At 3:30 the physician that Martha had sent for arrived, and thirty minutes later the doctor whose presence Craik had requested reached Mount Vernon. They consulted and continued to work on the patient, but there was little left to be done. They agreed that Washington was afflicted with “inflammatory quinsy,” a severe inflammation of the tonsils. Today it is presumed that he suffered from a streptococcus infection, an ailment that resulted in asphyxia as the swelling about the glottis diminished his capacity to draw in air. Such an affliction now can be successfully treated with antibiotic drugs. Without those modern medicines, however, Washington’s doctors tried other remedies. Their methods did not help the patient, yet, in all likelihood, their prescriptions did not result in his death.
By late afternoon Washington was too weak to turn himself. Lear lay beside him and, when prompted, wrestled to turn the large man to a more comfortable position. Sometime before 5:00 Washington painfully told Lear that he knew he was dying, that he had known as much since he first had awakened in the dark of that long night. A bit later he told Craik and his colleagues: “I feel myself going. ... I cannot last long.”
About 8:00 fresh blisters were applied to Washington’s legs and feet. But all knew it was hopeless. No one understood this better than Washington. “I die hard, but I am not afraid to go,” he whispered to Craik. Lear, Martha, and Craik remained in the bedroom, overcome with grief, worn by what must have seemed an endless day of endless anxiety. Outside the cold, black night had descended. Inside the three, together with the general’s body slave, sat in the barely lighted, overly warm bedchamber filled with the pungent aroma of medicines, and waited, listening to the labored breathing, straining to detect any sign of change.
Near 10:00 Washington stirred. In almost inaudible tones he told Lear, who was closest to his side, “I am just going.” Laboring for each word he issued his final command. “Have me decently buried, and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than two days after I am dead.” He knew that death was at hand. “’Tis well,” he said. They were his last words.
A few minutes later Washington took his own pulse. Then he seemed to relax, and his breathing grew more shallow. Quietly, at about 10:30 P.M., December 14, 1799, George Washington, aged sixty-seven, died.67
Afterword
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of eulogies to George Washington reverberated about the nation in the ensuing days, but, for majestic simplicity, none exceeded the sentiments that Eliza Powel conveyed to the general’s widow. His, she said, had been a “glorious well spent Life.”1
For others, life went on. Early on the morning after his death Martha asked Lear to see that a coffin was made in Alexandria, and the following day the brick and mortar that long had sealed the family vault at Mount Vernon was chipped away, opening the crypt so that it could be cleaned, then used once again. The tragic events of December 14 meant a heavier work load than usual for Martha’s female slaves, as mourning clothes had to be hurriedly made and food prepared for those who would attend the funeral. Finally, on the clear, cold afternoon of December 18 Washington’s body was laid to rest. Just before the coffin was sealed Lear cut a lock of the general’s hair, a last remembrance which he carefully entrusted to the widow.2
On that still, dark night four evenings before, Martha’s first words upon realizing that her husband was gone had been, “’Tis well. All is now over. I have no more trials to pass through. I shall soon follow him.” But she lived longer than she must have thought likely, longer, perhaps, than she wished. “May you long very long enjoy the happiness you now possess and never know affliction like mine,” she wrote Abigail Adams a few days after the general’s funeral.3 With Washington’s death, Martha’s reason for living seemed to have vanished, and her last years were ones of melancholy loneliness.
Martha Washington outlived her husband by two and a half years. Although Nelly and Lawrence, as well as Wash and Lear and Albin Rawlins, the clerk, continued on with her at Mount Vernon, it was not a pleasant time. Recurrent illnesses nagged at her, and her awful sense of loss never abated. Atop these woes were pressing financial concerns. While Washington’s estate was estimated to be worth approximately $530,000, little of that amount was in liquid assets. Moreover, without him there to manage affairs, little money came in. The estate’s exhausted soil continued to vex its proprietor, and to that problem was added a decline in the supply of labor, for many slaves, perhaps learning that their emancipation was imminent, simply drifted away. Sightseers and the curious troubled the widow too. They continued to flock to the estate, and, as when Washington had been alive, many were fed and lodged. The tax collector made his regular calls as well, taking a sizable bite of Martha’s resources, eating up funds earmarked for repairs. Abigain Adams visited Martha just before Christmas 1800, one year after the general’s death, and she discovered an estate already wearing a down-at-the-heels air. The once magnificent mansion, she thought, paled even by comparison to her modest little farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. Indeed, in the two years following her husband’s demise, Martha was compelled to sell considerable numbers of the farm’s livestock, including several of Washington’s jackasses and jennys, in order to raise money to maintain the residence. She realized over $3500 by this means, yet that amount hardly arrested the deterioration that had set in.4
In the end Martha went as had her husband, struck down suddenly by some violent fever. From the moment of the malady’s attack, said her grandson-in-law, she knew she was desperately ill and probably dying. She “prepared for death,” he added, even welcoming it, he thought, as a “relief from the infirmities & melancholy of old age.” Death came quickly, taking Martha Washington on May 22, 1802.5
Following her simple funeral at Mount Vernon, change came over the estate even more rapidly. The vast number of slaves still remaining on these grounds were liberated immediately, though some freedmen elected to continue on at Mount Vernon, the only home they had ever known. Of those who remained, the last died in the autumn of 1828. Soon the mansion’s interior reflected the change too, as its contents also were dispersed to the four winds. Some items, like the 561 books and pamphlets in the general’s library which went to Bushrod Washington, passed into the hands of heirs as designated in Washington’s will. Other pieces, also in accord with the will, were sold at an auction conducted by the estate’s executors forty-five days after Martha’s death. There was much to be sold. The Washingtons had owned 131 chairs, 142 paintings and 3 pieces of sculpture, 16 assorted tables, 25 trunks, 7 carpets, a settee and a sofa, 12 mirrors, 3 sideboards, 13 beds, and 5 chests. The general had accumulated 7 guns and 7 swords, 11 spyglasses, and a telescope. And that was but a fraction of the inventory of Mount Vernon. Family members outbid rivals for some pieces. Wash purchased his grandparents’ carriage, some of the general’s jennys and livestock, and a few pieces of farm equipment. Bushrod Washington secured some sheep and cattle. Surprisingly, however, Washington’s riding horse was sold outside the family, as were most of the goods. The sale raised $124,928, which under the will was to be divided among certain stipulated heirs.6
With Martha’s death the other residents of the mansion soon moved on. Nelly and Lawrence, with little Frances, now nearly three years old, moved to Woodlawn, an estate they built on the Dogue Run tract left to them by the general. There Lawrence settled into a life of planting, living on until 1839. Nelly, or Eleanor Parke Lewis as she called herself following her marriage, bore seven additional children, four of whom died before their second birthday. Following Lawrence’s death she moved in with one of her sons at Audley in Clarke County, where she remained for thirteen years, until her death at the age of seventy-three in 1852. She was buried at Mount Vernon.
George Parke Custis—“Wash”—stayed on at Mount Vernon for a time after his grandmother’s death, but in 1805, at the age of twenty-five, he married and set out on his own. He wed sixteen-year-old Mary Lee Fitzhugh and moved into a residence that had been under construction since shortly after Marth
a’s demise. Ultimately it grew into a huge Greek Revival mansion set on the twelve-hundred acres in Alexandria which Washington had bequeathed to him, a tract overlooking the Potomac and the emerging Federal City, or Washington, as everyone now called the new national capital. Wash and his wife had four children, but only one survived infancy. Like her great-grandmother, that child, Mary Anne Randolph Custis, eventually married a soldier, in 1831 uniting with young Lt. Robert E. Lee. For all the Washingtons’ frenetic hand-wringing over Wash, he turned out to be a sober and successful citizen. An eloquent speaker, he was in demand as a lecturer, and he wrote plays and sold paintings of Revolutionary battles. The crisis year of 1860 witnessed the publication of Recollection and Private Memoirs of Washington, his invaluable remembrance of his famous step-grandfather. Wash did not live to see his reminiscences in print, however. He had died three years earlier, in 1857.
By then most of those who had been close to Washington already had passed on. Nelly and Wash’s mother, Eleanor Stuart, died in 1811, and their stepfather, David Stuart, passed away three years later. Their last years were spent at Ossian Park, a plantation in Fairfax County. Dr. Craik, though a year older than the general, lived on until 1814. Sally Fairfax, two years older than Washington, died in England in 1811; she was eighty-one at her death. Eliza Powel lived through the semicentennial of the Declaration of Independence. She died in Philadelphia at the age of eighty-seven in 1830. Tobias Lear moved from Walnut Tree Farm to Washington soon after Martha’s death, and within a few weeks he was aboard a brig bound for Santo Domingo and an assignment as the United States consul general on that island. A similar position in Algiers followed, and in 1805 he played a key role in negotiating a peace treaty between his country and Tripoli. His treaty stirred a furor, however, and he abandoned the diplomatic service, returning to the capital where he took employment as an accountant for the war department. Lear died in October 1816. Blessed and cursed by a life that had mingled glitter with extraordinary disappointment and sorrow, Lear’s days ended in tragic misfortune. He died by his own hand.
Justice Bushrod Washington inherited Mount Vernon upon Martha’s death, but he, too, found the property next to useless as a working farm. Unable to live off the estate, he continued in his judicial post, living in Philadelphia and Washington most of the year and residing at Mount Vernon only in the summer months. During the twenty-seven years that he owned the property, he made only one substantive alteration, adding a small porch on the southwest end of the mansion. In 1829 he died suddenly while conducting circuit court proceedings in Philadelphia.7
Having no children, Bushrod divided his thirty-six hundred acres at Mount Vernon among three nephews, one niece, and the heirs of still another nephew. John Augustine Washington received the mansion, and he soon moved in. But his was a brief stay. He died less than three years after taking occupancy. His widow, Jane Washington, and her four children remained at the mansion, however, and in 1843 her eldest son, also John Augustine Washington, inherited the property.
By this time Mount Vernon had further deteriorated, falling, in fact, into a dilapidated state. For five years the owner struggled in vain to redeem the lands and the dwelling, only to awaken to the reality that renovating the estate would steal his every cent. In 1848, therefore, he put the place up for sale. Eleven years later the Mount Vernon Ladies Association purchased the mansion and 202 acres surrounding it for $200,000. On February 22, 1860, the 128th anniversary of George Washington’s birth, that organization, dedicated to the preservation and restoration of the residence where so much history had occurred, took over Mount Vernon.8 By then every person, save one, who had resided in that mansion with Washington had followed him to the grave.
Only Frances Parke Lewis, the little girl born to Nelly less than three weeks before Washington’s death, still was alive. Raised at Woodlawn, she had married Edward George Washington Butler in 1826. An officer in the United States army, Butler was transferred from base to base, until the family settled at Dunboyne Plantation in Louisiana.9 There in 1875, almost one hundred years to the day after her famous step-great-grandfather had arrived in Cambridge to take command of the Continental army, the last of Washington’s immediate family died.
Within a few months of the death of Frances Butler a great exposition opened its doors in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. The purpose of the spectacle was to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the American Revolution. There was irony in the selection of Fairmount Park as the site for the celebration, for this lush woodland included the gentle, rolling green estate of Mount Pleasant, the house looking upon the Schuylkill that Benedict Arnold had presented to his war bride, Peggy Shippen. But Philadelphia was the logical choice for a celebration of the Revolution. Not only had so many of the great events after 1774 occurred there, but the city epitomized the ultimate triumph of Federalism. Philadelphia had become a hub of manufacturing. Its industries annually spewed out products worth $335 million. The city contained 125,000 buildings, 300 miles of paved streets, 86,000 gas lights, and 8339 businesses, Railroad lines crisscrossed the sprawling metropolis, and 750,000 people were jammed into its distended neighborhoods.10 Visitors from the prairies and farms and small hamlets of the transmontane region could see in Philadelphia not only the legacy of the Federalist Revolution, they could see what was in store for them once the influence of the mercantile and commercial centers spread like a dark stain over their empire to the west.
George Washington would have taken pride in this city and in the ebullience and the raw dynamism that seemed to pulsate from the iron stalls and the showcases that made up this Centennial exposition. This was the America of which he had dreamt.
But Washington had always enjoyed success as a dreamer. Seldom do people dream on the grandiose scale that typified his vision. Even more rarely do such dreamers have the opportunity to realize even the least of their longings. In fact, almost never in history has a major leader been able to look back at the end of his life and acknowledge that virtually every grand design he had ever conceived had been realized.
But George Washington could have done just that.
Notes
The following abbreviations are used throughout in each citation of the publications, libraries, and individuals listed below.
AHR / American Historical Review.
DGW / Donald Jackson et al., eds. The Diaries of George Washington. 6 vols. Charlottesville, Va., 1976–79.
Flexner, GW, 1 / James T. Flexner. George Washington: The Forge of Experience. Boston, 1965.
Flexner, GW, 2 / James T. Flexner. George Washington in the American Revolution. Boston, 1968.
Flexner, GW, 3 / James T. Flexner. George Washington and the New Nation. Boston, 1970.
Flexner, GW, 4 / James T. Flexner. George Washington: Anguish and Farewell. Boston, 1972.
Freeman, GW / Douglas Southall Freeman. George Washington: A Biography, completed by J. A. Carroll and Mary W. Ashworth. 7 vols. New York, 1948–57.
GW / George Washington.
GWP / George Washington Papers: Presidential Papers on Microfilm. 124 reels. Washington, 1961.
HLQ / Huntington Library Quarterly.
Hamilton, LGW / Stanislaw Hamilton, ed. Letters to George Washington and Accompanying Papers. 5 vols. Boston, 1898–1902.
JCC / Worthington C. Ford et al., eds. The Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. 34 vols. Washington, 1904–37.
MHS / Massachusetts Historical Society.
MVL / Mount Vernon Library.
MW / Martha Washington.
NYHS / New-York Historical Society.
PC / President of Congress.
PCC-NA / Papers of the Continental Congress, National Archives.
PGW / W.W. Abbot et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series. Charlottesville, Va., 1983–.
PMHB / Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography.
Reed LBK / Joseph Reed Letterbook, New-York Historical Society.
Reed MSS / Jose
ph Reed Papers, New-York Historical Society.
Reed NYPL / Joseph Reed Papers, New York Public Library.
Sparks, WGW / Jared Sparks, ed. The Writings of George Washington. 12 vols. Boston, 1834–37.
VMHB / Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
WMQ / William and Mary Quarterly.
WW / John C. Fitzpatrick, ed. The Writings of Washington. 39 vols. Washington, D.C. 1931–44.
WPPV / Washington Papers Project, Alderman Library, University of Virginia.
Preface
1. Adams to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas McKean, July 30, 1815, in Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 2:451; Adams to Benjamin Rush, Apr. 4, 1790, Benjamin Rush, Old Family Letters (Philadelphia, 1892), 55.
2. GW to Dr. James Craik, March 25, 1784, WW, 27: 371–72; GW to David Humphreys, July 25, 1785, ibid., 28:203.
3. For the complete citations of these works, as well as for an explanation of the evolving literature on Washington, see the bibliographical essay at the conclusion of this study.
1
Young George Washington
1. Freeman, GW, 1:15–47; John C. Fitzpatrick, George Washington Himself: A Common Sense Biography Written from His Manuscripts (Indianapolis, 1933), 3–18; Bernhard Knollenberg, George Washington: The Virginia Period, 1732–1775 (Durham, N. C., 1964), 3–4.
2. Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960), 2:525–26.
3. Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Patrician and Plebian in Virginia, or the Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion (New York, 1910), 111–13; Freeman, GW, 1:73.
4. Morton, Colonial Virginia, 1:207–10, 298; 2:539–42.
5. Flexner, GW,1:14–15.
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