by Alexis Coe
But Washington himself was Mount Vernon’s most popular specimen. There was a steady stream of fans and opportunists who walked right up to the mansion house, hoping for a glimpse of or a word from the living legend. On occasion, Washington indulged “the doorkeepers of the temple of fame,” and even found some of the attention enjoyable. Martha was apparently unaware of artist Joseph Wright’s process: “Whilst in this ludicrous attitude, Mrs. Washington entered the room, and seeing my face thus overspread with the plaster, involuntarily exclaimed. Her cry so excited in me a disposition to smile, which gave my mouth a slight twist or compression of the lips, that is not observable in the busts Wright afterwards made.”9
For the most part, though, Washington tried to avoid his celebrity. He had a back stairway built inside the house, which allowed him to slip away unnoticed. When his mother was in need of money in 1787, he claimed he wasn’t in a position to help her financially, but invited her to live with him and collect rent on her home—though she should be warned that life at Mount Vernon “may be compared to a well resorted tavern.” She should be prepared to “always be dressing to appear in company” or “be as it were a prisoner of your own chamber.”10 Mary wouldn’t like it, and he didn’t either. But much as he did truly wish to focus on happenings at home and around the Potomac, he could not help but look beyond.
* * *
“From the high ground on which we stood—from the plain path which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen!—so lost! is really mortifying,” Washington had written John Jay in May 1786. He blamed the country’s many woes on the Articles of Confederation, which allowed the states to “laugh” at congressional requisitions. “Retired as I am from the world, I frankly acknowledge I cannot feel myself an unconcerned spectator. . . . having happily assisted in bringing the ship into port & having been fairly discharged.” Still, Washington added, “it is not my business to embark again on a sea of troubles.”11
Jay nonetheless sent him copies of the “Injunctions of Secrecy” in June, which was a list of ways the individual states were failing to uphold the treaty of peace with Great Britain. “[W]e are going and doing wrong,” Jay wrote, “and therefore I look forward to Evils and Calamities.”12 America had failed to pay back British debts and to treat remaining Loyalists well, all of which the British foreign secretary noted in a steady stream of embarrassing and very public correspondence. And that wasn’t all: The British were threatening American interests by occupying forts in New York and the Northwest Territory, the area bordering the Great Lakes that would eventually become the states of Ohio and Michigan.
Until the North and the South could agree on real powers for a central government, it would be impossible to collect taxes to pay the debts, or to function at all for much longer. And if the United States looked unstable to the rest of the world, foreign countries would exclude it from international affairs, including trade—but that was as much Washington’s concern as his neighbor’s. He was trying his best, for the sake of the country, to participate in national politics as a private citizen.
“We are either a United people, or we are not,” Washington had written James Madison in November 1785.13 America had always intended to succeed without a king, a dominant church, or a military leader, let alone an arthritic retiree with blurry vision, fogged hearing, a couple of teeth, and limited cash flow. Washington was no longer an ambitious youth with something to prove but a fifty-four-year-old man with everything to lose.
But his contemporaries didn’t let up; they kept writing, asking for him to get involved with increasing urgency. “It is the general wish that you should attend,” Henry Knox wrote of the upcoming Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.14 If he could help the delegates address the deeply flawed Articles of Confederation and strengthen the central government, they might avoid an impending crisis.
Martha, however, wouldn’t even entertain the idea of attending. “Mrs. Washington is become too Domestick, and too attentive to two little Grand Children to leave home,” he had written earlier in early May 1787.15 She was also comforting Fanny, who had buried her first child only two weeks after his birth. Experience had taught her this: Family was fleeting, and when Washington went to big meetings in Philadelphia, whatever tranquility they had come to know was about to be completely disrupted.
* * *
In May 1787, Washington headed to Philadelphia with Billy Lee, where he was quickly disabused of any notion that he was just another attendee: The delegates unanimously elected him to be the convention’s president.
Washington sat in a tall wooden chair on an elevated platform, once again in an old military uniform. He tried to observe in silence, except when debates became too heated or it was time to vote on an article. He kept a diary during this time, but his entries offer no clear insights into his thinking. We know from the letters and notes of others, however, that slavery loomed as a major obstacle for the founders. At this point in his life, Washington no longer bought slaves, but he was nowhere near favoring manumission. Like pretty much all the delegates, he wanted to defer difficult decisions; he probably was in favor of allowing the slave trade to continue for another twenty years and counting slaves as three-fifths of a person for the allotment of representatives.
But outside of the sessions, during dinners with trusted delegates, he spoke freely and often to a rapt audience, most often at Mayor Samuel Powel’s home. Powel’s lively wife, Elizabeth, ran a sort of salon, and Washington had long been fond of her, always taking the time to visit whenever he came to town. He found an unlikely ally in Gouverneur Morris, a war veteran who also believed in a strong central government. (Morris was perhaps better known for his scandalous affairs. He lost a limb in a carriage accident in 1780, but people gossiped that his peg leg was the result of an injury sustained when he leaped from a lover’s balcony to avoid her husband, who had unexpectedly returned home.) In the mornings, Washington took a constitutional with the enslaved people he traveled with before the crowds formed; one excursion included a stop by “the old Cantonment” of the Continental Army at Valley Forge, which he found to be “in Ruins.”16
All in all, it was a pleasant trip that concluded with consensus around the Constitution of the United States, with a preamble written by Morris.17 When the time came to sign it, Washington was the first; he was likely the first to depart Philadelphia, too. He did so satisfied that, with minimal interference, and at the expense of just a few weeks of neglecting private affairs, the country had been set on the right path. Now he could return to Mount Vernon for good.
Unfortunately for Washington, he was the only one left with that impression. Alexander Hamilton, who had served as his aide-de-camp until 1781, argued that, by attending, Washington had “pledged to take a part in the execution of the government.” The majority of delegates voted for a single executive, versus three, based on the assumption that Washington was going to be the first president. They figured that he’d define the role through precedents. They could see no other way of establishing the office. If he refused, there was no backup choice.
“It cannot be considered as a compliment to say that on your acceptance of the office of President the success of the new government in its commencement may materially depend,” Hamilton wrote, keeping the pressure on.18 “You must be the President,” echoed Morris.19
James Madison took a more personal approach. He visited Mount Vernon in the summer of 1788—the same summer, in fact, that Washington saw his mother for the last time.20 When one visit didn’t do the trick, Madison returned in December for Christmas. Time was of the essence: The electoral college was going to pick a president soon. Whatever Madison said worked. Martha complained to Fanny that “we have not a single article of news but pollitick which I do not concern myself” while Washington, fifty-six, began quietly getting his affairs in order.21
As one of his favorite writers, Joseph Addison, wrote in a play called Cato, “Thy life is not thy own, wh
en Rome demands it.”
CHAPTER 15
The Presidency; or, “The Place of His Execution”
The first presidential election in the United States was its least dramatic. There were no debates and no campaigns; when the Senate and the House of Representatives met for the first time on April 6, 1789, in New York to tally the votes, there were no surprises. George Washington appeared on every ballot and received sixty-nine electoral votes to secure the presidency. He easily beat John Adams, who garnered thirty-four votes, the top total among ten other also-rans. Second place gave the vice presidency to Adams. (By 1804, the Twelfth Amendment required that electors name both a president and a vice president on their ballots.)
The Virginian and the New Englander made for an odd couple. Washington was tall and athletic, whereas the much shorter Adams had already earned the nickname “His Rotundity.” People either loved or grudgingly respected Washington, whereas Adams was a more divisive figure. One had mastered the art of self-control, offering his opinions only when he judged it wise, whereas the other could not restrain himself. And when it came to the daunting roles they were about to assume, Washington was focused on big issues, like establishing enduring norms for his office and addressing foreign debt, whereas Adams was obsessed with essentially meaningless formalities, like the president’s title.
Adams argued that Washington be called “His Highness, the President of the United States of America, and Protector of the Rights of the Same.” When Jefferson got word in Paris, where he was serving as U.S. minister to France, of the spectacle, he wrote in code that it was “the most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard of.” Ben Franklin had described Adams, Jefferson added, as “Always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes absolutely mad.”1 And Jefferson was a friend of Adams.
Adams, and practically every vice president who followed, suffered the consequences of his faux pas. Washington did not easily trust or forgive, and this inauspicious beginning ensured Adams wouldn’t become a confidant. “My Country has in its Wisdom contrived for me, the most insignificant Office that ever the Invention of Man contrived or his Imagination conceived,” Adams later wrote to his wife, Abigail. “I can do neither good nor Evil, I must be born away by Others and meet the common Fate.”2
* * *
Eight days after Washington’s unanimous election as president, Charles Thomson’s carriage passed through the whitewashed gates of Mount Vernon. They were expecting him.
Henry Knox had sent word that the outgoing secretary of the Continental Congress was on his way with news of the election, to which Washington sent a dramatic, even fatalistic reply on April 1, 1789: “My movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied with feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.” He worried that he lacked “that competency of political skill—abilities & inclination which is necessary to manage the helm.”3 In the name of service to his country, he agreed to trade “a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties.”4
The family gathered outside, watching Thomson’s carriage approach the mansion house. Martha and Jacky had seen Washington become the commander in chief of America’s first army, and now Martha and Jacky’s children, Nelly and Wash, would see him become the first president.
After they greeted Thomson, they led him inside, to the New Room, the finest in the house, where he read a speech written by Congress, much of which must have made the flattery-averse Washington squirm:
I have now Sir to inform you that the proofs you have given of your patriotism and of your readiness to sacrifice domestic ease and private enjoyments to preserve the liberty & promote the happiness of your Country, did not permit the two houses to harbour a doubt of your undertaking this great, this important Office to which you are called not only by the unanimous votes of the Electors but by the voice of America, I have it therefore in command to accompany you to New York where the Senate & the house of Representatives of the United States are convened for the dispatch of public business.
In executing this part of my commission where personal gratification coincides with duty I shall wait your time & be wholly governed by your convenience.5
Washington had prepared a comparatively grave statement of his own, sticking to logistical matters:
Upon considering how long time some of the gentlemen of both Houses of Congress have been at New York, how anxiously desirous they must be to proceed to business, and how deeply the public mind appears to be impressed with the necessity of doing it immediately, I cannot find myself at liberty to delay my journey. I shall therefore be in readiness to set out the day after to-morrow, and shall be happy in the pleasure of your company.6
Washington and Thomson left two days later. “When, or wheather he will ever come home again god only knows,” Martha wrote to her nephew John Dandridge. “I think it was much too late for him to go in to publick life again, but it was not to be avoided. . . . I must soon follow him.”7 A month later, she set out for New York with Nelly, Wash, and six of their slaves: Molly and Oney Judge, Martha’s maids; Austin (Oney’s half brother) and Christopher Sheels, their waiters; and Giles and Paris, Washington’s coachmen.
Robert Lewis, the twenty-year-old son of Washington’s sister Betty, escorted the group on the roughly eight-day journey. He was to remain in New York, to serve as his uncle’s junior secretary. Mary had lent her grandson her carriage for the trip, but made him promise that he would eventually return it to Betty, to whom she had willed it. Mary had often declared herself near death, but this time she was right. It must have been obvious to Lewis, too, who “experienced the most disagreeable sensations imaginable with the reflections of parting with an Aged Mother and Grandmother.”8 Mary had breast cancer, and had been living on borrowed time since 1787, when a letter arrived at Mount Vernon urging Washington to get to Fredericksburg as soon as possible. She survived that scare, but there was little doctors could do for her. Perhaps she dulled the pain with opium or wine, but most often she sought solace in her Bible.
BILLY LEE’S FORCED RETIREMENT
Billy Lee, the slave who was Washington’s manservant for the entirety of the war, was left behind when he could no longer keep up. After he was crippled due to injuries sustained in service to Washington, Lee was demoted to shoemaker.
The year before his first accident, he’d convinced Washington to bring Margaret “Peggy” Lee to Mount Vernon. They had met during the war, and while Washington clearly didn’t care for her, he nonetheless wrote to Clement Biddle in an attempt to bring her to Virginia.9
Mount Vernon July 28th 1784
Dear Sir,
The Mulatto fellow William who has been with me all the War is attached (married he says) to one of his own colour a free woman, who, during the War was also of my family—She has been in an infirm state of health for sometime, and I had conceived that the connection between them had ceased—but I am mistaken—they are both applying to me to get her here, and tho’ I never wished to see her more, yet I cannot refuse his request (if it can be complied with on reasonable terms) as he has lived with me so long & followed my fortunes through the War with fidility.
After promising thus much, I have to beg the favor of you to procure her a passage to Alexandria either by Sea, by the passage Boats (if any there be) from the head of Elk, or in the Stage as you shall think cheapest & best, and circumstances may require—She is called Margaret Thomas als Lee (the name which he has assumed) and lives at Isaac & Hannah Sills, black people who frequently employ themselves in Cooking for families in the City of Phila. I am—Dr Sir Yr Most Obedt Hble Servt
Go: Washington
For whatever reason, Peggy never arrived. It seems that Lee never did remarry.
* * *
If Washington had been a king, Americans waiting to celebrate him on the road to New York would have bowed, but since the country had evicted the monarchy, it was Washington who bowed
to them. And they loved him for it. Hundreds of people walked alongside his small caravan to Baltimore, where he stayed the night. Well-wishers took him all the way to Wilmington, Delaware, the next day, and the day after that a military escort accompanied him to the Pennsylvania border. There the state president, Thomas Mifflin, escorted him, along with two cavalry units and a company of around a hundred men, into Philadelphia.
Once in town, Washington ditched the carriage for a white horse. The crowds went wild. They cheered him on as he boarded a commercial ferry, crossing into New Jersey along the same passage he had on that Christmas night in 1776, when a much-needed victory at Trenton restored belief that the war could be won; this time, the ride and weather were much more accommodating. He rode under a bridge with a sign that read “The Defenders of the Mothers will also Defend the Daughters”; it was covered in flowers, more of which were thrown at his feet. He was so moved by the gesture that he immediately had a thank-you letter sent “To The Ladies of Trenton.”