dr. James’ powders (one of the most
excellent medicines in the world), for it gave me immediate ease, and
removed my fevers and other complaints in four days’ time. My illness
was too violent to suffer me to ride; therefore I was indebted to a
covered wagon for some part of my transportation; but even in this I
could not continue far, for the jolting was so great, I was left upon
the road with a guard, and necessaries, to wait the arrival of Colonel
Dunbar’s detachment which was two days’ march behind us, the General
giving me his word of honor, that I should be brought up, before he
reached the French fort. This _promise_, and the doctor’s _threats_,
that, if I persevered in my attempts to get on, in the condition I was,
my life would be endangered, determined me to halt for the above
detachment.” Immediately upon his return from that campaign, he told a
brother, “I am not able, were I ever so willing, to meet you in town,
for I assure you it is with some difficulty, and with much fatigue,
that I visit my plantations in the Neck; so much has a sickness of five
weeks’ continuance reduced me.”
On the frontier, towards the end of 1757, he was seized with a violent
attack of dysentery and fever, which compelled him to leave the army
and retire to Mount Vernon. Three months later he said, “I have never
been able to return to my command, … my disorder at times returning
obstinately upon me, in spite of the efforts of all the sons of
Aesculapius, whom I have hitherto consulted. At certain periods I have
been reduced to great extremity, and have too much reason to apprehend
an approaching decay, being visited with several symptoms of such a
disease…. I am now under a strict regimen, and shall set out to-morrow
for Williamsburg to receive the advice of the best physician there. My
constitution is certainly greatly impaired, and … nothing can retrieve
it, but the greatest care and the most circumspect conduct.” It was in
this journey that he met his future wife, and either she or the doctor
cured him, for nothing more is heard of his approaching “decay.”
In 1761 he was attacked with a disease which seems incidental to new
settlements, known in Virginia at that time as the “river fever,” and a
hundred years later, farther west, as the “break-bone fever,” and
which, in a far milder form, is to-day known as malaria. Hoping to cure
it, he went over the mountains to the Warm Springs, being “much
overcome with the fatigue of the ride and weather together. However, I
think my fevers are a good deal abated, although my pains grow rather
worse, and my sleep equally disturbed. What effect the waters may have
upon me I can’t say at present, but I expect nothing from the air—this
certainly must be unwholesome. I purpose staying here a fortnight and
longer if benefitted.” After writing this, a relapse brought him “very
near my last gasp. The indisposition … increased upon me, and I fell
into a very low and dangerous state. I once thought the grim king would
certainly master my utmost efforts, and that I must sink, in spite of a
noble struggle; but thank God, I have now got the better of the
disorder, and shall soon be restored, I hope, to perfect health again.”
During the Revolution, fortunately, he seems to have been wonderfully
exempt from illness, and not till his retirement to Mount Vernon did an
old enemy, the ague, reappear. In 1786 he said, in a letter, “I write
to you with a very aching head and disordered frame…. Saturday last, by
an imprudent act, I brought on an ague and fever on Sunday, which
returned with violence Tuesday and Thursday; and, if Dr. Craik’s
efforts are ineffectual I shall have them again this day.” His diary
gives the treatment: “Seized with an ague before 6 o’clock this morning
after having laboured under a fever all night—Sent for Dr. Craik who
arrived just as we were setting down to dinner; who, when he thought my
fever sufficiently abated gave me cathartick and directed the Bark to
be applied in the Morning. September 2. Kept close to the House to day,
being my fit day in course least any exposure might bring it
on,—happily missed it September 14. At home all day repeating dozes of
Bark of which I took 4 with an interval of 2 hours between.”
With 1787 a new foe appeared in the form of “a rheumatic complaint
which has followed me more than six months, is frequently so bad that
it is sometimes with difficulty I can raise my hand to my head or turn
myself in bed.”
During the Presidency Washington had several dangerous illnesses, but
the earliest one had a comic side. In his tour through New England in
1789, so Sullivan states, “owing to some mismanagement in the reception
ceremonials at Cambridge, Washington was detained a long time, and the
weather being inclement, he took cold. For several days afterward a
severe influenza prevailed at Boston and its vicinity, and was called
the _Washington Influenza_.” He himself writes of this attack: “Myself
much disordered by a cold, and inflammation in the left eye.”
Six months later, in New York, he was “indisposed with a bad cold, and
at home all day writing letters on private business,” and this was the
beginning of “a severe illness,” which, according to McVickar, was “a
case of anthrax, so malignant as for several days to threaten
mortification. During this period Dr. Bard never quitted him. On one
occasion, being left alone with him, General Washington, looking
steadily in his face, desired his candid opinion as to the probable
termination of his disease, adding, with that placid firmness which
marked his address, ‘Do not flatter me with vain hopes; I am not afraid
to die, and therefore can bear the worst!’ Dr. Bard’s answer, though it
expressed hope, acknowledged his apprehensions. The President replied,
‘Whether to-night or twenty years hence, makes no difference.’” It was
of this that Maclay wrote, “Called to see the President. Every eye full
of tears. His life despaired of. Dr. MacKnight told me he would trifle
neither with his own character nor the public expectation; his danger
was imminent, and every reason to expect that the event of his disorder
would be unfortunate.”
During his convalescence the President wrote to a correspondent, “I
have the pleasure to inform you, that my health is restored, but a
feebleness still hangs upon me, and I am much incommoded by the
incision, which was made in a very large and painful tumor on the
protuberance of my thigh. This prevents me from walking or sitting.
However, the physicians assure me that it has had a happy effect in
removing my fever, and will tend very much to the establishment of my
general health; it is in a fair way of healing, and time and patience
only are wanting to remove this evil. I am able to take exercise in my
coach, by having it so contrived as to extend myself the full length of
it.” He himself seems to have thought this succession of illness due to
the fatigues of office, for he said,—
“Public meetings, and a dinner once a week to as many as my table will
hold, with the references _to and from_ the different department of
state and _other_ communications with _all_ parts of the Union, are as
much, if not more, than I am able to undergo; for I have already had
within less than a year, two severe attacks, the last worst than the
first. A third, more than probable, will put me to sleep with my
fathers. At what distance this may be I know not. Within the last
twelve months I have undergone more and severer sickness, than thirty
preceding years afflicted me with. Put it all together I have abundant
reason, however, to be thankful that I am so well recovered; though I
still feel the remains of the violent affection of my lungs; the cough,
pain in my breast, and shortness in breathing not having entirely left
me.”
While at Mount Vernon in 1794, “an exertion to save myself and horse
from falling among the rocks at the Lower Falls of the Potomac (whither
I went on Sunday morning to see the canal and locks),… wrenched my back
in such a manner as to prevent my riding;” the “hurt” “confined me
whilst I was at Mount Vernon,” and it was some time before he could
“again ride with ease and safety.” In this same year Washington was
operated on by Dr. Tate for cancer,—the same disorder from which his
mother had suffered.
After his retirement from office, in 1798, he “was seized with a fever,
of which I took little notice until I was obliged to call for the aid
of medicine; and with difficulty a remission thereof was so far
effected as to dose me all night on thursday with Bark—which having
stopped it, and weakness only remaining, will soon wear off as my
appetite is returning;” and to a correspondent he apologized for not
sooner replying, and pleaded “debilitated health, occasioned by the
fever wch. deprived me of 20 lbs. of the weight I had when you and I
were at Troy Mills Scales, and rendered writing irksome.”
A glance at Washington’s medical knowledge and opinions may not lack
interest. In the “Rules of civility” he had taken so to heart, the boy
had been taught that “In visiting the Sick, do not Presently play the
Physician if you be not Knowing therein,” but plantation life trained
every man to a certain extent in physicking, and the yearly invoice
sent to London always ordered such drugs as were needed,—ipecacuanha,
jalap, Venice treacle, rhubarb, diacordium, etc., as well as medicines
for horses and dogs. In 1755 Washington received great benefit from one
quack medicine, “Dr. James’s Powders;” he once bought a quantity of
another, “Godfrey’s Cordial;” and at a later time Mrs. Washington tried
a third, “Annatipic Pills.” More unenlightened still was a treatment
prescribed for Patsy Custis, when “Joshua Evans who came here last
night, put a [metal] ring on Patsey (for Fits).” A not much higher
order of treatment was Washington sending for Dr. Laurie to bleed his
wife, and, as his diary notes, the doctor “came here, I may add,
drunk,” so that a night’s sleep was necessary before the service could
be rendered. When the small-pox was raging in the Continental Army,
even Washington’s earnest request could not get the Virginia Assembly
to repeal a law which forbade inoculation, and he had to urge his wife
for over four years before he could bring her to the point of
submitting to the operation. One quality which implies greatness is
told by a visitor, who states that in his call “an allusion was made to
a serious fit of illness he had recently suffered; but he took no
notice of it” Custis notes that “his aversion to the use of medicine
was extreme; and, even when in great suffering, it was only by the
entreaties of his lady, and the respectful, yet beseeching look of his
oldest friend and companion in arms (Dr. James Craik) that he could be
prevailed upon to take the slightest preparation of medicine.” In line
with this was his refusal to take anything for a cold, saying, “Let it
go as it came,” though this good sense was apparently restricted to his
own colds, for Watson relates that in a visit to Mount Vernon “I was
extremely oppressed by a severe cold and excessive coughing, contracted
by the exposure of a harsh journey. He pressed me to use some remedies,
but I declined doing so. As usual, after retiring my coughing
increased. When some time had elapsed, the door of my room was gently
opened, and, on drawing my bed-curtains, to my utter astonishment, I
beheld Washington himself, standing at my bedside, with a bowl of hot
tea in his hand.”
The acute attacks of illness already touched upon by no means represent
all the physical debility and suffering of Washington’s life. During
the Revolution his sight became poor, so that in 1778 he first put on
glasses for reading, and Cobb relates that in the officers’ meeting in
1783, which Washington attended In order to check an appeal to arms,
“When the General took his station at the desk or pulpit, which, you
may recollect, was in the Temple, he took out his written address from
his coat pocket and then addressed the officers in the following
manner: ‘Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I
have not only grown gray, but almost blind, in the service of my
country.’ This little address, with the mode and manner of delivering
it, drew tears from [many] of the officers.”
Nor did his hearing remain entirely good. Maclay noted, at one of the
President’s dinners in 1789, that “he seemed in more good humor than I
ever saw him, though he was so deaf that I believe he heard little of
the conversation,” and three years later the President is reported as
saying to Jefferson that he was “sensible, too, of a decay of his
hearing, perhaps his other faculties might fall off and he not be
sensible of it.”
Washington’s teeth were even more troublesome. Mercer in 1760 alluded
to his showing, when his mouth was open, “some defective teeth,” and as
early as 1754 one of his teeth was extracted. From this time toothache,
usually followed by the extraction of the guilty member, became almost
of yearly recurrence, and his diary reiterates, with verbal variations,
“indisposed with an aching tooth, and swelled and inflamed gum,” while
his ledger contains many items typified by “To Dr. Watson drawing a
tooth 5/.” By 1789 he was using false teeth, and he lost his last tooth
in 1795. At first these substitutes were very badly fitted, and when
Stuart painted his famous picture he tried to remedy the malformation
they gave the mouth by padding under the lips with cotton. The result
was to make bad worse, and to give, in that otherwise fine portrait, a
feature at once poor and unlike Washington, and for this reason alone
the Sharpless miniature, which in all else approximates so closely to
Stuart’s masterpiece, is preferable. In 1796 Washington was furnished
with two sets of “sea-horse” (_i.e._, hippopotamus) ivory teeth, and
they were so much better fitted that the distortion of the mouth ceased
to be noticeable.
Washington’s final illness began December 12, 1799, in a severe cold
taken by riding about his plantation while “rain, hail and snow” were
“falling alternately, with a cold wind.” When he came in late in the
afternoon, Lear “observed to him that I was afraid that he had got wet,
he said no his great coat had kept him dry; but his neck appeared to be
wet and the snow was hanging on his hair.” The next day he had a cold,
“and complained of having a sore throat,” yet, though it was snowing,
none the less he “went out in the afternoon … to mark some trees which
were to be cut down.” “He had a hoarseness which increased in the
evening; but he made light of it as he would never take anything to
carry off a cold, always observing, ‘let it go as it came.’” At two
o’clock the following morning he was seized with a severe ague, and as
soon as the house was stirring he sent for an overseer and ordered the
man to bleed him, and about half a pint of blood was taken from him. At
this time he could “swallow nothing,” “appeared to be distressed,
convulsed and almost suffocated.”
There can be scarcely a doubt that the treatment of his last illness by
the doctors was little short of murder. Although he had been bled once
already, after they took charge of the case they prescribed “two pretty
copious bleedings,” and finally a third, “when about 32 ounces of blood
were drawn,” or the equivalent of a quart. Of the three doctors, one
disapproved of this treatment, and a second wrote, only a few days
after Washington’s death, to the third, “you must remember” Dr. Dick
“was averse to bleeding the General, and I have often thought that if
we had acted according to his suggestion when he said, ‘he needs all
his strength— bleeding will diminish it,’ and taken no more blood from
him, our good friend might have been alive now. But we were governed by
the best light we had; we thought we were right, and so we are
justified.”
Shortly after this last bleeding Washington seemed to have resigned
himself, for he gave some directions concerning his will, and said, “I
find I am going,” and, “smiling,” added, that, “as it was the debt
which we must all pay, he looked to the event with perfect
resignation.” From this time on “he appeared to be in great pain and
distress,” and said, “Doctor, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go. I
believed from my first attack that I should not survive it.” A little
later he said, “I feel myself going. I thank you for your attention,
you had better not take any more trouble about me; but let me go off
quietly.” The last words he said were, “’Tis well.” “About ten minutes
before he expired, his breathing became much easier—he lay quietly—…
and felt his own pulse…. The general’s hand fell from his wrist,… and
he expired without a struggle or a Sigh.”
III
EDUCATION
The father of Washington received his education at Appleby School in
England, and, true to his alma mater, he sent his two elder sons to the
same school. His death when George was eleven prevented this son from
having the same advantage, and such education as he had was obtained in
Virginia. His old friend, and later enemy, Rev. Jonathan Boucher, said
that “George, like most people thereabouts at that time, had no
education than reading, writing and accounts which he was taught by a
convict servant whom his father bought for a schoolmaster;” but Boucher
managed to include so many inaccuracies in his account of Washington,
that even if this statement were not certainly untruthful in several
respects, it could be dismissed as valueless.
Born at Wakefield, in Washington parish, Westmoreland, which had been
the home of the Washingtons from their earliest arrival in Virginia,
George was too young while the family continued there to attend the
school which had been founded in that parish by the gift of four
hundred and forty acres from some early patron of knowledge. When the
boy was about three years old, the family removed to “Washington,” as
Mount Vernon was called before it was renamed, and dwelt there from
1735 till 1739, when, owing to the burning of the homestead, another
remove was made to an estate on the Rappahannock, nearly opposite
Fredericksburg.
Here it was that the earliest education of George was received, for in
an old volume of the Bishop of Exeter’s Sermons his name is written,
and on a flyleaf a note in the handwriting of a relative who inherited
the library states that this “autograph of George Washington’s name is
believed to be the earliest specimen of his handwriting, when he was
probably not more than eight or nine years old.” During this period,
too, there came into his possession the “Young Man’s Companion,” an
English _vade-mecum_ of then enormous popularity, written “in a plain
and easy stile,” the title states, “that a young Man may attain the
same, without a Tutor.” It would be easier to say what this little book
did not teach than to catalogue what it did. How to read, write, and
figure is but the introduction to the larger part of the work, which
taught one to write letters, wills, deeds, and all legal forms, to
measure, survey, and navigate, to build houses, to make ink and cider,
and to plant and graft, how to address letters to people of quality,
how to doctor the sick, and, finally, how to conduct one’s self in
company. The evidence still exists of how carefully Washington studied
this book, in the form of copybooks, in which are transcribed problem
after problem and rule after rule, not to exclude the famous Rules of
civility, which biographers of Washington have asserted were written by
the boy himself. School-mates thought fit, after Washington became
famous, to remember his “industry and assiduity at school as very
remarkable,” and the copies certainly bear out the statement, but even
these prove that the lad was as human as the man, for scattered here
and there among the logarithms, geometrical problems, and legal forms
are crude drawings of birds, faces, and other typical school-boy
attempts.
From this book, too, came two qualities which clung to him through
life. His handwriting, so easy, flowing, and legible, was modelled from
the engraved “copy” sheet, and certain forms of spelling were acquired
here that were never corrected, though not the common usage of his
time. To the end of his life, Washington wrote lie, lye; liar, lyar;
ceiling, cieling; oil, oyl; and blue, blew, as in his boyhood he had
learned to do from this book. Even in his carefully prepared will,
“lye” was the form in which he wrote the word. It must be acknowledged
that, aside from these errors which he had been taught, through his
whole life Washington was a non-conformist as regarded the King’s
English: struggle as he undoubtedly did, the instinct of correct
spelling was absent, and thus every now and then a verbal slip
appeared: extravagence, lettely (for lately), glew, riffle (for rifle),
latten (for Latin), immagine, winder, rief (for rife), oppertunity,
spirma citi, yellow oaker,—such are types of his lapses late in life,
while his earlier letters and journals are far more inaccurate. It must
be borne in mind, however, that of these latter we have only the
draughts, which were undoubtedly written carelessly, and the two
letters actually sent which are now known, and the text of his surveys
before he was twenty, are quite as well written as his later epistles.
[Illustration: _Easy Copies to Write by_.
COPY OF PENMANSHIP BY WHICH WASHINGTON’S HANDWRITING WAS FORMED]
On the death of his father, Washington went to live with his brother
Augustine, in order, it is presumed, that he might take advantage of a
good school near Wakefield, kept by one Williams; but after a time he
returned to his mother’s, and attended the school kept by the Rev.
James Marye, in Fredericksburg. It has been universally asserted by his
biographers that he studied no foreign language, but direct proof to
the contrary exists in a copy of Patrick’s Latin translation of Homer,
printed in 1742, the fly-leaf of a copy of which bears, in a school-boy
hand, the inscription:
“Hunc mihi quaeso (bone Vir) Libellum
Redde, si forsan tenues repertum
Ut Scias qui sum sine fraude Scriptum.
Est mihi nomen,
Georgio Washington,
George Washington,
Fredericksburg,
Virginia.”
It is thus evident that the reverend teacher gave Washington at least
the first elements of Latin, but it is equally clear that the boy, like
most others, forgot it with the greatest facility as soon as he ceased
studying.
The end of Washington’s school-days left him, if a good “cipherer,” a
bad speller, and a still worse grammarian, but, fortunately, the
termination of instruction did not by any means end his education. From
that time there is to be noted a steady improvement in both these
failings. Pickering stated that “when I first became acquainted with
the General (in 1777) his writing was defective in grammar, and even
spelling, owing to the insufficiency of his early education; of which,
however, he gradually got the better in the subsequent years of his
life, by the official perusal of some excellent models, particularly
those of Hamilton; by writing with care and patient attention; and
reading numerous, indeed multitudes of letters to and from his friends
and correspondents. This obvious improvement was begun during the war.”
In 1785 a contemporary noted that “the General is remarked for writing
a most elegant letter,” adding that, “like the famous Addison, his
writing excells his speaking,” and Jefferson said that “he wrote
readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had
acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely
reading, writing and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at
a later day.”
There can be no doubt that Washington felt his lack of education very
keenly as he came to act upon a larger sphere than as a Virginia
planter. “I am sensible,” he wrote a friend, of his letters, “that the
narrations are just, and that truth and honesty will appear in my
writings; of which, therefore, I shall not be ashamed, though criticism
may censure my style.” When his secretary suggested to him that he
should write his own life, he replied, “In a former letter I informed
you, my dear Humphreys, that if I had _talents_ for it, I have not
leisure to turn my thoughts to Commentaries. A consciousness of a
defective education, and a certainty of the want of time, unfit me for
such an undertaking.” On being pressed by a French comrade-in-arms to
pay France a visit, he declined, saying, “Remember, my good friend,
that I am unacquainted with your language, that I am too far advanced
in years to acquire a knowledge of it, and that, to converse through
the medium of an interpreter upon common occasions, especially with the
Ladies, must appear so extremely awkward, insipid, and uncouth, that I
can scarce bear it in idea.”
In 1788, without previous warning, he was elected chancellor of William
and Mary College, a distinction by which he felt “honored and greatly
affected;” but “not knowing particularly what duties, or whether any
active services are immediately expected from the person holding the
office of chancellor, I have been greatly embarrassed in deciding upon
the public answer proper to be given…. My difficulties are briefly
these. On the one hand, nothing in this world could be farther from my
heart, than … a refusal of the appointment … provided its duties are
not incompatible with the mode of life to which I have entirely
addicted myself; and, on the other hand, I would not for any
consideration disappoint the just expectations of the convocation by
accepting an office, whose functions I previously knew … I should be
absolutely unable to perform.”
Perhaps the most touching proof of his own self-depreciation was
something he did when he had become conscious that his career would be
written about. Still in his possession were the letter-books in which
he had kept copies of his correspondence while in command of the
Virginia regiment between 1754 and 1759, and late in life he went
through these volumes, and, by interlining corrections, carefully built
them into better literary form. How this was done is shown here by a
single facsimile.
With the appointment to command the Continental Army, a secretary was
secured, and in an absence of this assistant he complained to him that
“my business increases very fast, and my distresses for want of you
along with it. Mr. Harrison is the only gentleman of my family, that
can afford me the least assistance in writing. He and Mr. Moylan,… have
heretofore afforded me their aid; and … they have really had a great
deal of trouble.”
Most of Washington’s correspondence during the Revolution was written
by his aides. Pickering said,—
“As to the public letters bearing his signature, it is certain that he
could not have maintained so extensive a correspondence with his own
pen, even if he had possessed the ability and promptness of Hamilton.
That he would, sometimes with propriety, observe upon, correct, and add
to any draught submitted for his examination and signature, I have no
doubt. And yet I doubt whether many, if any, of the letters … are his
own draught…. I have even reason to believe that not only the
_composition_, the _clothing of the ideas_, but the _ideas themselves_,
originated generally with the writers; that Hamilton and Harrison, in
particular, were scarcely in any degree his amanuenses. I remember,
when at head-quarters one day, at Valley Forge, Colonel Harrison came
down from the General’s chamber, with his brows knit, and thus accosted
me, ‘I wish to the Lord the General would give me the heads or some
idea, of what he would have me write.’”
[Illustration: CORRECTED LETTER OF WASHINGTON SHOWING LATER CHANGES]
After the Revolution, a visitor at Mount Vernon said, “It’s astonishing
the packet of letters that daily comes for him from all parts of the
world, which employ him most of the morning to answer.” A secretary was
employed, but not so much to do the actual writing as the copying and
filing, and at this time Washington complained “that my numerous
correspondencies are daily becoming irksome to me.” Yet there can be
little question that he richly enjoyed writing when it was not for the
public eye. “It is not the letters of my friends which give me
trouble,” he wrote to one correspondent; to another he said, “I began
with telling you that I should not write a lengthy letter but the
result has been to contradict it;” and to a third, “when I look back to
the length of this letter, I am so much astonished and frightened at it
myself that I have not the courage to give it a careful reading for the
purpose of correction. You must, therefore, receive it with all its
imperfections, accompanied with this assurance, that, though there may
be inaccuracies in the letter, there is not a single defect in the
friendship.” Occasionally there was, as here, an apology: “I am
persuaded you will excuse this scratch’d scrawl, when I assure you it
is with difficulty I write at all,” he ended a letter in 1777, and in
1792 of another said, “You must receive it blotted and scratched as you
find it for I have not time to copy it. It is now ten o’clock at night,
after my usual hour for retiring to rest, and the mail will be closed
early to-morrow morning.”
To his overseer, who neglected to reply to some of his questions, he
told his method of writing, which is worth quoting:
“Whenever I set down to write you, I read your letter, or letters
carefully over, and as soon as I come to a part that requires to be
noticed, I make a short note on the cover of a letter or piece of waste
paper;—then read on the next, noting that in like manner;—and so on
until I have got through the whole letter and reports. Then in writing
my letter to you, as soon as I have finished what I have to say on one
of these notes I draw my pen through it and proceed to another and
another until the whole is done—crossing each as I go on, by which
means if I am called off twenty times whilst I am writing, I can never
with these notes before me finished or unfinished, omit anything I
wanted to say; and they serve me also, as I keep no copies of letters I
wrote to you, as Memorandums of what has been written if I should have
occasion at any time to refer to them.”
Another indication of his own knowledge of defects is shown by his fear
about his public papers. When his Journal to the Ohio was printed by
order of the governor, in 1754, in the preface the young author said,
“I think I can do no less than apologize, in some Measure, for the
numberless imperfections of it. There intervened but one Day between my
Arrival in Williamsburg, and the Time for the Council’s Meeting, for me
to prepare and transcribe, from the rough Minutes I had taken in my
Travels, this Journal; the writing of which only was sufficient to
employ me closely the whole Time, consequently admitted of no Leisure
to consult of a new and proper Form to offer it in, or to correct or
amend the Diction of the old.” Boucher states that the publication, “in
Virginia at least, drew on him some ridicule.”
This anxiety about his writings was shown all through life, and led
Washington to rely greatly on such of his friends as would assist him,
even to the point, so Reed thought, that he “sometimes adopted draughts
of writing when his own would have been better … from an extreme
diffidence in himself,” and Pickering said, in writing to an aide,—
“Although the General’s private correspondence was doubtless, for the
most part, his own, and extremely acceptable to the persons addressed;
yet, in regard to whatever was destined to meet the public eye, he
seems to have been fearful to exhibit his own compositions, relying too
much on the judgment of his friends, and sometimes adopted draughts
that were exceptionable. Some parts of his private correspondence must
have essentially differed from other parts in the style of composition.
You mention your own aids to the General in this line. Now, if I had
your draughts before me, mingled with the General’s to the same
persons, nothing would be more easy than to assign to each his own
proper offspring. You could neither restrain your _courser_, nor
conceal your imagery, nor express your ideas otherwise than in the
language of a scholar. The General’s compositions would be perfectly
plain and didactic, and not always correct.”
During the Presidency, scarcely anything of a public nature was penned
by Washington,—Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Randolph acting as his
draughtsmen. “We are approaching the first Monday in December by hasty
strides,” he wrote to Jefferson. “I pray you, therefore, to revolve in
your mind such matters as may be proper for me to lay before Congress,
not only in your own department, (if any there be,) but such others of
a general nature, as may happen to occur to you, that I may be prepared
to open the session with such communication, as shall appear to merit
attention.” Two years later he said to the same, “I pray you to note
down or rather to frame into paragraphs or sections, such matters as
may occur to you as fit and proper for general communication at the
opening of the next session of Congress, not only in the department of
state, but on any other subject applicable to the occasion, that I may
in due time have everything before me.” To Hamilton he wrote in 1795,
“Having desired the late Secretary of State to note down every matter
as it occurred, proper either for the speech at the opening of the
session, or for messages afterwards, the inclosed paper contains
everything I could extract from that office. Aid me, I pray you, with
your sentiments on these points, and such others as may have occurred
to you relative to my communications to Congress.”
The best instance is furnished in the preparation of the Farewell
Address. First Madison was asked to prepare a draft, and from this
Washington drew up a paper, which he submitted to Hamilton and Jay,
with the request that “even if you should think it best to throw the
whole into a different form, let me request, notwithstanding, that my
draught may be returned to me (along with yours) with such amendments
and corrections as to render it as perfect as the formation is
susceptible of; curtailed if too verbose; and relieved of all tautology
not necessary to enforce the ideas in the original or quoted part. My
wish is that the whole may appear in a plain style, and be handed to
the public in an honest, unaffected, simple part.” Accordingly,
Hamilton prepared what was almost a new instrument in form, though not
in substance, which, after “several serious and attentive readings,”
Washington wrote that he preferred “greatly to the other draughts,
being more copious on material points, more dignified on the whole, and
with less egotism; of course, less exposed to criticism, and better
calculated to meet the eye of discerning readers (foreigners
particularly, whose curiosity I have little doubt will lead them to
inspect it attentively, and to pronounce their opinions on the
performance).” The paper was then, according to Pickering, “put into
the hands of Wolcott, McHenry, and myself … with a request that we
would examine it, and note any alterations and corrections which we
should think best. We did so; but our notes, as well as I recollect,
were very few, and regarded chiefly the grammar and composition.”
Finally, Washington revised the whole, and it was then made public.
Confirmatory of this sense of imperfect cultivation are the pains he
took that his adopted son and grandson should be well educated. As
already noted, tutors for both were secured at the proper ages, and
when Jack was placed with the Rev. Mr. Boucher, Washington wrote: “In
respect to the kinds, & manner of his Studying I leave it wholely to
your better Judgment—had he begun, or rather pursued his study of the
Greek Language, I should have thought it no bad acquisition; but
whether if he acquire this now, he may not forego some useful branches
of learning, is a matter worthy of consideration. To be acquainted with
the French Tongue is become part of polite Education; and to a man who
has the prospect of mixing in a large Circle absolutely necessary.
Without Arithmetick, the common affairs of Life are not to be managed
with success. The study of Geometry, and the Mathematics (with due
regard to the limites of it) is equally advantageous. The principles of
Philosophy Moral, Natural, &c. I should think a very desirable
knowledge for a Gentleman.” So, too, he wrote to Washington Custis, “I
do not hear you mention anything of geography or mathematics as parts
of your study; both these are necessary branches of useful knowledge.
Nor ought you to let your knowledge of the Latin language and
grammatical rules escape you. And the French language is now so
universal, and so necessary with foreigners, or in a foreign country,
that I think you would be injudicious not to make yourself master of
it.” It is worth noting in connection with this last sentence that
Washington used only a single French expression with any frequency, and
that he always wrote “faupas.”
Quite as indicative of the value he put on education was the aid he
gave towards sending his young relatives and others to college, his
annual contribution to an orphan school, his subscriptions to
academies, and his wish for a national university. In 1795 he said,—
“It has always been a source of serious reflection and sincere regret
with me, that the youth of the United States should be sent to foreign
countries for the purpose of education…. For this reason I have greatly
wished to see a plan adopted, by which the arts, sciences, and
belles-lettres could be taught in their _fullest_ extent, thereby
embracing _all_ the advantages of European tuition, with the means of
acquiring the liberal knowledge, which is necessary to qualify our
citizens for the exigencies of public as well as private life; and
(which with me is a consideration of great magnitude) by assembling the
youth from the different parts of this rising republic, contributing
from their intercourse and interchange of information to the removal of
prejudices, which might perhaps sometimes arise from local
circumstances.”
In framing his Farewell Address, “revolving … on the various matters it
contained and on the first expression of the advice or recommendation
which was given in it, I have regretted that another subject (which in
my estimation is of interesting concern to the well-being of this
country) was not touched upon also; I mean education generally, as one
of the surest means of enlightening and giving just ways of thinking to
our citizens, but particularly the establishment of a university; where
the youth from all parts of the United States might receive the polish
of erudition in the arts, sciences and belles-lettres.” Eventually he
reduced this idea to a plea for the people to “promote, then, as an
object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of
knowledge,” because “in proportion as the structure of a government
gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion
should be enlightened.” By his will he left to the endowment of a
university in the District of Columbia the shares in the Potomac
Company which had been given him by the State of Virginia, but the
clause was never carried into effect.
It was in 1745 that Washington’s school-days came to an end. His share
of his father’s property being his mother’s till he was twenty-one, a
livelihood had to be found, and so at about fourteen years of age the
work of life began. Like a true boy, the lad wanted to go to sea,
despite his uncle’s warning “that I think he had better be put
apprentice to a tinker; for a common sailor before the mast has by no
means the liberty of the subject; for they will press him from a ship
where he has fifty shillings a month; and make him take twenty-three,
and cut and slash, and use him like a negro, or rather like a dog.” His
mother, however, would not consent, and to this was due his becoming a
surveyor.
From his “Young Man’s Companion” Washington had already learned the use
of Gunter’s rule and how it should be used in surveying, and to
complete his knowledge he seems to have taken lessons of the licensed
surveyor of Westmoreland County, James Genn, for transcripts of some of
the surveys drawn by Genn still exist in the handwriting of his pupil.
This implied a distinct and very valuable addition to his knowledge,
and a large number of his surveys still extant are marvels of neatness
and careful drawing. As a profession it was followed for only four
years (1747-1751), but all through life he often used his knowledge in
measuring or platting his own property. Far more important is the
service it was to him in public life. In 1755 he sent to Braddock’s
secretary a map of the “back country,” and to the governor of Virginia
plans of two forts. During the Revolution it helped him not merely in
the study of maps, but also in the facility it gave him to take in the
topographical features of the country. Very largely, too, was the
selection of the admirable site for the capital due to his supervising:
all the plans for the city were submitted to him, and nowhere do the
good sense and balance of the man appear to better advantage than in
his correspondence with the Federal city commissioners.
In Washington’s earliest account-book there is an item when he was
sixteen years old, “To cash pd ye Musick Master for my Entrance 3/9.”
It is commonly said that he played the flute, but this is as great a
libel on him as any Tom Paine wrote, and though he often went to
concerts, and though fond of hearing his granddaughter Nelly play and
sing, he never was himself a performer, and the above entry probably
refers to the singing-master whom the boys and girls of that day made
the excuse for evening frolics.
Mention is made elsewhere of his taking lessons in the sword exercise
from Van Braam in these earlier years, and in 1756 he paid to Sergeant
Wood, fencing-master, the sum of £1.1.6. When he received the offer of
a position on Braddock’s staff, he acknowledged, in accepting, that “I
must be ingenuous enough to confess, that I am not a little biassed by
selfish considerations. To explain, Sir, I wish earnestly to attain
some knowledge in the military profession, and, believing a more
favorable opportunity cannot offer, than to serve under a gentleman of
General Braddock’s abilities and experience, it does … not a little
contribute to influence my choice.” Hamilton is quoted as saying that
Washington “never read any book upon the art of war but Sim’s Military
Guide,” and an anonymous author asserted that “he never read a book in
the art of war of higher value than Bland’s Exercises.” Certain it is
that nearly all the military knowledge he possessed was derived from
practice rather than from books, and though, late in life, he purchased
a number of works on the subject, it was after his army service was
over.
One factor in Washington’s education which must not go unnoticed was
his religious belief. When only two months old he was baptized,
presumably by the Rev. Lawrence De Butts, the clergyman of Washington
parish. The removal from that locality prevented any further religious
influence from this clergyman, and it probably first came from the Rev.
Charles Green, of Truro parish, who had received his appointment
through the friendship of Washington’s father, and who later was on
such friendly terms with Washington that he doctored Mrs. Washington in
an attack of the measles, and caught and returned two of his
parishioner’s runaway slaves. As early as 1724 the clergyman of the
parish in which Mount Vernon was situated reported that he catechised
the youth of his congregation “in Lent and a great part of the Summer,”
and George, as the son of one of his vestrymen, undoubtedly received a
due amount of questioning.
From 1748 till 1759 there was little church-going for the young
surveyor or soldier, but after his marriage and settling at Mount
Vernon he was elected vestryman in the two parishes of Truro and
Fairfax, and from that election he was quite active in church affairs.
It may be worth noting that in the elections of 1765 the new vestryman
stood third in popularity in the Truro church and fifth in that of
Fairfax. He drew the plans for a new church in Truro, and subscribed to
its building, intending “to lay the foundation of a family pew,” but by
a vote of the vestry it was decided that there should be no private
pews, and this breach of contract angered Washington so greatly that he
withdrew from the church in 1773. Sparks quotes Madison to the effect
that “there was a tradition that, when he [Washington] belonged to the
vestry of a church in his neighborhood, and several little difficulties
grew out of some division of the society, he sometimes spoke with great
force, animation, and eloquence on the topics that came before them.”
After this withdrawal he bought a pew in Christ Church in Alexandria
(Fairfax parish), paying £36.10, which was the largest price paid by
any parishioner. To this church he was quite liberal, subscribing
several times towards repairs, etc.
The Rev. Lee Massey, who was rector at Pohick (Truro) Church before the
Revolution, is quoted by Bishop Meade as saying that
“I never knew so constant an attendant in church as Washington. And his
behavior in the house of God was ever so deeply reverential that it
produced the happiest effect on my congregation, and greatly assisted
me in my pulpit labors. No company ever withheld him from church. I
have often been at Mount Vernon on Sabbath morning, when his breakfast
table was filled with guests; but to him they furnished no pretext for
neglecting his God and losing the satisfaction of setting a good
example. For instead of staying at home, out of false complaisance to
them, he used constantly to invite them to accompany him.”
This seems to have been written more with an eye to its influence on
others than to its strict accuracy. During the time Washington attended
at Pohick Church he was by no means a regular church-goer. His daily
“where and how my time is spent” enables us to know exactly how often
he attended church, and in the year 1760 he went just sixteen times,
and in 1768 he went fourteen, these years being fairly typical of the
period 1760-1773. During the Presidency a sense of duty made him attend
St Paul’s and Christ churches while in New York and Philadelphia, but
at Mount Vernon, when the public eye was not upon him, he was no more
regular than he had always been, and in the last year of his life he
wrote, “Six days do I labor, or, in other words, take exercise and
devote my time to various occupations in Husbandry, and about my
mansion. On the seventh, now called the first day, for want of a place
of Worship (within less than nine miles) such letters as do not require
immediate acknowledgment I give answers to…. But it hath so happened,
that on the two last Sundays—call them the first or the seventh as you
please, I have been unable to perform the latter duty on account of
visits from Strangers, with whom I could not use the freedom to leave
alone, or recommend to the care of each other, for their amusement.”
What he said here was more or less typical of his whole life. Sunday
was always the day on which he wrote his private letters,—even prepared
his invoices,—and he wrote to one of his overseers that his letters
should be mailed so as to reach him Saturday, as by so doing they could
be answered the following day. Nor did he limit himself to this, for he
entertained company, closed land purchases, sold wheat, and, while a
Virginia planter, went foxhunting, on Sunday. It is to be noted,
however, that he considered the scruples of others as to the day. When
he went among his western tenants, rent-collecting, he entered in his
diary that, it “being Sunday and the People living on my Land
_apparently_ very religious, it was thought best to postpone going
among them till to-morrow,” and in his journey through New England,
because it was “contrary to the law and disagreeable to the People of
this State (Connecticut) to travel on the Sabbath day—and my horses,
after passing through such intolerable roads, wanting rest, I stayed at
Perkins’ tavern (which, by the bye, is not a good one) all day—and a
meetinghouse being within a few rods of the door, I attended the
morning and evening services, and heard very lame discourses from a Mr.
Pond.” It is of this experience that tradition says the President
started to travel, but was promptly arrested by a Connecticut
tithing-man. The story, however, lacks authentication.
There can be no doubt that religious intolerance was not a part of
Washington’s character. In 1775, when the New England troops intended
to celebrate Guy Fawkes day, as usual, the General Orders declared that
“as the Commander in chief has been apprised of a design, formed for
the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the
effigy of the Pope, he cannot help expressing his surprise, that there
should be officers and soldiers in this army so void of common sense,
as not to see the impropriety of such a step.” When trying to secure
some servants, too, he wrote that “if they are good workmen, they may
be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mahometans, Jews, or
Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists.” When the bill taxing
all the people of Virginia to support the Episcopal Church (his own)
was under discussion, he threw his weight against it, as far as
concerned the taxing of other sectaries, but adding:
“Although no man’s sentiments are more opposed to any kind of restraint
upon religious principles than mine are, yet I must confess, that I am
not amongst the number of those, who are so much alarmed at the
thoughts of making people pay towards the support of that which they
profess, if of the denomination, of Christians, or to declare
themselves Jews, Mahometans, or otherwise, and thereby obtain proper
relief. As the matter now stands, I wish an assessment had never been
agitated, and as it has gone so far, that the bill could die an easy
death; because I think it will be productive of more quiet to the
State, than by enacting it into a law, which in my opinion would be
impolitic, admitting there is a decided majority for it, to the
disquiet of a respectable minority. In the former case, the matter will
soon subside; in the latter, it will rankle and perhaps convulse the
State.”
Again in a letter he says,—
“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which
are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the
most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was
in hopes, that the lightened and liberal policy, which has marked the
present age, would at least have reconciled _Christians_ of every
denomination so far, that we should never again see their religious
disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”
And to Lafayette, alluding to the proceedings of the Assembly of
Notables, he wrote,—
“I am not less ardent in my wish, that you may succeed in your plan of
toleration in religious matters. Being no bigot myself, I am disposed
to indulge the professors of Christianity in the church with that road
to Heaven, which to them shall seem the most direct, plainest, easiest,
and least liable to exception.”
What Washington believed has been a source of much dispute. Jefferson
states “that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets, and
believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington
believed no more of that system than he himself did,” and Morris, it is
scarcely necessary to state, was an atheist. The same authority quotes
Rush, to the effect that “when the clergy addressed General Washington
on his departure from the government, it was observed in their
consultation, that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the
public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they
thought they should so pen their address, as to force him at length to
declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not They did so. But, he
observed, the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every
article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over
without notice.”
Whatever his belief, in all public ways Washington threw his influence
in favor of religion, and kept what he really believed a secret, and in
only one thing did he disclose his real thoughts. It is asserted that
before the Revolution he partook of the sacrament, but this is only
affirmed by hearsay, and better evidence contradicts it. After that war
he did not, it is certain. Nelly Custis states that on “communion
Sundays he left the church with me, after the blessing, and returned
home, and we sent the carriage back for my grandmother.” And the
assistant minister of Christ Church in Philadelphia states that—
“Observing that on Sacrament Sundays, Gen’l Washington, immediately
after the Desk and Pulpit services, went out with the greater part of
the congregation, always leaving Mrs. Washington with the communicants,
she _invariably_ being one, I considered it my duty, in a sermon on
Public Worship, to state the unhappy tendency of _example_,
particularly those in elevated stations, who invariably turned their
backs upon the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. I acknowledge the
remark was intended for the President, as such, he received it. A few
days after, in conversation with, I believe, a Senator of the U.S. he
told me he had dined the day before with the President, who in the
course of the conversation at the table, said, that on the preceding
Sunday, he had received a very just reproof from the pulpit, for always
leaving the church before the administration of the Sacrament; that he
honored the preacher for his integrity and candour; that he had never
considered the influence of his example; that he would never again give
cause for the repetition of the reproof; and that, as he had never been
a communicant, were he to become one then, it would be imputed to an
ostentatious display of religious zeal arising altogether from his
elevated station. Accordingly he afterwards never came on the morning
of Sacrament Sunday, tho’ at other times, a constant attendant in the
morning.”
Nelly Custis, too, tells us that Washington always “stood during the
devotional part of the service,” and Bishop White states that “his
behavior was always serious and attentive; but, as your letter seems to
intend an inquiry on the point of kneeling during the service, I owe it
to the truth to declare, that I never saw him in the said attitude.”
Probably his true position is described by Madison, who is quoted as
saying that he did “not suppose that Washington had ever attended to
the arguments for Christianity, and for the different systems of
religion, or in fact that he had formed definite opinions on the
subject. But he took these things as he found them existing, and was
constant in his observances of worship according to the received forms
of the Episcopal Church, in which he was brought up.”
If there was proof needed that it is mind and not education which
pushes a man to the front, it is to be found in the case of Washington.
Despite his want of education, he had, so Bell states, “an excellent
understanding.” Patrick Henry is quoted as saying of the members of the
Congress of 1774— the body of which Adams claimed that “every man in it
is a great man, an orator, a critic, a statesman”—that “if you speak of
solid information and sound judgment Colonel Washington is
unquestionably the greatest man on the floor;” while Jefferson asserted
that “his mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first
order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton,
Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It
was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination,
but sure in conclusion.”
IV
RELATIONS WITH THE FAIR SEX
The book from which Washington derived almost the whole of his
education warned its readers,—
“Young Men have ever more a special care
That Womanish Allurements prove not a snare;”
but, however carefully the lad studied the rest, this particular
admonition took little root in his mind. There can be no doubt that
Washington during the whole of his life had a soft heart for women, and
especially for good-looking ones, and both in his personal intercourse
and in his letters he shows himself very much more at ease with them
than in his relations with his own sex. Late in life, when the strong
passions of his earlier years were under better control, he was able to
write,—
“Love is said to be an involuntary passion, and it is, therefore,
contended that it cannot be resisted. This is true in part only, for
like all things else, when nourished and supplied plentifully with
aliment, it is rapid in its progress; but let these be withdrawn and it
may be stifled in its birth or much stinted in its growth. For example,
a woman (the same may be said of the other sex) all beautiful and
accomplished will, while her hand and heart are undisposed of, turn the
heads and set the circle in which she moves on fire. Let her marry, and
what is the consequence? The madness _ceases_ and all is quiet again.
Why? not because there is any diminution in the charms of the lady, but
because there is an end of hope. Hence it follows, that love may and
therefore ought to be under the guidance of reason, for although we
cannot avoid first impressions, we may assuredly place them under
guard.”
To write thus in one’s sixty-sixth year and to practise one’s theory in
youth were, however, very different undertakings. Even while discussing
love so philosophically, the writer had to acknowledge that “in the
composition of the human frame, there is a good deal of inflammable
matter,” and few have had better cause to know it. When he saw in the
premature engagement of his ward, Jack Custis, the one advantage that
it would “in a great measure avoid those little flirtations with other
young ladies that may, by dividing the attention, contribute not a
little to divide the affection,” it is easy to think of him as looking
back to his own boyhood, and remembering, it is to be hoped with a
smile, the sufferings he owed to pretty faces and neatly turned ankles.
While still a school-boy, Washington was one day caught “romping with
one of the largest girls,” and very quickly more serious likings
followed. As early as 1748, when only sixteen years of age, his heart
was so engaged that while at Lord Fairfax’s and enjoying the society of
Mary Cary he poured out his feelings to his youthful correspondents
“Dear Robin” and “Dear John” and “Dear Sally” as follows:
“My place of Residence is at present at His Lordships where I might was
my heart disengag’d pass my time very pleasantly as theres a very
agreeable Young Lady Lives in the same house (Colo George Fairfax’s
Wife’s Sister) but as thats only adding Fuel to fire it makes me the
more uneasy for by often and unavoidably being in Company with her
revives my former Passion for your Low Land Beauty whereas was I to
live more retired from young Women I might in some measure eliviate my
sorrows by burying that chast and troublesome Passion in the grave of
oblivion or etarnall forgetfulness for as I am very well assured thats
the only antidote or remedy that I shall be releivd by or only recess
that can administer any cure or help to me as I am well convinced was I
ever to attempt any thing I should only get a denial which would be
only adding grief to uneasiness.”
“Was my affections disengaged I might perhaps form some pleasure in the
conversation of an agreeable Young Lady as theres one now Lives in the
same house with me but as that is only nourishment to my former affecn
for by often seeing her brings the other into my remembrance whereas
perhaps was she not often & (unavoidably) presenting herself to my view
I might in some measure aliviate my sorrows by burying the other in the
grave of Oblivion I am well convinced my heart stands in defiance of
all others but only she thats given it cause enough to dread a second
assault and from a different Quarter tho’ I well know let it have as
many attacks as it will from others they cant be more fierce than it
has been.”
“I Pass the time of[f] much more agreeabler than what I imagined I
should as there’s a very agrewable Young Lady lives in the same house
where I reside (Colo George Fairfax’s Wife’s Sister) that in a great
Measure cheats my thoughts altogether from your Parts I could wish to
be with you down there with all my heart but as it is a thing almost
Impractakable shall rest myself where I am with hopes of shortly having
some Minutes of your transactions in your Parts which will be very
welcomely receiv’d.”
Who this “Low Land Beauty” was has been the source of much speculation,
but the question is still unsolved, every suggested damsel—Lucy Grymes,
Mary Bland, Betsy Fauntleroy, _et al._—being either impossible or the
evidence wholly inadequate. But in the same journal which contains the
draughts of these letters is a motto poem—
“Twas Perfect Love before
But Now I do adore”—
followed by the words “Young M.A. his W[ife?],” and as it was a fashion
of the time to couple the initials of one’s well-beloved with such
sentiments, a slight clue is possibly furnished. Nor was this the only
rhyme that his emotions led to his inscribing in his journal: and he
confided to it the following:
“Oh Ye Gods why should my Poor Resistless Heart
Stand to oppose thy might and Power
At Last surrender to cupids feather’d Dart
And now lays Bleeding every Hour
For her that’s Pityless of my grief and Woes
And will not on me Pity take
He sleep amongst my most inveterate Foes
And with gladness never wish to wake
In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close
That in an enraptured Dream I may
In a soft lulling sleep and gentle repose
Possess those joys denied by Day.”
However woe-begone the young lover was, he does not seem to have been
wholly lost to others of the sex, and at this same time he was able to
indite an acrostic to another charmer, which, if incomplete,
nevertheless proves that there was a “midland” beauty as well, the lady
being presumptively some member of the family of Alexanders, who had a
plantation near Mount Vernon.
“From your bright sparkling Eyes I was undone;
Rays, you have; more transperent than the Sun.
Amidst its glory in the rising Day
None can you equal in your bright array;
Constant in your calm and unspotted Mind;
Equal to all, but will to none Prove kind,
So knowing, seldom one so Young, you’l Find.
Ah! woe’s me, that I should Love and conceal
Long have I wish’d, but never dare reveal,
Even though severely Loves Pains I feel;
Xerxes that great, was’t free from Cupids Dart,
And all the greatest Heroes, felt the smart.”
When visiting Barbadoes, in 1751, Washington noted in his journal his
meeting a Miss Roberts, “an agreeable young lady,” and later he went
with her to see some fireworks on Guy Fawkes day. Apparently, however,
the ladies of that island made little impression on him, for he further
noted, “The Ladys Generally are very agreeable but by ill custom or
w[ha]t effect the Negro style.” This sudden insensibility is explained
by a letter he wrote to William Fauntleroy a few weeks after his return
to Virginia:
“Sir: I should have been down long before this, but my business in
Frederick detained me somewhat longer than I expected, and immediately
upon my return from thence I was taken with a violent Pleurise, but
purpose as soon as I recover my strength, to wait on Miss Betsy, in
hopes of a revocation of the former cruel sentence, and see if I can
meet with any alteration in my favor. I have enclosed a letter to her,
which should be much obliged to you for the delivery of it. I have
nothing to add but my best respects to your good lady and family, and
that I am, Sir, Your most ob’t humble serv’t.”
Because of this letter it has been positively asserted that Betsy
Fauntleroy was the Low-Land Beauty of the earlier time; but as
Washington wrote of his love for the latter in 1748, when Betsy was
only eleven, the absurdity of the claim is obvious.
In 1753, while on his mission to deliver the governor’s letter to the
French, one duty which fell to the young soldier was a visit to
royalty, in the person of Queen Aliquippa, an Indian majesty who had
“expressed great Concern” that she had formerly been slighted.
Washington records that “I made her a Present of a Match-coat and a
Bottle of Rum; which latter was thought much the best Present of the
Two,” and thus (externally and internally) restored warmth to her
majesty’s feelings.
When returned from his first campaign, and resting at Mount Vernon, the
time seems to have been beguiled by some charmer, for one of
Washington’s officers and intimates writes from Williamsburg, “I
imagine you By this time plung’d in the midst of delight heaven can
afford & enchanted By Charmes even Stranger to the Ciprian Dame,” and a
footnote by the same hand only excites further curiosity concerning
this latter personage by indefinitely naming her as “Mrs. Neil.”
With whatever heart-affairs the winter was passed, with the spring the
young man’s fancy turned not to love, but again to war, and only when
the defeat of Braddock brought Washington back to Mount Vernon to
recover from the fatigues of that campaign was his intercourse with the
gentler sex resumed. Now, however, he was not merely a good-looking
young fellow, but was a hero who had had horses shot from under him and
had stood firm when scarlet-coated men had run away. No longer did he
have to sue for the favor of the fair ones, and Fairfax wrote him that
“if a Satterday Nights Rest cannot be sufficient to enable your coming
hither to-morrow, the Lady’s will try to get Horses to equip our Chair
or attempt their strength on Foot to Salute you, so desirous are they
with loving Speed to have an occular Demonstration of your being the
same Identical Gent—that lately departed to defend his Country’s
Cause.” Furthermore, to this letter was appended the following:
“DEAR SIR,—After thanking Heaven for your safe return I must accuse you
of great unkindness in refusing us the pleasure of seeing you this
night. I do assure you nothing but our being satisfied that our company
would be disagreeable should prevent us from trying if our Legs would
not carry us to Mount Vernon this night, but if you will not come to us
to-morrow morning very early we shall be at Mount Vernon.
“S[ALLY] FAIRFAX,
“ANN SPEARING.
“ELIZ’TH DENT.”
Nor is this the only feminine postscript of this time, for in the
postscript of a letter from Archibald Cary, a leading Virginian, he is
told that “Mrs. Cary & Miss Randolph joyn in wishing you that sort of
Glory which will most Indear you to the Fair Sex.”
In 1756 Washington had occasion to journey on military business to
Boston, and both in coming and in going he tarried in New York, passing
ten days in his first visit and about a week on his return. This time
was spent with a Virginian friend, Beverly Robinson, who had had the
good luck to marry Susannah Philipse, a daughter of Frederick Philipse,
one of the largest landed proprietors of the colony of New York. Here
he met the sister, Mary Philipse, then a girl of twenty-five, and,
short as was the time, it was sufficient to engage his heart. To this
interest no doubt are due the entries in his accounts of sundry pounds
spent “for treating Ladies,” and for the large tailors’ bills then
incurred. But neither treats nor clothes won the lady, who declined his
proposals, and gave her heart two years later to Lieutenant-Colonel
Roger Morris. A curious sequel to this disappointment was the accident
that made the Roger Morris house Washington’s head-quarters in 1776,
both Morris and his wife being fugitive Tories. Again Washington was a
chance visitor in 1790, when, as part of a picnic, he “dined on a
dinner provided by Mr. Marriner at the House lately Colo. Roger Morris,
but confiscated and in the occupation of a common Farmer.”
[Illustration: MARY PHILIPSE]
It has been asserted that Washington loved the wife of his friend
George William Fairfax, but the evidence has not been produced. On the
contrary, though the two corresponded, it was in a purely platonic
fashion, very different from the strain of lovers, and that the
correspondence implied nothing is to be found in the fact that he and
Sally Carlyle (another Fairfax daughter) also wrote each other quite as
frequently and on the same friendly footing; indeed, Washington
evidently classed them in the same category, when he stated that “I
have wrote to my two female correspondents.” Thus the claim seems due,
like many another of Washington’s mythical love-affairs, rather to the
desire of descendants to link their family “to a star” than to more
substantial basis. Washington did, indeed, write to Sally Fairfax from
the frontier, “I should think our time more agreeably spent, believe
me, in playing a part in Cato, with the company you mention, and myself
doubly happy in being the Juba to such a Marcia, as you must make,” but
private theatricals then no more than now implied “passionate love.”
What is more, Mrs. Fairfax was at this very time teasing him about
another woman, and to her hints Washington replied,—
“If you allow that any honor can be derived from my opposition … you
destroy the merit of it entirely in me by attributing my anxiety to the
animating prospect of possessing Mrs. Custis, when—I need not tell you,
guess yourself. Should not my own Honor and country’s welfare be the
excitement? ’Tis true I profess myself a votary of love. I acknowledge
that a lady is in the case, and further I confess that this lady is
known to you. Yes, Madame, as well as she is to one who is too sensible
of her charms to deny the Power whose influence he feels and must ever
submit to. I feel the force of her amiable beauties in the recollection
of a thousand tender passages that I could wish to obliterate, till I
am bid to revive them. But experience, alas! sadly reminds me how
impossible this is, and evinces an opinion which I have long
entertained that there is a Destiny which has the control of our
actions, not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature.
You have drawn me, dear Madame, or rather I have drawn myself, into an
honest confession of a simple Fact. Misconstrue not my meaning; doubt
it not, nor expose it. The world has no business to know the object of
my Love, declared in this manner to you, when I want to conceal it. One
thing above all things in this world I wish to know, and only one
person of your acquaintance can solve me that, or guess my meaning.”
The love-affair thus alluded to had begun in March, 1758, when ill
health had taken Washington to Williamsburg to consult physicians,
thinking, indeed, of himself as a doomed man. In this trip he met Mrs.
Martha (Dandridge) Custis, widow of Daniel Parke Custis, one of the
wealthiest planters of the colony. She was at this time twenty-six
years of age, or Washington’s senior by nine months, and had been a
widow but seven, yet in spite of this fact, and of his own expected
“decay,” he pressed his love-making with an impetuosity akin to that
with which he had urged his suit of Miss Philipse, and (widows being
proverbial) with better success. The invalid had left Mount Vernon on
March 5, and by April 1 he was back at Fort Loudon, an engaged man,
having as well so far recovered his health as to be able to join his
command. Early in May he ordered a ring from Philadelphia, at a cost of
£2.16.0; soon after receiving it he found that army affairs once more
called him down to Williamsburg, and, as love-making is generally
considered a military duty, the excuse was sufficient. But sterner
duties on the frontier were awaiting him, and very quickly he was back
there and writing to his _fiancée_,—
“We have begun our march for the Ohio. A courier is starting for
Williamsburg, and I embrace the opportunity to send a few words to one
whose life is now inseparable from mine. Since that happy hour when we
made our pledges to each other, my thoughts have been continually going
to you as another Self. That an all-powerful Providence may keep us
both in safety is the prayer of your ever faithful and affectionate
friend.”
Five months after this letter was written, Washington was able to date
another from Fort Duquesne, and, the fall of that post putting an end
to his military service, only four weeks later he was back in
Williamsburg, and on January 6, 1759, he was married.
Very little is really known of his wife, beyond the facts that she was
petite, over-fond, hot-tempered, obstinate, and a poor speller. In 1778
she was described as “a sociable, pretty kind of woman,” and she seems
to have been but little more. One who knew her well described her as
“not possessing much sense, though a perfect lady and remarkably well
calculated for her position,” and confirmatory of this is the opinion
of an English traveller that “there was nothing remarkable in the
person of the lady of the President; she was matronly and kind, with
perfect good breeding.” None the less she satisfied Washington; even
after the proverbial six months were over he refused to wander from
Mount Vernon, writing that “I am now, I believe, fixed at this seat
with an agreeable Consort for life,” and in 1783 he spoke of her as the
“partner of all my Domestic enjoyments.”
John Adams, in one of his recurrent moods of bitterness and jealousy
towards Washington, demanded, “Would Washington have ever been
commander of the revolutionary army or president of the United States
if he had not married the rich widow of Mr. Custis?” To ask such a
question is to overlook the fact that Washington’s colonial military
fame was entirely achieved before his marriage. It is not to be denied
that the match was a good one from a worldly point of view, Mrs.
Washington’s third of the Custis property equalling “fifteen thousand
acres of land, a good part of it adjoining the city of Williamsburg;
several lots in the said city; between two and three hundred negroes;
and about eight or ten thousand pounds upon bond,” estimated at the
time as about twenty thousand pounds in all, which was further
increased on the death of Patsy Custis in 1773 by a half of her
fortune, which added ten thousand pounds to the sum. Nevertheless the
advantage was fairly equal, for Mrs. Custis’s lawyer had written before
her marriage of the impossibility of her managing the property,
advising that she “employ a trusty steward, and as the estate is large
and very extensive, it is Mr. Wallers and my own opinion, that you had
better not engage any but a very able man, though he should require
large wages.” Of the management of this property, to which, indeed, she
was unequal, Washington entirely relieved her, taking charge also of
her children’s share and acting for their interests with the same care
with which he managed the part he was more directly concerned in.
He further saved her much of the detail of ordering her own clothing,
and we find him sending for “A Salmon-colored Tabby of the enclosed
pattern, with satin flowers, to be made in a sack,” “1 Cap,
Handkerchief, Tucker and Ruffles, to be made of Brussels lace or point,
proper to wear with the above negligee, to cost £20,” “1 pair black,
and 1 pair white Satin Shoes, of the smallest,” and “1 black mask.”
Again he writes his London agent, “Mrs. Washington sends home a green
sack to get cleaned, or fresh dyed of the same color; made up into a
handsome sack again, would be her choice; but if the cloth won’t afford
that, then to be thrown into a genteel Night Gown.” At another time he
wants a pair of clogs, and when the wrong kind are sent he writes that
“she intended to have leathern Gloshoes.” When she was asked to present
a pair of colors to a company, he attended to every detail of obtaining
the flag, and when “Mrs. Washington … perceived the Tomb of her Father
… to be much out of Sorts” he wrote to get a workman to repair it. The
care of the Mount Vernon household proving beyond his wife’s ability, a
housekeeper was very quickly engaged, and when one who filled this
position was on the point of leaving, Washington wrote his agent to
find another without the least delay, for the vacancy would “throw a
great additional weight on Mrs. Washington;” again, writing in another
domestic difficulty, “Your aunt’s distresses for want of a good
housekeeper are such as to render the wages demanded by Mrs. Forbes
(though unusually high) of no consideration.” Her letters of form,
which required better orthography than she was mistress of, he
draughted for her, pen-weary though he was.
It has already been shown how he fathered her “little progeny,” as he
once called them. Mrs. Washington was a worrying mother, as is shown by
a letter to her sister, speaking of a visit in which “I carried my
little patt with me and left Jacky at home for a trial to see how well
I could stay without him though we were gon but wone fortnight I was
quite impatient to get home. If I at aney time heard the doggs barke or
a noise out, I thought thair was a person sent for me. I often fancied
he was sick or some accident had happened to him so that I think it is
impossible for me to leave him as long as Mr. Washington must stay when
he comes down.” To spare her anxiety, therefore, when the time came for
“Jacky” to be inoculated, Washington “withheld from her the information
… & purpose, if possible, to keep her in total ignorance … till I hear
of his return, or perfect recovery;… she having often wished that Jack
wou’d take & go through the disorder without her knowing of it, that
she might escape those Tortures which suspense wd throw her into.” And
on the death of Patsy he wrote, “This sudden and unexpected blow, I
scarce need add has almost reduced my poor Wife to the lowest ebb of
Misery; which is encreas’d by the absence of her son.”
When Washington left Mount Vernon, in May, 1775, to attend the
Continental Congress, he did not foresee his appointment as
commander-in-chief, and as soon as it occurred he wrote his wife,—
“I am now set down to write to you on a subject, which fills me with
inexpressible concern, and this concern is greatly aggravated and
increased, when I reflect upon the uneasiness I know it will give you.
It has been determined in Congress, that the whole army raised for the
defence of the American cause shall be put under my care, and that it
is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take upon me
the command of it.
“You may believe me, my dear Patsey, when I assure you, in the most
solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have used
every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness
to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being
a trust too great for my capacity, and that I should enjoy more real
happiness in one month with you at home, than I have the most distant
prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times seven
years…. I shall feel no pain from the toil or danger of the campaign;
my unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness I know you will feel from
being left alone.”
To prevent this loneliness as far as possible, he wrote at the same
time to different members of the two families as follows:
“My great concern upon this occasion is, the thought of leaving your
mother under the uneasiness which I fear this affair will throw her
into; I therefore hope, expect, and indeed have no doubt, of your using
every means in your power to keep up her spirits, by doing everything
in your power to promote her quiet. I have, I must confess, very uneasy
feelings on her account, but as it has been a kind of unavoidable
necessity which has led me into this appointment, I shall more readily
hope that success will attend it and crown our meetings with
happiness.”
“I entreat you and Mrs. Bassett if possible to visit at Mt. Vernon, as
also my wife’s other friends. I could wish you to take her down, as I
have no expectation of returning till winter & feel great uneasiness at
her lonesome situation.”
“I shall hope that my friends will visit and endeavor to keep up the
spirits of my wife, as much as they can, as my departure will, I know,
be a cutting stroke upon her; and on this account alone I have many
very disagreeable sensations. I hope you and my sister, (although the
distance is great), will find as much leisure this summer as to spend a
little time at Mount Vernon.”
When, six months later, the war at Boston settled into a mere siege,
Washington wrote that “seeing no prospect of returning to my family and
friends this winter, I have sent an invitation to Mrs. Washington to
come to me,” adding, “I have laid a state of difficulties, however,
which must attend the journey before her, and left it to her own
choice.” His wife replied in the affirmative, and one of Washington’s
aides presently wrote concerning some prize goods to the effect that
“There are limes, lemons and oranges on board, which, being perishable,
you must sell immediately. The General will want some of each, as well
of the sweetmeats and pickles that are on board, as his lady will be
here to-day or to-morrow. You will please to pick up such things on
board as you think will be acceptable to her, and send them as soon as
possible; he does not mean to receive anything without payment.”
Lodged at head-quarters, then the Craigie house in Cambridge, the
discomforts of war were reduced to a minimum, but none the less it was
a trying time to Mrs. Washington, who complained that she could not get
used to the distant cannonading, and she marvelled that those about her
paid so little heed to it. With the opening of the campaign in the
following summer she returned to Mount Vernon, but when the army was
safely in winter quarters at Valley Forge she once more journeyed
northward, a trip alluded to by Washington in a letter to Jack, as
follows: “Your Mamma is not yet arrived, but … expected every hour. [My
aide] Meade set off yesterday (as soon as I got notice of her
intention) to meet her. We are in a dreary kind of place, and
uncomfortably provided.” And of this reunion Mrs. Washington wrote, “I
came to this place, some time about the first of February where I found
the General very well,… in camp in what is called the great valley on
the Banks of the Schuylkill. Officers and men are chiefly in Hutts,
which they say is tolerably comfortable; the army are as healthy as can
be well expected in general. The General’s apartment is very small; he
has had a log cabin built to dine in, which has made our quarters much
more tolerable than they were at first”
Such “winterings” became the regular custom, and brief references in
various letters serve to illustrate them. Thus, in 1779, Washington
informed a friend that “Mrs. Washington, according to custom marched
home when the campaign was about to open;” in July, 1782, he noted that
his wife “sets out this day for Mount Vernon,” and later in the same
year he wrote, “as I despair of seeing my home this Winter, I have sent
for Mrs. Washington;” and finally, in a letter he draughted for his
wife, he made her describe herself as “a kind of perambulator, during
eight or nine years of the war.”
Another pleasant glimpse during these stormy years is the couple,
during a brief stay in Philadelphia, being entertained almost to death,
described as follows by Franklin’s daughter in a letter to her father:
“I have lately been several times abroad with the General and Mrs.
Washington. He always inquires after you in the most affectionate
manner, and speaks of you highly. We danced at Mrs. Powell’s your
birthday, or night I should say, in company together, and he told me it
was the anniversary of his marriage; it was just twenty years that
night” Again there was junketing in Philadelphia after the surrender at
Yorktown, and one bit of this is shadowed in a line from Washington to
Robert Morris, telling the latter that “Mrs. Washington, myself and
family, will have the honor of dining with you in the way proposed,
to-morrow, being Christmas day.”
With the retirement to Mount Vernon at the close of the war, little
more companionship was obtained, for, as already stated, Washington
could only describe his home henceforth as a “well resorted tavern,”
and two years after his return he entered in his diary, “Dined with
only Mrs. Washington which I believe is the first instance of it since
my retirement from public life.”
Even this was only a furlough, for in six years they were both in
public life again. Mrs. Washington was inclined to sulk over the
necessary restraints of official life, writing to a friend, “Mrs. Sins
will give you a better account of the fashions than I can—I live a very
dull life hear and know nothing that passes in the town—I never goe to
any public place—indeed I think I am more like a State prisoner than
anything else; there is certain bounds set for me which I must not
depart from—and as I cannot doe as I like, I am obstinate and stay at
home a great deal.”
[Illustration: MRS. DANIEL PARKE CUSTIS, LATER MRS. WASHINGTON]
None the less she did her duties well, and in these “Lady Washington”
was more at home, for, according to Thacher, she combined “in an
uncommon degree, great dignity of manner with most pleasing
affability,” though possessing “no striking marks of beauty,” and there
is no doubt that she lightened Washington’s shoulders of social demands
materially. At the receptions of Mrs. Washington, which were held every
Friday evening, so a contemporary states, “the President did not
consider himself as visited. On these occasions he appeared as a
private gentleman, with neither hat nor sword, conversing without
restraint.”
From other formal society Mrs. Washington also saved her husband, for a
visitor on New Year’s tells of her setting “‘the General’ (by which
title she always designated her husband)” at liberty: “Mrs. Washington
had stood by his side as the visitors arrived and were presented, and
when the clock in the hall was heard striking nine, she advanced and
with a complacent smile said, ‘The General always retires at nine, and
I usually precede him,’ upon which all arose, made their parting
salutations, and withdrew.” Nor was it only from the fatigues of formal
entertaining that the wife saved her husband, Washington writing in
1793, “We remain in Philadelphia until the 10th instant. It was my wish
to have continued there longer; but as Mrs. Washington was unwilling to
leave me surrounded by the malignant fever which prevailed, I could not
think of hazarding her, and the Children any longer by _my_ continuance
in the City, the house in which we live being in a manner blockaded by
the disorder, and was becoming every day more and more fatal; I
therefore came off with them.”
Finally from these “scenes more busy, tho’ not more happy, than the
tranquil enjoyment of rural life,” they returned to Mount Vernon,
hoping that in the latter their “days will close.” Not quite three
years of this life brought an end to their forty years of married life.
On the night that Washington’s illness first became serious his
secretary narrates that “Between 2 and 3 o’clk on Saturday morning he
[Washington] awoke Mrs. Washington & told her he was very unwell, and
had had an ague. She … would have got up to call a servant; but he
would not permit her lest she should take cold.” As a consequence of
this care for her, her husband lay for nearly four hours in a chill in
a cold bedroom before receiving any attention, or before even a fire
was lighted. When death came, she said, “Tis well—All is now over—I
have no more trials to pass through—I shall soon follow him.” In his
will he left “to my dearly beloved wife” the use of his whole property,
and named her an executrix.
As a man’s views of matrimony are more or less colored by his personal
experience, what Washington had to say on the institution is of
interest. As concerned himself he wrote to his nephew, “If Mrs.
Washington should survive me, there is a moral certainty of my dying
without issue: and should I be the longest liver, the matter in my
opinion, is hardly less certain; for while I retain the faculty of
reasoning, I shall never marry a girl; and it is not probable that I
should have children by a woman of an age suitable to my own, should I
be disposed to enter into a second marriage.” And in a less personal
sense he wrote to Chastellux,—
“In reading your very friendly and acceptable letter,… I was, as you
may well suppose, not less delighted than surprised to meet the plain
American words, ‘my wife.’ A wife! Well, my dear Marquis, I can hardly
refrain from smiling to find you are caught at last. I saw, by the
eulogium you often made on the happiness of domestic life in America,
that you had swallowed the bait, and that you would as surely be taken,
one day or another, as that you were a philosopher and a soldier. So
your day has at length come. I am glad of it, with all my heart and
soul. It is quite good enough for you. Now you are well served for
coming to fight in favor of the American rebels, all the way across the
Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible contagion—domestic
felicity—which same, like the small pox or the plague, a man can have
only once in his life; because it commonly lasts him (at least with us
in America—I don’t know how you manage these matters in France) for his
whole life time. And yet after all the maledictions you so richly merit
on the subject, the worst wish which I can find in my heart to make
against Madame de Chastellux and yourself is, that you may neither of
you ever get the better of this same domestic felicity during the
entire course of your mortal existence.”
Furthermore, he wrote to an old friend, whose wife stubbornly refused
to sign a deed, “I think, any Gentleman, possessed of but a very
moderate degree of influence with his wife, might, in the course of
five or six years (for I think it is at least that time) have prevailed
upon her to do an act of justice, in fulfiling his Bargains and
complying with his wishes, if he had been really in earnest in
requesting the matter of her; especially, as the inducement which you
thought would have a powerful operation on Mrs. Alexander, namely the
birth of a child, has been doubled, and tripled.”
However well Washington thought of “the honorable state,” he was no
match-maker, and when asked to give advice to the widow of Jack Custis,
replied, “I never did, nor do I believe I ever shall, give advice to a
woman, who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage; first, because I
never could advise one to marry without her own consent; and, secondly
because I know it is to no purpose to advise her to refrain, when she
has obtained it. A woman very rarely asks an opinion or requires advice
on such an occasion, till her resolution is formed; and then it is with
the hope and expectation of obtaining a sanction, not that she means to
be governed by your disapprobation, that she applies. In a word the
plain English of the application may be summed up in these words: ‘I
wish you to think as I do; but, if unhappily you differ from me in
opinion, my heart, I must confess, is fixed, and I have gone too far
now to retract.’” Again he wrote:
“It has ever been a maxim with me through life, neither to promote nor
to prevent a matrimonial connection, unless there should be something
indispensably requiring interference in the latter. I have always
considered marriage as the most interesting event of one’s life, the
foundation of happiness or misery. To be instrumental therefore in
bringing two people together, who are indifferent to each other, and
may soon become objects of disgust; or to prevent a union, which is
prompted by the affections of the mind, is what I never could reconcile
with reason, and therefore neither directly nor indirectly have I ever
said a word to Fanny or George, upon the subject of their intended
connection.”
The question whether Washington was a faithful husband might well be
left to the facts already given, were it not that stories of his
immorality are bandied about in clubs, a well-known clergyman has
vouched for their truth, and a United States senator has given further
currency to them by claiming special knowledge on the subject. Since
such are the facts, it seems best to consider the question and show
what evidence there actually is for these stories, that at least the
pretended “letters,” etc., which are always being cited, and are never
produced, may no longer have credence put in them, and the true basis
for all the stories may be known and valued at its worth.
In the year 1776 there was printed in London a small pamphlet entitled
“Minutes of the Trial and Examination of Certain Persons in the
Province of New York,” which purported to be the records of the
examination of the conspirators of the “Hickey plot” (to murder
Washington) before a committee of the Provincial Congress of New York.
The manuscript of this was claimed in the preface to have been
“discovered (on the late capture of New York by the British troops)
among the papers of a person who appears to have been secretary to the
committee.” As part of the evidence the following was printed:
“William Cooper, soldier, sworn.
“Court. Inform us what conversation you heard at the Serjeant’s Arms?
“Cooper. Being there the 21st of May, I heard John Clayford inform the
company, that Mary Gibbons was thoroughly in their interest, and that
the whole would be safe. I learnt from enquiry that Mary Gibbons was a
girl from New Jersey, of whom General Washington was very fond, that he
maintained her genteelly at a house near Mr. Skinner’s,—at the North
River; that he came there very often late at night in disguise; he
learnt also that this woman was very intimate with Clayford, and made
him presents, and told him of what General Washington said.
“Court. Did you hear Mr. Clayford say any thing himself that night?
“Cooper. Yes; that he was the day before with Judith, so he called her,
and that she told him, Washington had often said he wished his hands
were clear of the dirty New-Englanders, and words to that effect.
“Court. Did you hear no mention made of any scheme to betray or seize
him?
“Cooper. Mr. Clayford said he could easily be seized and put on board a
boat, and carried off, as his female friend had promised she would
assist: but all present thought it would be hazardous.”
“William Savage, sworn.
“Court. Was you at the Serjeant’s Arms on the 21st of May? Did you hear
any thing of this nature?
“Savage. I did, and nearly as the last evidence has declared; the
society in general refused to be concerned in it, and thought it a mad
scheme.
“Mr. Abeel. Pray, Mr. Savage, have not you heard nothing of an
information that was to be given to Governor Tryon?
“Savage. Yes; papers and letters were at different times shewn to the
society, which were taken out of General Washington’s pockets by Mrs.
Gibbons, and given (as she pretended some occasion of going out) to Mr.
Clayford, who always copied them, and they were put into his pockets
again.”
The authenticity of this pamphlet thus becomes of importance, and over
this little time need be spent. The committee named in it differs from
the committee really named by the Provincial Congress, and the
proceedings nowhere implicate the men actually proved guilty. In other
words, the whole publication is a clumsy Tory forgery, put forward with
the same idle story of “captured papers” employed in the “spurious
letters” of Washington, and sent forth from the same press (J. Bew)
from which that forgery and several others issued.
The source from which the English fabricator drew this scandal is
fortunately known. In 1775 a letter to Washington from his friend
Benjamin Harrison was intercepted by the British, and at once printed
broadcast in the newspapers. In this the writer gossips to Washington
“to amuse you and unbend your minds from the cares of war,” as follows:
“As I was in the pleasing task of writing to you, a little noise
occasioned me to turn my head around, and who should appear but pretty
little Kate, the Washer-woman’s daughter over the way, clean, trim and
as rosy as the morning. I snatched the golden, glorious opportunity,
and, but for the cursed antidote to love, Sukey, I had fitted her for
my general against his return. We were obliged to part, but not till we
had contrived to meet again: if she keeps the appointment, I shall
relish a week’s longer stay.” From this originated the stories of
Washington’s infidelity as already given, and also a coarser version of
the same, printed in 1776 in a Tory farce entitled “The Battle of
Brooklyn.”
Jonathan Boucher, who knew Washington well before the Revolution, yet
who, as a loyalist, wrote in no friendly spirit of him, asserted that
“in his moral character, he is regular.” A man who disliked him far
more, General Charles Lee, in the excess of his hatred, charged
Washington in 1778 with immorality,—a rather amusing impeachment, since
at the very time Lee was flaunting the evidence of his own incontinence
without apparent shame,—and a mutual friend of the accused and accuser,
Joseph Reed, whose service on Washington’s staff enabled him to speak
wittingly, advised that Lee “forbear any Reflections upon the Commander
in Chief, of whom for the first time I have heard Slander on his
private Character, viz., great cruelty to his Slaves in Virginia &
Immorality of Life, tho’ they acknowledge so very secret that it is
difficult to detect. To me who have had so good opportunities to know
the Purity of the latter & equally believing the Falsehood of the
former from the known excellence of his disposition, it appears so
nearly bordering upon frenzy, that I can pity the wretches rather than
despise them.”
Washington was too much of a man, however, to have his marriage lessen
his liking for other women; and Yeates repeats that “Mr. Washington
once told me, on a charge which I once made against the President at
his own Table, that the admiration he warmly professed for Mrs.
Hartley, was a Proof of his Homage to the worthy Part of the Sex, and
highly respectful to his Wife.” Every now and then there is an allusion
in his letters which shows his appreciation of beauty, as when he wrote
to General Schuyler, “Your fair daughter, for whose visit Mrs.
Washington and myself are greatly obliged,” and again, to one of his
aides, “The fair hand, to whom your letter … was committed presented it
safe.”
His diary, in the notes of the balls and assemblies which he attended,
usually had a word for the sex, as exampled in: “at which there were
between 60 & 70 well dressed ladies;” “at which there was about 100
well dressed and handsome ladies;” “at which were 256 elegantly dressed
ladies;” “where there was a select Company of ladies;” “where (it is
said) there were upwards of 100 ladies; their appearance was elegant,
and many of them very handsome;” “at wch. there were about 400 ladies
the number and appearance of wch. exceeded anything of the kind I have
ever seen;” “where there were about 75 well dressed, and many of them
very handsome ladies—among whom (as was also the case at the Salem and
Boston assemblies) were a greater proportion with much blacker hair
than are usually seen in the Southern States.”
At his wife’s receptions, as already said, Washington did not view
himself as host, and “conversed without restraint, generally with
women, who rarely had other opportunity of seeing him,” which perhaps
accounts for the statement of another eye-witness that Washington
“looked very much more at ease than at his own official levees.”
Sullivan adds that “the young ladies used to throng around him, and
engaged him in conversation. There were some of the well-remembered
belles of the day who imagined themselves to be favorites with him. As
these were the only opportunities which they had of conversing with
him, they were disposed to use them.” In his Southern trip of 1791
Washington noted, with evident pleasure, that he “was visited about 2
o’clock, by a great number of the most respectable ladies of
Charleston—the first honor of the kind I had ever experienced and it
was flattering as it was singular.” And that this attention was not
merely the respect due to a great man is shown in the letter of a
Virginian woman, who wrote to her correspondent in 1777, that when
“General Washington throws off the Hero and takes up the chatty
agreeable Companion—he can be down right impudent sometimes—such
impudence, Fanny, as you and I like.”
Another feminine compliment paid him was a highly laudatory poem which
was enclosed to him, with a letter begging forgiveness, to which he
playfully answered,—
“You apply to me, my dear Madam, for absolution as tho’ I was your
father Confessor; and as tho’ you had committed a crime, great in
itself, yet of the venial class. You have reason good—for I find myself
strangely disposed to be a very indulgent ghostly adviser on this
occasion; and, notwithstanding ‘you are the most offending Soul alive’
(that is, if it is a crime to write elegant Poetry,) yet if you will
come and dine with me on Thursday, and go thro’ the proper course of
penitence which shall be prescribed I will strive hard to assist you in
expiating these poetical trespasses on this side of purgatory. Nay
more, if it rests with me to direct your future lucubrations, I shall
certainly urge you to a repetition of the same conduct, on purpose to
shew what an admirable knack you have at confession and reformation;
and so without more hesitation, I shall venture to command the muse,
not to be restrained by ill-grounded timidity, but to go on and
prosper. You see, Madam, when once the woman has tempted us, and we
have tasted the forbidden fruit, there is no such thing as checking our
appetites, whatever the consequences may be. You will, I dare say,
recognize our being the genuine Descendants of those who are reputed to
be our great Progenitors.”
Nor was Washington open only to beauty and flattery. From the rude
frontier in 1756 he wrote, “The supplicating tears of the women,… melt
me into such deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know my own
mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy,
provided that would contribute to the people’s ease.” And in 1776 he
said, “When I consider that the city of New York will in all human
probability very soon be the scene of a bloody conflict, I cannot but
view the great numbers of women, children, and infirm persons remaining
in it, with the most melancholy concern. When the men-of-war passed up
the river, the shrieks and cries of these poor creatures running every
way with their children, were truly distressing…. Can no method be
devised for their removal?”
Nevertheless, though liked by and liking the fair sex, Washington was
human, and after experience concluded that “I never again will have two
women in my house when I am there myself.”
V
FARMER AND PROPRIETOR
The earliest known Washington coat of arms had blazoned upon it “3
Cinque foiles,” which was the herald’s way of saying that the bearer
was a landholder and cultivator, and when Washington had a book-plate
made for himself he added to the conventional design of the arms spears
of wheat and other plants, as an indication of his favorite labor.
During his career he acted several parts, but in none did he find such
pleasure as in farming, and late in life he said, “I think with you,
that the life of a husbandman of all others is the most delectable. It
is honorable, it is amusing, and, with judicious management, it is
profitable. To see plants rise from the earth and flourish by the
superior skill and bounty of the laborer fills a contemplative mind
with ideas which are more easy to be conceived than expressed.”
“Agriculture has ever been the most favorite amusement of my life,” he
wrote after the Revolution, and he informed another correspondent that
“the more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs, the better pleased
I am with them; insomuch, that I can no where find so great
satisfaction as in those innocent and useful pursuits: In indulging
these feelings, I am led to reflect how much more delightful to an
undebauched mind is the task of making improvements on the earth, than
all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it, by the most
uninterrupted career of conquests.” A visitor to Mount Vernon in 1785
states that his host’s “greatest pride is, to be thought the first
farmer in America. He is quite a Cincinnatus.”
Undoubtedly a part of this liking flowed from his strong affection for
Mount Vernon. Such was his feeling for the place that he never seems to
have been entirely happy away from it, and over and over again, during
his various and enforced absences, he “sighs” or “pants” for his “own
vine and fig tree.” In writing to an English correspondent, he shows
his feeling for the place by saying, “No estate in United America, is
more pleasantly situated than this. It lies in a high, dry and healthy
country, three hundred miles by water from the sea, and, as you will
see by the plan, on one of the finest rivers in the world.”
The history of the Mount Vernon estate begins in 1674, when Lord
Culpepper conveyed to Nicholas Spencer and Lieutenant-Colonel John
Washington five thousand acres of land “scytuate Lying and being within
the said terrytory in the County of Stafford in the ffreshes of the
Pottomocke River and … bounded betwixt two Creeks.” Colonel John’s half
was bequeathed to his son Lawrence, and by Lawrence’s will it was left
to his daughter Mildred. She sold it to the father of George, who by
his will left it to his son Lawrence, with a reversion to George should
Lawrence die without issue. The original house was built about 1740,
and the place was named Mount Vernon by Lawrence, in honor of Admiral
Vernon, under whom he had served at Carthagena. After the death of
Lawrence, the estate of twenty-five hundred acres came under
Washington’s management, and from 1754 it was his home, as it had been
practically even in his brother’s life.
Twice Washington materially enlarged the house at Mount Vernon, the
first time in 1760 and the second in 1785, and a visitor reports, what
his host must have told him, that “its a pity he did not build a new
one at once, for it has cost him nearly as much to repair his old one.”
These alterations consisted in the addition of a banquet-hall at one
end (by far the finest room in the house), and a library and
dining-room at the other, with the addition of an entire story to the
whole.
The grounds, too, were very much improved. A fine approach, or bowling
green, was laid out, a “botanical garden,” a “shrubbery,” and
greenhouses were added, and in every way possible the place was
improved. A deer paddock was laid out and stocked, gifts of Chinese
pheasants and geese, French partridges, and guinea-pigs were sent him,
and were gratefully acknowledged, and from all the world over came
curious, useful, or beautiful plants.
The original tract did not satisfy the ambition of the farmer, and from
the time he came into the possession of Mount Vernon he was a
persistent purchaser of lands adjoining the property. In 1760 he
bargained with one Clifton for “a tract called Brents,” of eighteen
hundred and six acres, but after the agreement was closed the seller,
“under pretence of his wife not consenting to acknowledge her right of
dower wanted to disengage himself … and by his shuffling behavior
convinced me of his being the trifling body represented.” Presently
Washington heard that Clifton had sold his lands to another for twelve
hundred pounds, which “fully unravelled his conduct … and convinced me
that he was nothing less than a thorough pac’d rascall.” Meeting the
“rascall” at a court, “much discourse,” Washington states, “happened
between him and I concerning his ungenerous treatment of me, the whole
turning to little account, ’tis not worth reciting.” After much more
friction, the land was finally sold at public auction, and “I bought it
for £1210 Sterling, [and] under many threats and disadvantages paid the
money.”
[Illustration: WASHINGTON’S SURVEY OF MOUNT VERNON, CIRCA 1746]
In 1778, when some other land was offered, Washington wrote to his
agent, “I have premised these things to shew my inability, not my
unwillingness to purchase the Lands in my own Neck at (almost) any
price—& this I am very desirous of doing if it could be accomplished by
any means in my power, in ye way of Barter for other Land—for Negroes …
or in short—for any thing else … but for money I cannot, I want the
means.” Again, in 1782, he wrote, “Inform Mr. Dulany,… that I look upon
£2000 to be a great price for his land; that my wishes to obtain it do
not proceed from its intrinsic value, but from the motives I have
candidly assigned in my other letter. That to indulge this fancy, (for
in truth there is more fancy than judgment in it) I have submitted, or
am willing to submit, to the disadvantage of borrowing as large a sum
as I think this Land is worth, in order to come at it”
By thus purchasing whenever an opportunity occurred, the property was
increased from the twenty-five hundred acres which had come into
Washington’s possession by inheritance to an estate exceeding eight
thousand acres, of which over thirty-two hundred were actually under
cultivation during the latter part of its owner’s life.
To manage so vast a tract, the property was subdivided into several
tracts, called “Mansion House Farm,” “River Farm,” “Union Farm,” “Muddy
Hole Farm,” and “Dogue Run Farm,” each having an overseer to manage it,
and each being operated as a separate plantation, though a general
overseer controlled the whole, and each farm derived common benefit
from the property as a whole. “On Saturday in the afternoon, every
week, reports are made by all his overseers, and registered in books
kept for the purpose,” and these accounts were so schemed as to show
how every negro’s and laborer’s time had been employed during the whole
week, what crops had been planted or gathered, what increase or loss of
stock had occurred, and every other detail of farm-work. During
Washington’s absences from Mount Vernon his chief overseer sent him
these reports, as well as wrote himself, and weekly the manager
received in return long letters of instruction, sometimes to the length
of sixteen pages, which showed most wonderful familiarity with every
acre of the estate and the character of every laborer, and are little
short of marvellous when account is taken of the pressure of public
affairs that rested upon their writer as he framed them.
When Washington became a farmer, but one system of agriculture, so far
as Virginia was concerned, existed, which he described long after as
follows:
“A piece of land is cut down, and kept under constant cultivation,
first in tobacco, and then in Indian corn (two very exhausting plants),
until it will yield scarcely any thing; a second piece is cleared, and
treated in the same manner; then a third and so on, until probably
there is but little more to clear. When this happens, the owner finds
himself reduced to the choice of one of three things—either to recover
the land which he has ruined, to accomplish which, he has perhaps
neither the skill, the industry, nor the means; or to retire beyond the
mountains; or to substitute quantity for quality, in order to raise
something. The latter has been generally adopted, and, with the
assistance of horses, he scratches over much ground, and seeds it, to
very little purpose.”
Knowing no better, Washington adopted this one-crop system, even to the
extent of buying corn and hogs to feed his hands. Though following in
the beaten track, he experimented in different kinds of tobacco, so
that, “by comparing then the loss of the one with the extra price of
the other, I shall be able to determine which is the best to pursue.”
The largest crop he ever seems to have produced, “being all
sweet-scented and neatly managed,” was one hundred and fifteen
hogsheads, which averaged in sale twelve pounds each.
From a very early time Washington had been a careful student of such
books on agriculture as he could obtain, even preparing lengthy
abstracts of them, and the knowledge he thus obtained, combined with
his own practical experience, soon convinced him that the Virginian
system was wrong. “I never ride on my plantations,” he wrote, “without
seeing something which makes me regret having continued so long in the
ruinous mode of farming, which we are in,” and he soon “discontinued
the growth of tobacco myself; [and] except at a plantation or two upon
York River, I make no more of that article than barely serves to
furnish me with goods.”
From this time (1765) “the whole of my force [was] in a manner confined
to the growth of wheat and manufacturing of it into flour,” and before
long he boasted that “the wheat from some of my plantations, by one
pair of steelyards, will weigh upwards of sixty pounds,… and better
wheat than I now have I do not expect to make.” After the Revolution he
claimed that “no wheat that has ever yet fallen under my observation
exceeds the wheat which some years ago I cultivated extensively but
which, from inattention during my absence of almost nine years from
home, has got so mixed or degenerated as scarcely to retain any of its
original characteristics properly.” In 1768 he was able to sell over
nineteen hundred bushels, and how greatly his product was increased
after this is shown by the fact that in this same year he sowed four
hundred and ninety bushels.
Still further study and experimentation led him to conclude that “my
countrymen are too much used to corn blades and corn shucks; and have
too little knowledge of the profit of grass lands,” and after his final
home-coming to Mount Vernon, he said, “I have had it in contemplation
ever since I returned home to turn my farms to grazing principally, as
fast as I can cover the fields sufficiently with grass. Labor and of
course expence will be considerably diminished by this change, the nett
profit as great and my attention less divided, whilst the fields will
be improving.” That this was only an abandonment of a “one crop” system
is shown by the fact that in 1792 he grew over five thousand bushels of
wheat, valued at four shillings the bushel, and in 1799 he said, “as a
farmer, wheat and flour are my principal concerns.” And though, in
abandoning the growth of tobacco, Washington also tried “to grow as
little Indian corn as may be,” yet in 1795 his crop was over sixteen
hundred barrels, and the quantity needed for his own negroes and stock
is shown in a year when his crop failed, which “obliged me to purchase
upwards of eight hundred barrels of corn.”
In connection with this change of system, Washington became an early
convert to the rotation of crops, and drew up elaborate tables
sometimes covering periods of five years, so that the quantity of each
crop should not vary, yet by which his fields should have constant
change. This system naturally very much diversified the product of his
estate, and flax, hay, clover, buckwheat, turnips, and potatoes became
large crops. The scale on which this was done is shown by the facts
that in one year he sowed twenty-seven bushels of flaxseed and planted
over three hundred bushels of potatoes.
Early and late Washington preached to his overseers the value of
fertilization; in one case, when looking for a new overseer, he said
the man must be, “above all, Midas like, one who can convert everything
he touches into manure, as the first transmutation towards gold;—in a
word one who can bring worn out and gullied Lands into good tilth in
the shortest time.” Equally emphatic was his urging of constant
ploughing and grubbing, and he even invented a deep soil plough, which
he used till he found a better one in the English Rotheran plough,
which he promptly imported, as he did all other improved farming tools
and machinery of which he could learn. To save his woodlands, and for
appearance’s sake, he insisted on live fences, though he had to
acknowledge that “no hedge, alone, will, I am persuaded, do for an
outer inclosure, where _two_ or four footed hogs find it convenient to
open passage.” In all things he was an experimentalist, carefully
trying different kinds of tobacco and wheat, various kinds of plants
for hedges, and various kinds of manure for fertilizers; he had tests
made to see whether he could sell his wheat to best advantage in the
grain or when made into flour, and he bred from selected horses,
cattle, and sheep. “In short I shall begrudge no reasonable expence
that will contribute to the improvement and neatness of my Farms;—for
nothing pleases me better than to see them in good order, and
everything trim, handsome, and thriving about them.”
The magnitude of the charge of such an estate can be better understood
when the condition of a Virginia plantation is realized. Before the
Revolution practically everything the plantation could not produce was
ordered yearly from Great Britain, and after the annual delivery of the
invoices the estate could look for little outside help. Nor did this
change rapidly after the Revolution, and during the period of
Washington’s management almost everything was bought in yearly
supplies. This system compelled each plantation to be a little world
unto itself; indeed, the three hundred souls on the Mount Vernon estate
went far to make it a distinct and self-supporting community, and one
of Washington’s standing orders to his overseers was to “buy nothing
you can make within yourselves.” Thus the planting and gathering of the
crops were but a small part of the work to be done.
A corps of workmen—some negroes, some indentured servants, and some
hired laborers—were kept on the estate. A blacksmith-shop occupied
some, doing not merely the work of the plantation, but whatever
business was brought to them from outside; and a wood-burner kept them
and the mansion-house supplied with charcoal. A gang of carpenters were
kept busy, and their spare time was utilized in framing houses to be
put up in Alexandria, or in the “Federal city,” as Washington was
called before the death of its namesake. A brick-maker, too, was kept
constantly employed, and masons utilized the product of his labor. The
gardener’s gang had charge of the kitchen-garden, and set out thousands
of grape-vines, fruit-trees, and hedge-plants.
A water-mill, with its staff, not merely ground meal for the hands, but
produced a fine flour that commanded extra price in the market In 1786
Washington asserted that his flour was “equal, I believe, in quality to
any made in this country,” and the Mount Vernon brand was of such value
that some money was made by buying outside wheat and grinding it into
flour. The coopers of the estate made the barrels in which it was
packed, and Washington’s schooner carried it to market.
The estate had its own shoemaker, and in time a staff of weavers was
trained. Before this was obtained, in 1760, though with only a modicum
of the force he presently had, Washington ordered from London “450 ells
of Osnabrig, 4 pieces of Brown Wools, 350 yards of Kendall Cotton, and
100 yards of Dutch blanket.” By 1768 he was manufacturing the chief
part of his requirements, for in that year his weavers produced eight
hundred and fifteen and three-quarter yards of linen, three hundred and
sixty-five and one-quarter yards of woollen, one hundred and forty-four
yards of linsey, and forty yards of cotton, or a total of thirteen
hundred and sixty-five and one-half yards, one man and five negro girls
having been employed. When once the looms were well organized an
infinite variety of cloths was produced, the accounts mentioning
“striped woollen, woolen plaided, cotton striped, linen, wool-birdseye,
cotton filled with wool, linsey, M.’s & O.’s, cotton-India dimity,
cotton jump stripe, linen filled with tow, cotton striped with silk,
Roman M., Janes twilled, huccabac, broadcloth, counterpain, birdseye
diaper, Kirsey wool, barragon, fustian, bed-ticking, herring-box, and
shalloon.”
One of the most important features of the estate was its fishery, for
the catch, salted down, largely served in place of meat for the
negroes’ food. Of this advantage Washington wrote, “This river,… is
well supplied with various kinds of fish at all seasons of the year;
and, in the spring, with the greatest profusion of shad, herrings,
bass, carp, perch, sturgeon, &c. Several valuable fisheries appertain
to the estate; the whole shore, in short, is one entire fishery.”
Whenever there was a run of fish, the seine was drawn, chiefly for
herring and shad, and in good years this not merely amply supplied the
home requirements, but allowed of sales; four or five shillings the
thousand for herring and ten shillings the hundred for shad were the
average prices, and sales of as high as eighty-five thousand herring
were made in a single year.
In 1795, when the United States passed an excise law, distilling became
particularly profitable, and a still was set up on the plantation. In
this whiskey was made from “Rye chiefly and Indian corn in a certain
proportion,” and this not merely used much of the estate’s product of
those two grains, but quantities were purchased from elsewhere. In 1798
the profit from the distillery was three hundred and forty-four pounds
twelve shillings and seven and three-quarter pence, with a stock
carried over of seven hundred and fifty-five and one-quarter gallons;
but this was the most successful year. Cider, too, was made in large
quantities.
A stud stable was from an early time maintained, and the Virginia
papers regularly advertised that the stud horse “Samson,” “Magnolia,”
“Leonidas,” “Traveller,” or whatever the reigning stallion of the
moment might be, would “cover” mares at Mount Vernon, with pasturage
and a guarantee of foal, if their owners so elected. During the
Revolution Washington bought twenty-seven of the army mares that had
been “worn-down so as to render it beneficial to the public to have
them sold,” not even objecting to those “low in flesh or even
crippled,” because “I have many large Farms and am improving a good
deal of Land into Meadow and Pasture, which cannot fail of being
profited by a number of Brood Mares.” In addition to the stud, there
were, in 1793, fifty-four draught horses on the estate.
A unique feature of this stud was the possession of two jackasses, of
which the history was curious. At that time there was a law in Spain
(where the best breed was to be found) which forbade the exportation of
asses, but the king, hearing of Washington’s wish to possess a jack,
sent him one of the finest obtainable as a present, which was promptly
christened “Royal Gift.” The sea-voyage and the change of climate,
however, so affected him that for a time he proved of little value to
his owner, except as a source of amusement, for Washington wrote
Lafayette, “The Jack I have already received from Spain in appearance
is fine, but his late Royal master, tho’ past his grand climacteric
cannot be less moved by female allurements than he is; or when
prompted, can proceed with more deliberation and majestic solemnity to
the work of procreation.” This reluctance to play his part Washington
concluded was a sign of aristocracy, and he wrote a nephew, “If Royal
Gift will administer, he shall be at the service of your Mares, but at
present he seems too full of Royalty, to have anything to do with a
plebeian Race,” and to Fitzhugh he said, “particular attention shall be
paid to the mares which your servant brought, and when my Jack is in
the humor, they shall derive all the benefit of his labor, for labor it
appears to be. At present tho’ young, he follows what may be supposed
to be the example of his late Royal Master, who can not, tho’ past his
grand climacteric, perform seldomer or with more majestic solemnity
than he does. However I am not without hope that when he becomes a
little better acquainted with republican enjoyment, he will amend his
manners, and fall into a better and more expeditious mode of doing
business.” This fortunately proved to be the case, and his master not
merely secured such mules as he needed for his own use, but gained from
him considerable profit by covering mares in the neighborhood. He even
sent him on a tour through the South, and Royal Gift passed a whole
winter in Charleston, South Carolina, with a resulting profit of six
hundred and seventy-eight dollars to his owner. In 1799 there were on
the estate “2 Covering Jacks & 3 young ones, 10 she asses, 42 working
mules and 15 younger ones.”
Of cattle there were in 1793 a total of three hundred and seventeen
head, including “a sufficiency of oxen broke to the yoke,” and a dairy
was operated separate from the farms, and some butter was made, but
Washington had occasion to say, “It is hoped, and will be expected,
that more effectual measures will be pursued to make butter another
year; for it is almost beyond belief, that from 101 cows actually
reported on a late enumeration of the cattle, that I am obliged to _buy
butter_ for the use of my family.”
Sheep were an unusual adjunct of a Virginia plantation, and of his
flock Washington wrote, “From the beginning of the year 1784 when I
returned from the army, until shearing time of 1788, I improved the
breed of my sheep so much by buying and selecting the best formed and
most promising Rams, and putting them to my best ewes, by keeping them
always well culled and clean, and by other attentions, that they
averaged me … rather over than under five pounds of washed wool each.”
In another letter he said, “I … was proud in being able to produce
perhaps the largest mutton and the greatest quantity of wool from my
sheep that could be produced. But I was not satisfied with this; and
contemplated further improvements both in the flesh and wool by the
introduction of other breeds, which I should by this time have carried
into effect, had I been permitted to pursue my favorite occupation.” In
1789, however, “I was again called from home, and have not had it in my
power since to pay any attention to my farms. The consequence of which
is, that my sheep at the last shearing, yielded me not more than 2-1/2”
pounds. In 1793 he had six hundred and thirty-four in his flock, from
which he obtained fourteen hundred and-fifty-seven pounds of fleece. Of
hogs he had “many,” but “as these run pretty much at large in the
woodland, the number is uncertain.” In 1799 his manager valued his
entire live-stock at seven thousand pounds.
A separate account was kept of each farm, and of many of these separate
departments, and whenever there was a surplus of any product an account
was opened to cover it. Thus in various years there are accounts raised
dealing with cattle, hay, flour, flax, cord-wood, shoats, fish,
whiskey, pork, etc., and his secretary, Shaw, told a visitor that the
“books were as regular as any merchant whatever.” It is proper to note,
however, that sometimes they would not balance, and twice at least
Washington could only force one, by entering “By cash supposed to be
paid away & not credited £17.6.2,” and “By cash lost, stolen or paid
away without charging £143.15.2.” All these accounts were tabulated at
the end of the year and the net results obtained. Those for a single
year are here given:
BALANCE OF GAIN AND LOSS, 1798.
_Dr. gained._
Dogue Run Farm 397.11.02 Union Farm 529.10.11½ River Farm 234.
4.11 Smith’s Shop 34.12.09½ Distillery 83.13.01 Jacks 56.01
Traveller (studhorse) 9.17 Shoemaker 28.17.01
Fishery 165.12.0¾ Dairy 30.12.03
_Cr. lost._
Mansion House 466.18.02½ Muddy Hole Farm 60.01.03½
Spinning 51.02.0 Hire of head-overseer 140.00.0
By Clear gain on the Estate £ 898.16.4¼
A pretty poor showing for an estate and negroes which had certainly
cost him over fifty thousand dollars, and on which there was livestock
which at the lowest estimation was worth fifteen thousand dollars more.
It is not strange that in 1793 Washington attempted to find tenants for
all but the Mansion farm. This he reserved for my “own residence,
occupation and amusement,” as Washington held that “idleness is
disreputable,” and in 1798 he told his chief overseer he did not choose
to “discontinue my rides or become a cipher on my own estate.”
When at Mount Vernon, as this indicated, Washington rode daily about
his estate, and he has left a pleasant description of his life
immediately after retiring from the Presidency: “I begin my diurnal
course with the sun;… if my hirelings are not in their places at that
time I send them messages expressive of my sorrow for their
indisposition;… having put these wheels in motion, I examine the state
of things further; and the more they are probed, the deeper I find the
wounds are which my buildings have sustained by my absence and neglect
of eight years; by the time I have accomplished these matters,
breakfast (a little after seven o’clock)… is ready;… this being over, I
mount my horse and ride round my farms, which employs me until it is
time to dress for dinner.” A visitor at this time is authority for the
statement that the master “often works with his men himself—strips off
his coat and labors like a common man. The General has a great turn for
mechanics. It’s astonishing with what niceness he directs everything in
the building way, condescending even to measure the things himself,
that all may be perfectly uniform.”
This personal attention Washington was able to give only with very
serious interruptions. From 1754 till 1759 he was most of the time on
the frontier; for nearly nine years his Revolutionary service separated
him absolutely from his property; and during the two terms of his
Presidency he had only brief and infrequent visits. Just one-half of
his forty-six years’ occupancy of Mount Vernon was given to public
service.
The result was that in 1757 he wrote, “I am so little acquainted with
the business relative to my private affairs that I can scarce give you
any information concerning it,” and this was hardly less true of the
whole period of his absences. In 1775 he engaged overseers to manage
his various estates in his absence “upon shares,” but during the whole
war the plantations barely supported themselves, even with depletion of
stock and fertility, and he was able to draw nothing from them. One
overseer, and a confederate, he wrote, “I believe, divided the profits
of my Estate on the York River, tolerably betwn. them, for the devil of
any thing do I get.” Well might he advise knowingly that “I have no
doubt myself but that middling land under a man’s own eyes, is more
profitable than rich land at a distance.” “No Virginia Estate (except a
very few under the best of management) can stand simple Interest,” he
declared, and went even further when he wrote, “the nature of a
Virginia Estate being such, that without close application, it never
fails bringing the proprietors in Debt annually.” “To speak within
bounds,” he said, “ten thousand pounds will not compensate the losses I
might have avoided by being at home, & attending a little to my own
concerns” during the Revolution.
Fortunately for the farmer, the Mount Vernon estate was but a small
part of his property. His father had left him a plantation of two
hundred and eighty acres on the Rappahannock, “one Moiety of my Land
lying on Deep Run,” three lots in Frederick “with all the houses and
Appurtenances thereto belonging,” and one quarter of the residuary
estate. While surveying for Lord Fairfax in 1748, as part of his
compensation Washington patented a tract of five hundred and fifty
acres in Frederick County, which he always spoke of as “My Bull-skin
plantation.”
As a military bounty in the French and Indian War the governor of
Virginia issued a proclamation granting Western lands to the soldiers,
and under this Washington not merely secured fifteen thousand acres in
his own right, but by buying the claims of some of his fellow officers
doubled that quantity. A further tract was also obtained under the
kindred proclamation of 1763, “5000 Acres of Land in my own right, & by
purchase from Captn. Roots, Posey, & some other officers, I obtained
rights to several thousand more.” In 1786, after sales, he had over
thirty thousand acres, which he then offered to sell at thirty thousand
guineas, and in 1799, when still more had been sold, his inventory
valued the holdings at nearly three hundred thousand dollars.
In addition, Washington was a partner in several great land
speculations,—the Ohio Company, the Walpole Grant, the Mississippi
Company, the Military Company of Adventures, and the Dismal Swamp
Company; but all these ventures except the last collapsed at the
beginning of the Revolution and proved valueless. His interest in the
Dismal Swamp Company he held at the time of his death, and it was
valued in the inventory at twenty thousand dollars.
The properties that came to him from his brother Lawrence and with his
wife have already been described. It may be worth noting that with the
widow of Lawrence there was a dispute over the will, but apparently it
was never carried into the courts, and that owing to the great
depreciation of paper money during the Revolution the Custis personal
property was materially lessened, for “I am now receiving a shilling in
the pound in discharge of Bonds which ought to have been paid me, &
would have been realized before I left Virginia, but for my indulgences
to the debtors,” Washington wrote, and in 1778 he said, “by the
comparitive worth of money, six or seven thousand pounds which I have
in Bonds upon Interest is now reduced to as many hundreds because I can
get no more for a thousand at this day than a hundred would have
fetched when I left Virginia, Bonds, debts, Rents, &c. undergoing no
change while the currency is depreciating in value and for ought I know
may in a little time be totally sunk.” Indeed, in 1781 he complained
“that I have totally neglected all my private concerns, which are
declining every day, and may, possibly, end in capital losses, if not
absolute ruin, before I am at liberty to look after them.”
In 1784 he became partner with George Clinton in some land purchases in
the State of New York with the expectation of buying the “mineral
springs at Saratoga; and … the Oriskany tract, on which Fort Schuyler
stands.” In this they were disappointed, but six thousand acres in the
Mohawk valley were obtained “amazingly cheap.” Washington’s share cost
him, including interest, eighteen hundred and seventy-five pounds, and
in 1793 two-thirds of the land had been sold for three thousand four
hundred pounds, and in his inventory of 1799 Washington valued what he
still held of the property at six thousand dollars.
In 1790, having inside information that the capital was to be removed
from New York to Philadelphia, Washington tried to purchase a farm near
that city, foreseeing a speedy rise in value. In this apparently he did
not succeed. Later he purchased lots in the new Federal city, and built
houses on two of them. He also had town lots in Williamsburg,
Alexandria, Winchester, and Bath. In addition to all this property
there were many smaller holdings. Much was sold or traded, yet when he
died, besides his wife’s real estate and the Mount Vernon property, he
possessed fifty-one thousand three hundred and ninety-five acres,
exclusive of town property. A contemporary said “that General
Washington is, perhaps, the greatest landholder in America.”
All these lands, except Mount Vernon, were, so far as possible, rented,
but the net income was not large. Rent agents were employed to look
after the tenants, but low rents, war, paper money, a shifting
population, and Washington’s dislike of lawsuits all tended to reduce
the receipts, and the landlord did not get simple interest on his
investments. Thus, in 1799 he complains of slow payments from tenants
in Washington and Lafayette Counties (Pennsylvania). Instead of an
expected six thousand dollars, due June 1, but seventeen hundred
dollars were received.
Income, however, had not been his object in loading himself with such a
vast property, as Washington believed that he was certain to become
rich. “For proof of” the rise of land, he wrote in 1767, “only look to
Frederick, [county] and see what fortunes were made by the … first
taking up of those lands. Nay, how the greatest estates we have in this
colony were made. Was it not by taking up and purchasing at very low
rates the rich back lands, which were thought nothing of in those days,
but are now the most valuable land we possess?”
In this he was correct, but in the mean time he was more or less
land-poor. To a friend in 1763 he wrote that the stocking and repairing
of his plantations “and other matters … swallowed up before I well knew
where I was, all the moneys I got by marriage, nay more, brought me in
debt” In 1775, replying to a request for a loan, he declared that “so
far am I from having £200 to lend … I would gladly borrow that sum
myself for a few months.” When offered land adjoining Mount Vernon for
three thousand pounds in 1778, he could only reply that it was “a sum I
have little chance, if I had inclination, to pay; & therefore would not
engage it, as I am resolved not to incumber myself with Debt.” In 1782,
to secure a much desired tract he was forced to borrow two thousand
pounds York currency at the rate of seven per cent.
In 1788, “the total loss of my crop last year by the drought” “with
necessary demands for cash” “have caused me much perplexity and given
me more uneasiness than I ever experienced before from want of money,”
and a year later, just before setting out to be inaugurated, he tried
to borrow five hundred pounds “to discharge what I owe” and to pay the
expenses of the journey to New York, but was “unable to obtain more
than half of it, (though it was not much I required), and this at an
advanced interest with other rigid conditions,” though at this time
“could I get in one fourth part of what is due me on Bonds” “without
the intervention of suits” there would have been ample funds. In 1795
the President said, “my friends entertain a very erroneous idea of my
particular resources, when they set me down for a money lender, or one
who (now) has a command of it. You may believe me when I assert that
the bonds which were due to me before the Revolution, were discharged
during the progress of it—with a few exceptions in depreciated paper
(in some instances as low as a shilling in the pound). That such has
been the management of the Estate, for many years past, especially
since my absence from home, now six years, as scarcely to support
itself. That my public allowance (whatever the world may think of it)
is inadequate to the expence of living in this City; to such an
extravagant height has the necessaries as well as the conveniences of
life arisen. And, moreover that to keep myself out of debt; I have
found it expedient now and then to sell Lands, or something else to
effect this purpose.”
[Illustration: LOTTERY TICKET SIGNED BY WASHINGTON]
As these extensive land ventures bespoke a national characteristic, so
a liking for other forms of speculation was innate in the great
American. During the Revolution he tried to secure an interest in a
privateer. One of his favorite flyers was chances in lotteries and
raffles, which, if now found only in association with church fairs,
were then not merely respectable, but even fashionable. In 1760 five
pounds and ten shillings were invested in one lottery. Five pounds
purchased five tickets in Strother’s lottery in 1763. Three years later
six pounds were risked in the York lottery and produced prizes to the
extent of sixteen pounds. Fifty pounds were put into Colonel Byrd’s
lottery in 1769, and drew a half-acre lot in the town of Manchester,
but out of this Washington was defrauded. In 1791 John Potts was paid
four pounds and four shillings “in part for 20 Lottery tickets in the
Alexa. street Lottery at 6/ each, 14 Dollrs. the Bal. was discharged by
2.3 Lotr prizes.” Twenty tickets of Peregrine and Fitzhugh’s lottery
cost one hundred and eighty-eight dollars in 1794. And these are but
samples of innumerable instances. So, too, in raffles, the entries are
constant,—“for glasses 20/,” “for a Necklace £1.,” “by profit & loss in
two chances in raffling for Encyclopadia Britannica, which I did not
win £1.4,” two tickets were taken in the raffle of Mrs. Dawson’s coach,
as were chances for a pair of silver buckles, for a watch, and for a
gun; such and many others were smaller ventures Washington took.
There were other sources of income or loss besides. Before the
Revolution he had a good sized holding of Bank of England stock, and an
annuity in the funds, besides considerable property on bond, the larger
part of which, as already noted, was liquidated in depreciated paper
money. This paper money was for the most part put into United States
securities, and eventually the “at least £10,000 Virginia money” proved
to be worth six thousand two hundred and forty-six dollars in
government six per cents and three per cents. A great believer in the
Potomac Canal Company, Washington invested twenty-four hundred pounds
sterling in the stock, which produced no income, and in time showed a
heavy shrinkage. Another and smaller loss was an investment in the
James River Canal Company. Stock holdings in the Bank of Columbia and
in the Bank of Alexandria proved profitable investments.
None the less Washington was a successful businessman. Though his
property rarely produced a net income, and though he served the public
with practically no profit (except as regards bounty lands), and thus
was compelled frequently to dip into his capital to pay current
expenses, yet, from being a surveyor only too glad to earn a doubloon
(seven dollars and forty cents) a day, he grew steadily in wealth, and
when he died his property, exclusive of his wife’s and the Mount Vernon
estate, was valued at five hundred and thirty thousand dollars. This
made him one of the wealthiest Americans of his time, and it is to be
questioned if a fortune was ever more honestly acquired or more
thoroughly deserved.
VI
MASTER AND EMPLOYER
In his “rules of civility” Washington enjoined that “those of high
Degree ought to treat” “Artificers & Persons of low Degree” “with
affibility & Courtesie, without Arrogancy,” and it was a needed lesson
to every young Virginian, for, as Jefferson wrote, “the whole commerce
between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous
passions, the most insulting despotism on the one part, and degrading
submissions on the other.”
Augustine Washington’s will left to his son George “Ten negro Slaves,”
with an additional share of those “not herein particularly Devised,”
but all to remain in the possession of Mary Washington until the boy
was twenty-one years of age. With his taking possession of the Mount
Vernon estate in his twenty-second year eighteen more came under
Washington’s direction. In 1754 he bought a “fellow” for £40.5, another
(Jack) for £52.5, and a negro woman (Clio) for £50. In 1756 he
purchased of the governor a negro woman and child for £60, and two
years later a fellow (Gregory) for £60.9. In the following year (the
year of his marriage) he bought largely: a negro (Will) for £50;
another for £60; nine for £406, an average of £45; and a woman (Hannah)
and child, £80. In 1762 he added to the number by purchasing seven of
Lee Massey for £300 (an average of £43), and two of Colonel Fielding
Lewis at £115, or £57.10 apiece. From the estate of Francis Hobbs he
bought, in 1764, Ben, £72; Lewis, £36.10; and Sarah, £20. Another
fellow, bought of Sarah Alexander, cost him £76; and a negro (Judy) and
child, sold by Garvin Corbin, £63. In 1768 Mary Lee sold him two
mulattoes (Will and Frank) for £61.15 and £50, respectively; and two
boys (negroes), Adam and Frank, for £19 apiece. Five more were
purchased in 1772, and after that no more were bought. In 1760
Washington paid tithes on forty-nine slaves, five years later on
seventy-eight, in 1770 on eighty-seven, and in 1774 on one hundred and
thirty-five; besides which must be included the “dower slaves” of his
wife. Soon after this there was an overplus, and Washington in 1778
offered to barter for some land “Negroes, of whom I every day long more
to get clear of,” and even before this he had learned the economic fact
that except on the richest of soils slaves “only add to the Expence.”
In 1791 he had one hundred and fifteen “hands” on the Mount Vernon
estate, besides house servants, and De Warville, describing his estate
in the same year, speaks of his having three hundred negroes. At this
time Washington declared that “I never mean (unless some particular
circumstance compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase,”
but this intention was broken, for “The running off of my cook has been
a most inconvenient thing to this family, and what rendered it more
disagreeable, is that I had resolved never to become the Master of
another slave by purchase, but this resolution I fear I must break. I
have endeavored to hire, black or white, but am not yet supplied.”
A few more slaves were taken in payment of a debt, but it was from
necessity rather than choice, for at this very time Washington had
decided that “it is demonstratively clear, that on this Estate (Mount
Vernon) I have more working negros by a full moiety, than can be
employed to any advantage in the farming system, and I shall never turn
Planter thereon. To sell the overplus I cannot, because I am principled
against this kind of traffic in the human species. To hire them out, is
almost as bad, because they could not be disposed of in families to any
advantage, and to disperse the families I have an aversion. What then
is to be done? Something must or I shall be ruined; for all the money
(in addition to what I raise by crops, and rents) that have been
_received_ for Lands, sold within the last four years, to the amount of
Fifty thousand dollars, has scarcely been able to keep me afloat.” And
writing of one set he said, “it would be for my interest to set them
free, rather than give them victuals and cloaths.”
The loss by runaways was not apparently large. In October, 1760, his
ledger contains an item of seven shillings “To the Printing Office …
for Advertising a run-a-way Negro.” In 1761 he pays his clergyman, Rev.
Mr. Green, “for taking up one of my Runaway Negroes £4.” In 1766
rewards are paid for the “taking upp” of “Negro Tom” and “Negro Bett.”
The “taking up of Harry when Runaway” in 1771 cost £1.16. When the
British invaded Virginia in 1781, a number escaped or were carried away
by the enemy. By the treaty of peace these should have been returned,
and their owner wrote, “Some of my own slaves, and those of Mr. Lund
Washington who lives at my house may probably be in New York, but I am
unable to give you their description—their names being so easily
changed, will be fruitless to give you. If by chance you should come at
the knowledge of any of them, I will be much obliged by your securing
them, so that I may obtain them again.”
In 1796 a girl absconded to New England, and Washington made inquiries
of a friend as to the possibility of recovering her, adding, “however
well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire
emancipation of that description of people (if the latter was in itself
practicable) at this moment, it would neither be politic nor just to
reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference, and thereby
discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow servants, who, by
their steady attachment, are far more deserving than herself of favor,”
and at this time Washington wrote to a relative, “I am sorry to hear of
the loss of your servant; but it is my opinion these elopements will be
much more, before they are less frequent; and that the persons making
them should never be retained—if they are recovered, as they are sure
to contaminate and discontent others.”
Another source of loss was sickness, which, in spite of all Washington
could do, made constant inroads on the numbers. A doctor to care for
them was engaged by the year, and in the contracts with his overseers
clauses were always inserted that each was “to take all necessary and
proper care of the Negroes committed to his management using them with
proper humanity and descretion,” or that “he will take all necessary
and proper care of the negroes committed to his management, treating
them with humanity and tenderness when sick, and preventing them when
well, from running about and visiting without his consent; as also
forbid strange negroes frequenting their quarters without lawful
excuses for so doing.”
Furthermore, in writing to his manager, while absent from Mount Vernon,
Washington reiterated that “although it is last mentioned it is
foremost in my thoughts, to desire you will be particularly attentive
to my negros in their sickness; and to order every overseer
_positively_ to be so likewise; for I am sorry to observe that the
generality of them view these poor creatures in scarcely any other
light than they do a draught horse or ox; neglecting them as much when
they are unable to work; instead of comforting and nursing them when
they lye on a sick bed.” And in another letter he added, “When I
recommended care of, and attention to my negros in sickness, it was
that the first stage of, and the whole progress through the disorders
with which they might be seized (if more than a slight indisposition)
should be closely watched, and timely applications and remedies be
administered; especially in the pleurisies, and all inflammatory
disorders accompanied with pain, when a few days’ neglect, or want of
bleeding might render the ailment incurable. In such cases sweeten’d
teas, broths and (according to the nature of the complaint, and the
doctor’s prescription) sometimes a little wine, may be necessary to
nourish and restore the patient; and these I am perfectly willing to
allow, when it is requisite. My fear is, as I expressed to you in a
former letter, that the under overseers are so unfeeling, in short
viewing the negros in no other light than as a better kind of cattle,
the moment they cease to work, they cease their care of them.”
At Mount Vernon his care for the slaves was more personal. At a time
when the small-pox was rife in Virginia he instructed his overseer
“what to do if the Small pox should come amongst them,” and when he
“received letters from Winchester, informing me that the Small pox had
got among my quarters in Frederick; [I] determin’d … to leave town as
soon as possible, and proceed up to them…. After taking the Doctors
directions in regard to my people … I set out for my quarters about 12
oclock, time enough to go over them and found every thing in the utmost
confusion, disorder and backwardness…. Got Blankets and every other
requisite from Winchester, and settl’d things on the best footing I
cou’d, … Val Crawford agreeing if any of those at the upper quarter got
it, to have them remov’d into my room and the Nurse sent for.”
Other sickness was equally attended to, as the following entries in his
diary show: “visited my Plantations and found two negroes sick …
ordered them to be blooded;” “found that lightening had struck my
quarters and near 10 Negroes in it, some very bad but with letting
blood they recover’d;” “ordered Lucy down to the House to be Physikd,”
and “found the new negro Cupid, ill of a pleurisy at Dogue Run Quarter
and had him brot home in a cart for better care of him…. Cupid
extremely Ill all this day and at night when I went to bed I thought
him within a few hours of breathing his last.”
This matter of sickness, however, had another phase, which caused
Washington much irritation at times when he could not personally look
into the cases, but heard of them through the reports of his overseers.
Thus, he complained on one occasion, “I find by reports that Sam is, in
a manner, always returned sick; Doll at the Ferry, and several of the
spinners very frequently so, for a week at a stretch; and ditcher
Charles often laid up with lameness. I never wish my people to work
when they are really sick, or unfit for it; on the contrary, that all
necessary care should be taken of them when they are so; but if you do
not examine into their complaints, they will lay by when no more ails
them, than all those who stick to their business, and are not
complaining from the fatigue and drowsiness which they feel as the
effect of night walking and other practices which unfit them for the
duties of the day.” And again he asked, “Is there anything particular
in the cases of Ruth, Hannah and Pegg, that they have been returned
sick for several weeks together? Ruth I know is extremely deceitful;
she has been aiming for some time past to get into the house, exempt
from work; but if they are not made to do what their age and strength
will enable them, it will be a bad example for others—none of whom
would work if by pretexts they can avoid it”
Other causes than running away and death depleted the stock. One negro
was taken by the State for some crime and executed, an allowance of
sixty-nine pounds being made to his master. In 1766 an unruly negro was
shipped to the West Indies (as was then the custom), Washington writing
the captain of the vessel,—
“With this letter comes a negro (Tom) which I beg the favor of you to
sell in any of the islands you may go to, for whatever he will fetch,
and bring me in return for him
“One hhd of best molasses
“One ditto of best rum
“One barrel of lymes, if good and cheap
“One pot of tamarinds, containing about 10 lbs.
“Two small ditto of mixed sweetmeats, about 5 lbs. each.
And the residue, much or little, in good old spirits. That this fellow
is both a rogue and a runaway (tho’ he was by no means remarkable for
the former, and never practised the latter till of late) I shall not
pretend to deny. But that he is exceeding healthy, strong, and good at
the hoe, the whole neighborhood can testify, and particularly Mr.
Johnson and his son, who have both had him under them as foreman of the
gang; which gives me reason to hope he may with your good management
sell well, if kept clean and trim’d up a little when offered for sale.”
Another “misbehaving fellow” was shipped off in 1791, and was sold for
“one pipe and Quarter Cask of wine from the West Indies.” Sometimes
only the threat of such riddance was used, as when an overseer
complained of one slave, and his master replied, “I am very sorry that
so likely a fellow as Matilda’s Ben should addict himself to such
courses as he is pursuing. If he should be guilty of any atrocious
crime, that would effect his life, he might be given up to the civil
authority for trial; but for such offences as most of his color are
guilty of, you had better try further correction, accompanied with
admonition and advice. The two latter sometimes succeed where the first
has failed. He, his father and mother (who I dare say are his
receivers) may be told in explicit language, that if a stop is not put
to his rogueries and other villainies, by fair means and shortly, that
I will ship him off (as I did Wagoner Jack) for the West Indies, where
he will have no opportunity of playing such pranks as he is at present
engaged in.”
It is interesting to note, in connection with this conclusion, that
“admonition and advice” were able to do what “correction” sometimes
failed to achieve, that there is not a single order to whip, and that
the above case, and that which follows, are the only known cases where
punishment was approved. “The correction you gave Ben, for his assault
on Sambo, was just and proper. It is my earnest desire that quarrels
may be stopped or punishment of both parties follow, unless it shall
appear _clearly_, that one only is to blame, and the other forced into
[a quarrel] from self-defence.” In one other instance Washington wrote,
“If Isaac had his deserts he would receive a severe punishment for the
house, tools and seasoned stuff, which has been burned by his
carelessness.” But instead of ordering the “deserts” he continued, “I
wish you to inform him, that I sustain injury enough by their idleness;
they need not add to it by their carelessness.”
This is the more remarkable, because his slaves gave him constant
annoyance by their wastefulness and sloth and dishonesty. Thus, “Paris
has grown to be so lazy and self-willed” that his master does not know
what to with him; “Doll at the Ferry must be taught to knit, and _made_
to do a sufficient day’s work of it—otherwise (if suffered to be idle)
many more will walk in her steps”; “it is observed by the weekly
reports, that the sewers make only six shirts a week, and the last week
Carolina (without being sick) made only five. Mrs. Washington says
their usual task was to make nine with shoulder straps and good sewing.
Tell them therefore from me, that what _has_ been done, _shall_ be
done”; “none I think call louder for [attention] than the smiths, who,
from a variety of instances which fell within my own observation whilst
I was at home, I take to be two very idle fellows. A daily account
(which ought to be regularly) taken of their work, would alone go a
great way towards checking their idleness.” And the overseer was told
to watch closely “the people who are at work with the gardener, some of
whom I know to be as lazy and deceitful as any in the world (Sam
particularly).”
Furthermore, the overseers were warned to “endeavor to make the
Servants and Negroes take care of their cloathes;” to give them “a
weekly allowance of Meat … because the annual one is not taken care of
but either profusely used or stolen”; and to note “the delivery to and
the application of nails by the carpenters,… [for] I cannot conceive
how it is possible that 6000 twelve penny nails could be used in the
corn house at River Plantation; but of one thing I have no great doubt,
and that is, if they can be applied to other uses, or converted into
cash, rum or other things there will be no scruple in doing it.”
When robbed of some potatoes, Washington complained that “the deception
… is of a piece with other practices of a similar kind by which I have
suffered hitherto; and may serve to evince to you, in strong colors,
first how little confidence can be placed in any one round you; and
secondly the necessity of an accurate inspection into these things
yourself,—for to be plain, Alexandria is such a recepticle for every
thing that can be filched from the right owners, by either blacks or
whites; and I have such an opinion of my negros (two or three only
excepted), and not much better of some of the whites, that I am
perfectly sure not a single thing that can be disposed of at any price,
at that place, that will not, and is not stolen, where it is possible;
and carried thither to some of the underlying keepers, who support
themselves by this kind of traffick.” He dared not leave wine unlocked,
even for the use of his guests, “because the knowledge I have of my
servants is such, as to believe, that if opportunities are given them,
they will take off two glasses of wine for every one that is drank by
such visitors, and tell you they were used by them.” And when he had
some work to do requiring very ordinary qualities, he had to confess
that “I know not a negro among all mine, whose capacity, integrity and
attention could be relied on for such a trust as this.”
Whatever his opinion of his slaves, Washington was a kind master. In
one case he wrote a letter for one of them when the “fellow” was parted
from his wife in the service of his master, and at another time he
enclosed letters to a wife and to James’s “del Toboso,” for two of his
servants, to save them postage. In reference to their rations he wrote,
“whether this addition … is sufficient, I will not undertake to
decide;—but in most explicit language I desire they may have plenty;
for I will not have my feelings hurt with complaints of this sort, nor
lye under the imputation of starving my negros, and thereby driving
them to the necessity of thieving to supply the deficiency. To prevent
waste or embezzlement is the only inducement to allowancing of them at
all—for if, instead of a peck they could eat a bushel of meal a week
fairly, and required it, I would not withhold or begrudge it them.” At
Christmas-time there are entries in his ledger for whiskey or rum for
“the negroes,” and towards the end of his life he ordered the overseer,
“although others are getting out of the practice of using spirits at
Harvest, yet, as my people have always been accustomed to it, a
hogshead of Rum must be purchased; but I request at the same time, that
it may be used sparingly.”
A greater kindness of his was, in 1787, when he very much desired a
negro mason offered for sale, yet directed his agent that “if he has a
family, with which he is to be sold; or from whom he would reluctantly
part, I decline the purchase; his feelings I would not be the means of
hurting in the latter case, nor _at any rate_ be incumbered with the
former.”
The kindness thus indicated bore fruit in a real attachment of the
slaves for their master. In Humphreys’s poem on Washington the poet
alluded to the negroes at Mount Vernon in the lines,—
“Where that foul stain of manhood, slavery, flow’d
Through Afric’s sons transmitted in the blood;
Hereditary slaves his kindness shar’d,
For manumission by degrees prepar’d:
Return’d from war, I saw them round him press,
And all their speechless glee by artless signs express.”
And in a foot-note the writer added, “The interesting scene of his
return home, at which the author was present, is described exactly as
it existed.”
A single one of these slaves deserves further notice. His body-servant
“Billy” was purchased by Washington in 1768 for sixty-eight pounds and
fifteen shillings, and was his constant companion during the war, even
riding after his master at reviews; and this servant was so associated
with the General that it was alleged in the preface to the “forged
letters” that they had been captured by the British from “Billy,” “an
old servant of General Washington’s.” When Savage painted his
well-known “family group,” this was the one slave included in the
picture. In 1784 Washington told his Philadelphia agent that “The
mulatto fellow, William, who has been with me all the war, is attached
(married he says) to one of his own color, a free woman, who during the
war, was also of my family. She has been in an infirm condition for
some time, and I had conceived that the connexion between them had
ceased; but I am mistaken it seems; they are both applying to get her
here, and tho’ I never wished to see her more, I cannot refuse his
request (if it can be complied with on reasonable terms) as he has
served me faithfully for many years. After premising this much, I have
to beg the favor of you to procure her a passage to Alexandria.”
[Illustration: SAVAGE’S PICTURE OF THE WASHINGTON FAMILY]
When acting as chain-bearer in 1785, while Washington was surveying a
tract of land, William fell and broke his knee-pan, “which put a stop
to my surveying; and with much difficulty I was able to get him to
Abington, being obliged to get a sled to carry him on, as he could
neither walk, stand or ride.” From this injury Lee never quite
recovered, yet he started to accompany his master to New York in 1789,
only to give out on the road. He was left at Philadelphia, and Lear
wrote to Washington’s agent that “The President will thank you to
propose it to Will to return to Mount Vernon when he can be removed for
he cannot be of any service here, and perhaps will require a person to
attend upon him constantly. If he should incline to return to Mount
Vernon, you will be so kind as to have him sent in the first Vessel
that sails for Alexandria after he can be moved with safety—but if he
is still anxious to come on here the President would gratify him,
altho’ he will be troublesome—He has been an old and faithful Servant,
this is enough for the President to gratify him in every reasonable
wish.”
By his will Washington gave Lee his “immediate freedom or if he should
prefer it (on account of the accidents which have befallen him and
which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active
employment) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional
in him to do so— In either case however I allow him an annuity of
thirty dollars during his natural life which shall be independent of
the victuals and _cloaths_ he has been accustomed to receive; if he
_chuses_ the last alternative, but in full with his freedom, if he
prefers the first, and this I give him as a testimony of my sense of
his attachment to me and for his faithful services during the
Revolutionary War.”
Two small incidents connected with Washington’s last illness are worth
noting. The afternoon before the night he was taken ill, although he
had himself been superintending his affairs on horseback in the storm
most of the day, yet when his secretary “carried some letters to him to
frank, intending to send them to the Post Office in the evening,” Lear
tells us “he franked the letters; but said the weather was too bad to
send a servant up to the office that evening.” Lear continues, “The
General’s servant, Christopher, attended his bed side & in the room,
when he was sitting up, through his whole illness…. In the [last]
afternoon the General observing that Christopher had been standing by
his bed side for a long time—made a motion for him to sit in a chair
which stood by the bed side.”
A clause in Washington’s will directed that
“Upon the decease of my wife it is my will and desire that all the
slaves which I hold in _my own right_ shall receive their freedom—To
emancipate them during her life, would, tho’ earnestly wished by me, be
attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their
intermixture of marriages with the Dower negroes as to excite the most
painful sensations—if not disagreeable consequences from the latter,
while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same proprietor, it
not being in my power under the tenure by which the dower Negroes are
held to manumit them—And whereas among those who will receive freedom
according to this devise there may be some who from old age, or bodily
infirmities & others who on account of their infancy, that will be
unable to support themselves, it is my will and desire that all who
come under the first and second description shall be comfortably
cloathed and fed by my heirs while they live and that such of the
latter description as have no parents living, or if living are unable
or unwilling to provide for them, shall be bound by the Court until
they shall arrive at the age of twenty five years…. The negroes thus
bound are (by their masters and mistresses) to be taught to read and
write and to be brought up to some useful occupation.”
In this connection Washington’s sentiments on slavery as an institution
may be glanced at. As early as 1784 he replied to Lafayette, when told
of a colonizing plan, “The scheme, my dear Marqs., which you propose as
a precedent to encourage the emancipation of the black people of this
Country from that state of Bondage in wch. they are held, is a striking
evidence of the benevolence of your Heart. I shall be happy to join you
in so laudable a work; but will defer going into a detail of the
business, till I have the pleasure of seeing you.” A year later, when
Francis Asbury was spending a day in Mount Vernon, the clergyman asked
his host if he thought it wise to sign a petition for the emancipation
of slaves. Washington replied that it would not be proper for him, but
added, “If the Maryland Assembly discusses the matter; I will address a
letter to that body on the subject, as I have always approved of it.”
When South Carolina refused to pass an act to end the slave-trade, he
wrote to a friend in that State, “I must say that I lament the decision
of your legislature upon the question of importing slaves after March
1793. I was in hopes that motives of policy as well as other good
reasons, supported by the direful effects of slavery, which at this
moment are presented, would have operated to produce a total
prohibition of the importation of slaves, whenever the question came to
be agitated in any State, that might be interested in the measure.” For
his own State he expressed the “wish from my soul that the Legislature
of this State could see the policy of a gradual Abolition of Slavery;
it would prev’t much future mischief.” And to a Pennsylvanian he
expressed the sentiment, “I hope it will not be conceived from these
observations, that it is my wish to hold the unhappy people, who are
the subject of this letter, in slavery. I can only say, that there is
not a man living, who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan
adopted for the abolition of it; but there is only one proper and
effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by
legislative authority; and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall
never be wanting.”
Washington by no means restricted himself to slave servitors. Early in
life he took into his service John Alton at thirteen pounds per annum,
and this white man served as his body-servant in the Braddock campaign,
and Washington found in the march that “A most serious inconvenience
attended me in my sickness, and that was the losing the use of my
servant, for poor John Alton was taken about the same time that I was,
and with nearly the same disorder, and was confined as long; so that we
did not see each other for several days.” As elsewhere noticed,
Washington succeeded to the services of Braddock’s body-servant, Thomas
Bishop, on the death of the general, paying the man ten pounds a year.
These two were his servants in his trip to Boston in 1756, and in
preparation for that journey Washington ordered his English agent to
send him “2 complete livery suits for servants; with a spare cloak and
all other necessary trimmings for two suits more. I would have you
choose the livery by our arms, only as the field of the arms is white,
I think the clothes had better not be quite so, but nearly like the
inclosed. The trimmings and facings of scarlet, and a scarlet waist
coat. If livery lace is not quite disused, I should be glad to have the
cloaks laced. I like that fashion best, and two silver laced hats for
the above servants.”
For some reason Bishop left his employment, but in 1760 Washington
“wrote to my old servant Bishop to return to me again if he was not
otherwise engaged,” and, the man being “very desirous of returning,”
the old relation was reassumed. Alton in the mean time had been
promoted to be overseer of one of the plantations. In 1785 their master
noted in his diary, “Last night Jno Alton an Overseer of mine in the
Neck—an old & faithful Servant who has lived with me 30 odd years
died—and this evening the wife of Thos. Bishop, another old Servant who
had lived with me an equal number of years also died.” Both were
remembered in his will by a clause giving “To Sarah Green daughter of
the deceased Thomas Bishop, and to Ann Walker, daughter of John Alton,
also deceased I give each one hundred dollars, in consideration of the
attachment of their father[s] to me, each of whom having lived nearly
forty years in my family.”
Of Washington’s general treatment of the serving class a few facts can
be gleaned. He told one of his overseers, in reference to the
sub-overseers, that “to treat them civilly is no more than what all men
are entitled to, but my advice to you is, to keep them at a proper
distance; for they will grow upon familiarity, in proportion as you
will sink in authority if you do not.” To a housekeeper he promised “a
warm, decent and comfortable room to herself, to lodge in, and will eat
of the victuals of our Table, but not set at it, or at any time _with
us_ be her appearance what it may; for if this was _once admitted_ no
line satisfactory to either party, perhaps could be drawn thereafter.”
In visiting he feed liberally, good examples of which are given in the
cash account of the visit to Boston in 1756, when he “Gave to Servants
on ye Road 10/.” “By Cash Mr. Malbones servants £4.0.0.” “The
Chambermaid £1.2.6.” When the wife of his old steward, Fraunces, came
to need, he gave her “for Charity £1.17.6.” The majority will
sympathize rather than disapprove of his opinion when he wrote,
“Workmen in most Countries I believe are necessary plagues;—-in this
where entreaties as well as money must be used to obtain their work and
keep them to their duty they baffle all calculation in the
accomplishment of any plan or repairs they are engaged in;—and require
more attention to and looking after than can be well conceived.”
The overseers of his many plantations, and his “master” carpenters,
millers, and gardeners, were quite as great trials as his slaves. First
“young Stephens” gave him much trouble, which his diary reports in a
number of sententious entries: “visited my Plantation. Severely
reprimanded young Stephens for his Indolence, and his father for
suffering it;” “forbid Stephens keeping any horses upon my expence;”
“visited my quarters & ye Mill, according to custom found young
Stephens absent;” “visited my Plantation and found to my great surprise
Stephens constantly at work;” “rid out to my Plantn. and to my
Carpenters. Found Richard Stephens hard at work with an ax—Very
extraordinary this!”
Again he records, “Visited my Plantations—found Foster had been absent
from his charge since the 28th ulto. Left orders for him to come
immediately to me upon his return, and repremanded him severely.” Of
another, Simpson, “I never hear … without a degree of warmth & vexation
at his extreme stupidity,” and elsewhere he expresses his disgust at
“that confounded fellow Simpson.” A third spent all the fall and half
the winter in getting in his crop, and “if there was any way of making
such a rascal as Garner pay for such conduct, no punishment would be
too great for him. I suppose he never turned out of mornings until the
sun had warmed the earth, and if _he_ did not, the _negros_ would not.”
His chief overseer was directed to “Let Mr. Crow know that I view with
a very evil eye the frequent reports made by him of sheep dying;…
frequent _natural deaths_ is a very strong evidence to my mind of the
want of care or something worse.”
Curious distinctions were made oftentimes. Thus, in the contract with
an overseer, one clause was inserted to the effect, “And whereas there
are a number of whiskey stills very contiguous to the said Plantations,
and many idle, drunken and dissolute People continually resorting to
the same, priding themselves in debauching sober and well-inclined
Persons, the said Edd Voilett doth promise as well for his own sake as
his employers to avoid them as he ought.” To the contrary, in hiring a
gardener, it was agreed as part of the compensation that the man should
have “four dollars at Christmas, with which he may be drunk for four
days and four nights; two dollars at Easter to effect the same purpose;
two dollars at Whitsuntide to be drunk for two days; a dram in the
morning, and a drink of grog at dinner at noon.”
With more true kindness Washington wrote to one of his underlings, “I
was very glad to receive your letter of the 31st ultimo, because I was
afraid, from the accounts given me of your spitting blood,… that you
would hardly have been able to have written at all. And it is my
request that you will not, by attempting more than you are able to
undergo, with safety and convenience, injure yourself, and thereby
render me a disservice…. I had rather therefore hear that you had
nursed than exposed yourself. And the things which I sent from this
place (I mean the wine, tea, coffee and sugar) and such other matters
as you may lay in by the doctor’s direction for the use of the sick, I
desire you will make use of as your own personal occasions may
require.”
Of one Butler he had employed to overlook his gardeners, but who proved
hopelessly unfit, Washington said, “sure I am, there is no obligation
upon me to retain him from charitable motives; when he ought rather to
be punished as an imposter: for he well knew the services he had to
perform, and which he promised to fulfil with zeal, activity, and
intelligence.” Yet when the man was discharged his employer gave him a
“character:” “If his activity, spirit, and ability in the management of
Negroes, were equal to his honesty, sobriety and industry, there would
not be the least occasion for a change,” and Butler was paid his full
wages, no deduction being made for lost time, “as I can better afford
to be without the money than he can.”
Another thoroughly incompetent man was one employed to take charge of
the negro carpenters, of whom his employer wrote, “I am apprehensive …
that Green never will overcome his propensity to drink; that it is this
which occasions his frequent sickness, absences from work and poverty.
And I am convinced, moreover, that it answers no purpose to admonish
him.” Yet, though “I am so well satisfied of Thomas Green’s unfitness
to look after Carpenters,” for a time “the helpless situation in which
you find his family, has prevailed on me to retain him,” and when he
finally had to be discharged for drinking, Washington said, “Nothing
but compassion for his helpless family, has hitherto induced me to keep
him a moment in my service (so bad is the example he sets); but if he
has no regard for them himself, it is not to be expected that I am to
be a continual sufferer on this account for his misconduct.” His
successor needed the house the family lived in, but Washington could
not “bear the thought of adding to the distress I know they must be in,
by turning them adrift;… It would be better therefore on all accounts
if they were removed to some other place, even if I was to pay the
rent, provided it was low, or make some allowance towards it.”
To many others, besides family, friends, and employees, Washington was
charitable. From an early date his ledger contains frequent items
covering gifts to the needy. To mention a tenth of them would take too
much space, but a few typical entries are worth quoting:
“By Cash gave a Soldiers wife 5/;” “To a crippled man 5/;” “Gave a man
who had his House Burnt £1.;” “By a begging woman /5;” “By Cash gave
for the Sufferers at Boston by fire £12;” “By a wounded soldier 10/;”
“Alexandria Academy, support of a teacher of Orphan children £50;” “By
Charity to an invalid wounded Soldier who came from Redston with a
petition for Charity 18/;” “Gave a poor man by the President’s order
$2;” “Delivd to the President to send to two distress’d french women at
Newcastle $25;” “Gave Pothe a poor old man by the President’s order
$2;” “Gave a poor sailor by the Presdt order $1;” “Gave a poor blind
man by the Presdt order $1.50;” “By Madame de Seguer a french Lady in
distress gave her $50;” “By Subscription paid to Mr. Jas. Blythe
towards erecting and Supporting an Academy in the State of Kentucky
$100;” “By Subscription towards an Academy in the South Western
Territory $100;” “By Charity sent Genl Charles Pinckney in Columbus
Bank Notes, for the sufferers by the fire in Charleston So. Carolina
$300;” “By Charity gave to the sufferers by fire in Geo. Town $10;” “By
an annual Donation to the Academy at Alexandria pd. Dr. Cook $166.67;”
“By Charity to the poor of Alexandria deld. to the revd. Dr. Muir
$100.”
To an overseer he said, concerning a distant relative, “Mrs. Haney
should endeavor to do what she can for herself—this is a duty incumbent
on every one; but you must not let her suffer, as she has thrown
herself upon me; your advances on this account will be allowed always,
at settlement; and I agree readily to furnish her with provisions, and
for the good character you give of her daughter make the latter a
present in my name of a handsome but not costly gown, and other things
which she may stand most in need of. You may charge me also with the
worth of your tenement in which she is placed, and where perhaps it is
better she should be than at a great distance from your attentions to
her.”
After the terrible attack of fever in Philadelphia in 1793, Washington
wrote to a clergyman of that city,—
“It has been my intention ever since my return to the city, to
contribute my mite towards the relief of the _most_ needy inhabitants
of it. The pressure of public business hitherto has suspended, but not
altered my resolution. I am at a loss, however, for whose benefit to
apply the little I can give, and in whose hands to place it; whether
for the use of the fatherless children and widows, made so by the late
calamity, who may find it difficult, whilst provisions, wood, and other
necessaries are so dear, to support themselves; or to other and better
purposes, if any, I know not, and therefore have taken the liberty of
asking your advice. I persuade myself justice will be done to my
motives for giving you this trouble. To obtain information, and to
render the little I can afford, without ostentation or mention of my
name, are the sole objects of these inquiries. With great and sincere
esteem and regard, I am, &c.”
His adopted grandson he advised to “never let an indigent person ask,
without receiving _something_ if you have the means; always
recollecting in what light the widow’s mite was viewed.” And when he
took command of the army in 1775, the relative who took charge of his
affairs was told to “let the hospitality of the house, with respect to
the poor, be kept up. Let no one go hungry away. If any of this kind of
people should be in want of corn, supply their necessities, provided it
does not encourage them in idleness; and I have no objection to your
giving my money in charity, to the amount of forty or fifty pounds a
year, when you think it well bestowed. What I mean by having no
objection is, that it is my desire that it should be done. You are to
consider, that neither myself nor wife is now in the way to do these
good offices.”
VII
SOCIAL LIFE
There can be no doubt that Washington, like the Virginian of his time,
was pre-eminently social. It is true that late in life he complained,
as already quoted, that his home had become a “well resorted tavern,”
and that at his own table “I rarely miss seeing strange faces, come as
they say out of respect for me. Pray, would not the word curiosity
answer as well?” but even in writing this he added, “how different this
from having a few social friends at a cheerful board!” When a surveyor
he said that the greatest pleasure he could have would be to hear from
or be with “my Intimate friends and acquaintances;” to one he wrote, “I
hope you in particular will not Bauk me of what I so ardently wish
for,” and he groaned over being “amongst a parcel of barbarians.” While
in the Virginia regiment he complained of a system of rations which
“deprived me of the pleasure of inviting an officer or friend, which to
me would be more agreeable, than nick-nacks I shall meet with,” and
when he was once refused leave of absence by the governor, he replied
bitterly, “it was not to enjoy a party of pleasure I wanted a leave of
absence; I have been indulged with few of these, winter or summer!” At
Mount Vernon, if a day was spent without company the fact was almost
always noted in his diary, and in a visit, too, he noted that he had “a
very lonesome Evening at Colo Champe’s, not any Body favoring us with
their Company but himself.”
The plantation system which prevented town life and put long distances
between neighbors developed two forms of society. One of these was
house parties, and probably nowhere else in the world was that form of
hospitality so unstinted as in this colony. Any one of a certain social
standing was privileged, even welcomed, to ride up to the seat of a
planter, dismount, and thus become a guest, ceasing to be such only
when he himself chose. Sometimes one family would go _en masse_ many
miles to stay a week with friends, and when they set out to return
their hosts would journey with them and in turn become guests for a
week. The second form of social life was called clubs. At all the
cross-roads and court-houses there sprang up taverns or ordinaries, and
in these the men of a neighborhood would gather, and over a bowl of
punch or a bottle of wine, the expense of which they “clubbed” to
share, would spend their evenings.
Into this life Washington entered eagerly. As a mere lad his ledger
records expenditures: “By a club in Arrack at Mr. Gordon’s 2/6;” “Club
of a bottle of Rhenish at Mitchells 1/3;” “To part of the club at Port
Royal 1/;” “To Cash in part for a Bowl of fruit punch 1/7-1/2.” So,
too, he was a visitor at this time at some of the great Virginian
houses, as elsewhere noted. When he came into possession of Mount
Vernon he offered the same unstinted welcome that he had met with, and
even as a bachelor he writes of his “having much company,” and again of
being occupied with “a good deal of Company.” In two months of 1768
Washington had company to dinner, or to spend the night, on twenty-nine
days, and dined or visited away from home on seven; and this is
typical.
Whenever, too, trips were made to Williamsburg, Annapolis,
Philadelphia, or elsewhere, it was a rare occurrence when the various
stages of the journey were not spent with friends, and in those cities
he was dined and wined to a surfeit.
During the Revolution all of Washington’s aides and his secretary lived
with him at head-quarters, and constituted what he always called “my
family.” In addition, many others sat down at table,—those who came on
business from a distance, as well as bidden guests,—-which frequently
included ladies from the neighborhood, who must have been belles among
the sixteen to twenty men who customarily sat down to dinner. “If …
convenient and agreeable to you to take pot luck with me to-day,” the
General wrote John Adams in 1776, “I shall be glad of your company.”
Pot luck it was for commander-in-chief and staff. Mention has been made
of how sometimes Washington slept on the ground, and even when under
cover there was not occasionally much more comfort. Pickering relates
that one night was passed in “Headquarters at Galloway’s, an old log
house. The General lodged in a bed, and his family on the floor about
him. We had plenty of sepawn and milk, and all were contented.”
Oftentimes there were difficulties in the hospitality. “I have been at
my prest. quarters since the 1st day of Decr.,” Washington complained
to the commissary-general, “and have not a Kitchen to cook a Dinner in,
altho’ the Logs have been put together some considerable time by my own
Guard. Nor is there a place at this moment in which a servant can
lodge, with the smallest degree of comfort. Eighteen belonging to my
family, and all Mrs. Ford’s, are crowded together in her Kitchen, and
scarce one of them able to speak for the cold they have caught.”
Pickering, in telling how he tried to secure lodgings away from
head-quarters, gave for his reasons that “they are exceedingly pinched
for room…. Had I conceived how much satisfaction, quiet and even
leisure, I should have enjoyed at separate quarters, I would have taken
them six months ago. For at head-quarters there is a continual throng,
and my room, in particular, (when I was happy enough to get one,) was
always crowded by all that came to headquarters on business, because
there was no other for them, we having, for the most part, been in such
small houses.”
There were other difficulties. “I cannot get as much cloth,” the
general wrote, “as will make cloaths for my servants, notwithstanding
one of them that attends my person and table is indecently and most
shamefully naked.” One of his aides said to a correspondent, jocularly,
“I take your Caution to me in Regard to my Health very kindly, but I
assure you, you need be under no Apprehension of my losing it on the
Score of Excess of living, that Vice is banished from this Army and the
General’s Family in particular. We never sup, but go to bed and are
early up.” “Only conceive,” Washington complained to Congress, “the
mortification they (even the general officers) must suffer, when they
cannot invite a French officer, a visiting friend, or a travelling
acquaintance, to a better repast, than stinking whiskey (and not always
that) and a bit of Beef without vegetables.”
At times, too, it was necessary to be an exemplar. “Our truly
republican general,” said Laurens, “has declared to his officers that
he will set the example of passing the winter in a hut himself,” and
John Adams, in a time of famine, declared that “General Washington sets
a fine example. He has banished wine from his table, and entertains his
friends with rum and water.”
Whenever it was possible, however, there was company at head-quarters.
“Since the General left Germantown in the middle of September last,”
the General Orders once read, “he has been without his baggage, and on
that account is unable to receive company in the manner he could wish.
He nevertheless desires the Generals, Field Officers and Brigades Major
of the day, to dine with him in future, at three o’clock in the
afternoon.” Again the same vehicle informed the army that “the hurry of
business often preventing particular invitations being given to
officers to dine with the General; He presents his compliments to the
Brigadiers and Field Officers of the day, and requests while the Camp
continues settled in the City, they will favor him with their company
to dinner, without further or special invitation.”
Mrs. Drinker, who went with a committee of women to camp at Valley
Forge, has left a brief description of head-quarters hospitality:
“Dinner was served, to which he invited us. There were 15 Officers,
besides ye Gl. and his wife, Gen. Greene, and Gen. Lee. We had an
elegant dinner, which was soon over, when we went out with ye Genls
wife, up to her Chamber—and saw no more of him.” Claude Blanchard, too,
describes a dinner, at which “there was twenty-five covers used by some
officers of the army and a lady to whom the house belonged in which the
general lodged. We dined under the tent. I was placed along side of the
general. One of his aides-de-camp did the honors. The table was served
in the American style and pretty abundantly; vegetables, roast beef,
lamb, chickens, salad dressed with nothing but vinegar, green peas,
puddings, and some pie, a kind of tart, greatly in use in England and
among the Americans, all this being put upon the table at the same
time. They gave us on the same plate beef, green peas, lamb, &c.”
Nor was the ménage of the General unequal to unexpected calls.
Chastellux tells of his first arrival in camp and introduction to
Washington: “He conducted me to his house, where I found the company
still at table, although the dinner had been long over. He presented me
to the Generals Knox, Waine, Howe, &c. and to his _family_, then
composed of Colonels Hamilton and Tilgman, his Secretaries and his
Aides de Camp, and of Major Gibbs, commander of his guards; for in
England and America, the Aides de Camp, Adjutants and other officers
attached to the General, form what is called his _family_. A fresh
dinner was prepared for me and mine; and the present was prolonged to
keep me company.” “At nine,” he elsewhere writes, “supper was served,
and when the hour of bed-time came, I found that the chamber, to which
the General conducted me was the very parlour I speak of, wherein he
had made them place a camp-bed.” Of his hospitality Washington himself
wrote,—
“I have asked Mrs. Cochran & Mrs. Livingston to dine with me to-morrow;
but am I not in honor bound to apprize them of their fate? As I hate
deception, even where the imagination only is concerned; I will. It is
needless to premise, that my table is large enough to hold the ladies.
Of this they had ocular proof yesterday. To say how it is usually
covered, is rather more essential; and this shall be the purport of my
Letter.
“Since our arrival at this happy spot, we have had a ham, (sometimes a
shoulder) of Bacon, to grace the head of the Table; a piece of roast
Beef adorns the foot; a dish of beans, or greens, (almost
imperceptible,) decorates the center. When the cook has a mind to cut a
figure, (which, I presume will be the case to-morrow) we have two
Beef-steak pyes, or dishes of crabs, in addition, one on each side of
the center dish, dividing the space & reducing the distance between
dish & dish to about 6 feet, which without them would be near 12 feet
apart. Of late he has had the surprising sagacity to discover, that
apples will make pyes; and its a question, if, in the violence of his
efforts, we do not get one of apples, instead of having both of
Beef-steaks. If the ladies can put up with such entertainment, and will
submit to partake of it in plates, once Tin but now Iron—(not become so
by the labor of scouring), I shall be happy to see them.”
Dinners were not the only form of entertaining. In Cambridge, when Mrs.
Washington and Mrs. Jack Custis were at head-quarters, a reception was
held on the anniversary of Washington’s marriage, and at other times
when there was anything to celebrate,—the capitulation of Burgoyne, the
alliance with France, the birth of a dauphin, etc.,—parades, balls,
receptions, “feux-de-joie,” or cold collations were given. Perhaps the
most ambitious attempt was a dinner given on September 21, 1782, in a
large tent, to which ninety sat down, while a “band of American music”
added to the “gaiety of the company.”
Whenever occasion called the General to attend on Congress there was
much junketing. “My time,” he wrote, “during my winter’s residence in
Philadelphia, was unusually (for me) divided between parties of
pleasure and parties of business.” When Reed pressed him to pass the
period of winter quarters in visiting him in Philadelphia, he replied,
“were I to give in to private conveniency and amusement, I should not
be able to resist the invitation of my friends to make Philadelphia,
instead of a squeezed up room or two, my quarters for the winter.”
While President, a more elaborate hospitality was maintained. Both in
New York and Philadelphia the best houses procurable were rented as the
Presidential home,—for Washington “wholly declined living in any public
building,”—and a steward and fourteen lower servants attended to all
details, though a watchful supervision was kept by the President over
them, and in the midst of his public duties he found time to keep a
minute account of the daily use of all supplies, with their cost. His
payments to his stewards for mere servants’ wages and food (exclusive
of wine) were over six hundred dollars a month, and there can be little
doubt that Washington, who had no expense paid by the public, more than
spent his salary during his term of office.
It was the President’s custom to give a public dinner once a week “to
as many as my table will hold,” and there was also a bi-weekly levee,
to which any one might come, as well as evening receptions by Mrs.
Washington, which were more distinctly social and far more exclusive.
Ashbel Green states that “Washington’s dining parties were entertained
in a very handsome style. His weekly dining day for company was
Thursday, and his dining hour was always four o’clock in the afternoon.
His rule was to allow five minutes for the variations of clocks and
watches, and then go to the table, be present or absent, whoever might.
He kept his own clock in the hall, just within the outward door, and
always exactly regulated. When lagging members of Congress came in, as
they often did, after the guests had sat down to dinner, the
president’s only apology was, ‘Gentlemen (or sir) we are too punctual
for you. I have a cook who never asks whether the company has come, but
whether the hour has come.’ The company usually assembled in the
drawing-room, about fifteen or twenty minutes before dinner, and the
president spoke to every guest personally on entering the room.”
Maclay attended several of the dinners, and has left descriptions of
them. “Dined this day with the President,” he writes. “It was a great
dinner— all in the tastes of high life. I considered it as a part of my
duty as a Senator to submit to it, and am glad it is over. The
President is a cold, formal man; but I must declare that he treated me
with great attention. I was the first person with whom he drank a glass
of wine. I was often spoken to by him.” Again he says,—
“At dinner, after my second plate had been taken away, the President
offered to help me to part of a dish which stood before him. Was ever
anything so unlucky? I had just before declined being helped to
anything more, with some expression that denoted my having made up my
dinner. Had, of course, for the sake of consistency, to thank him
negatively, but when the dessert came, and he was distributing a
pudding, he gave me a look of interrogation, and I returned the thanks
positive. He soon after asked me to drink a glass of wine with him.” On
another occasion he “went to the President’s to dinner…. The President
and Mrs. Washington sat opposite each other in the middle of the table;
the two secretaries, one at each end. It was a great dinner, and the
best of the kind I ever was at. The room, however, was disagreeably
warm. First the soup; fish roasted and boiled; meats, sammon, fowls,
etc…. The middle of the table was garnished in the usual tasty way,
with small images, flowers, (artificial), etc. The dessert was, apple
pies, pudding, etc.; then iced creams, jellies, etc.; then
water-melons, musk-melons, apples, peaches, nuts. It was the most
solemn dinner I ever was at. Not a health drank; scarce a word was said
until the cloth was taken away. Then the President filling a glass of
wine, with great formality drank to the health of every individual by
name round the table. Everybody imitated him, charged glasses, and such
a buzz of ‘health, sir,’ and ‘health, madam,’ and ‘thank you, sir,’ and
‘thank you, madam,’ never had I heard before…. The ladies sat a good
while, and the bottles passed about; but there was a dead silence
almost. Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with the ladies. I expected
the men would now begin, but the same stillness remained. The President
told of a New England clergyman who had lost a hat and wig in passing a
river called the Brunks. He smiled, and everybody else laughed. He now
and then said a sentence or two on some common subject, and what he
said was not amiss…. The President … played with the fork, striking on
the edge of the table with it. We did not sit long after the ladies
retired. The President rose, went up-stairs to drink coffee; the
company followed.”
[Illustration: PRESIDENTIAL DINNER INVITATION]
Bradbury gives the menu of a dinner at which he was, where “there was
an elegant variety of roast beef, veal, turkey, ducks, fowls, hams,
&c.; puddings, jellies, oranges, apples, nuts, almonds, figs, raisins,
and a variety of wines and punch. We took our leave at six, more than
an hour after the candles were introduced. No lady but Mrs. Washington
dined with us. We were waited on by four or five men servants dressed
in livery.” At the last official dinner the President gave, Bishop
White was present, and relates that “to this dinner as many were
invited as could be accommodated at the President’s table…. Much
hilarity prevailed; but on the removal of the cloth it was put an end
to by the President—certainly without design. Having filled his glass,
he addressed the company, with a smile on his countenance, saying:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last time I shall drink your health,
as a public man. I do it with sincerity, and wishing you all possible
happiness.’ There was an end of all pleasantry.”
A glance at Mrs. Washington’s receptions has been given, but the levees
of the President remain to be described. William Sullivan, who attended
many, wrote,—
“At three o’clock or at any time within a quarter of an hour afterward,
the visitor was conducted to this dining room, from which all seats had
been removed for the time. On entering, he saw” Washington, who “stood
always in front of the fire-place, with his face towards the door of
entrance. The visitor was conducted to him, and he required to have the
name so distinctly pronounced that he could hear it. He had the very
uncommon faculty of associating a man’s name, and personal appearance,
so durably in his memory, as to be able to call one by name, who made
him a second visit. He received his visitor with a dignified bow, while
his hands were so disposed of as to indicate, that the salutation was
not to be accompanied with shaking hands. This ceremony never occurred
in these visits, even with his most near friends, that no distinction
might be made. As visitors came in, they formed a circle round the
room. At a quarter past three, the door was closed, and the circle was
formed for that day. He then began on the right, and spoke to each
visitor, calling him by name, and exchanging a few words with him. When
he had completed his circuit, he resumed his first position, and the
visitors approached him in succession, bowed and retired. By four
o’clock the ceremony was over.”
The ceremony of the dinners and levees and the liveried servants were
favorite impeachments of the President among the early Democrats before
they had better material, and Washington was charged with trying to
constitute a court, and with conducting himself like a king. Even his
bow was a source of criticism, and Washington wrote in no little
irritation in regard to this, “that I have not been able to make bows
to the taste of poor Colonel Bland, (who, by the by, I believe, never
saw one of them), is to be regretted, especially too, as (upon those
occasions), they were indiscriminately bestowed, and the best I was
master of, would it not have been better to throw the veil of charity
over them, ascribing their stiffness to the effects of age, or to the
unskillfulness of my teacher, than to pride and dignity of office,
which God knows has no charms for me? For I can truly say, I had rather
be at Mount Vernon with a friend or two about me, than to be attended
at the seat of government by the officers of state, and the
representatives of every power in Europe.”
There can be no doubt that Washington hated ceremony as much as the
Democrats, and yielded to it only from his sense of fitness and the
opinions of those about him. Jefferson and Madison both relate how such
unnecessary form was used at the first levee by the master of
ceremonies as to make it ridiculous, and Washington, appreciating this,
is quoted as saying to the amateur chamberlain, “Well, you have taken
me in once, but, by God, you shall never take me in a second time.” His
secretary, in writing to secure lodgings in Philadelphia, when the
President and family were on their way to Mount Vernon, said, “I must
repeat, what I observed in a former letter, that as little ceremony &
parade may be made as possible, for the President wishes to command his
own time, which these things always forbid in a greater or less degree,
and they are to him fatiguing and oftentimes painful. He wishes not to
exclude himself from the sight or conversation of his fellow citizens,
but their eagerness to show their affection frequently imposes a heavy
tax on him.”
This was still further shown in his diary of his tours through New
England and the Southern States. Nothing would do but for Boston to
receive him with troops, etc., and Washington noted, “finding this
ceremony not to be avoided, though I had made every effort to do it, I
named the hour.” In leaving Portsmouth he went “quietly, and without
any attendance, having earnestly entreated that all parade and ceremony
might be avoided on my return.” When travelling through North Carolina,
“a small party of horse under one Simpson met us at Greenville, and in
spite of every endeavor which could comport with decent civility, to
excuse myself from it, they would attend me to Newburn.”
During the few years that Washington was at Mount Vernon subsequent to
the Revolution, the same unbounded hospitality was dispensed as in
earlier times, while a far greater demand was made upon it, and one so
variegated that at times the host was not a little embarrassed. Thus he
notes that “a Gentleman calling himself the Count de Cheiza D’Artigan
Officer of the French Guards came here to dinner; but bringing no
letters of introduction, nor any authentic testimonials of his being
either; I was at a loss how to receive or treat him,—he stayed to
dinner and the evening,” and the next day departed in Washington’s
carriage to Alexandria. “A farmer came here to see,” he says, “my drill
plow, and staid all night.” In another instance he records that a woman
whose “name was unknown to me dined here.” Only once were visitors
frowned on, and this was when a British marauding party came to Mount
Vernon during the Revolution. Even they, in Washington’s absence, were
entertained by his overseer, but his master wrote him, on hearing of
this, “I am little sorry of my own [loss]; but that which gives me most
concern is, that you should go on board the enemy’s vessels and furnish
them with refreshments. It would have been a less painful circumstance
to me to have heard, that in consequence of your non-compliance with
their request, they had burnt my House and laid the plantation in
ruins. You ought to have considered yourself as my representative, and
should have reflected on the bad example of communicating with the
enemy, and making a voluntary offer of refreshments to them with a view
to prevent a conflagration.”
The hospitality at Mount Vernon was perfectly simple. A traveller
relates that he was taken there by a friend, and, as Washington was
“viewing his laborers,” we “were desired to tarry.” “When the President
returned he received us very politely. Dr. Croker introduced me to him
as a gentleman from Massachusetts who wished to see the country and pay
his respects. He thanked us, desired us to be seated, and to excuse him
a few moments…. The President came and desired us to walk in to dinner
and directed us where to sit, (no grace was said)…. The dinner was very
good, a small roasted pigg, boiled leg of lamb, roasted fowles, beef,
peas, lettice, cucumbers, artichokes, etc., puddings, tarts, etc., etc.
We were desired to call for what drink we chose. He took a glass of
wine with Mrs. Law first, which example was followed by Dr. Croker and
Mrs. Washington, myself and Mrs. Peters, Mr. Fayette and the young lady
whose name is Custis. When the cloth was taken away the President gave
‘All our Friends,’”
Another visitor tells that he was received by Washington, and, “after …
half an hour, the General came in again, with his hair neatly powdered,
a clean shirt on, a new plain drab coat, white waistcoat and white silk
stockings. At three, dinner was on the table, and we were shown by the
General into another room, where everything was set off with a peculiar
taste and at the same time neat and plain. The General sent the bottle
about pretty freely after dinner, and gave success to the navigation of
the Potomac for his toasts, which he has very much at heart…. After Tea
General Washington retired to his study and left us with the … rest of
the Company. If he had not been anxious to hear the news of Congress
from Mr. Lee, most probably he would not have returned to supper, but
gone to bed at his usual hour, nine o’clock, for he seldom makes any
ceremony. We had a very elegant supper about that time. The General
with a few glasses of champagne got quite merry, and being with his
intimate friends laughed and talked a good deal. Before strangers he is
very reserved, and seldom says a word. I was fortunate in being in his
company with his particular acquaintances…. At 12 I had the honor of
being lighted up to my bedroom by the General himself.”
This break on the evening hours was quite unusual, Washington himself
saying in one place that nine o’clock was his bedtime, and he wrote of
his hours after dinner, “the usual time of setting at table, a walk,
and tea, brings me within the dawn of candlelight; previous to which,
if not prevented by company I resolve, that as soon as the glimmering
taper supplies the place of the great luminary, I will retire to my
writing table and acknowledge the letters I have received; but when the
lights were brought, I feel tired and disinclined to engage in this
work, conceiving that the next night will do as well. The next comes,
and with it the same causes for postponement, and effect, and so on.”
The foregoing allusion to Washington’s conversation is undoubtedly
just. All who met him formally spoke of him as taciturn, but this was
not a natural quality. Jefferson states that “in the circle of his
friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share
in conversation,” and Madison told Sparks that, though “Washington was
not fluent nor ready in conversation, and was inclined to be taciturn
in general society,” yet “in the company of two or three intimate
friends, he was talkative, and when a little excited was sometimes
fluent and even eloquent” “The story so often repeated of his never
laughing,” Madison said, was “wholly untrue; no man seemed more to
enjoy gay conversation, though he took little part in it himself. He
was particularly pleased with the jokes, good humor, and hilarity of
his companions.”
Washington certainly did enjoy a joke. Nelly Custis said, “I have
sometimes made him laugh most heartily from sympathy with my joyous and
extravagant spirits,” and many other instances of his laughing are
recorded. He himself wrote in 1775 concerning the running away of some
British soldiers, “we laugh at his idea of chasing the Royal Fusileers
with the stores. Does he consider them as inanimate, or as treasure?”
When the British in Boston sent out a bundle of the king’s speech,
“farcical enough, we gave great joy to them, (the red coats I mean),
without knowing or intending it; for on that day, the day which gave
being to the new army, (but before the proclamation came to hand,) we
had hoisted the union flag in compliment to the United Colonies. But,
behold, it was received in Boston as a token of the deep impression the
speech had made upon us, and as a signal of submission.”
At times Washington would joke himself, though it was always somewhat
labored, as in the case of the Jack already cited. “Without a coinage,”
he wrote, “or unless a stop can be put to the cutting and clipping of
money, our dollars, pistareens, &c., will be converted, as Teague says,
into _five_ quarters.” When the Democrats were charging the Federalists
with having stolen from the treasury, he wrote to a Cabinet official,
“and pray, my good sir, what part of the $800.000 have come to your
share? As you are high in Office, I hope you did not disgrace yourself
in the acceptance of a paltry bribe—a $100.000 perhaps.” He once even
attempted a pun, by writing, “our enterprise will be ruined, and we
shall be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter; but not to gather
laurels, (except of the kind that covers the mountains).”
Probably the neatest turn was his course on one occasion with General
Tryon, who sent him some British proclamations with the request, “that
through your means, the officers and men under your command may be
acquainted with their contents.” Washington promptly replied that he
had given them “free currency among the officers and men under my
command,” and enclosed to Tryon a lot of the counter-proclamation,
asking him to “be instrumental in communicating its contents, so far as
it may be in your power, to the persons who are the objects of its
operation. The benevolent purpose it is intended to answer will I
persuade myself, sufficiently recommend it to your candor.”
To a poetess who had sent him some laudatory verses about himself he
expressed his thanks, and added, “Fiction is to be sure the very life
and Soul of Poetry—all Poets and Poetesses have been indulged in the
free and indisputable use of it, time out of mind. And to oblige you to
make such an excellent Poem on such a subject without any materials but
those of simple reality, would be as cruel as the Edict of Pharoah
which compelled the children of Israel to manufacture Bricks without
the necessary Ingredients.”
Twice he joked about his own death. “As I have heard,” he said after
Braddock’s defeat, “since my arrival at this place, a circumstancial
account of my death and dying speech, I take this early opportunity of
contradicting the first, and of assuring you, that I have not as yet
composed the latter.” Many years later, in draughting a letter for his
wife, he wrote,—
“I am now by desire of the General to add a few words on his behalf;
which he desires may be expressed in the terms following, that is to
say,—that despairing of hearing what may be said of him, if he should
really go off in an apoplectic, or any other fit (for he thinks all
fits that issue in death are worse than a love fit, a fit of laughter,
and many other kinds which he could name)—he is glad to hear
_beforehand_ what will be said of him on that occasion; conceiving that
nothing extra will happen between _this_ and _then_ to make a change in
his character for better, or for worse. And besides, as he has entered
into an engagement … not to quit _this_ world before the year 1800, it
may be _relied upon_ that no breach of contract shall be laid to him on
that account, unless dire necessity should bring it about, maugre all
his exertions to the contrary. In that same, he shall hope they would
do by him as he would do by them—excuse it. At present there seems to
be no danger of his thus giving them the slip, as neither his health
nor spirits, were ever in greater flow, notwithstanding, he adds, he is
descending, and has almost reached the bottom of the hill; or in other
words, the shades below. For your particular good wishes on this
occasion he charges me to say that he feels highly obliged, and that he
reciprocates them with great cordiality.”
Other social qualities of the man cannot be passed over. A marked trait
was his extreme fondness of afternoon tea. “Dined at Mr. Langdon’s, and
drank Tea there, with a large circle of Ladies;” “in the afternoon
drank Tea … with about 20 ladies, who had been assembled for the
occasion;” “exercised between 5 & 7 o’clock in the morning & drank Tea
with Mrs. Clinton (the Governor’s Lady) in the afternoon;” “Drank tea
at the Chief Justice’s of the U. States;” “Dined with the Citizens in
public; and in the afternoon, was introduced to upwards of 50 ladies
who had assembled (at a Tea party) on the occasion;” “Dined and drank
tea at Mr. Bingham’s in great splendor.” Such are the entries in his
diary whenever the was “kettle-a-boiling-be” was within reach.
Pickering’s journal shows that tea served regularly at head-quarters,
and at Mount Vernon it was drunk in summer on the veranda. In writing
to Knox of his visit to Boston, Washington mentioned his recollection
of the chats over tea-drinking, and of how “social and gay” they were.
A fondness for picnics was another social liking. “Rid with Fanny
Bassett, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Shaw to meet a Party from Alexandria at
Johnsons Spring … where we dined on a cold dinner brought from Town by
water and spent the Afternoon agreeably—Returning home by Sun down or a
little after it,” is noted in his diary on one occasion, and on another
he wrote, “Having formed a Party, consisting of the Vice-President, his
lady, Son & Miss Smith; the Secretaries of State, Treasury & War, and
the ladies of the two latter; with all the Gentlemen of my family, Mrs.
Lear & the two Children, we visited the old position of Fort Washington
and afterwards dined on a dinner provided by Mr. Mariner.” Launchings,
barbecues, clambakes, and turtle dinners were other forms of social
dissipations.
A distinct weakness was dancing. When on the frontier he sighed, “the
hours at present are melancholy dull. Neither the rugged toils of war,
nor the gentler conflict of A[ssembly] B[alls,] is in my choice.” His
diary shows him at balls and “Routs” frequently; when he was President
he was a constant attendant at the regular “Dancing Assemblies” in New
York and Philadelphia, and when at Mount Vernon he frequently went ten
miles to Alexandria to attend dances. Of one of these Alexandria balls
he has left an amusing description: “Went to a ball at Alexandria,
where Musick and dancing was the chief Entertainment, however in a
convenient room detached for the purpose abounded great plenty of bread
and butter, some biscuits, with tea and coffee, which the drinkers of
could not distinguish from hot water sweet’ned—Be it remembered that
pocket handkerchiefs servd the purposes of Table cloths & Napkins and
that no apologies were made for either. I shall therefore distinguish
this ball by the stile and title of the Bread & Butter Ball.”
During the Revolution, too, he killed many a weary hour of winter
quarters by dancing. When the camp spent a day rejoicing over the
French alliance, “the celebration,” according to Thacher, “was
concluded by a splendid ball opened by his Excellency General
Washington, having for his partner the lady of General Knox.” Greene
describes how “we had a little dance at my quarters a few evenings
past. His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours
without once sitting down.” Knox, too, tells of “a most genteel
entertainment given by self and officers” at which Washington danced.
“Everybody allows it to be the first of the kind ever exhibited in this
State at least. We had above seventy ladies, all of the first ton in
the State, and between three and four hundred gentlemen. We danced all
night—an elegant room, the illuminating, fireworks, &c., were more than
pretty.” And at Newport, when Rochambeau gave a ball, by request it was
opened by Washington. The dance selected by his partner was “A
Successful Campaign,” then in high favor, and the French officers took
the instruments from the musicians and played while he danced the first
figure.
[Illustration: AGREEMENT FOR DANCING ASSEMBLY]
While in winter quarters he subscribed four hundred dollars (paper
money, equal to eleven dollars in gold) to get up a series of balls, of
which Greene wrote, “We have opened an assembly in Camp. From this
apparent ease, I suppose it is thought we must be in happy
circumstances. I wish it was so, but, alas, it is not. Our provisions
are in a manner, gone. We have not a ton of hay at command, nor
magazine to draw from. Money is extremely scarce and worth little when
we get it. We have been so poor in camp for a fortnight, that we could
not forward the public dispatches, for want of cash to support the
expresses.” At the farewell ball given at Annapolis, when the
commander-in-chief resigned his command, Tilton relates that “the
General danced in every set, that all the ladies might have the
pleasure of dancing with him; or as it has since been handsomely
expressed, ‘get a touch of him.’” He still danced in 1796, when
sixty-four years of age, but when invited to the Alexandria Assembly in
1799, he wrote to the managers, “Mrs. Washington and myself have been
honored with your polite invitation to the assemblies of Alexandria
this winter, and thank you for this mark of your attention. But, alas!
our dancing days are no more. We wish, however all those who have a
relish for so agreeable and innocent an amusement all the pleasure the
season will afford them; and I am, gentlemen,
“Your most obedient and obliged humble servant,
“GEO. WASHINGTON.”
VIII
TASTES AND AMUSEMENTS
A market trait of Washington’s character was his particularity about
his clothes; there can be little question that he was early in life a
good deal of a dandy, and that this liking for fine feathers never
quite left him. When he was about sixteen years old he wrote in his
journal, “Memorandum to have my Coat made by the following Directions
to be made a Frock with a Lapel Breast the Lapel to Contain on each
side six Button Holes and to be about 5 or 6 Inches wide all the way
equal and to turn as the Breast on the Coat does to have it made very
long Waisted and in Length to come down to or below the bent of the
knee the Waist from the armpit to the Fold to be exactly as long or
Longer than from thence to the Bottom not to have more than one fold in
the Skirt and the top to be made just to turn in and three Button Holes
the Lapel at the top to turn as the Cape of the Coat and Bottom to Come
Parallel with the Button Holes the Last Button hole in the Breast to be
right opposite to the Button on the Hip.”
In 1754 he bought “a Superfine blue broad cloth Coat, with Silver
Trimmings,” “a fine Scarlet Waistcoat full Lac’d,” and a quantity of
“silver lace for a Hatt,” and from another source it is learned that at
this time he was the possessor of ruffled shirts. A little later he
ordered from London “As much of the best superfine blue Cotton Velvet
as will make a Coat, Waistcoat and Breeches for a Tall Man, with a fine
silk button to suit it, and all other necessary trimmings and linings,
together with garters for the Breeches,” and other orders at different
times were for “6 prs. of the Very neatest shoes,” “A riding waistcoat
of superfine scarlet cloth and gold Lace,” “2 prs. of fashionable mix’d
or marble Color’d Silk Hose,” “1 piece of finest and fashionable Stock
Tape,” “1 Suit of the finest Cloth & fashionable colour,” “a New Market
Great Coat with a loose hood to it, made of Bleu Drab or broad cloth,
with straps before according to the present taste,” “3 gold and scarlet
sword-knots, 3 silver and blue do, 1 fashionable gold-laced hat.”
As these orders indicated, the young fellow strove to be in the
fashion. In 1755 he wrote his brother, “as wearing boots is quite the
mode, and mine are in a declining state, I must beg the favor of you to
procure me a pair that is good and neat.” “Whatever goods you may send
me,” he wrote his London agent, “let them be fashionable, neat and good
of their several kinds.” It was a great trial to him that his clothes
did not fit him. “I should have enclosed you my measure,” he wrote to
London, “but in a general way they are so badly taken here, that I am
convinced that it would be of very little service.” “I have hitherto
had my clothes made by one Charles Lawrence in Old Fish Street,” he
wrote his English factor. “But whether it be the fault of the tailor,
or the measure sent, I can’t say, but, certain it is, my clothes have
never fitted me well.”
It must not be inferred, however, that Washington carried his dandyism
to weakness. When fine clothes were not in place, they were promptly
discarded. In his trip to the Ohio in 1753 he states that “I put myself
in an Indian walking Dress,” and “tied myself up in a Match Coat,”—that
is, an Indian blanket. In the campaign of 1758 he wrote to his superior
officer “that were I left to pursue my own Inclinations, I would not
only order the Men to adopt the Indian dress, but cause the Officers to
do it also, and be at the first to set the example myself. Nothing but
the uncertainty of its taking with the General causes me to hesitate a
moment at leaving my Regimentals at this place, and proceeding as light
as any Indian in the Woods. ’Tis an unbecoming dress, I confess, for an
officer; but convenience, rather than shew, I think should be
consulted.” And this was such good sense that the general gave him
leave, and it was done.
With increase of years his taste in clothes became softened and more
sober. “On the other side is an invoice of clothes which I beg the
favor of you to purchase for me,” he wrote to London. “As they are
designed for wearing apparel for myself, I have committed the choice of
them to your fancy, having the best opinion of your taste. I want
neither lace nor embroidery. Plain clothes, with a gold or silver
button (if worn in genteel dress) are all I desire.” “Do not conceive,”
he told his nephew in 1783, “that fine clothes make fine men more than
fine feathers make fine Birds. A plain genteel dress is more admired,
and obtains more credit than lace and embroidery, in the Eyes of the
judicious and sensible.” And in connection with the provisional army he
decided that “on reconsidering the uniform of the Commander in Chief,
it has become a matter of doubt with me, (although, as it respects
myself _personally_, I was against _all_ embroidery,) whether
embroidery on the Cape, Cuffs, and Pockets of the Coat, and none on the
buff waistcoat would not have a disjointed and awkward appearance.”
Probably nowhere did he show his good taste more than in his treatment
of the idea of putting him in classic garments when his bust was made
by Houdon.
“In answer to your obliging inquiries respecting the dress, attitude,
&c.,” he wrote, “which I would wish to have given to the statue in
question, I have only to observe, that, not having sufficient knowledge
in the art of sculpture to oppose my judgment to the taste of
connoisseurs, I do not desire to dictate in the matter. On the contrary
I shall be perfectly satisfied with whatever may be judged decent and
proper. I should even scarcely have ventured to suggest, that perhaps a
servile adherence to the garb of antiquity might not be altogether so
expedient, as some little deviation in favor of the modern costume.”
Washington, as noted, bought his clothes in England; but it was from
necessity more than choice. “If there be any homespun Cloths in
Philadelphia which are tolerably fine, that you can come reasonably
at,” he said to his Philadelphia agent in 1784, “I would be obliged to
you to send me patterns of some of the best kinds—I should prefer that
which is mixed in the grain, because it will not so readily discover
its quality as a plain cloth.” Before he was inaugurated he wrote
“General Knox this day to procure me homespun broadcloth of the
Hartford fabric, to make a suit of clothes for myself,” adding, “I hope
it will not be a great while before it will be unfashionable for a
gentleman to appear in any other dress. Indeed, we have already been
too long subject to British prejudices.” At another time he noted in
his diary with evident pride, “on this occasion I was dressed in a suit
made at the Woolen Manufactory at Hartford, as the buttons also were.”
But then, as now, the foreign clothes were so much finer that his taste
overcame his patriotism, and his secretary wrote that “the President is
desireous of getting as much superfine blk broad Cloth as will make him
a suit of Clothes, and desires me to request that you would send him
that quantity … The best superfine French or Dutch black—exceedingly
fine—of a soft, silky texture—not glossy like the Engh cloths.”
A caller during the Presidency spoke of him as dressed in purple satin,
and at his levees he is described by Sullivan as “clad in black velvet;
his hair in full dress, powdered and gathered behind in a large silk
bag; yellow gloves on his hands; holding a cocked hat with a cockade in
it, and the edges adorned with a black feather about an inch deep. He
wore knee and shoe buckles; and a long sword, with a finely wrought and
polished steel hilt, which appeared at the left hip; the coat worn over
the sword, so that the hilt, and the part below the coat behind, were
in view. The scabbard was white polished leather.”
About his person Washington was as neat as he desired his clothes to
be. At seventeen when surveying he records that he was
“Lighted into a Room & I not being so good a Woodsman as ye rest of my
Company striped myself very orderly & went in to ye Bed as they called
it when to my Surprize I found it to be nothing but a Little
Straw—Matted together without Sheets or any thing else but only one
thread Bear blanket with double its Weight of Vermin such as Lice,
Fleas &c. I was glad to get up (as soon as ye Light was carried from
us) I put on my Cloths & Lay as my Companions. Had we not have been
very tired I am sure we should not have slep’d much that night. I made
a Promise not to Sleep so from that time forward chusing rather to
sleep in ye open Air before a fire as will appear hereafter.” The next
day he notes that the party “Travell’d up to Frederick Town where our
Baggage came to us we cleaned ourselves (to get Rid of ye Game we had
catched y. Night before)” and slept in “a good Feather Bed with clean
Sheets which was a very agreeable regale.”
Wherever he happened to be, the laundress was in constant demand. His
bill from the washer-lady for the week succeeding his inauguration as
President, and before his domestic ménage was in running order, was for
“6 Ruffled shirts, 2 plain shirts, 8 stocks, 3 pair Silk Hose, 2 White
hand. 2 Silk Handks. 1 pr. Flanl. Drawers, 1 Hair nett.”
The barber, too, was a constant need, and Washington’s ledger shows
constant expenditures for perfumed hair-powder and pomatum, and also
for powder bags and puffs. Apparently the services of this individual
were only for the arranging of his hair, for he seems never to have
shaved Washington, that being done either by himself or by his valet.
Of this latter individual Washington said (when the injury to William
Lee unfitted him for the service), “I do not as yet know whether I
shall get a substitute for William: nothing short of excellent
qualities and a man of good appearance, would induce me to do it—and
under my present view of the matter, too, who would employ himself
otherwise than William did—that is as a butler as well as a valette,
for my wants of the latter are so trifling that any man (as William
was) would soon be ruined by idleness, who had only them to attend to.”
In food Washington took what came with philosophy. “If you meet with
collegiate fare, it will be unmanly to complain,” he told his grandson,
though he once complained in camp that “we are debarred from the
pleasure of good living; which, Sir, (I dare say with me you will
concur,) to one who has always been used to it, must go somewhat hard
to be confined to a little salt provision and water.” Usually, however,
poor fare was taken as a matter of course. “When we came to Supper,” he
said in his journal of 1748, “there was neither a Cloth upon ye Table
nor a Knife to eat with but as good luck would have it we had Knives of
our own,” and again he wrote, “we pull’d out our Knapsack in order to
Recruit ourselves every one was his own Cook our Spits was Forked
Sticks our Plates was a Large Chip as for Dishes we had none.” Nor was
he squeamish about what he ate. In the voyage to Barbadoes he several
times ate dolphin; he notes that the bread was almost “eaten up by
Weavel & Maggots,” and became quite enthusiastic over some “very fine
Bristol tripe” and “a fine Irish Ling & Potatoes.” But all this may
have been due to the proverbial sea appetite.
Samuel Stearns states that Washington “breakfasts about seven o’clock
on three small Indian hoe-cakes, and as many dishes of tea,” and Custis
relates that “Indian cakes, honey, and tea formed this temperate
repast.” These two writers tell us that at dinner “he ate heartily, but
was not particular in his diet, with the exception of fish, of which he
was excessively fond. He partook sparingly of dessert, drank a
home-made beverage, and from four to five glasses of Madeira wine”
(Custis), and that “he dines, commonly on a single dish, and drinks
from half a pint to a pint of Madeira wine. This, with one small glass
of punch, a draught of beer, and two dishes of tea (which he takes half
an hour before sun-setting) constitutes his whole sustenance till the
next day.” (Stearns.) Ashbel Green relates that at the state banquets
during the Presidency Washington “generally dined on one single dish,
and that of a very simple kind. If offered something either in the
first or second course which was very rich, his usual reply was—‘That
is too good for me.’” It is worth noting that he religiously observed
the fasts proclaimed in 1774 and 1777, going without food the entire
day.
A special liking is mentioned above. In 1782 Richard Varick wrote to a
friend, “General Washington dines with me to-morrow; he is exceedingly
fond of salt fish; I have some coming up, & tho’ it will be here in a
few days, it will not be here in time—If you could conveniently lend me
as much fish as would serve a pretty large company to-morrow (at least
for one Dish), it will oblige me, and shall in a very few days be
returned in as good Dun Fish as ever you see. Excuse this freedom, and
it will add to the favor. Could you not prevail upon somebody to catch
some Trout for me early to-morrow morning?” When procurable, salt
codfish was Washington’s regular Sunday dinner.
A second liking was honey. His ledger several times mentions purchases
of this, and in 1789 his sister wrote him, “when I last had the
Pleasure of seeing you I observ’d your fondness for Honey; I have got a
large Pot of very fine in the comb, which I shall send by the first
opportunity.” Among his purchases “sugar candy” is several times
mentioned, but this may have been for children, and not for himself. He
was a frequent buyer of fruit of all kinds and of melons.
He was very fond of nuts, buying hazelnuts and shellbarks by the
barrel, and he wrote his overseer in 1792 to “tell house Frank I expect
he will lay up a more plenteous store of the black common walnuts than
he usually does.” The Prince de Broglie states that “at dessert he eats
an enormous quantity of nuts, and when the conversation is entertaining
he keeps eating through a couple of hours, from time to time giving
sundry healths, according to the English and American custom. It is
what they call ‘toasting.’”
Washington was from boyhood passionately fond of horsemanship, and when
but seventeen owned a horse. Humphreys states that “all those who have
seen General Washington on horseback, at the head of his army, will
doubtless bear testimony with the author that they never saw a more
graceful or dignified person,” and Jefferson said of him that he was
“the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could
be seen on horseback.” His diary shows that he rode on various
occasions as much as sixty miles in a day, and Lawrence reports that he
“usually rode from Rockingham to Princeton, which is five miles, in
forty minutes.” John Hunter, in a visit to Mount Vernon in 1785, writes
that he went
“to see his famous race-horse Magnolia—a most beautiful creature. A
whole length of his was taken a while ago, (mounted on Magnolia) by a
famous man from Europe on copper…. I afterwards went to his stables,
where among an amazing number of horses, I saw old Nelson, now 22 years
of age, that carried the General almost always during the war;
Blueskin, another fine old horse next to him, now and then had that
honor. Shaw also shewed me his old servant, that was reported to have
been taken, with a number of the General’s papers about him. They have
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.”
Chastellux relates, “he was so attentive as to give me the horse he
rode, the day of my arrival, which I had greatly commended—I found him
as good as he is handsome; but above all, perfectly well broke, and
well trained, having a good mouth, easy in hand and stopping short in a
gallop without bearing the bit—I mention these minute particulars,
because it is the general himself who breaks all his own horses; and he
is a very excellent and bold horseman, leaping the highest fences, and
going extremely quick, without standing upon his stirrups, bearing on
the bridle, or letting his horse run wild.”
As a matter of course this liking for horses made Washington fond of
racing, and he not only subscribed liberally to most of the racing
purses, but ran horses at them, attending in person, and betting
moderately on the results. So, too, he was fond of riding to the
hounds, and when at Mount Vernon it was a favorite pastime. From his
diary excerpts of runs are,—
“Went a Fox hunting with the Gentlemen who came here yesterday…. after
a very early breakfast—found a Fox just back of Muddy hole Plantation
and after a Chase of an hour and a quarter with my Dogs, & eight couple
of Doctor Smiths (brought by Mr. Phil Alexander) we put him into a
hollow tree, in which we fastened him, and in the Pincushion put up
another Fox which, in an hour & 13 Minutes was killed—We then after
allowing the Fox in the hole half an hour put the Dogs upon his trail &
in half a Mile he took to another hollow tree and was again put out of
it but he did not go 600 yards before he had recourse to the same
shift—finding therefore that he was a conquered Fox we took the Dogs
off, and came home to Dinner.”
“After an early breakfast [my nephew] George Washington, Mr. Shaw and
Myself went into the Woods back of Muddy hole Plantation a hunting and
were joined by Mr. Lund Washington and Mr. William Peake. About half
after ten Oclock (being first plagued with the Dogs running Hogs) we
found a fox near Colo Masons Plantation on little Hunting Creek (West
fork) having followed on his Drag more than half a Mile; and run him
with Eight Dogs (the other 4 getting, as was supposed after a Second
Fox) close and well for an hour. When the Dogs came to a fault and to
cold Hunting until 20 minutes after when being joined by the missing
Dogs they put him up afresh and in about 50 Minutes killed up in an
open field of Colo Mason’s every Rider & every Dog being present at the
Death.”
During the Revolution, when opportunity offered, he rode to the hounds,
for Hiltzheimer wrote in 1781, “My son Robert [having] been on a Hunt
at Frankfort says that His Excel’y Gen. Washington was there.”
This liking made dogs an interest to him, and he took much pains to
improve the breed of his hounds. On one occasion he “anointed all my
Hounds (as well old Dogs as Puppies) which have the mange, with Hogs
Lard & Brimstone.” Mopsey, Pilot, Tartar, Jupiter, Trueman, Tipler,
Truelove, Juno, Dutchess, Ragman, Countess, Lady, Searcher, Rover,
Sweetlips, Vulcan, Singer, Music, Tiyal, and Forrester are some of the
names he gave them. In 1794, in the fall of his horse, as already
mentioned, he wrenched his back, and in consequence, when he returned
to Mount Vernon, this pastime was never resumed, and his pack was given
up.
Kindred to this taste for riding to the hounds was one for gunning. A
few entries in his diary tell the nature of his sport. “Went a ducking
between breakfast and dinner and kill’d 2 Mallards & 5 bald faces.” “I
went to the Creek but not across it. Kill’d 2 ducks, viz. a sprig tail
and a Teal.” “Rid out with my gun but kill’d nothing.” In 1787 a man
asked for permission to shoot over Mount Vernon, and Washington refused
it because
“my fixed determination is, that no person whatever shall hunt upon my
grounds or waters—To grant leave to one and refuse another would not
only be drawing a line of discrimination which would be offensive, but
would subject one to great inconvenience—for my strict and positive
orders to all my people are if they hear a gun fired upon my Land to go
immediately in pursuit of it…. Besides, as I have not lost my relish
for this sport when I find time to indulge myself in it, and Gentlemen
who come to the House are pleased with it, it is my wish not to have
game within my jurisdiction disturbed.”
Fishing was another pastime. He “went a dragging for Sturgeon”
frequently, and sometimes “catch’d one” and sometimes “catch’d none.”
While in Philadelphia in 1787 he went up to the old camp at Valley
Forge and spent a day fishing, and in 1789 at Portsmouth, “having
lines, we proceeded to the Fishing Banks a little without the Harbour
and fished for Cod; but it not being a proper time of tide, we only
caught two.” After his serious sickness in 1790 a newspaper reports
that “yesterday afternoon the President of the United States returned
from Sandy Hook and the fishing banks, where he had been for the
benefit of the sea air, and to amuse himself in the delightful
recreation of fishing. We are told he has had excellent sport, having
himself caught a great number of sea-bass and black fish—the weather
proved remarkably fine, which, together with the salubrity of the air
and wholesome exercise, rendered this little voyage extremely
agreeable, and cannot fail, we hope, of being serviceable to a speedy
and complete restoration of his health.”
Washington was fond of cards, and in bad weather even records “at home
all day, over cards.” How much time must have been spent in this way is
shown by the innumerable purchases of “1 dozen packs playing cards”
noted in his ledger. In 1748, when he was sixteen years old, he won two
shillings and threepence from his sister-in-law at whist and five
shillings at “Loo” (or, as he sometimes spells it, “Lue”) from his
brother, and he seems always to have played for small stakes, which
sometimes mounted into fairly sizable sums. The largest gain found is
three pounds, and the largest loss nine pounds fourteen shillings and
ninepence. He seems to have lost oftener than he won.
Billiards was a rival of cards, and a game of which he seems to have
been fond. In his seventeenth year he won one shilling and threepence
by the cue, and from that time won and lost more or less money in this
way. Here, too, he seems to have been out of pocket, though not for so
much money, his largest winning noted being only seven shillings and
sixpence, and his largest loss being one pound and ten shillings.
In 1751, at Barbadoes, Washington “was treated with a play ticket to
see the Tragedy of George Barnwell acted: the character of Barnwell and
several others was said to be well perform’d there was Musick a Dapted
and regularly conducted.” This presumptively was the lad’s first visit
to the playhouse, but from that time it was one of his favorite
amusements. At first his ledger shows expenditures of “Cash at the Play
House 1/3,” which proves that his purse would bear the cost of only the
cheapest seats; but later he became more extravagant in this respect,
and during the Presidency he used the drama for entertaining, his
ledger giving many items of tickets bought. A type entry in
Washington’s diary is, “Went to the play in the evening—sent tickets to
the following ladies and gentlemen and invited them to seats in my box,
viz:—Mrs. Adams (lady of the Vice-President,) General Schuyler and
lady, Mr. King and lady, Majr. Butler and lady, Colo Hamilton and lady,
Mrs. Green—all of whom accepted and came except Mrs. Butler, who was
indisposed.”
Maclay describes the first of these theatre parties as follows: “I
received a ticket from the President of the United States to use his
box this evening at the theatre, being the first of his appearances at
the playhouse since his entering on his office. Went The President,
Governor of the State, foreign Ministers, Senators from New Hampshire,
Connecticut, Pennsylvania, M.[aryland] and South Carolina; and some
ladies in the same box. I am old, and notices or attentions are lost on
me. I could have wished some of my dear children in my place; they are
young and would have enjoyed it. Long might they live to boast of
having been seated in the same box with the first Character in the
world. The play was the ‘School for Scandal,’ I never liked it; indeed,
I think it an indecent representation before ladies of character and
virtue. Farce, the ‘Old Soldier.’ The house greatly crowded, and I
thought the players acted well; but I wish we had seen the _Conscious
Lovers_, or some one that inculcated more prudential manners.”
Of the play, or rather interlude, of the “Old Soldier” its author,
Dunlap, gives an amusing story. It turned on the home-coming of an old
soldier, and, like the topical song of to-day, touched on local
affairs:
“When Wignell, as Darby, recounts what had befallen him in America, in
New York, at the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the
inauguration of the president, the interest expressed by the audience
in the looks and the changes of countenance of this great man
[Washington] became intense. He smiled at these lines, alluding to the
change in the government—
There too I saw some mighty pretty shows;
A revolution, without blood or blows,
For, as I understood, the cunning elves,
The people all revolted from themselves.
But at the lines—
A man who fought to free the land from we,
_Like me_, had left his farm, a-soldiering to go:
But having gain’d his point, he had _like me_,
Return’d his own potato ground to see.
But there he could not rest. With one accord
He’s called to be a kind of—not a lord—
I don’t know what, he’s not a _great man_, sure,
For poor men love him just as he were poor.
They love him like a father or a brother,
DERMOT.
As we poor Irishmen love one another.
The president looked serious; and when Kathleen asked,
How looked he, Darby? Was he short or tall?
his countenance showed embarrassment, from the expectation or one of
those eulogiums which, he had been obliged to hear on many public
occasions, and which must doubtless have been a severe trial to his
feelings: but Darby’s answer that he had _not seen him_, because he had
mistaken a man ‘all lace and glitter, botherum and shine,’ for him,
until all the show had passed, relieved the hero from apprehension of
farther personality, and he indulged in that which was with him
extremely rare, a hearty laugh.”
Washington did not even despise amateur performances. As already
mentioned, he expressed a wish to take part in “Cato” himself in 1758,
and a year before he had subscribed to the regimental “players at Fort
Cumberland,” His diary shows that in 1768 the couple at Mount Vernon “&
ye two children were up to Alexandria to see the Inconstant or ‘the way
to win him’ acted,” which was probably an amateur performance.
Furthermore, Duer tells us that “I was not only frequently admitted to
the presence of this most august of men, in _propria persona_, but once
had the honor of appearing before him as one of the _dramatis personae_
in the tragedy of Julius Caesar, enacted by a young ‘American Company,’
(the theatrical corps then performing in New York being called the ‘Old
American Company’) in the garret of the Presidential mansion, wherein
before the magnates of the land and the elite of the city, I performed
the part of Brutus to the Cassius of my old school-fellow, Washington
Custis.”
The theatre was by no means the only show that appealed to Washington.
He went to the circus when opportunity offered, gave nine shillings to
a “man who brought an elk as a show,” three shillings and ninepence “to
hear the Armonica,” two dollars for tickets “to see the automatum,”
treated the “Ladies to ye Microcosm” and paid to see waxworks, puppet
shows, a dancing bear, and a lioness and tiger. Nor did he avoid a
favorite Virginia pastime, but attended cockfights when able. His
frequent going to concerts has been already mentioned.
Washington seems to have been little of a reader except of books on
agriculture, which he bought, read, and even made careful abstracts of
many, and on this subject alone did he ever seem to write from
pleasure. As a lad, he notes in his journal that he is reading _The
Spectator_ and a history of England, but after those two brief entries
there is no further mention of books or reading in his daily memorandum
of “where and how my time is spent.” In his ledger, too, almost the
least common expenditure entered is one for books. Nor do his London
invoices, so far as extant, order any books but those which treated of
farming and horses. In the settlement of the Custis estate, “I had no
particular reason for keeping and handing down to his son, the books of
the late Colo Custis saving that I thought it would be taking the
advantage of a low appraisement, to make them my own property at it,
and that to sell them was not an object.”
With the broadening that resulted from the command of the army more
attention was paid to books, and immediately upon the close of the
Revolution Washington ordered the following works: “Life of Charles the
Twelfth,” “Life of Louis the Fifteenth,” “Life and Reign of Peter the
Great,” Robertson’s “History of America,” Voltaire’s “Letters,”
Vertot’s “Revolution of Rome” and “Revolution of Portugal,” “Life of
Gustavus Adolphus,” Sully’s “Memoirs,” Goldsmith’s “Natural History,”
“Campaigns of Marshal Turenne,” Chambaud’s “French and English
Dictionary,” Locke “on the Human Understanding,” and Robertson’s
“Charles the Fifth.” From this time on he was a fairly constant
book-buyer, and subscribed as a “patron” to a good many forthcoming
works, while many were sent him as gifts. On politics he seems to have
now read with interest; yet in 1797, after his retirement from the
Presidency, in writing of the manner in which he spent his hours, he
said, “it may strike you that in this detail no mention is made of any
portion of time allotted to reading. The remark would be just, for I
have not looked into a book since I came home, nor shall I be able to
do it until I have discharged my workmen; probably not before the
nights grow long when possibly I may be looking into Doomsday book.”
There can be no doubt that through all his life Washington gave to
reading only the time he could not use on more practical affairs.
His library was a curious medley of books, if those on military science
and agriculture are omitted. There is a fair amount of the standard
history of the day, a little theology, so ill assorted as to suggest
gifts rather than purchases, a miscellany of contemporary politics, and
a very little belles-lettres. In political science the only works in
the slightest degree noticeable are Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” “The
Federalist,” and Rousseau’s “Social Compact,” and, as the latter was in
French, it could not have been read. In lighter literature Homer,
Shakespeare, and Burns, Lord Chesterfield, Swift, Smollett, Fielding,
and Sterne, and “Don Quixote,” are the only ones deserving notice. It
is worthy of mention that Washington’s favorite quotation was Addison’s
“’Tis not in mortals to command success,” but he also utilized with
considerable aptitude quotations from Shakespeare and Sterne. There
were half a dozen of the ephemeral novels of the day, but these were
probably Mrs. Washington’s, as her name is written in one, and her
husband’s in none. Writing to his grandson, Washington warned him that
“light reading (by this, I mean books of little importance) may amuse
for the moment, but leaves nothing solid behind.”
[Illustration: WASHINGTON’S BOOK-PLATE]
One element of Washington’s reading which cannot be passed over without
notice is that of newspapers. In his early life he presumably read the
only local paper of the time (the _Virginia Gazette_), for when an
anonymous writer, “Centinel,” in 1756, charged that Washington’s
regiment was given over to drunkenness and other misbehavior, he drew
up a reply, which he sent with ten shillings to the newspaper, but the
printer apparently declined to print it, for it never appeared.
After the Revolution he complained to his Philadelphia agent, “I have
such a number of Gazettes, crowded upon me (many without orders) that
they are not only expensive, but really useless; as my other avocations
will not afford me time to read them oftentimes, and when I do attempt
it, find them more troublesome, than profitable; I have therefore to
beg, if you Should get Money into your hands on Acct of the Inclosed
Certificate, that you would be so good as to pay what I am owing to
Messrs Dunlap & Claypoole, Mr. Oswald & Mr. Humphrey’s. If they
consider me however as engaged for the year, I am Content to let the
matter run on to the Expiration of it” During the Presidency he
subscribed to the _Gazette of the United States_, Brown’s _Gazette_,
Dunlap’s _American Advertiser_, the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, Bache’s
_Aurora_, and the _New York Magazine_, Carey’s _Museum_, and the
_Universal Asylum_, though at this time he “lamented that the editors
of the different gazettes in the Union do not more generally and more
correctly (instead of stuffing their papers with scurrility and
nonsensical declamation, which few would read if they were apprised of
the contents,) publish the debates in Congress on all great national
questions.”
Presently, for personal and party reasons, certain of the papers began
to attack him, and Jefferson wrote to Madison that the President was
“extremely affected by the attacks made and kept up on him in the
public papers. I think he feels these things more than any person I
ever met with.” Later the Secretary of State noted that at an interview
Washington “adverted to a piece in Freneau’s paper of yesterday, he
said that he despised all their attacks on him personally, but that
there never had been an act of government … that paper had not abused …
He was evidently sore and warm.” At a cabinet meeting, too, according
to the same writer, “the Presidt was much inflamed, got into one of
those passions when he cannot command himself, ran on much on the
personal abuse which had been bestowed on him, defied any man on earth
to produce a single act of his since he had been in the govmt which was
not done on the purest motives, that he had never repented but once the
having slipped the moment of resigning his office, & that was every
moment since, that _by god_ he had rather be in his grave than in his
present situation. That he had rather be on his farm than to be made
_emperor of the world_ and yet that they were charging him with wanting
to be a king. That that _rascal Freneau_ sent him 3 of his papers every
day, as if he thought he would become the distributor of his papers,
that he could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult him.
He ended in this high tone. There was a pause.”
To correspondents, too, Washington showed how keenly he felt the
attacks upon him, writing that “the publications in Freneau’s and
Bache’s papers are outrages on common decency; and they progress in
that style in proportion as their pieces are treated with contempt, and
are passed by in silence, by those at whom they are aimed,” and asked
“in what will this abuse terminate? The result, as it respects myself,
I care not; for I have consolation within, that no earthly efforts can
deprive me of, and that is, that neither ambitious nor interested
motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence,
therefore however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most
vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I am _up_ as a _mark_, they will
be continually aimed.”
On another occasion he said, “I am beginning to receive, what I had
made my mind up for on this occasion, the abuse of Mr. Bache, and his
correspondents.” He wrote a friend, “if you read the Aurora of this
city, or those gazettes, which are under the same influence, you cannot
but have perceived with what malignant industry and persevering
falsehoods I am assailed, in order to weaken if not destroy the
confidence of the public.”
When he retired from office he apparently cut off his subscriptions to
papers, for a few months later he inquired, “what is the character of
Porcupine’s Gazette? I had thought when I left Philadelphia, of
ordering it to be sent to me; then again, I thought it best not to do
it; and altho’ I should like to see both his and Bache’s, the latter
may, under all circumstances, be the best decision; I mean not
subscribing to either of them.” This decision to have no more to do
with papers did not last, for on the night he was seized with his last
illness Lear describes how “in the evening the papers having come from
the post office, he sat in the room with Mrs. Washington and myself,
reading them, till about nine o’clock when Mrs. Washington went up into
Mrs. Lewis’s room, who was confined, and left the General and myself
reading the papers. He was very cheerful; and, when he met with
anything which he thought diverting or interesting, he would read it
aloud as well as his hoarseness would permit. He desired me to read to
him the debates of the Virginia Assembly, on the election of a Senator
and Governor; which I did—and, on hearing Mr. Madison’s observations
respecting Mr. Monroe, he appeared much affected, and spoke with some
degree of asperity on the subject, which I endeavored to moderate, as I
always did on such occasions.”
IX
FRIENDS
The frequently repeated statement that Washington was a man without
friends is not the least curious of the myths that have obtained
general credence. That it should be asserted only goes to show how
absolutely his private life has been neglected in the study of his
public career.
In his will Washington left tokens of remembrance “to the acquaintances
and friends of my juvenile years, Lawrence Washington and Robert
Washington of Chotanck,” the latter presumably the “dear Robin” of his
earliest letter, and these two very distant kinsmen, whom he had come
to know while staying at Wakefield, are the earliest friends of whom
any record exists. Contemporary with them was a “Dear Richard,” whose
letters gave Washington “unspeakable pleasure, as I am convinced I am
still in the memory of so worthy a friend,—a friendship I shall ever be
proud of increasing.”
Next in time came his intimacy with the Fairfaxes and Carlyles, which
began with Washington’s visits to his brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon.
About four miles from that place, at Belvoir, lived the Fairfaxes; and
their kinspeople, the Carlyles, lived at Alexandria. Lawrence
Washington had married Ann Fairfax, and through his influence his
brother George was taken into the employment of Lord Fairfax, half as
clerk and half as surveyor of his great tract of land, “the northern
neck,” which he had obtained by marriage with a daughter of Lord
Culpeper, who in turn had obtained it from the “Merrie Monarch” by
means so disreputable that they are best left unstated. From that time
till his death Washington corresponded with several of the family and
was a constant visitor at Belvoir, as the Fairfaxes were at Mount
Vernon.
[Illustration: SURVEY OF WASHINGTON’S BIRTHPLACE (WAKEFIELD), 1743]
In 1755 Washington told his brother that “to that family I am under
many obligations, particularly the old gentleman,” but as time went on
he more than paid the debt. In 1757 he acted as pallbearer to William
Fairfax, and twelve years later his diary records, “Set off with Mrs.
Washington and Patsey,… in order to stand for Mr. B. Fairfax’s third
son, which I did together with my wife, Mr. Warner Washington and his
lady.” For one of the family he obtained an army commission, and for
another he undertook the care of his property during a visit to
England; a care which unexpectedly lengthened, and was resigned only
when Washington’s time became public property. Nor did that lessen his
services or the Fairfaxes’ need of them, for in the Revolution that
family were loyalists. Despite this, “the friendship,” Washington
assured them, “which I ever professed and felt for you, met no
diminution from the difference in our political sentiments,” and in
1778 he was able to secure the safety of Lord Fairfax from persecution
at the hands of the Whigs, a service acknowledged by his lordship in
the following words:
“There are times when favors conferred make a greater impression than
at others, for, though I have received many, I hope I have not been
unmindful of them; yet that, at a time your popularity was at the
highest and mine at the lowest, and when it is so common for men’s
resentments to run up high against those, who differ from them in
opinion, you should act with your wonted kindness towards me, has
affected me more than any favor I have received; and could not be
believed by some in New York, it being above the run of common minds.”
In behalf of another member of the family, threatened with
confiscation, he wrote to a member of the House of Delegates, “I hope,
I trust, that no act of Legislation in the State of Virginia has
affected, or can affect, the properly of this gentleman, otherwise than
in common with that of every good and well disposed citizen of
America,” and this was sufficient to put an end to the project At the
close of the war he wrote to this absentee, “There was nothing wanting
in [your] Letter to give compleat satisfaction to Mrs. Washington and
myself but some expression to induce us to believe you would once more
become our neighbors. Your house at Belvoir I am sorry to add is no
more, but mine (which is enlarged since you saw it), is most sincerely
and heartily at your service till you could rebuild it. As the path,
after being closed by a long, arduous, and painful contest, is to use
an Indian metaphor, now opened and made smooth, I shall please myself
with the hope of hearing from you frequently; and till you forbid me to
indulge the wish, I shall not despair of seeing you and Mrs. Fairfax
once more the inhabitants of Belvoir, and greeting you both there the
intimate companions of our old age, as you have been of our younger
years.” And to another he left a token of remembrance in his will.
One of the most curious circle of friends was that composed of Indians.
After his mission among them in 1753, Washington wrote to a tribe and
signed himself “your friend and brother.” In a less general sense he
requested an Indian agent to “recommend me kindly to Mononcatoocha and
others; tell them how happy it would make Conotocarius to have an
opportunity of taking them by the hand.” A little later he had this
pleasure, and he wrote the governor, “the Indians are all around
teasing and perplexing me for one thing or another, so that I scarce
know what I write.” When Washington left the frontier this intercourse
ceased, but he was not forgotten, for in descending the Ohio in his
Western trip of 1770 a hunting party was met, and “in the person of
Kiashuto I found an old acquaintance, he being one of the Indians that
went [with me] to the French in 1753. He expressed satisfaction at
seeing me, and treated us with great kindness, giving us a quarter of
very fine buffalo. He insisted upon our spending that night with him,
and, in order to retard us as little as possible moved his camp down
the river.”
With his appointment to the Virginia regiment came military friends.
From the earliest of these—Van Braam, who had served under Lawrence
Washington in the Carthagena expedition of 1742, and who had come to
live at Mount Vernon—Washington had previously taken lessons in
fencing, and when appointed the bearer of a letter to the French
commander on the Ohio he took Van Braam with him as interpreter. A
little later, on receiving his majority, Washington appointed Van Braam
his recruiting lieutenant, and recommended him to the governor for a
captain’s commission on the grounds that he was “an experienced good
officer.” To Van Braam fell the duty of translating the capitulation to
the French at Fort Necessity, and to his reading was laid the blunder
by which Washington signed a statement acknowledging himself as an
“assassin.” Inconsequence he became the scapegoat of the expedition,
was charged by the governor with being a “poltroon” and traitor, and
was omitted from the Assembly’s vote of thanks and extra pay to the
regiment. But Washington stood by him, and when himself burgess
succeeded in getting this latter vote rescinded.
Another friend of the same period was the Chevalier Peyroney, whom
Washington first made an ensign, and then urged the governor to advance
him, promising that if the governor “should be pleased to indulge me in
this request, I shall look upon it in a very particular light.”
Peyroney was badly wounded at Fort Necessity and was furloughed, during
which he wrote his commander, “I have made my particular Business to
tray if any had some Bad intention against you here Below; But thank
God I meet allowais with a good wish for you from evry Mouth each one
entertining such Caracter of you as I have the honour to do myself.” He
served again in the Braddock march, and in that fiasco, Washington
wrote, “Captain Peyroney and all his officers down to a corporal, was
killed.”
With Captain Stewart—“a gentleman whose assiduity and military capacity
are second to none in our Service”—Washington was intimate enough to
have Stewart apply in 1763 for four hundred pounds to aid him to
purchase a commission, a sum Washington did not have at his disposal.
But because of “a regard of that high nature that I could never see you
uneasy without feeling a part and wishing to remove the cause,”
Washington lent him three hundred pounds towards it, apparently without
much return, for some years later he wrote to a friend that he was
“very glad to learn that my friend Stewart was well when you left
London. I have not had a letter from him these five years.” At the
close of the Revolution he received a letter from Stewart containing
“affectionate and flattering expressions,” which gave Washington “much
pleasure,” as it “removed an apprehension I had long labored under, of
your having taken your departure for the land of Spirits. How else
could I account for a silence of 15 years. I shall always be happy to
see you at Mt. Vernon.”
His friend William Ramsay—“well known, well-esteemed, and of
unblemished character”—he appointed commissary, and long after, in
1769, wrote,—
“Having once or twice of late heard you speak highly in praise of the
Jersey College, as if you had a desire of sending your son William
there … I should be glad, if you have no other objection to it than
what may arise from the expense, if you would send him there as soon as
it is convenient, and depend on me for twenty-five pounds this currency
a year for his support, so long as it may be necessary for the
completion of his education. If I live to see the accomplishment of
this term, the sum here stipulated shall he annually paid; and if I die
in the mean while, this letter shall be obligatory upon my heirs, or
executors, to do it according to the true intent and meaning hereof. No
other return is expected, or wished, for this offer, than that you will
accept it with the same freedom and good will, with which it is made,
and that you may not even consider it in the light of an obligation or
mention it as such; for, be assured, that from me it will never be
known.”
The dearest friendship formed in these years was with the doctor of the
regiment, James Craik, who in the course of his duties attended
Washington in two serious illnesses, and when the war was ended settled
near Mount Vernon. He was frequently a visitor there, and soon became
the family medical attendant. When appointed General, Washington wrote,
“tell Doctor Craik that I should be very glad to see him here if there
was anything worth his acceptance; but the Massachusetts people suffer
nothing to go by them that they lay hands upon.” In 1777 the General
secured his appointment as deputy surgeon-general of the Middle
Department, and three years later, when the hospital service was being
reformed, he used his influence to have him retained. Craik was one of
those instrumental in warning the commander-in-chief of the existence
of the Conway Cabal, because “my attachment to your person is such, my
friendship is so sincere, that every hint which has a tendency to hurt
your honor, wounds me most sensibly.” The doctor was Washington’s
companion, by invitation, in both his later trips to the Ohio, and his
trust in him was so strong that he put under his care the two nephews
whose charge he had assumed. In Washington’s ledger an entry tells of
another piece of friendliness, to the effect, “Dr. James Craik, paid
him, being a donation to his son, Geo. Washington Craik for his
education £30,” and after graduating the young man for a time served as
one of his private secretaries. After a serious illness in 1789,
Washington wrote to the doctor, “persuaded as I am, that the case has
been treated with skill, and with as much tenderness as the nature of
the complaint would admit, yet I confess I often wished for your
inspection of it,” and later he wrote, “if I should ever have occasion
for a Physician or Surgeon, I should prefer my old Surgeon, Dr. Craik,
who, from 40 years’ experience, is better qualified than a Dozen of
them put together.” Craik was the first of the doctors to reach
Washington’s bedside in his last illness, and when the dying man
predicted his own death, “the Doctor pressed his hand but could not
utter a word. He retired from the bedside and sat by the fire absorbed
in grief.” In Washington’s will he left “to my compatriot in arms and
old and intimate friend, Doctor Craik I give my Bureau (or as the
Cabinet makers called it, Tambour Secretary) and the circular chair, an
appendage of my study.”
The arrival of Braddock and his army at Alexandria brought a new circle
of military friends. Washington “was very particularly noticed by that
General, was taken into his family as an extra aid, offered a Captain’s
commission by _brevet_ (which was the highest grade he had it in his
power to bestow) and had the compliment of several blank Ensigncies
given him to dispose of to the Young Gentlemen of his acquaintance.” In
this position he was treated “with much complaisance … especially from
the General,” which meant much, as Braddock seems to have had nothing
but curses for nearly every one else, and the more as Washington and he
“had frequent disputes,” which were “maintained with warmth on both
sides, especially on his.” But the general, “though his enmities were
strong,” in “his attachments” was “warm,” and grew to like and trust
the young volunteer, and had he “survived his unfortunate defeat, I
should have met with preferment,” having “his promise to that effect.”
Washington was by the general when he was wounded in the lungs, lifted
him into a covered cart, and “brought him over the _first_ ford of the
Monongahela,” into temporary safety. Three days later Braddock died of
his wounds, bequeathing to Washington his favorite horse and his
body-servant as tokens of his gratitude. Over him Washington read the
funeral service, and it was left to him to see that “the poor general”
was interred “with the honors of war.”
Even before public service had made him known, Washington was a friend
and guest of many of the leading Virginians. Between 1747 and 1754 he
visited the Carters of Shirley, Nomony, and Sabine Hall, the Lewises of
Warner Hall, the Lees of Stratford, and the Byrds of Westover, and
there was acquaintance at least with the Spotswoods, Fauntleroys,
Corbins, Randolphs, Harrisons, Robinsons, Nicholases, and other
prominent families. In fact, one friend wrote him, “your health and
good fortune are the toast of every table,” and another that “the
Council and Burgesses are mostly your friends,” and those two bodies
included every Virginian of real influence. It was Richard Corbin who
enclosed him his first commission, in a brief note, beginning “Dear
George” and ending “your friend,” but in time relations became more or
less strained, and Washington suspected him “of representing my
character … with ungentlemanly freedom.” With John Robinson, “Speaker”
and Treasurer of Virginia, who wrote Washington in 1756, “our hopes,
dear George, are all fixed on you,” a close correspondence was
maintained, and when Washington complained of the governor’s course
towards him Robinson replied, “I beg dear friend, that you will bear,
so far as a man of honor ought, the discouragements and slights you
have too often met with.” The son, Beverly Robinson, was a
fellow-soldier, and, as already mentioned, was Washington’s host on his
visit to New York in 1756. The Revolution interrupted the friendship,
but it is alleged that Robinson (who was deep in the Arnold plot) made
an appeal to the old-time relation in an endeavor to save André. The
appeal was in vain, but auld lang syne had its influence, for the sons
of Beverly, British officers taken prisoners in 1779, were promptly
exchanged, so one of them asserted, “in consequence of the embers of
friendship that still remained unextinguished in the breasts of my
father and General Washington.”
Outside of his own colony, too, Washington made friends of many
prominent families, with whom there was more or less interchange of
hospitality. Before the Revolution there had been visiting or breaking
of bread with the Galloways, Dulaneys, Carrolls, Calverts, Jenifers,
Edens, Ringgolds, and Tilghmans of Maryland, the Penns, Cadwaladers,
Morrises, Shippens, Aliens, Dickinsons, Chews, and Willings of
Pennsylvania, and the De Lanceys and Bayards of New York.
Election to the Continental Congress strengthened some friendships and
added new ones. With Benjamin Harrison he was already on terms of
intimacy, and as long as the latter was in Congress he was the member
most in the confidence of the General. Later they differed in politics,
but Washington assured Harrison that “my friendship is not in the least
lessened by the difference, which has taken place in our political
sentiments, nor is my regard for you diminished by the part you have
acted.” Joseph Jones and Patrick Henry both took his part against the
Cabal, and the latter did him especial service in forwarding to him the
famous anonymous letter, an act for which Washington felt “most
grateful obligations.” Henry and Washington differed later in politics,
and it was reported that the latter spoke disparagingly of the former,
but this Washington denied, and not long after offered Henry the
Secretaryship of State. Still later he made a personal appeal to him to
come forward and combat the Virginia resolutions of 1798, an appeal to
which Henry responded. The intimacy with Robert Morris was close, and,
as already noted, Washington and his family were several times inmates
of his home. Gouverneur Morris was one of his most trusted advisers,
and, it is claimed, gave the casting vote which saved Washington from
being arrested in 1778, when the Cabal was fiercest. While President,
Washington sent him on a most important mission to Great Britain, and
on its completion made him Minister to France. From that post the
President was, at the request of France, compelled to recall him; but
in doing so Washington wrote him a private letter assuring Morris that
he “held the same place in my estimation” as ever, and signed himself
“yours affectionately.” Charles Carroll of Carrollton was a partisan of
the General, and very much disgusted a member of the Cabal by telling
him “almost literally that anybody who displeased or did not admire the
Commander-in-chief, ought not to be kept in the army.” And to Edward
Rutledge Washington wrote, “I can but love and thank you, and I do it
sincerely for your polite and friendly letter…. The sentiments
contained in it are such as have uniformly flowed from your pen, and
they are not the less flattering than pleasing to me.”
The command of the Continental army brought a new kind of friend, in
the young aides of his staff. One of his earliest appointments was
Joseph Reed, and, though he remained but five months in the service, a
close friendship was formed. Almost weekly Washington wrote him in the
most confidential and affectionate manner, and twice he appealed to
Reed to take the position once more, in one instance adding that if
“you are disposed to continue with me, I shall think myself too
fortunate and happy to wish for a change.” Yet Washington none the less
sent Reed congratulations on his election to the Pennsylvania Assembly,
“although I consider it the coup-de-grace to my ever seeing you” again
a “member of my family,” to help him he asked a friend to endeavor to
get Reed legal business, and when all law business ceased and the
would-be lawyer was without occupation or means of support, he used his
influence to secure him the appointment of adjutant.
Reed kept him informed as to the news of Philadelphia, and wrote even
such adverse criticism of the General as he heard, which Washington
“gratefully” acknowledged. But one criticism Reed did not write was
what he himself was saying of his general after the fall of Fort
Washington, for which he blamed the commander-in-chief in a letter to
Lee, and probably to others, for when later Reed and Arnold quarrelled,
the latter boasted that “I can say I never basked in the sunshine of my
general’s favor, and courted him to his face, when I was at the same
time treating him with the greatest disrespect and villifying his
character when absent. This is more than a ruling member of the Council
of Pennsylvania can say.” Washington learned of this criticism in a
letter from Lee to Reed, which was opened at head-quarters on the
supposition that it was on army matters, and “with no idea of its being
a private letter, much less the tendency of the correspondence,” as
Washington explained in a letter to Reed, which had not a word of
reproach for the double-dealing that must have cut the General keenly,
coming as it did at a moment of misfortune and discouragement. Reed
wrote a lame explanation and apology, and later sought to “regain” the
“lost friendship” by an earnest appeal to Washington’s generosity. Nor
did he appeal in vain, for the General replied that though “I felt
myself hurt by a certain letter … I was hurt … because the same
sentiments were not communicated immediately to myself.” The old-time
intimacy was renewed, and how little his personal feeling had
influenced Washington is shown in the fact that even previous to this
peace-making he had secured for Reed the appointment to command one of
the choicest brigades in the army. Perhaps the friendship was never
quite as close, but in writing him Washington still signed himself
“yours affectionately.”
John Laurens, appointed an aide in 1777, quickly endeared himself to
Washington, and conceived the most ardent affection for his chief. The
young officer of twenty-four used all his influence with his father
(then President of Congress) against the Cabal, and in 1778, when
Charles Lee was abusing the commander-in-chief, Laurens thought himself
bound to resent it, “as well on account of the relation he bore to
General Washington, as from motives of personal friendship and respect
for his character,” and he challenged the defamer and put a bullet into
him. To his commander he signed himself “with the greatest veneration
and attachment your Excellency’s Faithful Aid,” and Washington in his
letters always addressed him as “my dear Laurens.” After his death in
battle, Washington wrote, in reply to an inquiry,—
“You ask if the character of Colonel John Laurens, as drawn in the
_Independent Chronicle_ of 2d of December last, is just. I answer, that
such parts of the drawing as have fallen under my observation, is
literally so; and that it is my firm belief his merits and worth richly
entitle him to the whole picture. No man possessed more of the _amor
patriae_. In a word, he had not a fault, that I could discover, unless
intrepidity bordering upon rashness could come under that denomination;
and to this he was excited by the purest motives.”
Of another aide, Tench Tilghman, Washington said, “he has been a
zealous servant and slave to the public, and a faithful assistant to me
for near five years, great part of which time he refused to receive
pay. Honor and gratitude interest me in his favor.” As an instance of
this, the commander-in-chief gave to him the distinction of bearing to
Congress the news of the surrender of Cornwallis, with the request to
that body that Tilghman should be honored in some manner. And in
acknowledging a letter Washington said, “I receive with great
sensibility and pleasure your assurances of affection and regard. It
would be but a renewal of what I have often repeated to you, that there
are few men in the world to whom I am more attached by inclination than
I am to you. With the Cause, I hope—most devoutly hope—there will be an
end to my Military Service, when as our places of residence will not be
far apart, I shall never be more happy than in your Company at Mt.
Vernon. I shall always be glad to hear from, and keep up a
correspondence with you.” When Tilghman died, Washington asserted that
“He had left as fair a reputation as ever belonged to a human
character,” and to his father he wrote, “Of all the numerous
acquaintances of your lately deceased son, & midst all the sorrowings
that are mingled on that melancholy occasion, I may venture to assert
that (excepting those of his nearest relatives) none could have felt
his death with more regret than I did, because no one entertained a
higher opinion of his worth, or had imbibed sentiments of greater
friendship for him than I had done…. Midst all your grief, there is
this consolation to be drawn;—that while living, no man could be more
esteemed, and since dead, none more lamented than Colo. Tilghman.”
To David Humphreys, a member of the staff, Washington gave the honor of
carrying to Congress the standards captured at Yorktown, recommending
him to the notice of that body for his “attention, fidelity, and good
services.” This aide escorted Washington to Mount Vernon at the close
of the Revolution, and was “the last officer belonging to the army” who
parted from “the Commander-in-chief.” Shortly after, Humphreys returned
to Mount Vernon, half as secretary and half as visitor and companion,
and he alluded to this time in his poem of “Mount Vernon,” when he
said,—
“Twas mine, return’d from Europe’s courts
To share his thoughts, partake his sports.”
When Washington was accused of cruelty in the Asgill case, Humphreys
published an account of the affair, completely vindicating his friend,
for which he was warmly thanked. He was frequently urged to come to
Mount Vernon, and Washington on one occasion lamented “the cause which
has deprived us of your aid in the attack of Christmas pies,” and on
another assured Humphreys of his “great pleasure [when] I received the
intimation of your spending the winter under this Roof. The invitation
was not less sincere, than the reception will be cordial. The only
stipulations I shall contend for are, that in all things you shall do
as you please—I will do the same; and that no ceremony may be used or
any restraint be imposed on any one.” Humphreys was visiting him when
the notification of his election as President was received, and was the
only person, except servants, who accompanied Washington to New York.
Here he continued for a time to give his assistance, and was
successively appointed Indian commissioner, informal agent to Spain,
and finally Minister to Portugal. While holding this latter position
Washington wrote to him, “When you shall think with the poet that ‘the
post of honor is a private station’—& may be inclined to enjoy yourself
in my shades … I can only tell you that you will meet with the same
cordial reception at Mount Vernon that you have always experienced at
that place,” and when Humphreys answered that his coming marriage made
the visit impossible, Washington replied, “The desire of a companion in
my latter days, in whom I could confide … induced me to express too
strongly … the hope of having you as an inmate.” On the death of
Washington, Humphreys published a poem expressing the deepest affection
and admiration for “my friend.”
[Illustration: WASHINGTON FAMILY RECORD]
The longest and closest connection was that with Hamilton. This very
young and obscure officer attracted Washington’s attention in the
campaign of 1776, early in the next year was appointed to the staff,
and quickly became so much a favorite that Washington spoke of him as
“my boy.” Whatever friendliness this implied was not, however,
reciprocated by Hamilton. After four years of service, he resigned,
under circumstances to which he pledged Washington to secrecy, and then
himself, in evident irritation, wrote as follows:
“Two days ago, the General and I passed each other on the stairs. He
told me he wanted to speak to me. I answered that I would wait upon him
immediately. I went below, and delivered Mr. Tilghman a letter to be
sent to the commissary, containing an order of a pressing and
interesting nature. Returning to the General, I was stopped on the way
by the Marquis de Lafayette, and we conversed together about a minute
on a matter of business. He can testify how impatient I was to get
back, and that I left him in a manner which, but for our intimacy would
have been more than abrupt. Instead of finding the General, as is
usual, in his room, I met him at the head of the stairs, where,
accosting me in an angry tone, ‘Colonel Hamilton,’ said he ‘you have
kept me waiting at the head of the stairs these ten minutes. I must
tell you, sir, you treat me with disrespect.’ I replied without
petulancy, but with decision: ‘I am not conscious of it, sir; but since
you have thought it necessary to tell me so, we part.’ ‘Very well,
sir,’ said he, ‘if it be your choice,’ or something to this effect, and
we separated. I sincerely believe my absence, which gave so much
umbrage, did not last two minutes. In less than an hour after, Tilghman
came to me in the General’s name, assuring me of his great confidence
in my abilities, integrity, usefulness, etc, and of his desire, in a
candid conversation, to heal a difference which could not have happened
but in a moment of passion. I requested Mr Tilghman to tell him—1st.
That I had taken my resolution in a manner not to be revoked … Thus we
stand … Perhaps you may think I was precipitate in rejecting the
overture made by the General to an accomodation. I assure you, my dear
sir, it was not the effect of resentment; it was the deliberate result
of maxims I had long formed for the government of my own conduct…. I
believe you know the place I held in the General’s confidence and
counsels, which will make more extraordinary to you to learn that for
three years past I have felt no friendship for him and have professed
none. The truth is, our dispositions are the opposites of each other,
and the pride of my temper would not suffer me to profess what I did
not feel. Indeed, when advances of this kind have been made to me on
his part, they were received in a manner that showed at least that I
had no desire to court them, and that I desired to stand rather upon a
footing of military confidence than of private attachment.”
Had Washington been the man this letter described he would never have
forgiven this treatment. On the contrary, only two months later, when
compelled to refuse for military reasons a favor Hamilton asked, he
said that “my principal concern arises from an apprehension that you
will impute my refusal to your request to other motives.” On this
refusal Hamilton enclosed his commission to Washington, but “Tilghman
came to me in his name, pressed me to retain my commission, with an
assurance that he would endeavor, by all means, to give me a command.”
Later Washington did more than Hamilton himself had asked, when he gave
him the leading of the storming party at Yorktown, a post envied by
every officer in the army.
Apparently this generosity lessened Hamilton’s resentment, for a
correspondence on public affairs was maintained from this time on,
though Madison stated long after “that Hamilton often spoke
disparagingly of Washington’s talents, particularly after the
Revolution and at the first part of the presidentcy,” and Benjamin Rush
confirms this by a note to the effect that “Hamilton often spoke with
contempt of General Washington. He said that … his heart was a stone.”
The rumor of the ill feeling was turned to advantage by Hamilton’s
political opponents in 1787, and compelled the former to appeal to
Washington to save him from the injury the story was doing. In response
Washington wrote a letter intended for public use, in which he said,—
“As you say it is insinuated by some of your political adversaries, and
may obtain credit, ‘that you _palmed_ yourself upon me, and was
_dismissed_ from my family,’ and call upon me to do you justice by a
recital of the facts, I do therefore explicitly declare, that both
charges are entirely unfounded. With respect to the first, I have no
cause to believe, that you took a single step to accomplish, or had the
most distant idea of receiving an appointment in my family till you
were invited in it; and, with respect to the second, that your quitting
it was altogether the effect of your own choice.”
With the appointment as Secretary of the Treasury warmer feelings were
developed. Hamilton became the President’s most trusted official, and
was tireless in the aid he gave his superior. Even after he left office
he performed many services equivalent to official ones, for which
Washington did “not know how to thank” him “sufficiently,” and the
President leaned on his judgment to an otherwise unexampled extent.
This service produced affection and respect, and in 1792 Washington
wrote from Mount Vernon, “We have learnt … that you have some thoughts
of taking a trip this way. I felt pleasure at hearing it, and hope it
is unnecessary to add, that it would be considerably increased by
seeing you under this roof; for you may be assured of the sincere and
affectionate regard of yours, &c.” and signed other letters “always and
affectionately yours,” or “very affectionately,” while Hamilton
reciprocated by sending “affectionate attachment.”
On being appointed lieutenant-general in 1798, Washington at once
sought the aid of Hamilton for the highest position under him, assuring
the Secretary of War that “of the abilities and fitness of the
gentleman you have named for a high command in the _provisional army_,
I think as you do, and that his services ought to be secured at almost
any price.” To this the President, who hated Hamilton, objected, but
Washington refused to take the command unless this wish was granted,
and Adams had to give way. They stood in this relation when Washington
died, and almost the last letter he penned was to this friend. On
learning of the death, Hamilton wrote of “our beloved
Commander-in-chief,”—
“The very painful event … filled my heart with bitterness. Perhaps no
man in this community has equal cause with myself to deplore the loss.
I have been much indebted to the kindness of the General, and he was an
_Ægis very essential to me_. But regrets are unavailing. For great
misfortunes it is the business of reason to seek consolation. The
friends of General Washington have very noble ones. If virtue can
secure happiness in another world, he is happy.”
Knox was the earliest army friend of those who rose to the rank of
general, and was honored by Washington with absolute trust. After the
war the two corresponded, and Knox expressed “unalterable affection”
for the “thousand evidences of your friendship.” He was appointed
Secretary of War in the first administration, and in taking command of
the provisional army Washington secured his appointment as a
major-general, and at this time asserted that, “with respect to General
Knox I can say with truth there is no man in the United States with
whom I have been in habits of greater intimacy, no one whom I have
loved more sincerely nor any for whom I have had a greater friendship.”
Greene was perhaps the closest to Washington of all the generals, and
their relations might be dwelt upon at much length. But the best
evidence of friendship is in Washington’s treatment of a story
involving his financial honesty, of which he said, “persuaded as I
always have been of Genl Greene’s integrity and worth, I spurned those
reports which tended to calumniate his conduct … being perfectly
convinced that whenever the matter should be investigated, his motives
… would appear pure and unimpeachable.” When on Greene’s death
Washington heard that his family was left in embarrassed circumstances,
he offered, if Mrs. Greene would “entrust my namesake G. Washington
Greene to my care, I will give him as good an education as this country
(I mean the United States) will afford, and will bring him up to either
of the genteel professions that his frds. may chuse, or his own
inclination shall lead him to pursue, at my own cost & expence.”
For “Light-horse Harry” Lee an affection more like that given to the
youngsters of the staff was felt Long after the war was over, Lee began
a letter to him “Dear General,” and then continued,—
“Although the exalted station, which your love of us and our love of
you has placed you in, calls for change in mode of address, yet I
cannot so quickly relinquish the old manner. Your military rank holds
its place in my mind, notwithstanding your civic glory; and, whenever I
do abandon the title which used to distinguish you, I shall do it with
awkwardness…. My reluctance to trespass a moment on your time would
have operated to a further procrastination of my wishes, had I not been
roused above every feeling of ceremony by the heart rending
intelligence, received yesterday, that your life was despaired of. Had
I had wings in the moment, I should have wafted myself to your bedside,
only again to see the first of men; but alas! despairing as I was, from
the account received, after the affliction of one day and night, I was
made most happy by receiving a letter, now before me from New York,
announcing the restoration of your health. May heaven preserve it!”
It was Lee who first warned Washington that Jefferson was slandering
him in secret, and who kept him closely informed as to the political
manuvres in Virginia. Washington intrusted to him the command of the
army in the Whiskey Insurrection, and gave him an appointment in the
provisional army. Lee was in Congress when the death of the great
American was announced to that body, and it was he who coined the
famous “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
countrymen.”
As need hardly be said, however, the strongest affection among the
general officers was that between Washington and Lafayette. In the
advent of this young Frenchman the commander saw only “embarassment,”
but he received “the young volunteer,” so Lafayette said, “in the most
friendly manner,” invited him to reside in his house as a member of his
military family, and as soon as he came to know him he recommended
Congress to give him a command. As Lafayette became popular with the
army, an endeavor was made by the Cabal to win him to their faction by
bribing him with an appointment to lead an expedition against Canada,
independent of control by Washington. Lafayette promptly declined the
command, unless subject to the General, and furthermore he “braved the
whole party (Cabal) and threw them into confusion by making them drink
the health of their general.” At the battle of Monmouth Washington gave
the command of the attacking party to Lafayette, and after the conflict
the two, according to the latter, “passed the night lying on the same
mantle, talking.” In the same way Washington distinguished him by
giving him the command of the expedition to rescue Virginia from
Cornwallis, and to his division was given the most honorable position
at Yorktown. When the siege of that place was completed, Lafayette
applied for leave of absence to spend the winter in France, and as he
was on the point of sailing he received a personal letter from
Washington, for “I owe it to friendship and to my affectionate regard
for you my dear Marquis, not to let you leave this country without
carrying fresh marks of my attachment to you,” and in his absence
Washington wrote that a mutual friend who bore a letter “can tell you
more forcibly, than I can express how much we all love and wish to
embrace you.”
A reunion came in 1784, looked forward to by Lafayette with an
eagerness of which he wrote, “by Sunday or Monday, I hope at last to be
blessed with a sight of my dear General. There is no rest for me till I
go to Mount Vernon. I long for the pleasure to embrace you, my dear
General; and the happiness of being once more with you will be so
great, that no words can ever express it. Adieu, my dear General; in a
few days I shall be at Mount Vernon, and I do already feel delighted
with so charming a prospect.” After this visit was over Washington
wrote, “In the moment of our separation, upon the road as I travelled,
and every hour since, I have felt all that love, respect and attachment
for you, with which length of years, close connexion, and your merits
have inspired me. I often asked myself, as our carriages separated,
whether that was the last sight I ever should have of you?” And to this
letter Lafayette replied,—
“No my beloved General, our late parting was not by any means a last
interview. My whole soul revolts at the idea; and could I harbour it an
instant, indeed, my dear General, it would make me miserable. I well
see you will never go to France. The inexpressible pleasure of
embracing you in my own house, of welcoming you in a family where your
name is adored, I do not much expect to experience; but to you I shall
return, and, within the walls of Mount Vernon, we shall yet speak of
olden times. My firm plan is to visit now and then my friend on this
side of the Atlantic; and the most beloved of all friends I ever had,
or ever shall have anywhere, is too strong an inducement for me to
return to him, not to think that whenever it is possible I shall renew
my so pleasing visits to Mount Vernon…. Adieu, adieu, my dear General.
It is with inexpressible pain that I feel I am going to be severed from
you by the Atlantic. Everything, that admiration, respect, gratitude,
friendship, and fillial love, can inspire, is combined in my
affectionate heart to devote me most tenderly to you. In your
friendship I find a delight which words cannot express. Adieu, my dear
General. It is not without emotion that I write this word, although I
know I shall soon visit you again. Be attentive to your health. Let me
hear from you every month. Adieu, adieu.”
The correspondence begged was maintained, but Lafayette complained that
“To one who so tenderly loves you, who so happily enjoyed the times we
have passed together, and who never, on any part of the globe, even in
his own house, could feel himself so perfectly at home as in your
family, it must be confessed that an irregular, lengthy correspondence
is quite insufficient I beseech you, in the name of our friendship, of
that paternal concern of yours for my happiness, not to miss any
opportunity to let me hear from my dear General.”
One letter from Washington told Lafayette of his recovery from a
serious illness, and Lafayette responded, “What could have been my
feelings, had the news of your illness reached me before I knew my
beloved General, my adopted father, was out of danger? I was struck at
the idea of the situation you have been in, while I, uninformed and so
distant from you, was anticipating the long-waited-for pleasure to hear
from you, and the still more endearing prospect of visiting you and
presenting you the tribute of a revolution, one of your first
offsprings. For God’s sake, my dear General, take care of your health!”
Presently, as the French Revolution gathered force, the anxiety was
reversed, Washington writing that “The lively interest which I take in
your welfare, my dear Sir, keeps my mind in constant anxiety for your
personal safety.” This fear was only too well founded, for shortly
after Lafayette was a captive in an Austrian prison and his wife was
appealing to her husband’s friend for help. Our ministers were told to
do all they could to secure his liberty, and Washington wrote a
personal letter to the Emperor of Austria. Before receiving her letter,
on the first news of the “truly affecting” condition of “poor Madame
Lafayette,” he had written to her his sympathy, and, supposing that
money was needed, had deposited at Amsterdam two hundred guineas
“subject to your orders.”
When she and her daughters joined her husband in prison, Lafayette’s
son, and Washington’s godson, came to America; an arrival of which the
godfather wrote that, “to express all the sensibility, which has been
excited in my breast by the receipt of young Lafayette’s letter, from
the recollection of his father’s merits, services, and sufferings, from
my friendship for him, and from my wishes to become a friend and father
to his son is unnecessary.” The lad became a member of the family, and
a visitor at this time records that “I was particularly struck with the
marks of affection which the General showed his pupil, his adopted son
of Marquis de Lafayette. Seated opposite to him, he looked at him with
pleasure, and listened to him with manifest interest.” With Washington
he continued till the final release of his father, and a simple
business note in Washington’s ledger serves to show both his delicacy
and his generosity to the boy: “By Geo. W. Fayette, gave for the
purpose of his getting himself such small articles of Clothing as he
might not choose to ask for $100.” Another item in the accounts was
three hundred dollars “to defray his exps. to France,” and by him
Washington sent a line to his old friend, saying, “this letter I hope
and expect will be presented to you by your son, who is highly
deserving of such parents as you and your amiable lady.”
Long previous to this, too, a letter had been sent to Virginia
Lafayette, couched in the following terms:
“Permit me to thank my dear little correspondent for the favor of her
letter of the 18 of June last, and to impress her with the idea of the
pleasure I shall derive from a continuance of them. Her papa is
restored to her with all the good health, paternal affection, and
honors, which her tender heart could wish. He will carry a kiss to her
from me (which might be more agreeable from a pretty boy), and give her
assurances of the affectionate regard with which I have the pleasure of
being her well-wisher,
George Washington.”
In this connection it is worth glancing at Washington’s relations with
children, the more that it has been frequently asserted that he had no
liking for them. As already shown, at different times he adopted or
assumed the expenses and charge of not less than nine of the children
of his kith and kin, and to his relations with children he seldom wrote
a letter without a line about the “little ones.” His kindnesses to the
sons of Ramsay, Craik, Greene, and Lafayette have already been noticed.
Furthermore, whenever death or illness came among the children of his
friends there was sympathy expressed. Dumas relates of his visit to
Providence with Washington, that “we arrived there at night; the whole
of the population had assembled from the suburbs; we were surrounded by
a crowd of children carrying torches, reiterating the acclamations of
the citizens; all were eager to approach the person of him whom they
called their father, and pressed so closely around us that they
hindered us from proceeding. General Washington was much affected,
stopped a few moments, and, pressing my hand, said, ‘We may be beaten
by the English; it is the chance of war; but behold an army which they
can never conquer,’”
In his journey through New England, not being able to get lodgings at
an inn, Washington spent a night in a private house, and when all
payment was refused, he wrote his host from his next stopping-place,—
“Being informed that you have given my name to one of your sons, and
called another after Mrs. Washington’s family, and being moreover very
much pleased with the modest and innocent looks of your two daughters,
Patty and Polly, I do for these reasons send each of these girls a
piece of chintz; and to Patty, who bears the name of Mrs. Washington,
and who waited upon us more than Polly did, I send five guineas, with
which she may buy herself any little ornaments she may want, or she may
dispose of them in any other manner more agreeable to herself. As I do
not give these things with a view to have it talked of, or even of its
being known, the less there is said about the matter the better you
will please me; but, that I may be sure the chintz and money have got
safe to hand, let Patty, who I dare say is equal to it, write me a line
informing me thereof, directed to ‘The President of the United States
at New York.’”
Miss Stuart relates that “One morning while Mr. Washington was sitting
for his picture, a little brother of mine ran into the room, when my
father thinking it would annoy the General, told him he must leave; but
the General took him upon his knee, held him for some time, and had
quite a little chat with him, and, in fact, they seemed to be pleased
with each other. My brother remembered with pride, as long as he lived,
that Washington had talked with him.”
For the son of his secretary, Lear, there seems to have been great
fondness, and in one instance the father was told that “It gave Mrs.
Washington, myself and all who know him, sincere pleasure to hear that
our little favorite had arrived safe, and was in good health at
Portsmouth. We sincerely wish him a long continuance of the latter—that
he may always be as charming and promising as he now is—and that he may
live to be a comfort and blessing to you, and an ornament to his
country. As a testimony of my affection for him I send him a ticket in
the lottery which is now drawing in the Federal City; and if it should
be his fortune to draw the hotel it will add to the pleasure I have in
giving it.” A second letter condoled with “little Lincoln,” because
owing to the collapse of the lottery the “poor little fellow” will not
even get enough to “build him a baby house.”
For the father, Tobias Lear, who came into his employment in 1786 and
remained with him till his death, Washington felt the greatest
affection and trust. It was he who sent for the doctor in the beginning
of the last illness, and he was in the sickroom most of the time.
Holding Washington’s hand, he received from him his last orders, and
later when Washington “appeared to be in great pain and distress from
the difficulty of breathing … I lay upon the bed and endeavored to
raise him, and turn him with as much ease as possible. He appeared
penetrated with gratitude for my attentions, and often said ‘I am
afraid I shall fatigue you too much.’” Still later Lear “aided him all
in my power, and was gratified in believing he felt it; for he would
look upon me with eyes speaking gratitude, but unable to utter a word
without great distress.” At the final moment Lear took his hand “and
laid it upon his breast.” When all was over, “I kissed the cold hand,
laid it down, and was … lost in profound grief.”
X
ENEMIES
Any man of force is to be known quite as much by the character of his
enemies as by that of his friends, and this is true of Washington. The
subject offers some difficulties, for most of his enemies later in life
went out of their way to deny all antagonism, and took pains to destroy
such proof as they could come at of ill-feeling towards him. Yet enough
remains to show who were in opposition to him, and on what grounds.
The first of those now known to be opposed to him was George Muse,
lieutenant-colonel in 1754 under Washington. At Fort Necessity he was
guilty of cowardice, he was discharged in disgrace, and his name was
omitted from the Assembly’s vote of thanks to the regiment. Stung by
this action, he took his revenge in a manner related by Peyroney, who
wrote Washington,—
“Many enquired to me about Muse’s Braveries, poor Body I had pity him
ha’nt he had the weakness to Confes his Coardise himself, & the
impudence to taxe all the reste of the oficers without exception of the
same imperfection for he said to many of the Consulars and Burgeses
that he was Bad But th’ the reste was as Bad as he—To speak francly,
had I been in town at that time I cou’nt help’d to make use of my
horses [whip] whereas for to vindicate the injury of that vilain. He
Contrived his Business so that several ask me if it was true that he
had Challeng’d you to fight: My Answer was no other But that he should
rather chuse to go to hell than doing of it—for he had Such thing
declar’d: that was his Sure Road.”
Washington seems to have cherished no personal ill-will for Muse’s
conduct, and when the division of the “bounty lands” was being pushed,
he used his influence that the broken officer should receive a quotum.
Not knowing this, or else being ungrateful, Muse seems to have written
a letter to Washington which angered him, for he replied,—
“Sir, Your impertinent letter was delivered to me yesterday. As I am
not accustomed to receive such from any man, nor would have taken the
same language from you personally, without letting you feel some marks
of my resentment, I would advise you to be cautious in writing me a
second of the same tenor. But for your stupidity and sottishness you
might have known, by attending to the public gazette, that you had your
full quantity of ten thousand acres of land allowed you, that is, nine
thousand and seventy-three acres in the great tract, and the remainder
in the small tract. But suppose you had really fallen short, do you
think your superlative merit entitles you to greater indulgence than
others? Or, if it did, that I was to make it good to you, when it was
at the option of the Governor and Council to allow but five hundred
acres in the whole, if they had been so inclined? If either of these
should happen to be your opinion, I am very well convinced that you
will be singular in it; and all my concern is, that I ever engaged in
behalf of so ungrateful a fellow as you are. But you may still be in
need of my assistance, as I can inform you, that your affairs, in
respect to these lands, do not stand upon so solid a basis as you
imagine, and this you may take by way of hint. I wrote to you a few
days ago concerning the other distribution, proposing an easy method of
dividing our lands; but since I find in what temper you are, I am sorry
I took the trouble of mentioning the land or your name in a letter, as
I do not think you merit the least assistance from me.”
The Braddock campaign brought acquaintance with one which did not end
in friendship, however amicable the beginning. There can be little
doubt that there was cameraderie with the then Lieutenant-Colonel Gage,
for in 1773, when in New York for four days, Washington “Dined with
Gen. Gage,” and also “dined at the entertainment given by the citizens
of New York to Genl. Gage.” When next intercourse was resumed, it was
by formal correspondence between the commanders-in-chief of two hostile
armies, Washington inquiring as to the treatment of prisoners, and as a
satisfactory reply was not obtained, he wrote again, threatening
retaliation, and “closing my correspondence with you, perhaps forever,”
—a letter which Charles Lee thought “a very good one, but Gage
certainly deserved a stronger one, such as it was before it was
softened.” One cannot but wonder what part the old friendship played in
this “softening.”
Relations with the Howes began badly by a letter from Lord Howe
addressed “George Washington, Esq.,” which Washington declined to
receive as not recognizing his official position. A second one to
“George Washington, Esq. &c. &c. &c.” met with the same fate, and
brought the British officer “to change my superscription.” A little
after this brief war of forms, a letter from Washington to his wife was
intercepted with others by the enemy, and General Howe enclosed it,
“happy to return it without the least attempt being made to discover
any part of the contents.” This courtesy the American commander
presently was able to reciprocate by sending “General Washington’s
compliments to General Howe,—does himself the pleasure to return to him
a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and, by the inscription
on the collar, appears to belong to General Howe.” Even politeness had
its objections, however, at moments, and Washington once had to write
Sir William,—
“There is one passage of your letter, which I cannot forbear taking
particular notice of. No expression of personal politeness to me can be
acceptable, accompanied by reflections on the representatives of a free
people, under whose authority I have the honor to act. The delicacy I
have observed, in refraining from everything offensive in this way,
entitles me to expect a similar treatment from you. I have not indulged
myself in invective against the present rulers of Great Britain, in the
course of our correspondence, nor will I even now avail myself of so
fruitful a theme.”
Apparently when Sir Henry Clinton succeeded to the command of the
British army the same old device to insult the General was again tried,
for Dumas states that Washington “received a despatch from Sir Henry
Clinton, addressed to ‘Mr. Washington.’ Taking it from the hands of the
flag of truce, and seeing the direction, ‘This letter,’ said he, ‘is
directed to a planter of the state of Virginia. I shall have it
delivered to him after the end of the war; till that time it shall not
be opened.’ A second despatch was addressed to his Excellency General
Washington.” A better lesson in courtesy was contained in a letter from
Washington to him, complaining of “wanton, unprecedented and inhuman
murder,” which closed with the following: “I beg your Excellency to be
persuaded, that it cannot be more disagreeable to you to be addressed
in this language, than it is to me to offer it; but the subject
requires frankness and decision.”
Quite as firm was one addressed to Cornwallis, which read,—
“It is with infinite regret, I am again compelled to remonstrate
against that spirit of wanton cruelty, that has in several instances
influenced the conduct of your soldiery. A recent exercise of it
towards an unhappy officer of ours, Lieutenant Harris, convinces me,
that my former representations on this subject have been unavailing.
That Gentleman by the fortunes of war, on Saturday last was thrown into
the hands of a party of your horse, and unnecessarily murdered with the
most aggravated circumstances of barbarity. I wish not to wound your
Lordship’s feelings, by commenting on this event; but I think it my
duty to send his mangled body to your lines as an undeniable testimony
of the fact, should it be doubted, and as the best appeal to your
humanity for the justice of our complaint.”
A pleasanter intercourse came with the surrender of Yorktown, after
which not merely were Cornwallis and his officers saved the
mortification of surrendering their swords, but the chief among them
were entertained at dinner by Washington. At this meal, so a
contemporary account states, “Rochhambeau, being asked for a toast,
gave _‘The United States’_. Washington gave _‘The King of France’_.
Lord Cornwallis, simply _‘The King’_; but Washington, putting that
toast, added, _‘of England’_, and facetiously, _‘confine him there,
I’ll drink him a full bumper’_, filling his glass till it ran over.
Rochambeau, with great politeness, was still so French, that he would
every now and then be touching on points that were improper, and a
breach of real politeness. Washington often checked him, and showed in
a more saturnine manner, the infinite esteem he had for his gallant
prisoner, whose private qualities the Americans admired even in a foe,
that had so often filled them with the most cruel alarms.” Many years
later, when Cornwallis was governor-general of India, he sent a verbal
message to his old foe, wishing “General Washington a long enjoyment of
tranquility and happiness,” adding that for himself he “continued in
troubled waters.”
[Illustration: MRS WASHINGTON]
Turning from these public rather than personal foes, a very different
type of enemies is encountered in those inimical to Washington in his
own army. Chief of these was Horatio Gates, with whom Washington had
become acquainted in the Braddock campaign, and with whom there was
friendly intercourse from that time until the Revolution. In 1775, at
Washington’s express solicitation, Gates was appointed adjutant- and
brigadier-general, and in a letter thanking Washington for the favor he
professed to have “the greatest respect for your character and the
sincerest attachment to your person.” Nevertheless, he very early in
the war suggested that a committee of Congress be sent to camp to keep
watch on Washington, and as soon as he was in a separate command he
began to curry favor with Congress and scheme against his commander.
This was not unknown to Washington, who afterwards wrote, “I discovered
very early in the war symptoms of coldness & constraint in General
Gates’ behavior to me. These increased as he rose into greater
consequence.”
When Burgoyne capitulated to Gates, he sent the news to Congress and
not to Washington, and though he had no further need for troops the
commander-in-chief had sent him, he endeavored to prevent their return
at a moment when every man was needed in the main army. His attitude
towards Washington was so notorious that his friends curried favor with
him by letters criticising the commander, and when, by chance, the
General learned of the contents of one of these letters, and news to
that effect reached the ears of Gates, he practically charged
Washington with having obtained his knowledge by dishonorable means;
but Washington more than repaid the insult, in telling Gates how he had
learned of the affair, by adding that he had “considered the
information as coming from yourself, and given with a friendly view to
forewarn and consequently forearm me, against a secret enemy … but in
this, as in other matters of late, I have found myself mistaken.”
Driven to the wall, Gates wrote to Washington a denial that the letter
contained the passage in question, which was an absolute lie, and this
untruth typifies his character. Without expressing either belief or
disbelief in this denial, Washington replied,—
“I am as averse to controversy as any man, and had I not been forced
into it, you never would have had occasion to impute to me, even the
shadow of disposition towards it. Your repeatedly and solemnly
disclaiming any offensive views in those matters, which have been the
subject of our past correspondence makes me willing to close with the
desire, you express, of burying them hereafter in silence, and, as far
as future events will permit, oblivion. My temper leads me to peace and
harmony with all men; and it is peculiarly my wish to avoid any
personal feuds or dissentions with those who are embarked in the same
great national interest with, myself; as every difference of this kind
must in its consequence be very injurious.”
After this affair subsided, Washington said,—
“I made a point of treating Gen. Gates with all the attention and
cordiality in my power, as well from a sincere desire of harmony, as
from an unwillingness to give any cause of triumph among ourselves. I
can appeal to the world, and to the whole army, whether I have not
cautiously avoided offending Gen. Gates in any way. I am sorry his
conduct to me has not been equally generous, and that he is continually
giving me fresh proofs of malevolence and opposition. It will not be
doing him injustice to say, that, besides the little underhand
intrigues which he is frequently practising, there has hardly been any
great military question, in which his advice has been asked, that it
has not been given in an equivocal and designing manner, apparently
calculated to afford him an opportunity of censuring me, on the failure
of whatever measures might be adopted.”
After the defeat of Gates at Camden, the Prince de Broglie wrote that
“I saw General Gates at the house of General Washington, with whom he
had had a misunderstanding…. This interview excited the curiosity of
both armies. It passed with a most perfect propriety on the part of
both gentlemen. Mr. Washington treated Mr. Gates with a politeness
which had a frank and easy air, while the other responded with that
shade of respect which was proper towards his general.” And how
fair-minded Washington was is shown by his refusal to interfere in an
army matter, because, “considering the delicate situation in which I
stand with respect to General Gates, I feel an unwillingness to give
any opinion (even in a confidential way) in a matter in which he is
concerned, lest my sentiments (being known) should have unfavorable
interpretations ascribed to them by illiberal Minds.” Yet the
friendship was never restored, and when the two after the war were
associated in the Potomac company, Washington’s sense of the old
treachery was still so keen that he alluded to the appointment of “my
bosom friend Genl G-tes, who being at Richmond, contrived to edge
himself in to the commission.”
Thomas Conway was Washington’s traducer to Gates. He was an
Irish-French soldier of fortune who unfortunately had been made a
brigadier-general in the Continental army. Having made friends of the
New England delegates in Congress, it was then proposed by them to
advance him to the rank of major-general, which Washington opposed, on
the grounds that “his merit and importance exist more in his
imagination than in reality.” For the moment this was sufficient to
prevent Conway’s promotion, and even if he had not before been opposed
to his commander, he now became his bitter enemy. To more than Gates he
said or wrote, “A great & good God has decreed that America shall be
free, or Washington and weak counsellors would have ruined her long
ago.” Upon word of this reaching Washington, so Laurens tells, “The
genl immediately copied the contents of the paper, introducing them
with ‘sir,’ and concluding with, ‘I am your humble servt,’ and sent
this copy in the form of a letter to Genl Conway. This drew an answer,
in which he first attempts to deny the fact, and then in a most
shameless manner, to explain away the matter. The perplexity of his
style, and evident insincerity of his compliments, betray his weak
sentiments, and expose his guilt.”
Yet, though detected, Conway complained to the Continental Congress
that Washington was not treating him properly, and in reply to an
inquiry from a member the General acknowledged that,—
“If General Conway means by cool receptions mentioned in the last
paragraph of his letter of the 31st ultimo, that I did not receive him
in the language of a warm and cordial friend, I readily confess the
charge. I did not, nor shall I ever, till I am capable of the arts of
dissimulation. These I despise, and my feelings will not permit me to
make professions of friendship to the man I deem my enemy, and whose
system of conduct forbids it. At the same time, truth authorizes me to
say, that he was received and treated with proper respect to his
official character, and that he has had no cause to justify the
assertion, that he could not expect any support for fulfilling the
duties of his appointment.”
In spite of Washington’s opposition, Conway’s friends were numerous
enough in the Congress finally to elect him major-general, at the same
time appointing him inspector-general. Elated with this evident
partiality of the majority of that body for him, he went even further,
and Laurens states that he was guilty of a “base insult” to Washington,
which “affects the General very sensibly,” and he continues,—
“It is such an affront as Conway would never have dared to offer, if
the General’s situation had not assured him of the impossibility of its
being revenged in a private way. The Genl, therefore, has determined to
return him no answer at all, but to lay the whole matter before
Congress; they will determine whether Genl W. is to be sacrificed to
Genl. C., for the former can never consent to be concern’d in any
transaction with the latter, from whom he has received such
unpardonable insults.”
Fortunately, Conway did not limit his “insulting letters” to the
commander-in-chief alone, and presently he sent one to Congress
threatening to resign, which so angered that body that they took him at
his word. Moreover, his open abuse of Washington led an old-time friend
of the latter to challenge him, and to lodge a ball, with almost poetic
justice, in Conway’s mouth. Thinking himself on the point of death, he
wrote a farewell line to Washington “expressing my sincere grief for
having done, written or said anything disagreeable to your Excellency….
You are in my eyes a great and good man.” And with this recantation he
disappeared from the army. A third officer in this “cabal” was Thomas
Mifflin. He was the first man appointed on Washington’s staff at the
beginning of the war, but did not long remain in that position, being
promoted by Washington to be quartermaster-general. In this position
the rumor reached the General that Mifflin was “concerned in trade,”
and Washington took “occasion to hint” the suspicion to him, only to
get a denial from the officer. Whether this inquiry was a cause for
ill-feeling or not, Mifflin was one of the most outspoken against the
commander-in-chief as his opponents gathered force, and Washington
informed Henry that he “bore the second part in the cabal.” Mifflin
resigned from the army and took a position on the board of war, but
when the influence of that body broke down with the collapse of the
Cabal, he applied for a reappointment,—a course described by Washington
in plain English as follows:
“I was not a little surprised to find a certain gentleman, who, some
time ago (when a cloud of darkness hung heavy over us, and our affairs
looked gloomy,) was desirous of resigning, now stepping forward in the
line of the army. But if he can reconcile such conduct to his own,
feelings, as an officer and a man of honor, and Congress hath no
objections to his leaving his seat in another department, I have
nothing personally to oppose it. Yet I must think, that gentleman’s
stepping in and out, as the sun happens to beam forth or obscure, is
not _quite_ the thing, nor _quite_ just, with respect to those
officers, who take ye bitter with the sweet.”
Not long after Greene wrote that “I learn that General Mifflin has
publicly declared that he looked upon his Excellency as the best friend
he ever had in his life, so that is a plain sign that the Junto has
given up all ideas of supplanting our excellent general from a
confidence of the impracticability of such an attempt.”
A very minor but most malignant enemy was Dr. Benjamin Rush. In 1774
Washington dined with him in Philadelphia, which implied friendship.
Very early in the war, however, an attempt was made to remove the
director-general of hospitals, in which, so John Armstrong claimed,
“Morgan was the ostensible—Rush the real prosecutor of Shippen—the
former acting from revenge,… the latter from a desire to obtain the
directorship. In approving the sentence of the court, Washington
stigmatized the prosecution as one originating in bad motives, which
made Rush his enemy and defamer as long as he lived.” Certain it is he
wrote savage letters of criticism about his commander-in-chief of which
the following extract is a sample:
“I have heard several officers who have served under General Gates
compare his army to a well regulated family. The same gentlemen have
compared Gen’l Washington’s imitation of an army to an unformed mob.
Look at the characters of both! The one on the pinnacle of military
glory—exulting in the success of schemes planned with wisdom, &
executed with vigor and bravery—and above all see a country saved by
his exertions. See the other outgeneral’d and twice heated—obliged to
witness the march of a body of men only half their number thro’ 140
Miles of a thick settled country— forced to give up a city the capitol
of a state & after all outwitted by the same army in a retreat.”
Had Rush written only this, there would be no grounds for questioning
his methods; but, not content with spreading his opinions among his
friends, he took to anonymous letter-writing, and sent an unsigned
letter abusing Washington to the governor of Virginia (and probably to
others), with the request that the letter should be burned. Instead of
this, Henry sent it to Washington, who recognized at once the
handwriting, and wrote to Henry that Rush “has been elaborate and
studied in his professions of regard to me, and long since the letter
to you.” An amusing sequel to this incident is to be found in Rush
moving heaven and earth on the publication of Marshall’s “Life of
Washington” to prevent his name from appearing as one of the
commander-in-chief’s enemies.
After the collapse of the attempt Washington wrote to a friend, “I
thank you sincerely for the part you acted at York respecting C—-y, and
believe with you that matters have and will turn out very different to
what that party expected. G—-s has involved himself in his letters to
me in the most absurd contradictions. M—- has brought himself into a
scrape that he does not know how to get out of with a gentleman of this
State, and C—-, as you know is sent upon an expedition which all the
world knew, and the event has proved, was not practicable. In a word, I
have a good deal of reason to believe that the machination of this
junta will recoil upon their own heads, and be a means of bringing some
matters to light which, by getting me out of the way, some of them
thought to conceal.”
Undoubtedly the most serious army antagonist was General Charles Lee,
and, but for what seem almost fatalistic chances, he would have been a
dangerous rival. He was second in command very early in the war, and at
this time he asserted that “no man loves, respects and reverences
another more than I do General Washington. I esteem his virtues,
private and public. I know him to be a man of sense, courage and
firmness.” But four months later he was lamenting Washington’s “fatal
indecision,” and by inference was calling him “a blunderer.” In another
month he wrote, “_entre nous_ a certain great man is most damnably
deficient.” At this point, fortunately, Lee was captured by the
British, so that his influence for the time being was destroyed. While
a prisoner he drew up a plan for the English general, showing how
America could be conquered.
When he had been exchanged, and led the American advance at the battle
of Monmouth, he seems to have endeavored to aid the British in another
way, for after barely engaging, he ordered a retreat, which quickly
developed into a rout, and would have ended in a serious defeat had
not, as Laurens wrote, “fortunately for the honor of the army, and the
welfare of America, Genl Washington met the troops retreating in
disorder, and without any plan to make an opposition. He ordered some
pieces of artillery to be brought up to defend the pass, and some
troops to form and defend the pieces. The artillery was too distant to
be brought up readily, so that there was but little opposition given
here. A few shot though, and a little skirmishing in the wood checked
the enemy’s career. The Genl expressed his astonishment at this
unaccountable retreat Mr. Lee indecently replied that the attack was
contrary to his advice and opinion in council.”
In a fit of temper Lee wrote Washington two imprudent letters,
expressed “in terms [so] highly improper” that he was ordered under
arrest and tried by a court-martial, which promptly found him guilty of
disobedience and disrespect, as well as of making a “disorderly and
unnecessary retreat.” To this Lee retorted, “I aver that his
Excellencies letter was from beginning to the end a most abominable
lie—I aver that my conduct will stand the strictest scrutiny of every
military judge—I aver that my Court Martial was a Court of
Inquisition—that there was not a single member with a military idea—at
least if I may pronounce from the different questions they put to the
evidences.”
In this connection it is of interest to note a letter from Washington’s
friend Mason, which said, “You express a fear that General Lee will
challenge our friend. Indulge in no such apprehensions, for he too well
knows the sentiments of General Washington on the subject of duelling.
From his earliest manhood I have heard him express his contempt of the
man who sends and the man who accepts a challenge, for he regards such
acts as no proof of moral courage; and the practice he abhors as a
relic of old barbarisms, repugnant alike to sound morality and
Christian enlightenment.”
A little later, still smarting from this court-martial, Lee wrote to a
newspaper a savage attack on his late commander, apparently in the
belief, as he said in a private letter, that “there is … a visible
revolution … in the minds of men, I mean that our Great Gargantua, or
Lama Babak (for I know not which Title is the properest) begins to be
no longer consider’d as an infallible Divinity—and that those who have
been sacrificed or near sacrific’d on his altar, begin to be esteem’d
as wantonly and foolishly offer’d up.” Lee very quickly found his
mistake, for the editor of the paper which contained his attack was
compelled by a committee of citizens to publish an acknowledgment that
in printing it “I have transgressed against truth, justice and my duty
as a good citizen,” and, as Washington wrote to a friend, “the author
of the Queries, ‘Political and Military,’ has had no cause to exult in
the favorable reception of them by the public.” With Lee’s
disappearance the last army rival dropped from the ranks, and from that
time there was no question as to who should command the armies of
America. Long after, a would-be editor of Lee’s papers wrote to
Washington to ask if he had any wishes in regard to the publication,
and was told in the reply that,—
“I never had a difference with that gentleman, but on public ground,
and my conduct towards him upon this occasion was such only, as I
conceived myself indispensably bound to adopt in discharge of the
public trust reposed in me. If this produced in him unfavorable
sentiments of me, I yet can never consider the conduct I pursued, with
respect to him, either wrong or improper, however I may regret that it
may have been differently viewed by him and that it excited his censure
and animadversions. Should there appear in General Lee’s writings any
thing injurious or unfriendly to me, the impartial and dispassionate
world must decide how far I deserved it from the general tenor of my
conduct.”
These attempts to undermine Washington owed their real vitality to the
Continental Congress, and it is safe to say that but for Washington’s
political enemies no army rival would have ventured to push forward. In
what the opposition in that body consisted, and to what length it went,
are discussed elsewhere, but a glance at the reasons of hostility to
him is proper here.
John Adams declared himself “sick of the Fabian systems,” and in
writing of the thanksgiving for the Saratoga Convention, he said that
“one cause of it ought to be that the glory of turning the tide of arms
is not immediately due to the commander-in-chief…. If it had, idolatry
and adulation would have been unbounded.” James Lovell asserted that
“Our affairs are Fabiused into a very disagreeable posture,” and wrote
that “depend upon it for every ten soldiers placed under the command of
our Fabius, five recruits will be wanted annually during the war.”
William Williams agreed with Jonathan Trumbull that the time had come
when “a much exalted character should make way for a _general_” and
suggested if this was not done “voluntarily,” those to whom the public
looked should “see to it.” Abraham Clark thought “we may talk of the
Enemy’s Cruelty as we will, but we have no greater Cruelty to complain
of than the Management of our Army.” Jonathan D. Sargent asserted that
“we want a general—thousands of Lives & Millions of Property are yearly
sacrificed to the Insufficiency of our Commander-in-Chief—Two Battles
he has lost for us by two such Blunders as might have disgraced a
Soldier of three months standing, and yet we are so attached to this
Man that I fear we shall rather sink with him than throw him off our
Shoulders. And sink we must under his Management. Such Feebleness, &
Want of Authority, such Confusion & Want of Discipline, such Waste,
such destruction would exhaust the Wealth of both the Indies &
annihilate the armies of all Europe and Asia.” Richard Henry Lee agreed
with Mifflin that Gates was needed to “procure the indispensable
changes in our Army.” Other Congressmen who were inimical to
Washington, either by openly expressed opinion or by vote, were
Elbridge Gerry, Samuel Adams, William Ellery, Eliphalet Dyer, Roger
Sherman, Samuel Chase, and F.L. Lee. Later, when Washington’s position
was more secure, Gerry and R.H. Lee wrote to him affirming their
friendship, and to both the General replied without a suggestion of
ill-feeling, nor does he seem, in later life, to have felt a trace of
personal animosity towards any one of the men who had been in
opposition to him in Congress. Of this enmity in the army and Congress
Washington wrote,—
“It is easy to bear the first, and even the devices of private enemies
whose ill will only arises from their common hatred to the cause we are
engaged in, are to me tolerable; yet, I confess, I cannot help feeling
the most painful sensations, whenever I have reason to believe I am the
object of persecution to men, who are embarked in the same general
interest, and whose friendship my heart does not reproach me with, ever
having done any thing to forfeit. But with many, it is a sufficient
cause to hate and wish the ruin of a man, because he has been happy
enough, to be the object of _his country’s_ favor.”
The political course of Washington while President produced the
alienation of the two Virginians whom he most closely associated with
himself in the early part of his administration. With Madison the break
does not seem to have come from any positive ill-feeling, but was
rather an abandonment of intercourse as the differences of opinion
became more pronounced. The disagreement with Jefferson was more acute,
though probably never forced to an open rupture. To his political
friends Jefferson in 1796 wrote that the measures pursued by the
administration were carried out “under the sanction of a name which has
done too much good not to be sufficient to cover harm also,” and that
he hoped the President’s “honesty and his political errors may not
furnish a second occasion to exclaim, ‘curse on his virtues, they’ve
undone his country.’” Henry Lee warned Washington of the undercurrent
of criticism, and when Jefferson heard indirectly of this he wrote his
former chief that “I learn that [Lee] has thought it worth his while to
try to sow tares between you and me, by representing me as still
engaged in the bustle of politics & in turbulence & intrigue against
the government. I never believed for a moment that this could make any
impression on you, or that your knowledge of me would not overweigh the
slander of an intriguer dirtily employed in sifting the conversations
of my table.” To this Washington replied,—
“As you have mentioned the subject yourself, it would not be frank,
candid or friendly to conceal, that your conduct has been represented
as derogating from that opinion _I_ had conceived you entertained of
me; that, to your particular friends and connexions you have described,
and they have denounced me as a person under a dangerous influence; and
that, if I would listen more to some _other_ opinions, all would be
well. My answer invariably has been, that I had never discovered any
thing in the conduct of Mr. Jefferson to raise suspicions in my mind of
his insincerity; that, if he would retrace my public conduct while he
was in the administration, abundant proofs would occur to him, that
truth and right decisions were the _sole_ objects of my pursuit; that
there was as many instances within his own knowledge of my having
decided _against_ as in _favor_ of the opinions of the person evidently
alluded to; and, I was no believer in the infallibility of the politics
or measures of _any man living_. In short that I was no party man
myself and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to
reconcile them.”
As proof upon proof of Jefferson’s secret enmity accumulated,
Washington ceased to trust his disclaimers, and finally wrote to one of
his informants, “Nothing short of the evidence you have adduced,
corroborative of intimations which I had received long before through
another channel, could have shaken my belief in the sincerity of a
friendship, which I had conceived as possessed for me by the person to
whom you allude. But attempts to injure those, who are supposed to
stand well in the estimation of the people, and are stumbling blocks in
the way, by misrepresenting their political tenets, thereby to destroy
all confidence in them, are among the means by which the government is
to be assailed, and the constitution destroyed.”
Once convinced, all relations with Jefferson were terminated. It is
interesting in this connection to note something repeated by Madison,
to the effect that “General Lafayette related to me the following
anecdote, which I shall repeat as nearly as I can in his own words.
‘When I last saw Mr. Jefferson,’ he observed, ‘we conversed a good deal
about General Washington, and Mr. Jefferson expressed high admiration
of his character. He remarked particularly that he and Hamilton often
disagreed when they were members of the Cabinet, and that General
Washington would sometimes favor the opinion of one and sometimes the
other, with an apparent strict impartiality. And Mr. Jefferson added
that, so sound was Washington’s judgment, that he was commonly
convinced afterwards of the accuracy of his decision, whether it
accorded with the opinion he had himself first advanced or not.’”
[Illustration: EARLIEST SIGNATURE OF WASHINGTON]
A third Virginian who was almost as closely associated was Edmund
Randolph. There had been a friendship with his father, until he turned
Tory and went to England, when, according to Washington’s belief, he
wrote the “forged letters” which gave Washington so much trouble. For
the sake of the old friendship, however, he gave the son a position on
his staff, and from that time was his friend and correspondent. In the
first administration he was made Attorney-General, and when Jefferson
retired from office he became Secretary of State. In this position he
was charged with political dishonesty. Washington gave him a chance to
explain, but instead he resigned from office and published what he
called “a vindication,” in which he charged the President with
“prejudging,” “concealment,” and “want of generosity.” Continuing, he
said, “never … could I have believed that in addressing you … I should
use any other language than that of a friend. From my early period of
life, I was taught to esteem you—as I advanced in years, I was
habituated to revere you:—you strengthened my prepossessions by marks
of attention.” And in another place he acknowledged the weakness of his
attack by saying, “still however, those very objections, the very
reputation which you have acquired, will cause it to be asked, why you
should be suspected of acting towards me, in any other manner, than
deliberately, justly and even kindly?”
In the preparation of this pamphlet Randolph wrote the President a
letter which the latter asserted was “full of innuendoes,” and one
statement in the pamphlet he denounced as being “as impudent and
insolent an assertion as it is false.” And his irritation at this
treatment from one he had always befriended gave rise to an incident,
narrated by James Ross, at a breakfast at the President’s, when “after
a little while the Secretary of War came in, and said to Washington,
‘Have you seen Mr. Randolph’s pamphlet?’ ‘I have,’ said Washington,
‘and, by the eternal God, he is the damnedest liar on the face of the
earth!’ and as he spoke he brought his fist down upon the table with
all his strength, and with a violence which made the cups and plates
start from their places.” Fortunately, the attack was ineffective;
indeed, Hamilton wrote that “I consider it as amounting to a confession
of guilt; and I am persuaded this will be the universal opinion. His
attempts against you are viewed by all whom I have seen, as base. They
will certainly fail of their aim, and will do good rather than harm, to
the public cause and to yourself. It appears to me that, by you, no
notice can be, or ought to be, taken of the publication. It contains
its own antidote.”
Not content with this double giving up of what to any man of honor was
confidential, Randolph, a little later, rested under Washington’s
suspicions of a third time breaking the seal of official secrecy by
sending a Cabinet paper to the newspapers for no other purpose than to
stir up feeling against Washington. But after his former patron’s death
regret came, and Randolph wrote to Bushrod Washington, “If I could now
present myself before your venerated uncle it would be my pride to
confess my contrition that I suffered my irritation, be the cause what
it might, to use some of those expressions respecting him which, at
this moment … I wish to recall as being inconsistent with my subsequent
convictions.”
Another type of enemy, more or less the result of this differing with
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Randolph, was sundry editors and
writers who gathered under their patronage and received aids of money
or of secret information. One who prospered for a time by abusing
Washington was Philip Freneau. He was a college friend of Madison’s,
and was induced to undertake the task by his and Jefferson’s urging,
though the latter denied this later. As aid to the undertaking,
Jefferson, then Secretary of State, gave Freneau an office, and thus
produced the curious condition of a clerk in the government writing and
printing savage attacks on the President. Washington was much irritated
at the abuse, and Jefferson in his “Anas” said that he “was evidently
sore & warm and I took his intention to be that I should interpose in
some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating
clerk to my office. But I will not do it.” According to the French
minister, some of the worst of these articles were written by Jefferson
himself, and Freneau is reported to have said, late in life, that many
of them were written by the Secretary of State.
Far more indecent was the paper conducted by Benjamin Franklin Bache,
who, early in the Presidency, applied for a place in the government,
which for some reason not now known was refused. According to Cobbett,
who hated him, “this … scoundrel … spent several years in hunting
offices under the Federal Government, and being constantly rejected, he
at last became its most bitter foe. Hence his abuse of General
Washington, whom at the time he was soliciting a place he panegyrized
up to the third heaven.” Certain it is that under his editorship the
_General Advertiser_ and _Aurora_ took the lead in all criticisms of
Washington, and not content with these opportunities for daily and
weekly abuse, Bache (though the fact that they were forgeries was
notorious) reprinted the “spurious letters which issued from a certain
press in New York during the war, with a view to destroy the confidence
which the army and community might have had in my political
principles,—and which have lately been republished with greater avidity
and perseverance than ever, by Mr. Bache to answer the same nefarious
purpose with the latter,” and Washington added that “immense pains has
been taken by this said Mr. Bache, who is no more than the agent or
tool of those who are endeavoring to destroy the confidence of the
people, in the officers of Government (chosen by themselves) to
disseminate these counterfeit letters.” In addition Bache wrote a
pamphlet, with the avowal that “the design of these remarks is to prove
the want of claim in Mr. Washington either to the gratitude or
confidence of his country…. Our chief object … is to _destroy undue
impressions in favor of Mr. Washington_.” Accordingly it charged that
Washington was “treacherous,” “mischievous,” “inefficient;” dwelt upon
his “farce of disinterestedness,” his “stately journeyings through the
American continent in search of personal incense,” his “ostentatious
professions of piety,” his “pusillanimous neglect,” his “little
passions,” his “ingratitude,” his “want of merit,” his
“insignificance,” and his “spurious fame.”
The successor of Bache as editor of these two journals, William Duane,
came to the office with an equal hatred of Washington, having already
written a savage pamphlet against him. In this the President was
charged with “treacherous mazes of passion,” and with having
“discharged the loathings of a sick mind.” Furthermore it asserted
“that had you obtained promotion … after Braddock’s defeat, your sword
would have been drawn against your country,” that Washington “retained
the barbarous usages of the feudal system and kept men in Livery,” and
that “posterity will in vain search for the monuments of wisdom in your
administration;” the purpose of the pamphlet, by the author’s own
statement, being “to expose the _Personal Idolatry_ into which we have
been heedlessly running,” and to show the people the “fallibility of
the most favored of men.”
A fourth in this quartet of editors was the notorious James Thomson
Callender, whose publications were numerous, as were also his
impeachments against Washington. By his own account, this writer
maintained, “Mr. Washington has been twice a traitor,” has “authorized
the robbery and ruin of the remnants of his own army,” has “broke the
constitution,” and Callender fumes over “the vileness of the adulation
which has been paid” to him, claiming that “the extravagant popularity
possessed by this citizen reflects the utmost ridicule on the
discernment of America.”
The bitterest attack, however, was penned by Thomas Paine. For many
years there was good feeling between the two, and in 1782, when Paine
was in financial distress, Washington used his influence to secure him
a position “out of friendship for me,” as Paine acknowledged.
Furthermore, Washington tried to get the Virginia Legislature to
pension Paine or give him a grant of land, an endeavor for which the
latter was “exceedingly obliged.” When Paine published his “Rights of
Man” he dedicated it to Washington, with an inscription dwelling on his
“exemplary virtue” and his “benevolence;” while in the body of the work
he asserted that no monarch of Europe had a character to compare with
Washington’s, which was such as to “put all those men called kings to
shame.” Shortly after this, however, Washington refused to appoint him
Postmaster-General; and still later, when Paine had involved himself
with the French, the President, after consideration, decided that
governmental interference was not proper. Enraged by these two acts,
Paine published a pamphlet in which he charged Washington with
“encouraging and swallowing the greatest adulation,” with being “the
patron of fraud,” with a “mean and servile submission to the insults of
one nation, treachery and ingratitude to another,” with “falsehood,”
“ingratitude,” and “pusillanimity;” and finally, after alleging that
the General had not “served America with more disinterestedness or
greater zeal, than myself, and I know not if with better effect,” Paine
closed his attack by the assertion, “and as to you, sir, _treacherous
in private friendship_, and a _hypocrite_ in public life, the world
will be puzzled to decide, whether you are an _apostate_ or an
_impostor_; whether you have _abandoned good principles_, or whether
_you ever had any?_”
Washington never, in any situation, took public notice of these
attacks, and he wrote of a possible one, “I am gliding down the stream
of life, and wish, as is natural, that my remaining days may be
undisturbed and tranquil; and, conscious of my integrity, I would
willingly hope, that nothing would occur tending to give me anxiety;
but should anything present itself in this or any other publication, I
shall never undertake the painful task of recrimination, nor do I know
that I should even enter upon my justification.” To a friend he said,
“my temper leads me to peace and harmony with all men; and it is
peculiarly my wish to avoid any feuds or dissentions with those who are
embarked in the same great national interest with myself; as every
difference of this kind must in its consequence be very injurious.”
XI
SOLDIER
“My inclinations,” wrote Washington at twenty-three, “are strongly bent
to arms,” and the tendency was a natural one, coming not merely from
his Indian-fighting great-grandfather, but from his elder brother
Lawrence, who had held a king’s commission in the Carthagena
expedition, and was one of the few officers who gained repute in that
ill-fated attempt. At Mount Vernon George must have heard much of
fighting as a lad, and when the ill health of Lawrence compelled
resignation of command of the district militia, the younger brother
succeeded to the adjutancy. This quickly led to the command of the
first Virginia regiment when the French and Indian War was brewing.
Twice Washington resigned in disgust during the course of the war, but
each time his natural bent, or “glowing zeal,” as he phrased it, drew
him back into the service. The moment the news of Lexington reached
Virginia he took the lead in organizing an armed force, and in the
Virginia Convention of 1775, according to Lynch, he “made the most
eloquent speech … that ever was made. Says he, ‘I will raise one
thousand men, enlist them at my own expense, and march myself at their
head for the relief of Boston.’” At fifty-three, in speaking of war,
Washington said, “my first wish is to see this plague to mankind
banished from off the earth;” but during his whole life, when there was
fighting to be done, he was among those who volunteered for the
service.
The personal courage of the man was very great. Jefferson, indeed, said
“he was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest
unconcern.” Before he had ever been in action, he noted of a certain
position that it was “a charming field for an encounter,” and his first
engagement he described as follows: “I fortunately escaped without any
wound, for the right wing, where I stood, was exposed to and received
all the enemy’s fire, and it was the part where the man was killed, and
the rest wounded. I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there
is something charming in the sound.” In his second battle, though he
knew that he was “to be attacked and by unequal numbers,” he promised
beforehand to “withstand” them “if there are five to one,” adding, “I
doubt not, but if you hear I am beaten, but you will, at the same
[time,] hear that we have done our duty, in fighting as long [as] there
was a possibility of hope,” and in this he was as good as his word.
When sickness detained him in the Braddock march, he halted only on
condition that he should receive timely notice of when the fighting was
to begin, and in that engagement he exposed himself so that “I had four
bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped
unhurt, altho’ death was levelling my companions on every side of me!”
Not content with such an experience, in the second march on Fort
Duquesne he “prayed” the interest of a friend to have his regiment part
of the “light troops” that were to push forward in advance of the main
army.
The same carelessness of personal danger was shown all through the
Revolution. At the battle of Brooklyn, on New York Island, at Trenton,
Germantown, and Monmouth, he exposed himself to the enemy’s fire, and
at the siege of Yorktown an eyewitness relates that “during the
assault, the British kept up an incessant firing of cannon and musketry
from their whole line. His Excellency General Washington, Generals
Lincoln and Knox with their aids, having dismounted, were standing in
an exposed situation waiting the result. Colonel Cobb, one of General
Washington’s aids, solicitous for his safety, said to his Excellency,
‘Sir, you are too much exposed here, had you not better step back a
little?’ ‘Colonel Cobb,’ replied his Excellency, ‘if you are afraid,
you have liberty to step back.’” It is no cause for wonder that an
officer wrote, “our army love their General very much, but they have
one thing against him, which is the little care he takes of himself in
any action. His personal bravery, and the desire he has of animating
his troops by example, make him fearless of danger. This occasions us
much uneasiness.”
[Illustration: WASHINGTON’S TRANSCRIPT OF THE RULES OF CIVILITY,
CIRCA 1744]
This fearlessness was equally shown by his hatred and, indeed,
non-comprehension of cowardice. In his first battle, upon the French
surrendering, he wrote to the governor, “if the whole Detach’t of the
French behave with no more Resolution than this chosen Party did, I
flatter myself we shall have no g’t trouble in driving them to the
d—-.” At Braddock’s defeat, though the regiment he had commanded
“behaved like men and died like soldiers,” he could hardly find words
to express his contempt for the conduct of the British “cowardly
regulars,” writing of their “dastardly behavior” when they “broke and
ran as sheep before hounds,” and raging over being “most scandalously”
and “shamefully beaten.” When the British first landed on New York
Island, and two New England brigades ran away from “a small party of
the enemy,” numbering about fifty, without firing a shot, he completely
lost his self-control at their “dastardly behavior,” and riding in
among them, it is related, he laid his cane over the officers’ backs,
“damned them for cowardly rascals,” and, drawing his sword, struck the
soldiers right and left with the flat of it, while snapping his pistols
at them. Greene states that the fugitives “left his Excellency on the
ground within eighty yards of the enemy, so vexed at the infamous
conduct of the troops, that he sought death rather than life,” and
Gordon adds that the General was only saved from his “hazardous
position” by his aides, who “caught the bridle of his horse and gave
him a different direction.” At Monmouth an aide stated that when he met
a man running away he was “exasperated … and threatened the man … he
would have him whipped,” and General Scott says that on finding Lee
retreating, “he swore like an angel from heaven.” Wherever in his
letters he alludes to cowardice it is nearly always coupled with the
adjectives “infamous,” “scandalous,” or others equally indicative of
loss of temper.
There can be no doubt that Washington had a high temper. Hamilton’s
allusion to his not being remarkable for “good temper” has already been
quoted, as has also Stuart’s remark that “all his features were
indicative of the strongest and most ungovernable passions, and had he
been born in the forests, he would have been the fiercest man among the
savage tribes.” Again Stuart is quoted by his daughter as follows:
“While talking one day with General Lee, my father happened to remark
that Washington had a tremendous temper, but held it under wonderful
control. General Lee breakfasted with the President and Mrs. Washington
a few days afterwards.
“‘I saw your portrait the other day,’ said the General, ‘but Stuart
says you have a tremendous temper.’
“‘Upon my word,’ said Mrs. Washington, coloring, ‘Mr. Stuart takes a
great deal upon himself to make such a remark.’
“‘But stay, my dear lady,’ said General Lee, ‘he added that the
president had it under wonderful control.’
“With something like a smile, General Washington remarked, ‘He is
right.’”
Lear, too, mentions an outburst of temper when he heard of the defeat
of St. Clair, and elsewhere records that in reading politics aloud to
Washington “he appeared much affected, and spoke with some degree of
asperity on the subject, which I endeavored to moderate, as I always
did on such occasions.” How he swore at Randolph and at Freneau is
mentioned elsewhere. Jefferson is evidence that “his temper was
naturally irritable and high-toned, but reflection and resolution had
obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it. If however it broke
its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath.”
Strikingly at variance with these personal qualities of courage and hot
blood is the “Fabian” policy for which he is so generally credited, and
a study of his military career goes far to dispel the conception that
Washington was the cautious commander that he is usually pictured.
In the first campaign, though near a vastly superior French force,
Washington precipitated the conflict by attacking and capturing an
advance party, though the delay of a few days would have brought him
large reinforcements. As a consequence he was very quickly surrounded,
and after a day’s fighting was compelled to surrender. In what light
his conduct was viewed at the time is shown in two letters, Dr. William
Smith writing, “the British cause,… has received a fatal Blow by the
entire defeat of Washington, whom I cannot but accuse of Foolhardiness
to have ventured so near a vigilant enemy without being certain of
their numbers, or waiting for Junction of some hundreds of our best
Forces, who are within a few Days’ March of him,” and Ann Willing
echoed this by saying, “the melancholy news has just arrived of the
loss of sixty men belonging to Col. Washington’s Company, who were
killed on the spot, and of the Colonel and Half-King being taken
prisoners, all owing to the obstinacy of Washington, who would not wait
for the arrival of reinforcements.”
Hardly less venturesome was he in the Braddock campaign, for “the
General (before they met in council,) asked my opinion concerning the
expedition. I urged it, in the warmest terms I was able, to push
forward, if we even did it with a small but chosen band, with such
artillery and light stores as were absolutely necessary; leaving the
heavy artillery, baggage, &c. with the rear division of the army, to
follow by slow and easy marches, which they might do safely, while we
were advanced in front.” How far the defeat of that force was due to
the division thus urged it is not possible to say, but it undoubtedly
made the French bolder and the English more subject to panic.
The same spirit was manifested in the Revolution. During the siege of
Boston he wrote to Reed, “I proposed [an assault] in council; but
behold, though we had been waiting all the year for this favorable
event the enterprise was thought too dangerous. Perhaps it was; perhaps
the irksomeness of my situation led me to undertake more than could be
warranted by prudence. I did not think so, and I am sure yet, that the
enterprise, if it had been undertaken with resolution, must have
succeeded.” He added that “the enclosed council of war:… being almost
unanimous, I must suppose it to be right; although, from a thorough
conviction of the necessity of attempting something against the
ministerial troops before a reinforcement should arrive, and while we
were favored with the ice, I was not only ready but willing, and
desirous of making the assault,” and a little later he said that had he
but foreseen certain contingencies “all the generals upon earth should
not have convinced me of the propriety of delaying an attack upon
Boston.”
In the defence of New York there was no chance to attack, but even when
our lines at Brooklyn had been broken and the best brigades in the army
captured, Washington hurried troops across the river, and intended to
contest the ground, ordering a retreat only when it was voted in the
affirmative by a council of war. At Harlem plains he was the attacking
party.
How with a handful of troops he turned the tide of defeat by attacking
at Trenton and Princeton is too well known to need recital. At
Germantown, too, though having but a few days before suffered defeat,
he attacked and well-nigh won a brilliant victory, because the British
officers did not dream that his vanquished army could possibly take the
initiative. When the foe settled down into winter quarters in
Philadelphia Laurens wrote, “our Commander-in-chief wishing ardently to
gratify the public expectation by making an attack upon the enemy …
went yesterday to view the works.” On submitting the project to a
council, however, they stood eleven to four against the attempt.
The most marked instance of Washington’s un-Fabian preferences, and
proof of the old saying that “councils of war never fight,” is
furnished in the occurrences connected with the battle of Monmouth.
When the British began their retreat across New Jersey, according to
Hamilton “the General unluckily called a council of war, the result of
which would have done honor to the most honorable society of mid-wives
and to them only. The purport was, that we should keep at a comfortable
distance from the enemy, and keep up a vain parade of annoying them by
detachment … The General, on mature reconsideration of what had been
resolved on, determined to pursue a different line of conduct at all
hazards.” Concerning this decision Pickering wrote,—
“His great caution in respect to the enemy, acquired him the name of
the American Fabius. From this _governing_ policy he is said to have
departed, when” at Monmouth he “indulged the most anxious desire to
close with his antagonist in general action. Opposed to his wishes was
the advice of his general officers. To this he for a time yielded; but
as soon as he discovered that the enemy had reached Monmouth Court
House, not more than twelve miles from the heights of Middletown, he
determined that he should not escape without a blow.”
Pickering considered this a “departure” from Washington’s “usual
practice and policy,” and cites Wadsworth, who said, in reference to
the battle of Monmouth, that the General appeared, on that occasion,
“to act from the impulses of his own mind.”
Thrice during the next three years plans for an attack on the enemy’s
lines at New York were matured, one of which had to be abandoned
because the British had timely notice of it by the treachery of an
American general, a second because the other generals disapproved the
attempt, and, on the authority of Humphreys, “the accidental
intervention of some vessels prevented [another] attempt, which was
more than once resumed afterwards. Notwithstanding this favorite
project was not ultimately effected, it was evidently not less bold in
conception or feasible in accomplishment, than that attempted so
successfully at Trenton, or than that which was brought to so glorious
an issue in the successful siege of Yorktown.”
As this _résumé_ indicates, the most noticeable trait of Washington’s
military career was a tendency to surrender his own opinions and wishes
to those over whom he had been placed, and this resulted in a general
agreement not merely that he was disposed to avoid action, but that he
lacked decision. Thus his own aide, Reed, in obvious contrast to
Washington, praised Lee because “you have decision, a quality often
wanted in minds otherwise valuable,” continuing, “Oh! General, an
indecisive mind is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall an
army; how often have I lamented it this campaign,” and Lee in reply
alluded to “that fatal indecision of mind.” Pickering relates meeting
General Greene and saying to him, “‘I had once conceived an exalted
opinion of General Washington’s military talents; but since I have been
with the army, I have seen nothing to increase that opinion.’ Greene
answered, ‘Why, the General does want decision: for my part, I decide
in a moment.’ I used the word ‘increase,’ though I meant ‘support,’ but
did not dare speak it.” Wayne exclaimed “if our worthy general will but
follow his own good judgment without listening too much to some
counsel!” Edward Thornton, probably repeating the prevailing public
estimate of the time rather than his own conclusion, said, “a certain
degree of indecision, however, a want of vigor and energy, may be
observed in some of his actions, and are indeed the obvious result of
too refined caution.”
Undoubtedly this leaning on others and the want of decision were not
merely due to a constitutional mistrust of his own ability, but also in
a measure to real lack of knowledge. The French and Indian War, being
almost wholly “bush-fighting,” was not of a kind to teach strategic
warfare, and in his speech accepting the command Washington requested
that “it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room, that I this
day declare with the utmost sincerity I do not think myself equal to
the command I am honored with.” Indeed, he very well described himself
and his generals when he wrote of one officer, “his wants are common to
us all—the want of experience to move upon a large scale, for the
limited and contracted knowledge, which any of us have in military
matters, stands in very little stead.” There can be no question that in
most of the “field” engagements of the Revolution Washington was
out-generalled by the British, and Jefferson made a just distinction
when he spoke of his having often “failed in the field, and rarely
against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York.”
The lack of great military genius in the commander-in-chief has led
British writers to ascribe the results of the war to the want of
ability in their own generals, their view being well summed up by a
writer in 1778, who said, “in short, I am of the opinion … that any
other General in the world than General Howe would have beaten General
Washington; and any other General in the world than General Washington
would have beaten General Howe.”
This is, in effect, to overlook the true nature of the contest, for it
was their very victories that defeated the British. They conquered New
Jersey, to meet defeat; they captured Philadelphia, only to find it a
danger; they established posts in North Carolina, only to abandon them;
they overran Virginia, to lay down their arms at Yorktown. As
Washington early in the war divined, the Revolution was “a war of
posts,” and he urged the danger of “dividing and subdividing our Force
too much [so that] we shall have no one post sufficiently guarded,”
saying, “it is a military observation strongly supported by experience,
‘that a superior army may fall a sacrifice to an inferior, by an
injudicious division.’” It was exactly this which defeated the British;
every conquest they made weakened their force, and the war was not a
third through when Washington said, “I am well convinced myself, that
the enemy, long ere this, are perfectly well satisfied, that the
possession of our towns, while we have an army in the field, will avail
them little.” As Franklin said, when the news was announced that Howe
had captured Philadelphia, “No, Philadelphia has captured Howe.”
The problem of the Revolution was not one of military strategy, but of
keeping an army in existence, and it was in this that the
commander-in-chief’s great ability showed itself. The British could and
did repeatedly beat the Continental army, but they could not beat the
General, and so long as he was in the field there was a rallying ground
for whatever fighting spirit there was.
The difficulty of this task can hardly be over-magnified. When
Washington assumed command of the forces before Boston, he “found a
mixed multitude of people … under very little discipline, order, or
government,” and “confusion and disorder reigned in every department,
which, in a little time, must have ended either in the separation of
the army or fatal contests with one another.” Before he was well in the
saddle his general officers were quarrelling over rank, and resigning;
there was such a scarcity of powder that it was out of the question for
some months to do anything; and the British sent people infected with
small-pox to the Continental army, with a consequent outbreak of that
pest.
Hardly had he brought order out of chaos when the army he had taken
such pains to discipline began to melt away, having been by political
folly recruited for short terms, and the work was to be all done over.
Again and again during the war regiments which had been enlisted for
short periods left him at the most critical moment. Very typical
occurrences he himself tells of, when Connecticut troops could “not be
prevailed upon to stay longer than their term (saving those who have
enlisted for the next campaign, and mostly on furlough), and such a
dirty, mercenary spirit pervades the whole, that I should not be at all
surprised at any disaster that may happen,” and when he described how
in his retreat through New Jersey, “The militia, instead of calling
forth their utmost efforts to a brave and manly opposition in order to
repair our losses, are dismayed, intractable, and impatient to return.
Great numbers of them have gone off; in some instances, almost by whole
regiments, by half ones, and by companies at a time.” Another instance
of this evil occurred when “the Continental regiments from the eastern
governments … agreed to stay six weeks beyond their term of
enlistment…. For this extraordinary mark of their attachment to their
country, I have agreed to give them a bounty of ten dollars per man,
besides their pay running on.” The men took the bounty, and nearly
one-half went off a few days after.
Nor was this the only evil of the policy of short enlistments. Another
was that the new troops not merely were green soldiers, but were
without discipline. At New York Tilghman wrote that after the battle of
Brooklyn the “Eastern” soldiers were “plundering everything that comes
in their way,” and Washington in describing the condition said, “every
Hour brings the most distressing complaints of the Ravages of our own
Troops who are become infinitely more formidable to the poor Farmers
and Inhabitants than the common Enemy. Horses are taken out of the
Continental Teams; the Baggage of Officers and the Hospital Stores,
even the Quarters of General Officers are not exempt from Rapine.” At
the most critical moment of the war the New Jersey militia not merely
deserted, but captured and took with them nearly the whole stores of
the army. As the General truly wrote, “the Dependence which the
Congress have placed upon the militia, has already greatly injured, and
I fear will totally ruin our cause. Being subject to no controul
themselves, they introduce disorder among the troops, whom you have
attempted to discipline, while the change in their living brings on
sickness; this makes them Impatient to get home, which spreads
universally, and introduces abominable desertions.” “The collecting
militia,” he said elsewhere, “depends entirely upon the prospects of
the day. If favorable they throng in to you; if not, they will not
move.”
To make matters worse, politics were allowed to play a prominent part
in the selection of officers, and Washington complained that “the
different States [were], without regard to the qualifications of an
officer, quarrelling about the appointments, and nominating such as are
not fit to be shoeblacks, from the attachments of this or that member
of Assembly.” As a result, so he wrote of New England, “their officers
are generally of the lowest class of the people; and, instead of
setting a good example to their men, are leading them into every kind
of mischief, one species of which is plundering the inhabitants, under
the pretence of their being Tories.” To this political motive he
himself would not yield, and a sample of his appointments was given
when a man was named “because he stands unconnected with either of
these Governments; or with this, or that or tother man; for between you
and me there is more in this than you can easily imagine,” and he
asserted that “I will not have any Gentn. introduced from family
connexion, or local attachments, to the prejudice of the Service.”
To misbehaving soldiers Washington showed little mercy. In his first
service he had deserters and plunderers “flogged,” and threatened that
if he could “lay hands” on one particular culprit, “I would try the
effect of 1000 lashes.” At another time he had “a Gallows near 40 feet
high erected (which has terrified the _rest_ exceedingly) and I am
determined if I can be justified in the proceeding, to hang two or
three on it, as an example to others.” When he took command of the
Continental army he “made a pretty good slam among such kind of
officers as the Massachusetts Government abound in since I came to this
Camp, having broke one Colo, and two Captains for cowardly behavior in
the action on Bunker’s Hill,—two Captains for drawing more provisions
and pay than they had men in their Company—and one for being absent
from his Post when the Enemy appeared there and burnt a House just by
it Besides these, I have at this time—one Colo., one Major, one Captn.,
& two subalterns under arrest for tryal—In short I spare none yet fear
it will not at all do as these People seem to be too inattentive to
every thing but their Interest” “I am sorry,” he wrote, “to be under a
Necessity of making frequent Examples among the Officers,” but “as
nothing can be more fatal to an Army, than Crimes of this kind, I am
determined by every Motive of Reward and Punishment to prevent them in
future.” Even when plundering was avoided there were short commons for
those who clung to the General. The commander-in-chief wrote Congress
that “they have often, very often, been reduced to the necessity of
Eating Salt Porke, or Beef not for a day, or a week but months together
without Vegetables, or money to buy them;” and again, he complained
that “the Soldiers [were forced to] eat every kind of horse food but
Hay. Buckwheat, common wheat, Rye and Indn. Corn was the composition of
the Meal which made their bread. As an Army they bore it, [but]
accompanied by the want of Cloaths, Blankets, &c., will produce
frequent desertions in all armies and so it happens with us, tho’ it
did not excite a mutiny.” Even the horses suffered, and Washington
wrote to the quartermaster-general, “Sir, my horses I am told have not
had a mouthful of long or short forage for three days. They have eaten
up their mangers and are now, (though wanted for immediate use,)
scarcely able to stand.”
Two results were sickness and discontent. At times one-fourth of the
soldiers were on the sick-list. Three times portions of the army
mutinied, and nothing but Washington’s influence prevented the disorder
from spreading. At the end of the war, when, according to Hamilton,
“the army had secretly determined not to lay down their arms until due
provision and a satisfactory prospect should be offered on the subject
of their pay,” the commander-in-chief urged Congress to do them
justice, writing, “the fortitude—the long, & great suffering of this
army is unexampled in history; but there is an end to all things & I
fear we are very near to this. Which, more than probably will oblige me
to stick very close to my flock this winter, & try like a careful
physician, to prevent, if possible, the disorders getting to an
incurable height.” In this he judged rightly, for by his influence
alone was the army prevented from adopting other than peaceful measures
to secure itself justice.
A chief part of these difficulties the Continental Congress is directly
responsible for, and the reason for their conduct is to be found
largely in the circumstances of Washington’s appointment to the
command.
[Illustration: LIFE MASK OF WASHINGTON]
When the Second Congress met, in May, 1775, the battle of Lexington had
been fought, and twenty thousand minute-men were assembled about
Boston. To pay and feed such a horde was wholly beyond the ability of
New England, and her delegates came to the Congress bent upon getting
that body to assume the expense, or, as the Provincial Congress of
Massachusetts naively put it, “we have the greatest Confidence in the
Wisdom and Ability of the Continent to support us.”
The other colonies saw this in a different light. Massachusetts,
without our advice, has begun a war and embodied an army; let
Massachusetts pay her own bills, was their point of view. “I have found
this Congress like the last,” wrote John Adams. “When we first came
together, I found a strong jealousy of us from New England, and the
Massachusettes in particular, suspicions entertained of designs of
independency, an American republic, Presbyterian principles, and twenty
other things. Our sentiments were heard in Congress with great caution,
and seemed to make but little impression.” Yet “every post brought me
letters from my friends … urging in pathetic terms the impossibility of
keeping their men together without the assistance of Congress.” “I was
daily urging all these things, but we were embarrassed with more than
one difficulty, not only with the party in favor of the petition to the
King, and the party who were zealous of independence, but a third
party, which was a southern party against a Northern, and a jealousy
against a New England army under the command of a New England General.”
Under these circumstances a political deal was resorted to, and
Virginia was offered by John and Samuel Adams, as the price of an
adoption and support of the New England army, the appointment of
commander-in-chief, though the offer was not made with over-good grace,
and only because “we could carry nothing without conceding it.” There
was some dissension among the Virginia delegates as to who should
receive the appointment, Washington himself recommending an old
companion in arms, General Andrew Lewis, and “more than one,” Adams
says of the Virginia delegates, were “very cool about the appointment
of Washington, and particularly Mr. Pendleton was very clear and full
against it” Washington himself said the appointment was due to
“partiality of the Congress, joined to a political motive;” and, hard
as it is to realize, it was only the grinding political necessity of
the New England colonies which secured to Washington the place for
which in the light of to-day he seems to have been created.
As a matter of course, there was not the strongest liking felt for the
General thus chosen by the New England delegates, and this was steadily
lessened by Washington’s frank criticism of the New England soldiers
and officers already noticed. Equally bitter to the New England
delegates and their allies were certain army measures that Washington
pressed upon the attention of Congress. He urged and urged that the
troops should be enlisted for the war, that promotions should be made
from the army as a whole, and not from the colony- or State-line alone,
and most unpopular of all, that since Continental soldiers could not
otherwise be obtained, a bounty should be given to secure them, and
that as compensation for their inadequate pay half-pay should be given
them after the war. He eventually carried these points, but at the
price of an entire alienation of the democratic party in the Congress,
who wished to have the war fought with militia, to have all the
officers elected annually, and to whom the very suggestion of pensions
was like a red rag to a bull.
A part of their motive in this was unquestionably to prevent the danger
of a standing army, and of allowing the commander-in-chief to become
popular with the soldiers. Very early in the war Washington noted “the
_jealousy_ which Congress unhappily entertain of the army, and which,
if reports are right, some members labor to establish.” And he
complained that “I see a distrust and jealousy of military power, that
the commander-in-chief has not an opportunity, even by recommendation,
to give the least assurance of reward for the most essential services.”
The French minister told his government that when a committee was
appointed to institute certain army reforms, delegates in Congress
“insisted on the danger of associating the Commander-in-chief with it,
whose influence, it was stated, was already too great,” and when France
sent money to aid the American cause, with the provision that it should
be subject to the order of the General, it aroused, a writer states,
“the jealousy of Congress, the members of which were not satisfied that
the head of the army should possess such an agency in addition to his
military power.”
His enemies in the Congress took various means to lessen his influence
and mortify him. Burke states that in the discussion of one question
“Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina voted for
expunging it; the four Eastern States, Virginia and Georgia for
retaining it. There appeared through this whole debate a great desire,
in some of the delegates from the Eastern States, and in one from New
Jersey, to insult the General,” and a little later the Congress passed
a “resolve which,” according to James Lovell, “was meant to rap a Demi
G—over the knuckles.” Nor was it by commission, but as well by
omission, that they showed their ill feeling. John Laurens told his
father that
“there is a conduct observed towards” the General “by certain great
men, which as it is humiliating, must abate his happiness…. The
Commander in Chief of this army is not sufficiently informed of all
that is known by Congress of European affairs. Is it not a galling
circumstance, for him to collect the most important intelligence
piecemeal, and as they choose to give it, from gentlemen who come from
York? Apart from the chagrin which he must necessarily feel at such an
appearance of slight, it should be considered that in order to settle
his plan of operations for the ensuing campaign, he should take into
view the present state of European affairs, and Congress should not
leave him in the dark.”
Furthermore, as already noted, Washington was criticised for his Fabian
policy, and in his indignation he wrote to Congress, “I am informed
that it is a matter of amazement, and that reflections have been thrown
out against this army, for not being more active and enterprising than,
in the opinion of some, they ought to have been. If the charge is just,
the best way to account for it will be to refer you to the returns of
our strength, and those which I can produce of the enemy, and to the
enclosed abstract of the clothing now actually wanting for the army.”
“I can assure those gentlemen,” he said, in reply to political
criticism, “that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw
remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside, than to occupy
a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or
blankets.”
The ill feeling did not end with insults. With the defeats of the years
1776 and 1777 it gathered force, and towards the end of the latter year
it crystallized in what has been known in history as the Conway Cabal.
The story of this conspiracy is so involved in shadow that little is
known concerning its adherents or its endeavors. But in a general way
it has been discovered that the New England delegates again sought the
aid of the Lee faction in Virginia, and that this coalition, with the
aid of such votes as they could obtain, schemed several methods which
should lessen the influence of Washington, if they did not force him to
resign. Separate and detached commands were created, which were made
independent of the commander-in-chief, and for this purpose even a
scheme which the General called “a child of folly” was undertaken.
Officers notoriously inimical to Washington, yet upon whom he would be
forced to rely, were promoted. A board of war made up of his enemies,
with powers “in effect paramount,” Hamilton says, “to those of the
commander-in-chief,” was created It is even asserted that it was moved
in Congress that a committee should be appointed to arrest Washington,
which was defeated only by the timely arrival of a new delegate, by
which the balance of power was lost to the Cabal.
Even with the collapse of the army Cabal the opposition in Congress was
maintained. “I am very confident,” wrote General Greene, “that there is
party business going on again, and, as Mifflin is connected with it, I
doubt not its being a revival of the old scheme;” again writing,
“General Schuyler and others consider it a plan of Mifflin’s to injure
your Excellency’s operations. I am now fully convinced of the reality
of what I suggested to you before I came away.” In 1779 John Sullivan,
then a member of Congress, wrote,—
“Permit me to inform your Excellency, that the faction raised against
you in 1777, is not yet destroyed. The members are waiting to collect
strength, and seize some favorable moment to appear in force. I speak
not from conjecture, but from certain knowledge. Their plan is to take
every method of proving the danger arising from a commander, who enjoys
the full and unlimited confidence of his army, and alarm the people
with the prospects of imaginary evils; nay, they will endeavor to
convert your virtue into arrows, with which, they will seek to wound
you.”
But Washington could not be forced into a resignation, ill-treat and
slight him as they would, and at no time were they strong enough to
vote him out of office. For once a Congressional “deal” between New
England and Virginia did not succeed, and as Washington himself wrote,
“I have a good deal of reason to believe that the machination of this
junto will recoil on their own heads, and be a means of bringing some
matters to light which by getting me out of the way, some of them
thought to conceal,” In this he was right, for the re-elections of both
Samuel Adams and Richard Henry Lee were put in danger, and for some
time they were discredited even in their own colonies. “I have happily
had,” Washington said to a correspondent, “but few differences with
those with whom I have had the honor of being connected in the service.
With whom, and of what nature these have been, you know. I bore much
for the sake of peace and the public good”
As is well known, Washington served without pay during his eight years
of command, and, as he said, “fifty thousand pounds would not induce me
again to undergo what I have done.” No wonder he declared “that the God
of armies may incline the hearts of my American brethren to support the
present contest, and bestow sufficient abilities on me to bring it to a
speedy and happy conclusion, thereby enabling me to sink into sweet
retirement, and the full enjoyment of that peace and happiness, which
will accompany a domestic life, is the first wish and most fervent
prayer of my soul.”
The day finally came when his work was finished, and he could be, as he
phrased it, “translated into a private citizen.” Marshall describes the
scene as follows: “At noon, the principal officers of the army
assembled at Frances’ tavern; soon after which, their beloved commander
entered the room. His emotions were too strong to be concealed. Filling
a glass, he turned to them and said, ‘With a heart full of love and
gratitude, I now take leave of you; I most devoutly wish that your
latter days may be as prosperous and happy, as your former ones have
been glorious and honorable.’ Having drunk, he added, ‘I cannot come to
each of you to take my leave; but shall be obliged to you, if each of
you will come and take me by the hand.’ General Knox, being nearest,
turned to him. Incapable of utterance, Washington grasped his hand, and
embraced him. In the same affectionate manner he took leave of each
succeeding officer. In every eye was the tear of dignified sensibility,
and not a word was articulated to interrupt the majestic silence, and
the tenderness of the scene. Leaving the room, he passed through the
corps of light infantry, and walked to Whitehall, where a barge waited
to convey him to Powles-hook. The whole company followed in mute and
solemn procession, with dejected countenance … Having entered the
barge, he turned to the company, and, waving his hat, bade them a
silent adieu.”
XII
CITIZEN AND OFFICE-HOLDER
Washington became a government servant before he became a voter, by
receiving in 1749, or when he was seventeen years of age, the
appointment of official surveyor of Culpepper County, the salary of
which, according to Boucher, was about fifty pounds Virginia currency a
year. The office was certainly not a very fat berth, for it required
the holder to live in a frontier county, to travel at times, as
Washington in his journal noted, over “ye worst Road that ever was trod
by Man or Beast,” to sometimes lie on straw, which once “catch’d a
Fire,” and we “was luckily Preserved by one of our Mens waking,”
sometimes under a tent, which occasionally “was Carried quite of[f]
with ye Wind and” we “was obliged to Lie ye Latter part of ye night
without covering,” and at other times driven from under the tent by
smoke. Indeed, one period of surveying Washington described to a friend
by writing,—
“[Since] October Last I have not sleep’d above three Nights or four in
a bed but after Walking a good deal all the Day lay down before the
fire upon a Little Hay Straw Fodder or bearskin which-ever is to be had
with Man Wife and Children like a Parcel of Dogs or Catts & happy’s he
that gets the Birth nearest the fire there’s nothing would make it pass
of tolerably but a good Reward a Dubbleloon is my constant gain every
Day that the Weather will permit my going out and some time Six
Pistoles the coldness of the Weather will not allow my making a long
stay as the Lodging is rather too cold for the time of Year. I have
never had my Cloths of but lay and sleep in them like a Negro except
the few Nights I have lay’n in Frederick Town.”
In 1751, when he was nineteen, Washington bettered his lot by becoming
adjutant of one of the four military districts of Virginia, with a
salary of one hundred pounds and a far less toilsome occupation. This
in turn led up to his military appointment in 1754, which he held
almost continuously till 1759, when he resigned from the service.
Next to a position on the Virginia council, a seat in the House of
Burgesses, or lower branch of the Legislature, was most sought, and
this position had been held by Washington’s great-grandfather, father,
and elder brother. It was only natural, therefore, that in becoming the
head of the family George should desire the position. As early as 1755,
while on the frontier, he wrote to his brother in charge of Mount
Vernon inquiring about the election to be held in the county, and
asking him to “come at Colo Fairfax’s intentions, and let me know
whether he purposes to offer himself as a candidate.” “If 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.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF WASHINGTON’S JOURNAL]
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 give your Honor such
instances of the villainous Behavior of those Tippling House-keepers,
as wou’d astonish any person.”
The conduct was admirable, but it was not good politics, and as soon as
he offered himself as a candidate, the saloon element, under the
leadership of one Lindsay, whose family were tavern-keepers in
Winchester for at least one hundred years, united to oppose him.
Against the would-be burgess they set up one Captain Thomas Swearingen,
whom Washington later described as “a man of great weight among the
meaner class of people, and supposed by them to possess extensive
knowledge.” As a result, the poll showed Swearingen elected by two
hundred and seventy votes, and Washington defeated with but forty
ballots.
This sharp experience in practical politics seems to have taught the
young candidate a lesson, for when a new election came in 1758 he took
a leaf from his enemy’s book, and fought them with their own weapons.
The friendly aid of the county boss, Colonel John Wood, was secured, as
also that of Gabriel Jones, a man of much local force and popularity.
Scarcely less important were the sinews of war employed, told of in the
following detailed account. A law at that time stood on the Virginia
statutes forbidding all treating or giving of what were called
“ticklers” to the voters, and declaring illegal all elections which
were thus influenced. None the less, the voters of Frederick enjoyed at
Washington’s charge—
40 gallons of Rum Punch @ 3/6 pr. galn 7 0 0 15 gallons of Wine @
10/ pr. galn 7 10 0 Dinner for your Friends 3 0 0 13½ gallons
of Wine @ 10/ 6 15 3½ pts. of Brandy @ 1/3 4 4½ 13 Galls. Beer
@ 1/3 16 3 8 qts. Cyder Royl @ 1/6 0 12 0 Punch 3 9 30
gallns. of strong beer @ 8d pr. gall 1 0 1 hhd & 1 Barrell of
Punch, consisting of 26 gals. best Barbadoes rum, 5/ 6 10 0 12
lbs. S. Refd. Sugar 1/6 18 9 3 galls. and 3 quarts of Beer @ 1/ pr.
gall 3 9 10 Bowls of Punch @ 2/6 each 1 5 0 9 half pints of
rum @ 7½ d. each 5 7½ 1 pint of wine 1 6
After the election was over, Washington wrote Wood that “I hope no
Exception was taken to any that voted against me, but that all were
alike treated, and all had enough. My only fear is that you spent with
too sparing a hand.” It is hardly necessary to say that such methods
reversed the former election; Washington secured three hundred and ten
votes, and Swearingen received forty-five. What is more, so far from
now threatening to blow out his brains, there was “a general applause
and huzzaing for Colonel Washington.”
From this time until he took command of the army Washington was a
burgess. Once again he was elected from Frederick County, and then, in
1765, he stood for Fairfax, in which Mount Vernon was located. Here he
received two hundred and eight votes, his colleague getting but one
hundred and forty-eight, and in the election of 1768 he received one
hundred and eighty-five, and his colleague only one hundred and
forty-two. Washington spent between forty and seventy-five pounds at
each of these elections, and usually gave a ball to the voters on the
night he was chosen. Some of the miscellaneous election expenses noted
in his ledger are, “54 gallons of Strong Beer,” “52 Do. of Ale,”
“£1.0.0. to Mr. John Muir for his fiddler,” and “For cakes at the
Election £7.11.1.”
The first duty which fell to the new burgess was service on a committee
to draught a law to prevent hogs from running at large in Winchester.
He was very regular in his attendance; and though he took little part
in the proceedings, yet in some way he made his influence felt, so that
when the time came to elect deputies to the First Congress he stood
third in order among the seven appointed to attend that body, and a
year later, in the delegation to the Continental Congress, he stood
second, Peyton Randolph receiving one more vote only, and all the other
delegates less.
This distinction was due to the sound judgment of the man rather than
to those qualities that are considered senatorial. Jefferson said, “I
served with General Washington in the legislature of Virginia before
the revolution, and, during it, with Dr. Franklin in Congress. I never
heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the
main point which was to decide the question. They laid their shoulders
to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of
themselves.”
Through all his life Washington was no speechmaker. In 1758, by an
order of the Assembly, Speaker Robinson was directed to return its
thanks to Colonel Washington, on behalf of the colony, for the
distinguished military services which he had rendered to the country.
As soon as he took his seat in the House, the Speaker performed this
duty in such glowing terms as quite overwhelmed him. Washington rose to
express his acknowledgments for the honor, but was so disconcerted as
to be unable to articulate a word distinctly. He blushed and faltered
for a moment, when the Speaker relieved him from his embarrassment by
saying, “Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty equals your valor, and
that surpasses the power of any language that I possess.”
This stage-fright seems to have clung to him. When Adams hinted that
Congress should “appoint a General,” and added, “I had no hesitation to
declare that I had but one gentleman in my mind for that important
command, and that was a gentleman whose skill and experience as an
officer, whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent
universal character, would command the approbation of all America, and
unite the cordial exertions of all the Colonies better than any other
person in the Union,” he relates that “Mr. Washington who happened to
sit near the door, as soon as he heard me allude to him, from his usual
modesty, darted into the library-room.”
So, too, at his inauguration as President, Maclay noted that “this
great man was agitated and embarrassed more than ever he was by the
leveled cannon or pointed musket. He trembled, and several times could
scarce make out to read [his speech], though it must be supposed he had
often read it before,” and Fisher Ames wrote, “He addressed the two
Houses in the Senate-chamber; it was a very touching scene and quite of
a solemn kind. His aspect grave, almost to sadness; his modesty
actually shaking; his voice deep, a little tremulous, and so low as to
call for close attention,”
There can be little doubt that this non-speech-making ability was not
merely the result of inaptitude, but was also a principle, for when his
favorite nephew was elected a burgess, and made a well-thought-of
speech in his first attempt, his uncle wrote him, “You have, I find,
broke the ice. The only advice I will offer to you on the occasion (if
you have a mind to command the attention of the House,) is to speak
seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate
to your constituents; and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly
master of the subject. Never exceed a decent warmth, and submit your
sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial stile, though it may carry
conviction, is always accompanied with disgust.” To a friend writing of
this same speech he said, “with great pleasure I received the
information respecting the commencement of my nephew’s political
course. I hope he will not be so bouyed by the favorable impression it
has made, as to become a babbler.”
Even more indicative of his own conceptions of senatorial conduct is
advice given in a letter to Jack Custis, when the latter, too, achieved
an election to the Assembly.
“I do not suppose,” he wrote, “that so young a senator as you are,
little versed in political disquisitions, can yet have much influence
in a populous assembly, composed of Gentln. of various talents and of
different views. But it is in your power to be punctual in your
attendance (and duty to the trust reposed in you exacts it of you), to
hear dispassionately and determine coolly all great questions. To be
disgusted at the decision of questions, because they are not consonant
to your own ideas, and to withdraw ourselves from public assemblies, or
to neglect our attendance at them, upon suspicion that there is a party
formed, who are inimical to our cause, and to the true interest of our
country, is wrong, because these things may originate in a difference
of opinion; but, supposing the fact is otherwise, and that our
suspicions are well founded, it is the indispensable duty of every
patriot to counteract them by the most steady and uniform opposition.”
In the Continental Congress, Randolph states, “Washington was
prominent, though silent. His looks bespoke a mind absorbed in
meditation on his country’s fate; but a positive concert between him
and Henry could not more effectually have exhibited him to view, than
when Henry ridiculed the idea of peace ‘when there was no peace,’ and
enlarged on the duty of preparing for war.” Very quickly his attendance
on that body was ended by its appointing him general.
His political relations to the Congress have been touched upon
elsewhere, but his attitude towards Great Britain is worth attention.
Very early he had said, “At a time when our lordly masters in Great
Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of
American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something should be
done to avert the stroke, and maintain the liberty, which we have
derived from our ancestors. But the manner of doing it, to answer the
purpose effectually, is the point in question. That no man should
scruple, or hesitate a moment, to use a—s in defence of so valuable a
blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my
opinion.” When actual war ensued, he was among the first to begin to
collect and drill a force, even while he wrote, “unhappy it is, though
to reflect, that a brother’s sword has been sheathed in a brother’s
breast, and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are
either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad
alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?”
Not till early in 1776 did he become a convert to independence, and
then only by such “flaming arguments as were exhibited at Falmouth and
Norfolk,” which had been burned by the British. At one time, in 1776,
he thought “the game will be pretty well up,” but “under a full
persuasion of the justice of our cause, I cannot entertain an Idea,
that it will finally sink, tho’ it may remain for some time under a
cloud,” and even in this time of terrible discouragement he maintained
that “nothing short of independence, it appears to me, can possibly do.
A peace on other terms would, if I may be allowed the expression, be a
peace of war.”
Pickering, who placed a low estimate on his military ability, said
that, “upon the whole, I have no hesitation in saying that General
Washington’s talents were much better adapted to the Presidency of the
United States than to the command of their armies,” and this is
probably true. The diplomatist Thornton said of the President, that if
his “circumspection is accompanied by discernment and penetration, as I
am informed it is, and as I should be inclined to believe from the
judicious choice he has generally made of persons to fill public
stations, he possesses the two great requisites of a statesman, the
faculty of concealing his own sentiments and of discovering those of
other men.”
To follow his course while President is outside of the scope of this
work, but a few facts are worth noting. Allusion has already been made
to his use of the appointing power, but how clearly he held it as a
“public trust” is shown in a letter to his longtime friend Benjamin
Harrison, who asked him for an office. “I will go to the chair,” he
replied, “under no pre-engagement of any kind or nature whatsoever.
But, when in it, to the best of my judgment, discharge the duties of
the office with that impartiality and zeal for the public good, which
ought never to suffer connection of blood or friendship to intermingle
so as to have the least sway on the decision of a public nature.” This
position was held to firmly. John Adams wrote an office-seeker, “I must
caution you, my dear Sir, against having any dependence on my influence
or that of any other person. No man, I believe, has influence with the
President. He seeks information from all quarters, and judges more
independently than any man I ever knew. It is of so much importance to
the public that he should preserve this superiority, that I hope I
shall never see the time that any man will have influence with him
beyond the powers of reason and argument.”
Long after, when political strife was running high, Adams said,
“Washington appointed a multitude of democrats and jacobins of the
deepest die. I have been more cautious in this respect; but there is
danger of proscribing under imputations of democracy, some of the
ablest, most influential, and best characters in the Union.” In this he
was quite correct, for the first President’s appointments were made
with a view to destroy party and not create it, his object being to
gather all the talent of the country in support of the national
government, and he bore many things which personally were disagreeable
in an endeavor to do this.
Twice during Washington’s terms he was forced to act counter to the
public sentiment. The first time was when a strenuous attempt was made
by the French minister to break through the neutrality that had been
proclaimed, when, according to John Adams, “ten thousand people in the
streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington
out of his house, and effect a revolution in the government, or compel
it to declare in favor of the French revolution and against England.”
The second time was when he signed the treaty of 1795 with Great
Britain, which produced a popular outburst from one end of the country
to the other. In neither case did Washington swerve an iota from what
he thought right, writing, “these are unpleasant things, but they must
be met with firmness.” Eventually the people always came back to their
leader, and Jefferson sighed over the fact that “such is the popularity
of the President that the people will support him in whatever he will
do or will not do, without appealing to their own reason or to anything
but their feelings towards him.”
[Illustration: PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, PHILADELPHIA]
It is not to be supposed from this that Washington was above
considering the popular bent, or was lacking in political astuteness.
John Adams asserted that “General Washington, one of the most attentive
men in the world to the manner of doing things, owed a great proportion
of his celebrity to this circumstance,” and frequently he is to be
found considering the popularity or expediency of courses. In 1776 he
said, “I have found it of importance and highly expedient to yield to
many points in fact, without seeming to have done it, and this to avoid
bringing on a too frequent discussion of matters which in a political
view ought to be kept a little behind the curtain, and not to be made
too much the subjects of disquisition. Time only can eradicate and
overcome customs and prejudices of long standing—they must be got the
better of by slow and gradual advances.”
Elsewhere he wrote, “In a word, if a man cannot act in all respects as
he would wish, he must do what appears best, under the circumstances he
is in. This I aim at, however short I may fall of the end;” of a
certain measure he thought, “it has, however, like many other things in
which I have been involved, two edges, neither of which can be avoided
without falling on the other;” and that even in small things he tried
to be politic is shown in his journey through New England, when he
accepted an invitation to a large public dinner at Portsmouth, and the
next day, being at Exeter, he wrote in his diary, “a jealousy subsists
between this town (where the Legislature alternately sits) and
Portsmouth; which, had I known it in time, would have made it necessary
to have accepted an invitation to a public dinner, but my arrangements
having been otherwise made, I could not.”
Nor was Washington entirely lacking in finesse. He offered Patrick
Henry a position after having first ascertained in a roundabout manner
that it would be refused, and in many other ways showed that he
understood good politics. Perhaps the neatest of his dodges was made
when the French revolutionist Volney asked him for a general letter of
introduction to the American people. This was not, for political and
personal reasons, a thing Washington cared to give, yet he did not
choose to refuse, so he wrote on a sheet of paper,—
“C. Volney
needs no recommendation from
Geo. Washington.”
There is a very general belief that success in politics and
truthfulness are incompatible, yet, as already shown, Washington
prospered in politics, and the Rev. Mason L. Weems is authority for the
popular statement that at six years of age George could not tell a lie.
Whether this was so, or whether Mr. Weems was drawing on his
imagination for his facts, it seems probable that Washington partially
outgrew the disability in his more mature years.
When trying to win the Indians to the English cause in 1754, Washington
in his journal states that he “let the young Indians who were in our
camp know that the French wanted to kill the Half King,” a diplomatic
statement he hardly believed, which the writer says “had its desired
effect,” and which the French editor declared to be an “imposture.” In
this same campaign he was forced to sign a capitulation which
acknowledged that he had been guilty of assassination, and this raised
such a storm in Virginia when it became known that Washington hastened
to deny all knowledge of the charge having been contained among the
articles, and alleged that it had not been made clear to him when the
paper had been translated and read. On the contrary, another officer
present at the reading states that he refused to “sign the Capitulation
because they charged us with Assasination in it.”
In writing to an Indian agent in 1755, Washington was “greatly
enraptured” at hearing of his approach, dwelt upon the man’s “hearty
attachment to our glorious Cause” and his “Courage of which I have had
very great proofs.” Inclosing a copy of the letter to the governor,
Washington said, “the letter savors a little of flattery &c., &c., but
this, I hope is justifiable on such an occasion.”
With his London agent there was a little difficulty in 1771, and
Washington objected to a letter received “because there is one
paragraph in particular in it … which appears to me to contain an
implication of my having deviated from the truth.” A more general
charge was Charles Lee’s: “I aver that his Excellencies letter was from
beginning to the end a most abominable lie.”
As a _ruse de guerre_ Washington drew up for a spy in 1779 a series of
false statements as to the position and number of his army for him to
report to the British. And in preparation for the campaign of 1781
“much trouble was taken and finesse used to misguide and bewilder Sir
Henry Clinton by making a deceptive provision of ovens, forage and
boats in his neighborhood.” “Nor were less pains taken to deceive our
own army,” and even “the highest military as well as civil officers”
were deceived at this time, not merely that the secret should not leak
out, but also “for the important purpose of inducing the eastern and
middle states to make greater exertions.”
When travelling through the South in 1791, Washington entered in his
diary, “Having suffered very much by the dust yesterday—and finding
that parties of Horse, & a number of other Gentlemen were intending to
attend me part of the way to-day, I caused their enquiries respecting
the time of my setting out, to be answered that, I should endeavor to
do it before eight o’clock; but I did it a little after five, by which
means I avoided the inconveniences above mentioned.”
Weld, in his “Travels in America,” published that “General Washington
told me that he never was so much annoyed by the mosquitos in any part
of America as in Skenesborough, for that they used to bite through the
thickest boot.” When this anecdote appeared in print, good old Dr.
Dwight, shocked at the taradiddle, and fearing its evil influence on
Washington’s fame, spoiled the joke by explaining in a book that “a
gentleman of great respectability, who was present when General
Washington made the observation referred to, told me that he said, when
describing those mosquitoes to Mr. Weld, that they ‘bit through his
stockings above the boots.’” Whoever invented the explanation should
also have evolved a type of boots other than those worn by Washington,
for unfortunately for the story Washington’s military boots went above
his “small clothes,” giving not even an inch of stocking for either
mosquito or explanation. In 1786, Washington declared that “I do not
recollect that in the course of my life, I ever forfeited my word, or
broke a promise made to any one,” and at another time he wrote, “I
never say any thing of a Man that I have the smallest scruple of saying
_to him_.”
From 1749 till 1784, and from 1789 till 1797, or a period of forty
years, Washington filled offices of one kind or another, and when he
died he still held a commission. Thus, excluding his boyhood, there
were but seven years of his life in which he was not engaged in the
public service. Even after his retirement from the Presidency he served
on a grand jury, and before this he had several times acted as petit
juror. In another way he was a good citizen, for when at Mount Vernon
he invariably attended the election, rain or shine, though it was a
ride of ten miles to the polling town.
Both his enemies and his friends bore evidence to his honesty.
Jefferson said, “his integrity was most pure, his justice the most
inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity
or friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed
in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man.”
Pickering wrote that “to the excellency of his _virtues_ I am not
disposed to set any limits. All his views were upright, all his actions
just” Hamilton asserted that “the General is a very honest Man;” and
Tilghman spoke of him as “the honestest man that I believe ever adorned
human nature.”
INDEX.
ADAMS, John, opinion of Washington, use of appointing power,
deal arranged by,
dislike of Washington,
quoted,
——, Samuel, opposed to Washington,
Agriculture, Washington’s fondness for,
Ague, Washington’s attacks of,
ALEXANDER, Frances,
Alexandria, assemblies at,
Washington builds in,
lots in,
ALIQUIPPA, Queen,
Alton, John,
Ames, Fisher, quoted,
Appleby school,
ARMSTRONG, John, quoted,
ARNOLD, B.,
Asses, breeding of,
_Aurora_,
BACHE, B.F., writes against Washington,
BALLS, maternal ancestors of Washington,
Balls,
Bank-stock, holdings of,
Barbadoes, Washington’s visit to,
BARD, Dr., quoted,
BASSETT, Burwell,
——, Frances,
Bath, Virginia, lots in,
_Battle of Brooklyn_, a farce,
Billiards,
BISHOP, Thomas,
BLAND, Mary,
——, T., criticises Washington’s bow,
“Blueskin,”
Books,
Boston, siege of,
BOUCHER, Rev. J., quoted,
mentioned,
Bounties,
BRADDOCK, Edward, Washington and, defeat of,
march of,
mentioned,
Brasenose College, Lawrence Washington a fellow of,
BRISSOT de Warville, quoted,
British forgeries,
Brixted Parva, Lawrence Washington rector of,
BROGLIE, Prince de, quoted,
Brooklyn, battle of,
CALLENDER, James Thomson, publications of,
CALVERT, Eleanor, marriage with Jack Custis,
visit to Cambridge,
remarriage,
Cambridge, head-quarters at,
mentioned,
CAMPBELL, A., portrait of Washington by,
Cancer, George Washington’s,
Mary Washington’s,
Capital. _See_ Washington City.
Cards,
CARLYLE, Washington’s friendship for,
——, Major,
——, Sally,
CARROLL, Charles,
CARY, Mary,
“Cato,”
“Centinel,”
Charity, Washington’s,
Charleston, ladies of, visit Washington,
jackass at,
CHASTELLUX, Marquis de, quoted,
marriage of,
Children and Washington,
Christ Church,
Christianity, Washington’s view of,
CLARK, Abraham, opinion of Washington,
CLINTON, George, Washington’s investment with,
——, Sir H.,
Washington’s relations with,
Clothes, Washington’s taste in,
Clubs, Washington’s share in,
COBB, David, quoted,
at Yorktown,
COBBETT, William, quoted,
Colds, Washington’s treatment of,
Commissariat,
Congress, Continental, Washington’s relations with,
jealousy of Washington and the army,
endeavors to insult Washington,
part in the Conway cabal,
Washington’s election to,
Washington in,
Connecticut troops, misconduct of,
“Conotocarius,” Indian name for Washington,
Continental army,
sickness of,
farewell to,
small-pox in,
threatened mutiny of,
Conway Cabal,
CONWAY, Thomas, Washington’s relations with,
CORBIN, Richard,
CORNWALLIS, Lord, Washington’s relations with,
Craigie house,
CRAIK, Dr. James, Washington’s friendship for,
bleeds Washington,
CULPEPER, Lord,
Culpeper County,
CUSTIS, Eleanor P.,
marriage to L. Lewis,
quoted,
——, G.W.P., education,
quoted,
acts,
——, John Parke, relations with Washington,
education,
——, Martha. _See_ Washington, Martha.
——, Martha (“Patsy”), relations of Washington with,
death,
treatment of,
property,
—— property,
Dancing, Washington’s fondness of,
DANDRIDGE, Bartholomew,
——, Martha. _See_ Washington, Martha.
——, Mrs.
DEANE, Silas, quoted,
DE BUTTS, Lawrence,
Democratic criticism of Washington,
DENT, Elizabeth,
DICK, Dr., quoted,
Dismal Swamp Company,
Distillery at Mount Vernon,
District of Columbia,
Dogs,
DUANE, William, writes against Washington,
Duelling, Washington’s views on,
threatened,
DUER, W.A., quoted,
DUMAS, M., quoted,
DUNLAP, W., quoted,
Duquesne, Fort,
“Eltham,”
Exeter, Bishop of, Sermons,
FAIRFAX, Ann,
——, Bryan, Lord,
——, George William,
——, Sally, 90-1,
——, Thomas, Lord,
——, William,
Fairfax County,
Fairfax Parish,
Farewell Address,
drafting of,
Fauntleroy, Betsy,
William,
Federal city. _See_ Washington City.
Fees, Washington’s gifts of,
Fertilization, Washington’s value of,
Fish, Washington’s fondness of,
Fishery at Mount Vernon,
Fishing,
Flour, Washington’s pride in his,
Forged letters,
authorship of,
Bache reprints,
Fort Necessity,
Fox hunting,
FRANKLIN, B., quoted,
Frederick County, Washington stands for,
Fredericksburg,
residence of Mary Washington,
French and Indian War,
French language, Washington on,
FRENEAU, P., writes against Washington,
GAGE, Thomas, relations with Washington,
GATES, Horatio, Washington’s relations with,
mentioned,
General orders, quotations from,
Genet episode,
GENN, James, Washington learns surveying from,
Germantown, battle of,
GERRY, Elbridge, attitude towards Washington,
GIBBONS, Mary, scandal concerning,
GORDON, Rev. W., quoted,
Great Britain, Washington’s attitude towards,
GREEN, Rev. Charles,
GREENE, N., friendship with Washington,
quoted,
GRYMES, Lucy,
Half-King,
HAMILTON, A., mentioned,
quoted,
Washington’s relations with,
HARRISON, Benjamin,
letter of,
asks office,
——, R.H.,
HENRY Eighth grants lands to Washingtons,
HENRY, Patrick, quoted,
mentioned,
offered office,
Herring, sales of,
Hickey plot,
Horses, stud at Mount Vernon,
Houdon bust,
HOWE, Lord, and Sir William, Washington’s relations with,
Humphreys, D., quoted,
relations with Washington,
HUNTER, J., quoted,
Hunting,
Independence, Washington on,
Indians,
Washington’s diplomacy with,
James River Land Company, Washington’s interest in,
Jay treaty,
JEFFERSON, Thomas, Washington’s relations with,
opinion of Washington,
helps Freneau,
quoted,
mentioned,
JONES, Gabriel,
Kenmore House,
KNOX, Henry,
relations with Washington,
LAFAYETTE, Marquis de,
Washington’s relations with,
quoted,
——, G.W.,
——, Virginia,
Land bounties,
—— companies,
Latin, Washington’s knowledge of,
LAURENS, John, Washington’s relations with,
quoted,
LAWRENCE, Nathaniel, quoted,
Lawsuits, Washington’s dislike of,
LEAR, T., friendship for,
quoted,
LEE, Charles, Washington’s relations with,
libels Washington,
quoted,
——, Henry, friendship for Washington,
anecdote of,
warns Washington of Jefferson’s conduct,
——, R.H., opinion of Washington,
re-election of,
——, William, Washington’s body-servant,
LEWIS, Elizabeth,
——, Fielding,
——, ——. Jr.,
——, Howell,
——, Lewis,
——, Robert,
Lexington, battle of,
Liveried servants,
Lotteries, Washington’s liking for,
LOVELL, John, opinion of Washington,
quoted, 288.
“Lowland Beauty,”
LYNCH, Thomas, quoted,
McHENRY, James,
McKNIGHT, Dr. C., quoted,
MACLAY, W., quoted,
MADISON, James, relations with Washington,
quoted,
drafts papers,
“Magnolia,”
MARSHALL, J., quoted,
MARYE, Rev. T., Washington’s teacher,
MASON, George, quoted,
Massachusetts, difficulties of,
“slam” at officers of,
MASSEY, Rev. Lee, quoted,
Mather’s _Young Man’s Companion_,
Matrimony, Washington’s views on,
Medical knowledge of Washington,
treatment of last illness,
Medicine, Washington’s aversion to,
MERCER, George, quoted,
MIFFLIN, Thomas, Washington’s relations with,
mentioned,
Military Company of Adventurers,
—— science, books on,
Washington’s knowledge of,
Militia, evils of,
“Minutes of the Trial,” authority of,
Mississippi Company,
Monmouth, battle of,
allusions to,
MORRIS, Gouverneur, quoted,
friendship with,
——, Robert,
——, Roger,
Mount Vernon, boyhood home of Washington,
division of estate by will,
invitation to visit,
history of,
name,
house at,
grounds,
additions to land,
management of,
absence of Washington from,
system at,
work at,
fishery of,
distillery at,
stud stable of,
live stock of,
profits of,
desire to rent farms of,
Washington’s superintendence of,
Washington’s life at,
slaves at,
overseers of,
British visit to,
hunting at,
shooting at,
MOYLAN, S.,
MUSE, George, relations with Washington,
Music, Washington’s fondness of,
“Nelson,”
Nepotism, Washington’s views on,
Newburg, threatened revolt of army at,
New England, opposition to Washington,
jealousy of,
arranges deal,
journey in,
conduct of troops,
officers,
New Jersey troops, desertion of,
New York, Washington’s visit to,
borrows money for journey to,
head-quarters at,
warfare at,
_Minutes of the Trial in_,
proposed attack on,
farewell to army at,
presidential house at,
Newspapers,
Nuts, Washington’s fondness for,
Oaths, Washington’s use of,
Office-seekers,
Ohio, march to,
journey to,
_Journal_,
Ohio Company,
_Old Soldier_,
PAINE, Thomas, relations with Washington,
Paper money, depreciation of,
Pension of Mary Washington,
PEYRONEY, Chevalier,
Philadelphia, visit to,
fever at,
proposed attack on,
capture of,
Presidential house in,
Washington’s attempted purchase near,
PHILIPSE, Mary,
PICKERING, Timothy, quoted,
Pohick Church,
Potomac Canal Company,
Presidency, Washington in the,
duties of,
hospitality of,
Privateer, Washington tries to secure share in,
Purleigh, Lawrence Washington, rector of,
Raffles, Washington’s liking for,
RAMSAY, W.,
RANDOLPH, Edmund, Washington’s relations with,
quoted,
——, John, forges letters,
REED, Joseph, sends print to Washington,
relations with Washington,
quoted,
Revolution, Washington’s service in,
ROBIN, Abbé, quoted,
ROBINSON, Beverly,
——, John,
ROCHAMBEAU, Count,
Ross, James, quoted,
“Royal Gift,” jackass,
Rules of civility,
RUSH, Benjamin, anonymous letter of,
Washington’s relations with,
quoted,
RUTLEDGE, E.,
St. Clair’s defeat,
St. Paul’s Church,
SARGENT, J.D., opinion of Washington,
SCOTT, Charles, quoted,
Servants, Washington’s,
Shad, sales of,
Sharpless portrait,
Sheep at Mount Vernon,
Shooting,
Skenesborough, mosquitoes at,
Slavery, Washington’s views on,
Slaves, Washington’s,
runaway,
carried off by British,
sickness,
laziness,
punishment,
rations of,
thieving by,
Small-pox, Washington’s attack of,
SMITH, Rev. W., quoted,
Southern tour,
Spain, king of, gift of jackass to Washington,
SPEARING, Ann,
STEARN, Samuel, quoted,
STEWART, R.,
STUART, Gilbert, opinion on Washington’s face,
quoted,
Stuart portrait,
Stud stable at Mount Vernon,
SULLIVAN, John, quoted,
——, W., quoted,
Sunday, Washington’s observance of,
SWEARINGEN, Thomas,
Taverns, Washington’s view of,
Tea, Washington’s fondness for,
THACHER, Dr. James, quoted,
Theatre,
THORNTON, Edward, quoted,
TILGHMAN, Tench, Washington’s relations with,
quoted,
Tobacco, Washington’s crop of,
Trenton, battle of,
TRUMBULL, Jonathan, wishes Washington removed,
Truro Parish,
University, National, Washington’s wish for,
Valley Forge,
VAN BRAAM, J.,
VARICK, Richard,
VERNON, Admiral E., Mount Vernon named after,
Virginia, social life of,
clubs,
British invasion of,
convention,
land bounties,
elections,
agricultural system of,
deal with New England,
Washington’s office-holding in,
estates, Washington’s opinion of,
—— Regiment, drunkenness of,
VOLNEY, C., Washington’s diplomacy with,
WADSWORTH, J., quoted,
“Wakefield,”
Walpole grant,
WANSEY, H., quoted,
Warm Springs, visit to,
WASHINGTON, Augustine,
——, Augustine (Jr.),
——, Bushrod,
letter to,
——, Charles,
——, Elizabeth (Betty). _See_ Fielding.
——, Frances,
——, George, ancestors of,
birth of,
his resemblance to the Balls,
relations with his mother,
his dislike of public recompense,
views on public office,
financial help to relatives,
will of,
views on drinking,
loans,
care of Custis property,
adoption of Custis children,
physique,
weight,
eyes,
hair,
teeth,
nose,
height,
mouth,
expression,
gracefulness,
complexion,
pock-marked,
modesty,
manners,
portraits of,
strength,
illnesses of,
his last,
medicine, his dislike of,
fall of,
hearing,
education,
handwriting,
spelling,
surveyor,
secretaries of,
journal to the Ohio,
messages,
farewell address,
languages,
music,
reading,
religion,
church attendance,
Sunday conduct,
hunting,
tolerance,
love affairs,
poetry,
Barbadoes, visit to,
Ohio, mission to,
Boston, visit to, (1756)
New York, visit to, (1773)
marriage,
appointed commander-in-chief,
matrimony, his views on,
morality,
forged letters,
agriculture, fondness for,
[agriculture] system,
[agriculture] study of,
coat-of-arms of,
as farmer,
land purchases of,
invents a plow,
humor,
income,
accounts,
property of,
bounty lands of,
investments in land companies,
borrower,
speculation, liking for,
lotteries, liking for,
raffles, liking for,
interest in Potomac Canal Company,
wealth of,
slaves of,
[slaves] care of,
slavery, views on,
charity,
social life,
headquarters life,
dinners,
levees,
bows,
ceremony, hatred of,
conversation,
tea, liking for,
dancing, fondness of,
staff,
simple habits,
dress of,
Rules of Civility,
neatness of,
food,
horsemanship,
fishing, fondness for,
card-playing,
theatre, fondness for,
embarrassment,
library of,
newspapers,
abuse, sensitiveness to,
friendships of,
godfather,
pall-bearer,
Indian friends,
[Indian] name,
assassin,
temper,
quarrel of Hamilton with,
children, relations with,
enemies,
[enemies] duelling and,
drinks toasts,
intrigues against,
attacks on,
insulted,
Presidency,
judgment,
liveried servants of,
courage of,
swears,
Fabian policy,
rashness of,
indecision of,
lack of military knowledge,
generalship,
severity to soldiers,
relations with Continental Congress,
New England, dislike of,
farewell to army,
adjutant of Virginia,
burgess,
stands for Frederick County,
elected,
election expenses of,
drafts law,
inability to make speeches,
stage fright,
inauguration,
in the Continental Congress,
attitude towards Great Britain,
threatened,
popularity of,
diplomacy of,
truthfulness,
serves on jury,
attends elections,
honesty,
——, George Augustine,
——, Harriot,
——, John,
——, John Augustine,
——, Lawrence, Rev. (1st),
——, Lawrence (2d),
——, Lawrence, Major (3d),
——, Lawrence, of Chotanck (4th),
——, Lund,
——, Martha, sickness of,
meets Washington,
engaged,
Washington’s letters to,
marriage,
character,
Washington’s fondness for,
wealth,
clothing,
housekeeper for,
orthography, 93,
children,
visits to head-quarters,
social life,
mentioned,
dower slaves,
drafts of letters for,
receptions,
——, Mary (Ball),
——, Mildred,
——, Robert,
——, Samuel,
——, Thornton,
Washington City,
WATSON, Elkanah, quoted,
WAYNE, Anthony, quoted,
Weaving at Mount Vernon,
WEEMS, M.L., quoted,
WELD, Isaac, quoted,
Wheat, Washington’s production of,
Whiskey, distilling of, at Mount Vernon,
WHITE, Rev. W., quoted,
William and Mary College,
Williamsburg,
lots in,
Washington goes to, for medical advice,
WILLIAMS, William, wishes Washington removed,
WILLING, Ann, quoted,
Winchester, lots in,
election at, 295,
WOLCOTT, Oliver,
WOOD, John,
Yorktown, siege of,
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