Despite her tart response, 1,100 British cavalrymen pitched their tents on the grounds while Colonel Tarleton set up his headquarters in the grand mansion. Known for her hospitality, Mrs. Slocumb at the dinner hour set a feast before the royal officers, complete with dessert and peach brandy prepared earlier by the absent lieutenant. Amazed at the largess and beauty all around the grand plantation, one officer made the remark, “When we conquer this country, is it not to be divided out among us?”
To this affront the saucy Mrs. Slocumb answered, “The only land in these United States which will ever remain in possession of a British officer will measure but six feet by two.”
While we don’t hear much of the Israel or Slocumb wives in most historical accounts of the Revolutionary period—and there were many women like them—most of us are at least dimly aware of the era’s best-known women. They would be the Marthas, the Abigails, and, for the most part, their respective circles of close friends and associates. While almost every one of these women was the spouse of a famous man, they nonetheless acquired a mantle, an aura, of leadership by their own example and accomplishments.
Martha Dandridge Custis Washington
“GOD BLESS LADY WASHINGTON,” SHOUTED THE ONLOOKERS AT PECK’S SLIP IN New York City as she stepped off the gaily bedecked “President’s Barge” together with a tall, stately man—the recently inaugurated president of the United States of America.
“Long live President Washington,” the crowd also shouted.
Just minutes before, crossing over from Elizabethtown Point on the New Jersey shore, their forty-foot barge had been rowed by a symbolic thirteen oarsmen. While passing the Battery at the tip of Manhattan Island, the couple was treated to a thirteen-gun salute.
And all for Martha, since George had been inaugurated some weeks before this day in May of 1789.
Her long and arduous journey by coach and ferryboat from Virginia had been relieved by stopovers with friends and punctuated by greetings from well-wishers all along the way. Reporters in the crowd had followed Mrs. Washington’s coach hoping for a glimpse of the grand lady, and one such eyewitness, impressed with her outfit, wrote in the Daily Advertizer and Gazette of Philadelphia, “She was clothed in the manufacture of our Country, in which her native goodness and patriotism appeared to the greatest advantage.”
Fancy silks and frills and fashions from the Continent had been taboo during the war for the lady from Virginia. So much so that Martha’s homey ways didn’t always quite suit her public. On one such occasion, Mrs. Washington was with the General at his winter headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey, when several town ladies decided to pay a social call. A Mrs. Troupe later told the story: “So we dressed ourselves in our most elegant ruffles and silks, and were introduced to her ladyship. And don’t you think we found her knitting and with a specked apron on!”
As if that were not enough, Mrs. Troupe also told a local minister, “She received us very graciously, and easily, but after the compliments were over, she resumed her knitting.”
Obviously not one to put on airs, the lady from Virginia nonetheless always was quite comfortable in her role as supportive wife of her “General” (as she publicly called him), as a mother and grandmother, and as mistress of their plantation on the Potomac.
As the new nation’s first First Lady in 1789, however, she would be negotiating uncharted waters—not even the newly approved Constitution gave any guidelines for the wife of the president. Even so, by education, background, and long exposure to the Revolutionary leadership, she well understood the historical significance of her new role and the precedents she necessarily would be setting.
Martha was born on June 21, 1731, to Colonel John Dandridge and Frances Jones on their plantation near Williamsburg. Her father was a wealthy tobacco planter who also served New Kent County as county clerk. Martha’s mother came from a long line of clergymen and scholars. Washington biographer Douglas Southall Freeman considered them “second tier” in the hierarchical society of colonial Virginia.
“Tier-ranking” aside, a teenage Martha made her debut into the blue-ribbon society of Williamsburg. And here she met Daniel Parke Custis, descended from two of the wealthiest families of Virginia. Colonel John Custis objected to his son’s courtship of the young Martha, because he had hoped to see his son marry a wealthy cousin. But Martha quickly won the colonel over with her “amiable nature”—or, as some suggest, through her determination.
At the age of eighteen, Martha married Daniel and settled into his “White House” estate on the Pamunkey River. Four children were born to the couple, but two died in infancy. The surviving children, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis, were always called by their pet names, “Jacky” and “Patsy.”
Martha’s husband died suddenly at the age of forty-five, leaving Martha, at age twenty-six, the wealthiest widow in the Old Dominion.
Less than a year later, legend has it, a handsome military hero on his way to Williamsburg made a hurried stop at a nearby ferry crossing to visit an old friend, a Major Chamberlayne. And here, as fate would have it, a certain young widow was also a guest. The military man and the fair lady met, and he who had been in such a rush to get to Williamsburg delayed his trip until the next day.
Whatever the true story of their first meeting, Martha and George did meet and the rest is history.
To begin their dramatic life together, Martha Custis and George Washington were married on the Twelfth Night after Christmas, January 6, 1759, at “White House,” now her home on the Pamunkey, but it would not be until springtime that the bride would see her new home on another river, Mount Vernon on the Potomac. Little did she know even then, of course, that just upriver one day would appear a vast, almost magical city and national capital named for her new husband.
Thus began what have been called the golden years at Mount Vernon, years during which Martha was content with her domestic duties—especially priding herself on her ability to cure meat. “Virginia women value themselves on the goodness of their bacon,” Washington once explained to a visiting Marquis de Lafayette, according to Joseph E. Fields, editor of the book, “Worthy Partner”: The Papers of Martha Washington. And nephew Lund Washington, who managed the plantation during the Washingtons’ absence, once said that Mrs. Washington’s charitable gifts grew in direct ratio to her meat-house successes.
Martha and George had no children of their own but he was very fond of his two stepchildren, Jacky and Patsy, and by all accounts treated them as his own. More generally, Washington the gentleman farmer was the very picture of a happily married man. He, himself, wrote to a friend soon after his marriage, “I am now I believe fixd at this Seat with an agreeable Consort for life and hope to find more happiness in retirement than I ever experienced amid a wide and bustling World.”
Their Mount Vernon home, as often was the custom for any fine house in those days, was a favorite stopping place for friends and family, a haven quite often for nieces and nephews in their youth. Both relatives and friends came and went, on occasion spending days or weeks with the happy couple—even in some cases becoming permanent members of the household.
George once offered his aging mother a home at the plantation, but with the warning that the activities there made it seem more like a “busy resort” than a place for privacy and quiet. She apparently took the warning seriously.
Swirling about this idyllic setting, however, were clouds of war. Talk of it was everywhere, and in the busy halls of Mount Vernon notable Patriots came and went.
The women, too, realized that their way of life was about to change—if nothing else, Martha and her friends soon were boycotting goods from England in silent protest to the policies of Parliament and King George III. Since the women of Martha’s day couldn’t fight or take the reins of political leadership, the boycott simply was the patriotic and effective approach to take. Martha’s spinning wheels took on double duty. Sewing, knitting, whatever, her hands were never idle, as her Morristown visitors later would notice.
Years later she would report to a friend that at Mount Vernon she often had sixteen spinning and carding machines going at once.
Before the hostilities openly broke out, the year 1773 brought the Washingtons both tragedy and joy. Patsy, never a hardy child, died suddenly in June during a seizure (probably due to epilepsy). That fall, son Jacky, a student at King’s College in New York, expressed his desire to come home and to marry his sweetheart, Eleanor Calvert of Mount Airy, Maryland, a direct descendant of the first Lord Baltimore.
Both Jacky and “Nelly,” as Eleanor was called, were still in their teens, and Jacky had only completed three months of his two-year course. Still, Martha, always indulgent with her son, acquiesced. The young couple was married the following February at the bride’s home in Mount Airy. Martha, still in mourning for her daughter, declined to attend but penned a letter to her new daughter-in-law that revealed the depth of her feelings:
Dear Nelly—God took from Me a Daughter when June Roses were blooming—He has now given me another daughter, about her Age when Winter winds are blowing, to warm my Heart again. I am as Happy as One so Afflicted and so Blest can be. Pray receive my Benediction and a wish that you may long live the Loving Wife of my happy Son, and a Loving Daughter of
Your Affectionate Mother
***
Two years later, the Revolutionary storm in full sway, Martha would be saying the first of many farewells to her Virginia gentleman as he left their beloved Mount Vernon for the 1775 session of the Continental Congress in far-off Philadelphia. While she considered the outcome of his trip to be uncertain at best, it might have been a more fearful farewell on her part if she had known he was about to take command of the Continental Army for the duration of a prolonged, eight-year war.
Either way, having her man march off, either to Congress or war, was hardly the best wish of even the patriotic mistress of Mount Vernon, but she knew her duty to home and hearth—clearly she would abide by it. When there were rumors in 1775 that Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, might want to seize her as a prize hostage, she refused to be frightened away from Mount Vernon, although the mansion on the Potomac clearly would be vulnerable to raiders traveling by boat. Husband George wanted her to seek safety with family elsewhere. But Martha stayed home.
She did join him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, later in 1775, during the siege of Boston and again for a short time in New York the following spring and early summer. For the rest of the war period, it usually was when her General went into winter quarters that she packed her things and left Mount Vernon to the care of her husband’s relative Lund Washington and his staff.
The first winter camp actually was at Cambridge on the outskirts of Boston. Here, Martha brightened the dreary camp life for all who knew her. She made many long-lasting friendships with other visiting officers’ wives, too. She was especially fond of Lucia (Lucy) Knox, wife of General Henry Knox, and Mercy Otis Warren.
Mercy Warren provided a vivid picture of the General’s wife in a letter to her friend Abigail Adams that winter: “I will tell you I think the Complacency of her manners speaks at once the benevolence of her heart, and her affability, Candor and gentleness, qualify her to soften the hours of private life, or to sweeten the cares of the Hero, and smooth the rugged paths of War…”
Others have suggested that Martha saved the Revolution by joining her General and his beleaguered men at Valley Forge the winter of 1777–1778. Her warm presence certainly did inspire the discouraged George, while the cheerful caregiving she offered his men in many cases provided the strength to persevere. As one small example of her willingness to help, she was evermore knitting socks for all—herself included.
Martha returned to Mount Vernon every spring to resume managing its affairs, but when the Continental Army again went into winter quarters, she once more would make the arduous journey to join her General and his men. Once again, she would oversee the care of the soldiers and set a social pace to brighten the long winter days. To think, however, that Martha Washington simply was a passive, nurturing, supportive wife to her husband and den mother to his men is to miss other elements of the picture. She also was privy to confidential military plans by virtue of her occasional secretarial services, and she was often by her husband’s side when his officers and military advisers came for discussions.
His staff aides Pierre Etienne du Ponceau and Baron Von Steuben were among her many admirers, with Ponceau once comparing her to the matrons of ancient Rome. With every passing year “Lady Washington’s” reputation grew. She soon became quite used to seeing her name in the newspapers, or hearing the fond nickname, “Lady Washington.”
These were dramatic and emotional times, but not all the emotion was generated by the war itself. Most Americans have probably forgotten the unhappy shadow that dogged George Washington and his wife at the very moment of the General’s triumph at Yorktown.
Behind the siege lines, the General’s aide and adopted stepson Jacky fell ill with a camp fever that would prove fatal a few days later. A grieving George Washington later wrote that he arrived at the young officer’s deathbed just “in time to see poor Custis breathe his last.” Jacky’s widow and four small children now became part of the Washington household—the younger two children in fact were adopted and raised by Martha and George.
With the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October of 1781, the war was essentially over. But for the General and his “Lady” there was much yet to come.
He at last, in late 1783, could rejoin her at their beloved Mount Vernon, thus returning to the “bosom of the land of that country, which gave me birth,” as Washington once phrased his greatest wartime wish. But the new bliss for the master and mistress of Mount Vernon would only last a few years before the Father of His Country would answer its call once more.
“I little thought when the war was finished,” wrote Martha later, “that any Circumstances could possibly happen which would call the General into public life again. I had anticipated that, from that Moment, we should be suffered to grow old together, in solitude and tranquility.”
How wrong she was! Just six years later, a new U.S. Constitution now in place, her General was the natural choice of his countrymen to serve as their first president. So it was that in April 1789 he stood before a crowd of ten thousand in New York City, the temporary federal capital, to take his oath of office. So it was, too, that Martha a few weeks later would journey northward herself and cross that same Hudson River from the Jersey shore to join her Founding Father–husband in another pioneering chapter of their lifetime together.
Abigail Smith Adams
THE WIFE OF FOUNDING FATHER AND FUTURE PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS, MOTHER of four children—one son, John Quincy Adams, also destined to become president—manager of family finances and farm, and lifelong adviser to her husband, Abigail truly can take her place as a Founding Mother.
Abigail, the definitive letter-writer of the Revolutionary period, probably never dreamed that her letters to her husband, written from the start of a political career that carried him to such heights, would someday be read by others. And it is doubtful that she had any idea of the impact her volumes of personal letters would have on biographers and social historians. Yet it was her ability to take her thoughts to pen so succinctly and to pour out her emotions so endearingly that captures the imagination of her readers.
As wife of the second president and mother of the sixth president of the United States, she had the credentials to be included in the history books, but she is worth knowing in her own right. Her witty, intelligent, and sometimes lecturing letters open a window into her times, into her life at the center of the Revolution and the political events that followed. When a friend suggested in 1818 that her letters be published, her strong reply was, “No. No…Heedless and inaccurate as I am, I have too much vanity to risk my reputation before the public.”
She was neither heedless nor inaccurate, though she bewailed her lack of formal education. Her love of bo
oks was instilled early in her life by her father acting as tutor for his children—she and sisters Mary and Elizabeth were schooled in his library.
Abigail Smith was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, November 11, 1774, into a prominent New England family. Her mother was descended from Quincys, Nortons, and a long line of respected families of the Bay Colony, while her father, the Reverend William Smith, could boast some degree of wealth and a heritage of merchants and ship captains.
Here in the Boston countryside, Abigail spent her childhood and most of her adult life. It was an idyllic world of an extended family with cousins sometimes visiting for weeks, months, or even years at a time. Abigail often went to Mount Wollaston, home of her maternal grandparents, where she was always warmly welcomed. She was especially close to her grandmother, who seemed to understand and accept her shy but determined ways. Abigail’s mother was concerned about what she called her stubborn streak…and spending too much time reading books that ladies should not be interested in. But, according to Lynne Withey in her book Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams, the grandmother would answer with pithy adages such as, “Wild colts make the best horses.”
While still a colt, but hardly wild, Abigail often visited her uncle and aunt, Isaac and Elizabeth Smith, in Boston, a bustling sophisticated seaport city that captured the young filly’s imagination. She formed a strong friendship with her cousin Isaac Jr., and some of his friends, with whom she exchanged letters in hopes of improving her writing skills.
She was still in her early teens when she met the young attorney John Adams, who had recently moved to Weymouth to establish his law practice. He and his friend Richard Cranch, who was courting Abigail’s sister Mary, often came calling. John was impressed with the shy Abigail’s quick mind—in his eyes, in fact, she was a “constant feast…Prudent, modest, delicate, soft, obliging, active.” He was especially impressed by her interest in learning and began bringing her books. She, for her part, soon began to take an interest in the young lawyer despite the fact that he was less than handsome, that he was short and had a quick temper. He had endearing qualities as well, she decided—he was sensitive and understanding. And perhaps she saw in him a mirror of her own quiet ambition.
Best Little Stories from the American Revolution Page 49