Congress must have more power or the Union would cease to exist; “. . . it is unfortunate for us,” Washington wrote, “that evils which might have been averted, must be first felt, and our national character for wisdom, justice and temperance, suffer in the eyes of the world, before we can guide the political machine as it ought to be.” British commercial policy, he thought, in time would force the States to vest Congress with power necessary to protect common interests, but, at the moment, he maintained: “The Confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without the substance.” His correspondence resounded with arguments over a stronger union and the demand, from the other camp, that the States make no additional grant of power to build up New England tyranny over the South. Washington answered with fundamentals: “We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us in all matters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.” Common sense dictated union.
In that conviction, the General did not hesitate to express himself when he talked with his friends or wrote to them, though he remained the retired observer and no more than that, except as his prestige gave weight to his private remarks. While he continued to hope for the ratification of the impost and navigation acts, he saw no financial relief for Congress otherwise than through the sale of western lands ceded by the States. After tedious debate, Congress on May 20, 1785, had passed a measure that provided for surveying townships and “lots,” one-seventh of which were to be assigned “for the use of the late Continental Army.” Subject to various reservations, the six-sevenths were “to be drawn for, in the name of the thirteen States respectively, according to the quotas in the last preceding requisition on all the States.” These lands were to be sold for not less than one dollar, specie, per acre, and the proceeds were to be made available to the Board of Treasury through the Commissioners of the Loan Office in the various States. “I confess,” Washington wrote, “it does not strike me as a very eligible [mode for disposing of the western lands],” but he added with his usual caution: “however, mine is only an opinion, and I wish to be mistaken in it, as the fund would be very productive and afford great relief to the public creditors if the lands meet with a ready sale.”
As for his own way of living, Washington did not permit financial distress to dampen the delights of his plantation; nor did he complain because retirement had brought him less leisure than he had expected. He decided that he would be his own manager, with his nephew, George Augustine Washington, as his assistant. In acting as steward, Lund Washington had made large sacrifice for his kinsman during the war; his long-cherished desire to resign could not in decency be disregarded further.
Christmas 1785 found numerous guests at Mount Vernon, but as soon as they left and holidays were over, the retired General became a surveyor again on his Dogue Run plantation, “with a view,” as he said, “to new model the fields at that place.” He was determined to reorganize his estate and make it all it could be. For this task he now had more time because his guests included fewer celebrities whose entertainment ate up his hours. Another gain of 1786 was a decrease in correspondence. He was irked by his mail but was not as heavily burdened as he sometimes thought he was. Later in the year Washington changed private secretaries and procured in Tobias Lear exactly the man he wanted. Lear was twenty-four, a well-born native of New Hampshire and a graduate of Harvard. He had resided for a time in Europe and read French well enough to translate it easily. He was good-natured, sober, industrious and companionable, and he made an excellent impression from the first.
Another change by which Washington hoped to improve his management of Mount Vernon was the employment of a type of man he had long desired, “a thorough bred practical English farmer.” Through the efforts of George William Fairfax he made a one-year contract, at sixty guineas, with James Bloxham, “a plain, honest farmer” recently arrived in America, whose appearance and conversation were as “much in his favor” as were his recommendations. Bloxham began, unfortunately, in another adverse season. Both he and his employer had to make the best of this—the manager with lament and sighs for England, the proprietor with determination to re-divide his farms and “go into an entire new course of cropping.” For this purpose, he leased new land on Dogue Run, surveyed his acquisitions and made his holdings into six distinct but cooperating plantations—Mansion House, Dogue, Ferry, River, Muddy Hole and French. Unless company or absence prevented, he visited all of these every weekday—a round of about twenty miles—and wrote in his diary what was being done at each. An overseer had general charge of each property. Under each overseer were a suitable number of the two hundred and more slaves that Washington and his wife owned.
The “new course of cropping” that Washington instituted as rapidly as he could was substantially the same on all his plantations and designed to yield food or marketable crops without exhausting the land. Prevention of this ruin depended on three essentials—the return of plowland to grass, liberal use of manure, and prompt stoppage of all flow of ground water that might create gulleys. This became the basic pattern of farming at Mount Vernon, followed in good years and in bad, when the owner had money and when he had to borrow. Progress towards a crop system that would feed his poor land was not easy, but Washington persisted in tests and finally developed a six-year rotation. Although he was not entirely satisfied with this system, it probably represented the most useful experiment Washington conducted after he returned home. Next in practical value was his determination of the wheat that gave the most satisfactory yield on his plantations.
Invaluable as horses had been to him during the war, he did not believe them the most economical beast of burden on a farm. From what he had learned of mules he concluded that they would do more and consume less, and he decided that he would import a jackass to breed them. When this plan became known, the King of Spain presented him two of these animals. One died on the voyage but the other reached Mount Vernon in December 1785 and received the name “Royal Gift.” Lafayette sent from Malta a jack and two she-asses which arrived in November 1786. The master of Mount Vernon decided in February 1786 to test the qualities of South American asses and sent a consignment of flour to Surinam, Dutch Guiana, to be traded for a jenny, which in due time was delivered to him. Washington already was standing the young Arabian stallion, Magnolio, which he had taken over at £500 from the estate of Jack Custis. The General owned, also, a work-horse stallion and, with the accession of the two asses, he had a four-animal stud.
Most of his outlays had ultimate utility and in time would make Mount Vernon more valuable as well as more attractive, but throughout 1786 they drained a strongbox into which he seldom could put cash. He did a fair business at the mill and continued his fishery, but the main sources of income were notes and bonds of kinsfolk whom it was embarrassing to press. The estate of Martha’s first husband owed her—and therefore the General—£1119 balance and back payments for six years on the “rent or annuity” of £525 annually due from the yield of the properties on the Pamunkey and York; Bartholomew Dandridge on his own account and as Jack Custis’s executor had died with unsettled obligations of approximately £2500 due to Gen. and Mrs. Washington; the owner of Mount Vernon still had his claim to £500 sterling of Bank of England stock from Patsy’s estate, but he had not been able to compel his London agents to sell it; the General probably did not know precisely how his dead brother Samuel’s account with him stood. Where kinsmen were not involved, old friends were, and if the friends were not close, then business associations had been, and the debts sometimes had been in proportion.
Washington had a surprising number of obligations, some of them pressing, some embarrassing because, though small, they had not been settled long previously. When, for example, the General came to examine his accounts with his old friend and former neighbor, George William Fairfax, he found he was in Fairfax’s debt by £207, which
he contrived to pay promptly. Washington still owed £800, and current interest at 7 per cent, on a tract near Fort Schuyler that he had purchased with the assistance of George Clinton. Settlement had not yet been made with Lund Washington for salary during the latter part of the war. The situation in its entirety was the worst Washington had known at any time after he became proprietor of Mount Vernon, and it was not improving. His corn crop of 1786 was 1018 barrels; his year’s supply of pork, weighed fresh, was 13,867 pounds, perhaps two thousand less than he had “for family consumption” in good years. Almost the sole gain of the year with respect to his estate was the judicial establishment of his title to lands in Washington County, Pennsylvania.
Along with the embarrassment of debt, Washington had on August 31 an attack of “ague and fever.” A fortnight passed before he was himself again, and then he had rheumatic pains that continued into the winter of 1786-87. He was uncomfortable, rather than alarmed, and insisted that he was reconciled to a general decline in his health, because he was “descending the hill” and, though “blessed,” as he said, “with a good constitution,” was “of a short-lived family.” In this spirit he began to make plans for the future of George Augustine, but he was far from expectation of early death.
Washington had new reminders of the ancestral truth that war does not terminate its toll when the bullets cease to whine. During September 1785 he had heard of the death of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull, patriot, prophet and politician, who had aided Washington valiantly during the war. In May 1786 he learned that Tench Tilghman had expired April 18; June and July brought tidings that Alexander McDougall and Nathanael Greene had received their last leave. Had any of these men died in the course of hostilities, Washington would have announced it in a few words with a composure so stern that critics might have called it callous. It was different now. He wrote a careful eulogy of Trumbull, praised McDougall as a “brave soldier and disinterested patriot,” and made no less than three attempts, all of them futile, to express his feeling at the death of Tilghman, the bearer of the “victory dispatch” to Congress, a man who “left as fair a reputation as ever belonged to a human character.” Gloomy restraint in speaking of Greene was followed by warmer praise, and, at length, by this clumsy confession to Lafayette: “General Greene’s death is an event which has given so much general concern and is so much regretted by his numerous friends that I can scarce persuade myself to touch upon it, even so far as to say that in him you lost a man who affectionately regarded and was a sincere admirer of you.” He showed in another way than by words the depth of his feeling over the loss of Greene, who died with his financial affairs wretchedly entangled. Washington wrote Jeremiah Wadsworth that if Mrs. Greene and the executors thought “proper to 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 friends may choose, or his own inclination shall lead him to pursue at my own cost and expense.” This offer was made in October 1786, when Washington’s distress for money was acute.
Wise use of his hours had been a rule of Washington’s early career; it now became so fixed a habit that interruption of his well-ordered day was painful. Duties as President of the Potomac Company during 1786 demanded attendance at six meetings of directors or committees. Because of adverse weather he had to get the consent of the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia to an extension of the authorized period during which the company was expected to improve navigation between Fort Cumberland and Great Falls; but he continued altogether optimistic that the great design could be executed.
Although narrowness of interest had been as bad after the war as during the course of hostilities and in several States perhaps had become worse, a few leaders had continued to plead for closer economic relations. There had been a promising development in the suggestion for an annual meeting of representatives of Virginia and Maryland. When this had been proposed nothing more had been contemplated than that the two States review questions of commercial relation from year to year, precisely as they had considered the joint use of the Chesapeake and the Potomac; but when the ratification of the united agreement was taken up in the Maryland Legislature, the lawmakers decided to invite Delaware and Pennsylvania to the conference. Some Virginians went further and asked, Why not invite all the States to be represented at such a meeting? The answer was not unanimous, but a resolution to this effect was passed January 21, 1786. Of course, this measure might mean much or little, but as Madison was quick to point out, there was a chance the conference might recommend an increase of the powers of Congress. This, said Madison, “may possibly lead to better consequences than at first occur.”
Washington was not hopeful the obstacles to better relations among the States could be removed quickly. His “sentiments” with respect to the Federal Union, he wrote Henry Lee, had “been communicated without reserve,” but, he went on, “I have little hope of amendment without another convulsion.” His deepest dread apparently was of the slow disintegration of a union held together by waning sentiment and a Congress so pauperized and powerless that the States did not even take the trouble to see that their Delegates attended.
By May 1786 he found encouragement in the response to Virginia’s invitation. He explained to Lafayette: “All the Legislatures which I have heard from have come into the proposition, and have made very judicious appointments: much good is expected from this measure, and it is regretted by many that more objects were not embraced by the meeting. A General Convention is talked of by many for the purpose of revising and correcting the defects of the federal government; but whilst this is the wish of some, it is the dread of others from an opinion that matters are not yet sufficiently ripe for such an event.” He told John Jay: “I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the State governments extends over the several States.”
In this attitude of mind and in the face of letters predominantly pessimistic, Washington looked forward with much eagerness to the meeting which had been set for Annapolis in September. When he learned that five States only had been represented, he was disappointed and was puzzled to know why the commercial States of the East had sent no one. He soon had assurance that failure had not been complete: The fourteen Delegates unanimously had agreed to a report prepared by Hamilton which recommended that the States send Delegates to a convention in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May 1787. This proposed assembly was to:
take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union; and to report such an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled, as, when agreed to by them, and afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State will effectually provide for the same.
Was this recommendation to be taken seriously by public men or was it to have the fate of Virginia’s call for the commercial convention of all the States at Annapolis?
Before Washington could form any judgment of this, he was alarmed by news from Massachusetts. Gazettes told of discontent that had begun to take form at the end of August. On September 11, at Concord, a crowd of two or three hundred men had cowed the justices into an announcement that they would not attempt to hold court. Washington did not understand what lay behind this angry challenge of the law. Aside from the newspaper reports, all he had at first concerning events in New England, was conveyed in a letter of Humphreys that read: “. . . Our friend [David] Cobb, who is both a General of militia and a Judge of the court in the county where he resides, is much celebrated for having said ’he would die as a General or sit as a Judge.’ This was indeed a patriotic sentiment. His firmness in principles and example in conduct effected a suppression of the mob—but the court was adjourned in consequence of the Governor�
�s order.” Washington wrote back: “. . . For God’s sake, tell me what is the cause of all these commotions: do they proceed from licentiousness, British influence disseminated by the Tories, or real grievances which admit of redress? If the latter, why were they delayed till the popular mind had become so much agitated? If the former, why are not the powers of government tried at once?”
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