You Never Forget Your First

by Alexis Coe

  CHAPTER 12: EIGHT YEARS AWAY

  1. “From George Washington to Lund Washington, 20 August 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed May 10, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0234.

  2. “To George Washington from Lund Washington, 5 October 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed June 20, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0105.

  3. “Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, accessed June 7, 2017, www.gilderlehrman.org/content/lord-dunmore%E2%80%99s-proclamation-1775.

  4. Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington, April 23, 1781, in Stanley J. Idzerda et al., eds., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776–1790 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 4: 60–61. George Washington to Lund Washington, April 30, 1781, in WGW, vol. 22: 14.

  5. Lund Washington, “List of Runaways, April 1781,” WGW, 22: 14. This list and others are unfortunately scant on biographical detail.

  6. PGW, CS, 10: 137.

  7. Mount Vernon Commemorative Guidebook 1999: George Washington Bicentennial Edition (Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 1998), 28.

  8. George Washington to Lund Washington, December 18, 1778, WGW, 13: 428–429.

  9. “From George Washington to John Augustine Washington, 29 April 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed August 9, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-04-02-0139.

  10. “From George Washington to Jonathan Boucher, 20 April 1771,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed February 2, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-08-02-0309.

  11. “From George Washington to Major General Horatio Gates, 28 January 1777,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 4, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-08-02-0180.

  12. “From George Washington to John Hancock, 21 July 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0085.

  13. “To George Washington from John Hancock, 21 May 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed March 11, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-04-02-0290.

  14. “From George Washington to Burwell Bassett, 4 June 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed January 21, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-04-02-0347.

  15. George Washington, “Cash Accounts,” May 3, 1768, PGW, CS, 8: 82–83. Also see Worthington C. Ford, Washington as an Employer and Importer of Labor (Brooklyn, NY: Privately printed, 1889), 8–9. Washington often refers to Billy Lee as a “mulatto.” Frank would serve as a waiter and butler at Mount Vernon.

  16. “To George Washington from Lund Washington, 30 December 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed May 3, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0577. [Original source: PGW, RWS, 2: 620–621.]

  17. Paula S. Felder, Fielding Lewis and the Washington Family: A Chronicle of 18th Century Fredericksburg (Fredericksburg, VA: The American History Company, 1998), 301.

  18. Mary Ball Washington to Lund Washington, December 19, 1778, PGW, RWS, 19: 459. [Original source: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/14378#.] The price of corn had shot up from ten shillings a barrel to six pounds during the war.

  19. “From George Washington to John Augustine Washington, 16 January 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed December 2, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-10433. [This is an Early Access document from PGW. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  20. “To George Washington from Mary Ball Washington, 13 March 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 2, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-07962. [This is an Early Access document from PGW. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  21. Some historians have claimed, without evidence, that Mary formally requested relief from the state.

  22. “From George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, Sr., 21 March 1781,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-05144. [This is an Early Access document from PGW. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  23. “From George Washington to John Augustine Washington, 15 June 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed October 1, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-11462. [This is an Early Access document from PGW. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  24. Felder, Fielding Lewis and the Washington Family, 310.

  25. Paul Leicester Ford, The True George Washington (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1896), 301. [Original source: WGW, 13: 408.]

  26. Eliza Parke Custis Law, “Self-Portrait: Eliza Custis, 1808,” ed. William D. Hoyt, Jr., Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 53, no. 2 (April 1945): 97.

  27. “Knox, Henry (1750–1806) to Clement Biddle,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, accessed June 3, 2017, www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/glc0243701287?back=/mweb/search%3Fneedle%3DFirst%2520Lady%253B%2526fields%3D_t301001410.

  28. “To George Washington from John Parke Custis, 10 June 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-04-02-0380. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 4, 1 April 1776–15 June 1776, ed. Philander D. Chase (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991), 484–486.]

  29. “[Diary entry: 5 November 1781],” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed February 1, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-03-02-0007-0007-0001. [Original source: DGW, 3: 437.]

  30. “From George Washington to Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., 6 November 1781,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-07391. [This is an Early Access document from PGW. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  31. George Washington to Marquis de Lafayette, October 20, 1782, WGW, 25: 278–281. Colonel John Laurens, a former Washington aide, died at the Battle of the Combahee River. The news was most devastating to Alexander Hamilton, who was so fond of Laurens that biographers have wondered as to the nature of their relationship. According to Chernow, “Hamilton did not form friendships easily and never again revealed his interior life to another man as he had to Laurens.” After Laurens’s death, he goes on, “Hamilton shut off some compartment of his emotions and never reopened it.”

  32. Washington’s brother Charles was a drunkard, and his other brother John Augustine had too many children of his own to take on the ones Samuel left behind. His widow, Susannah Perrin, had been left destitute with a baby and four children from Samuel’s previous marriages; before her, he had buried four wives. Ferdinand, the eldest of Samuel’s children, would stay with the widow and help support her, but four-year-old Harriot, six-year-old Lawrence Augustine Washington, and eight-year-old George Steptoe Washington would be their uncle’s responsibilities.

  33. George Washington to Lund Washington, June 11, 1783, WGW, 27: 1.

  CHAPTER 13: “FROM WHENCE NO TRAVELLER RETURNS”

  1. “From George Washington to George William Fairfax, 10 July 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed January 17, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-11584. [This is an Early Access document from PGW. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  2. “From George Washington to Joseph Jones, 14 December 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-10202. [This is an Early Access document from PGW. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  3. Douglas
Southall Freeman, George Washington, a Biography, Vol. 5: Victory with the Help of France (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 434–435.

  4. “From George Washington to James Craik, 8 September 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed August 19, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0001.

  5. “From George Washington to Thomas Mifflin, 20 December 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-12212. [This is an Early Access document from PGW. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  6. George Washington, “To the Burgesses and Common Council of the Borough of Wilmington, December 16, 1783,” WGW, 27: 276–277.

  7. “From George Washington to Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin, Baron [von] Steuben, 23 December 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-12226. [This is an Early Access document from PGW. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  8. “I. Report of a Committee on Arrangements for the Public Audience, [22 December 1783],” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 4, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-06-02-0319-0002.

  9. “III. Washington’s Address to Congress Resigning His Commission, [23 December 1783],” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed August 6, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-06-02-0319-0004.

  10. “Editorial Note: George Washington’s Resignation as Commander-in-Chief,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 1, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-06-02-0319-0001. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, 21 May 1781–1 March 1784, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), 402–409.] See also PGW, Confederation, 1: 71–72.

  11. “James McHenry to Margaret Caldwell, 23 December 1783,” in Paul A. Smith, ed., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1976–2000), 21: 222–223. Jefferson, suffering from what must have been a migraine, had tried to leave much of the Congressional response to McHenry, but McHenry had not heard from his intended, the beautiful Margaret Caldwell, and declared himself “becoming mad” on “a rack of suspense.” His contributions were likely minimal in planning and in crafting a response, as were Gerry’s, though we cannot know for certain, as the original draft was lost.

  12. Editorial Note: George Washington’s Resignation as Commander-in-Chief,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 29, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-06-02-0319-0001.

  13. Benjamin West to Rufus King, May 3, 1797, in Robert E. Spiller et al., Literary History of the United States (New York: MacMillan, 1963), 200. Also see Benjamin West quoted in Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1984), 13.

  PART III: MR. PRESIDENT

  1. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856), 300.

  2. “From John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 22 April 1812,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5777. [This is an Early Access document from The Adams Papers. It is not an authoritative final version.]

  3. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829), 68.

  4. “Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 2 January 1814,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0052.

  5. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 2 (New York: Citadel Press, 1945), 1167.

  6. Thomas Paine to George Washington, July 30, 1796, quoted in Thomas Paine, The Political Works of Thomas Paine: In Two Volumes, vol. 2 (London: W.T. Sherwin, 1819), 36.

  7. “From James Madison to Edmund Randolph, 18 March 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-06-02-0117.

  8. “From James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 4 April 1796,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-16-02-0191.

  9. “To Thomas Jefferson from James Monroe, 12 July 1788,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-13-02-0256.

  10. Unsent draft letter, Gratz Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  CHAPTER 14: UNRETIREMENT

  1. Martha Washington, “Letter, Martha Washington to Elizabeth Powel, January 18, 1788,” in Martha Washington, Item #33, accessed April 4, 2018, http://marthawashington.us/items/show/33.

  2. “To George Washington from Thomas Jefferson, 10 December 1784,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed August 11, 2018, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0142.

  3. “From George Washington to Bushrod Washington, 13 April 1786,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed May 2, 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-04-02-0020. [Original source: PGW, Confederation, 4: 18.]

  4. “From George Washington to John Hoomes, 17 February 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-07-02-0216.

  5. “From George Washington to Gilbert Simpson, 13 February 1784,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed February 4, 2018, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-01-02-0084.

  6. “From George Washington to Richard Henry Lee, 8 February 1785,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0240.

  7. Le Marquis de Lafayette to Adrienne de Lafayette, August 20, 1784, quoted in Stanley J. Idzerda and Rover Rhodes Crout, eds., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776–1790, 5 vols. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 5: 403–404. Nelly, Jack Custis’s widow, remarried David Stuart, a doctor in Alexandria; she seemed content to raise her two eldest children with him, and leave her two youngest with the Washingtons. The Stuarts stayed at Mount Vernon on numerous occasions.

  8. James R. Gaines, For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), 199.

  9. Elkanah Watson, Men and Times of the Revolution (New York: Dana & Co., 1856), 119.

  10. PGW, Confederation, 5: 33–37.

  11. “From George Washington to John Jay, 18 May 1786,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-04-02-0063.

  12. “To George Washington from John Jay, 27 June 1786,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-04-02-0129.

  13. “From George Washington to James Madison, 30 November 1785,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-03-02-0357.

  14. “To George Washington from Henry Knox, 9 April 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-05-02-0129.

  15. “George Washington to Robert Morris, May 5, 1787,” Library of Congress, accessed February 17, 2019, www.loc.gov/resource/mgw2.014/?sp=100.

  16. May 14–September 17, 1787, in Diaries 5:156–185.

  17. “To Thomas Jefferson from James Monroe, 12 July 1788,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-13-02-0256.

  18. “To George Washington from Alexander Hamilton, September 1788,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-01-02-0011.

  19. Gouverneur Morris to Ge
orge Washington, December 6, 1788, quoted in Bruce Chadwick, George Washington’s War: The Forging of a Revolutionary Leader and the American Presidency (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2004), 463.

  20. Neither Mary nor Washington left a record of the visit, but George Washington Parke Custis did.

  21. Martha Washington to Fanny Bassett Washington, February 25, 1788, quoted in Joseph E. Fields, ed., “Worthy Partner”: The Papers of Martha Washington (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 205–206.

  CHAPTER 15: THE PRESIDENCY; OR, “THE PLACE OF HIS EXECUTION”

  1. “From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 29 July 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0307. The italics indicate that Jefferson wrote in code, not that he intended emphasis.

  2. “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 19 December 1793,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-09-02-0278.

  3. “From George Washington to Henry Knox, 1 April 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0003.

  4. “From George Washington to Henry Knox, 1 April 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0003.

  5. “Address by Charles Thomson, 14 April 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0056.

  6. “[April 1789],” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-05-02-0005-0001.

  7. Martha Washington to John Dandridge, April 20, 1789, quoted in Joseph E. Fields, ed., “Worthy Partner”: The Papers of Martha Washington (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 213–214.

  8. Martha Saxton, The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). This is the best book on Washington’s mother; unfortunately, it was published too close to this book’s publication to cite extensively, but Saxton and I spoke on the phone and exchanged emails on the subject in 2018.