George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  14. McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:79 (6 March 1759).

  15. To Bushrod Washington, 10 November 1787, GWP.

  16. Freeman 3:8; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses 1758–1761 9:81 (7 March 1759), 9:99 (17 March 1759), 9:110 (28 March 1759), 9:125 (10 April 1759), 9:128 (14 April 1759), 9:71 (28 February 1759), 9:81 (7 March 1759), 9:92 (14 March 1759), 9:113 (2 April 1759); Pargellis, “The Procedure of the Virginia House of Burgesses (concluded),” WMQ 7:143, 151 (1927); Hening, Statutes at Large, 7:315–16 (Winchester’s boundaries), and 7:283–85 (peddler regulation). Robert Carter Nicholas handled the legislation extending the boundaries of Winchester, while Benjamin Harrison handled the peddler legislation.

  17. Hening, Statutes at Large, 7:265–74 (“An Act for reducing the several acts made for laying a duty upon liquors, into one Act”).

  18. To John Parke Custis, 28 February 1781, GWP.

  18. TO MOUNT VERNON

  1. To John Alton, 5 April 1759, GWP; “Cash Accounts,” April 1759, note 4, GWP.

  2. Dalzell and Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 30, 40–43.

  3. From George William Fairfax, 25 July 1758, 1 September 1758, GWP; from John Patterson, 13 August 1758, 15 September 1758, GWP; from Humphrey Knight, 2 September 1758, GWP. In the nearly six years since Lawrence’s death, Mount Vernon had suffered from neglect. Dalzell and Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 50–52, 57.

  4. From Andrew Burnaby, 4 January 1760, GWP.

  5. To Richard Washington, 20 September 1759, GWP.

  6. Abigail Adams to Mary Cranch, 12 July 1789, in Stewart Mitchell, ed., New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1801, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. (1947), 15; Martha Dangerfield Bland to Frances Bland Randolph, 12 April 1777, in Proceedings of the New Jersey Hist. Soc. (July 1933), 152; Nathanael Greene to Catharine Greene, 8 April 1777, in Richard Showman, ed., The Papers of Nathanael Greene, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (2015) 2:54; Lafayette to Adrienne de Noailles de Lafayette, 6 January 1778, in Stanley Izderda, ed., Lafayette in the Age of American Revolution, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (1977) 1:225; from Lund Washington, 30 March 1767, GWP (extra note added by Martha).

  7. Hunter Dickinson Farish, ed., Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, 1773–1774, (1943), Princeton: The University Library (1900), 32–25, 177–78; Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 74–75, 83–85; Tillson Jr., Accommodating Revolutions, 19; Helen Bryan, Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, New York: John Wiley & Sons (2002), 19.

  8. Custis, Recollections, 45; e.g., Diary, 24–30 May and 21–22, 26 August 1768, 12–13 February and 3–9 March 1769, GWP.

  9. To Burwell Bassett, 28 August 1762, GWP.

  10. That tableau recalls the end of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II, when the new king denies his former boon companion, the blustery knight John Falstaff, who was not a fit comrade for a king. Helen Bryan captures this idea in her biography of Martha Washington: “George was moving up in the world, with his estate, his wallpapers, his Chippendale chairs, his rich society wife, and his grand friends, leaving Mary, her plain ways, abrupt manners, and her rigid piety to the lonely comfort of her pipe and book of sermons at Ferry Farm.” Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, 125.

  11. E.g., to George William Fairfax, 20 July and 29 September 1763, GWP.

  12. Washington served as godfather for Bryan Fairfax’s son Ferdinando, attending the ceremony with his cousin Warner Washington, who had married Hannah Fairfax, Bryan’s sister. Diary, 31 May 1769, GWP.

  13. Peter Henriques, “An Uneven Friendship: The Relationship Between George Washington and George Mason,” VMHB 97:185 (1989); Freeman 3:15–16.

  14. To William Peachey, 18 September 1757, GWP; from Robert Stewart, 16 January, 10 June, and 28 September 1759, 8 March 1760, GWP; to Robert Stewart, 2 May 1763, GWP; Freeman 3:90–91.

  15. To George Mercer, 5 April 1775, GWP; from Robert Stewart, 19 April 1783; to Robert Stewart, 10 August 1783, GWP.

  16. From Captain Robert Orme, 10 November 1755 (“my dear friend”), GWP; to Captain Francis Halkett, 12 April and 21 July 1758, GWP; from Dr. James Craik, 29 December 1758. Craik’s western journeys with Washington came in fall 1770 and again in 1784. Freeman 3:256–61; Joel Achenbach, The Grand Idea, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002).

  17. Diary, 14 June 1768, GWP (“valerian”); John Johnson to Martha Washington, 21 March 1772, in Fields, Worthy Partner, 150 (“light cooling food”); Bryan, Martha Washington, 161 (Peruvian bark); Diary, 6 June 1768, GWP (“julep”); to Jonathan Boucher, 3 February 1771 (ether), GWP; “Cash Accounts,” May 1771, GWP (“Fit drops”); Diary, 16 February 1769 (iron ring), GWP; Martha Washington to Margaret Green, 26 June 1761, in Fields, Worthy Partner, 135 (mercury pills). For consultations with other physicians, see Diary, 30 and 31 January 1769, 31 July 1770, GWP (Hugh Mercer of Fredericksburg); Diary, 24 November 1769 Note; 12 December 1769 Note, GWP (Dr. John de Sequeyra of London); Chernow, 154.

  18. Diary, 14 June 1768, GWP (Patsy fit on trip to Belvoir); Diary, 15 April 1769, GWP (Patsy fit on excursion); Flexner 1:263; Diary, 16 July 1772, GWP (Patsy at a ball in Alexandria); Diary, 20 September 1768, GWP (Patsy at theater in Alexandria); Diary, 26–27 February 1768, GWP; Martha Washington to Mrs. Shelbury, 10 August 1764, GWP (specifying goods for Miss Custis at age nine).

  19. James Reid, “The Religion of the Bible and the Religion of King William County Compared,” in Richard Beale David, ed., The Colonial Virginia Satirist: Mid-Eighteenth-Century Commentaries on Politics, Religion, and Society, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society (1967), 56.

  20. To Jonathan Boucher, 30 May 1768, GWP; Tobias Lear to David Humphreys, 12 April 1791, in The Rosenbach, Philadelphia, Accession No. AMs 1052/18.2 (writing of the “unbounded indulgences” shown by Martha to her grandson, George Washington Parke Custis); Henriques, Realistic Visionary, 97

  21. From Jonathan Boucher, 2 August 1768, 20 July 1769, GWP; to Jonathan Boucher, 16 December 1770, 5 June 1771, GWP.

  22. To James Gildart, 20 September 1759, GWP (noting “vile impositions from the dishonesty of tradesmen”); to Robert Cary & Co., 20 September 1759, GWP (demanding a consistent commercial process or “I might possibly think myself deceived and be disgusted accordingly”); to Robert Cary & Co., 10 August 1760, GWP (unhappy with “exorbitant prices of my goods this year”); T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1985), 106–7. On one occasion, Washington ordered two whipsaws only to receive two dozen of them. To Robert Cary & Co., 1–5 August 1761, GWP; to Robert Cary & Co., 10 August 1760, GWP; to Robert Cary & Co., 28 September 1760.

  23. Washington to Robert Cary & Co., 1 May 1759, 12 June 1759, 20 September 1759, GWP.

  24. The coat of arms—two red horizontal stripes below three horizontal red stars, against a white background—is replicated on the flag of the District of Columbia.

  25. From Robert Cary & Co., 6 August 1759, GWP; Hayes, George Washington: A Life in Books, 94–96, 100–2; Harrison, A Powerful Mind, 74–77.

  26. Diary, 26 February, 2 March, 11 March, 18 March, 20 March 1760, GWP; Freeman 3:40–41; Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington, 55.

  27. Flexner 1:234; “Slavery Database,” posted at www.mountvernon.org. For two of Washington’s slave transactions during this period, the number of slaves he acquired was not recorded, which accounts for the reference in text to “about” thirty additional slaves, based on a chart of slave acquisitions provided to the author by Mary Thompson, Research Historian, Fred W. Smith National Library, Mount Vernon; Lorena S. Walsh, “Slavery and Agriculture at Mount Vernon,” in Philip J. Schwarz, Slavery at the Home of George Washington, Mount Vernon: Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (2001), 53.

  28. To Robert Stewart, 27 April 1763, GWP.

  19. MAN OF BUSINESS, MAS
TER OF SLAVES

  1. Custis, Recollections, 162–67, 454.

  2. Custis, Recollections, 169–71.

  3. Breen, Tobacco Culture, 63.

  4. Breen, Tobacco Culture, 45–53.

  5. Flexner 1:274, 1:284; to Cary & Co., 15 November 1762, 26 April 1763, 10 August 1764, 20 September 1765, GWP; From George Gildart, 18 May 1764, GWP; Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2004), 88; Walsh, “Slavery and Agriculture at Mount Vernon,” in Schwartz, Slavery at the Home of George Washington, 54; Zagarri, Humphreys, 24. A similar transition to grain production can be seen in the records of Robert Carter III of Nomini Hall in Westmoreland County. E.g., Carter to Beverley Robinson, 18 May 1767, in Letterbooks of Robert Carter III of Nomini Hall, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, Williamsburg; to Edward Hunt and Sons, 29 September 1767, in Letterbooks; to James Buchanan & Co., 31 July 1768, in Letterbooks; to William Taylor, 25 September 1773, in Letterbooks; to Richard Washington, 10 August 1760, GWP; to Robert Cary & Co., 3 April 1761, 28 May 1762, GWP.

  6. Breen, Tobacco Culture, 31, 46, 150, 185; Tillson, Accommodating Revolutions, 36–37; Zagarri, Humphreys, 24; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 84.

  7. Walsh, “Slavery and Agriculture at Mount Vernon,” in Schwartz, Slavery at the Home of George Washington, 54, 57–58; Wiencek, Imperfect God, 97.

  8. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 77; Diary, 15, 22, and 29 September 1765, 3 February 1770 and note, 25 April 1771 and note, GWP.

  9. Freeman 3:113.

  10. To George Washington Parke Custis, 7 January 1798, GWP; to William Pearce, 18 December 1793, GWP.

  11. To George Steptoe Washington, 5 December 1790, GWP; to John Fairfax, 1 January 1789, GWP.

  12. Sayen, “A Compleat Gentleman,” 222–24; Diary, 14 April 1760, GWP.

  13. Diary, 5 February 1760, GWP; “Spinning and Weaving Records,” 1768, GWP.

  14. Diary, 15 July 1769, GWP. In April 1763, Washington determined that at a Custis farm in King William County, fifteen slaves with two overseers created 190,000 corn holes and 170,000 tobacco hills. He calculated that each slave made 24,000 holes and hills, which translated to 800 plants per day for thirty days, or one per minute through a twelve-hour day, which he called “not very strenuous work for farmers.” Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 102.

  15. Walsh, “Slavery and Agriculture at Mount Vernon,” in Schwartz, Slavery at the Home of George Washington, 57.

  16. Dalzell and Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 181–86.

  17. Twohig, “The Making of George Washington,” in Hofstra, George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry, 24.

  18. Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery, 1; Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia, New York: Oxford University Press (1972), 16, 24; Greene, Colonel Landon Carter Diary, 22 March 1770, 1:371; 14 May 1770, 1:389; to Richard Whiting, 3 March 1793, GWP; from James Hill, 5 February 1773, GWP.

  19. James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (1998), 15; Worthington Chauncey Ford, Washington as an Employer and an Importer of Labor, Brooklyn (1889), 14–15; Dalzell and Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 127–30.

  20. To Anthony Whiting, 2 December 1792, GWP; Dalzell and Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 133, 135–36.

  21. Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 97.

  22. Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 32, 44, 48; Dalzell and Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 136; Diary, 7 May 1760, GWP; from Christopher Hardwick, 18 May 1760, GWP.

  23. To William Pearce, 22 March 1795, GWP.

  24. Edmund S. Morgan, The Genius of George Washington, Washington, DC: The Society of the Cincinnati (1980), 6–7; Richard Parkinson, A Tour in America in 1798, 1799, and 1800, London: J. Harding & J. Murray (1805) 2:418–20; to William Pearce, 18 December 1793, GWP.

  25. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, 29; to William Pearce, 10 May 1795, GWP.

  26. To Lawrence Lewis, 14 August 1797, GWP; to George Augustine Washington, 1 July 1787, GWP; Greene, Colonel Landon Carter Diary 2:755 (5 June 1773).

  27. Dalzell and Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 136; Mary V. Thompson, “Resisting Enslavement: The Roguest People About the House,” in Susan Schoelwer, ed., Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Mount Vernon: Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (2016), 70; Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, 61; to William Pearce, 23 November 1794, GWP; to Anthony Whiting, 3 February 1793, GWP.

  28. David John Mays, Edmund Pendleton, 1721–1803, A Biography, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1952) 1:43–44, 46; “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I,” Am. Hist. Rev. 26:726, 745 (July 1921), (May 30, 1765).

  29. Hening, Statutes at Large 6:104–12; Terry K. Dunn, Among His Slaves: George Mason, Slavery at Gunston Hall, and the Idealism of the American Revolution, Alexandria: Commonwealth Books of Virginia (2017), 65–66; Oakes, The Ruling Race, 25.

  30. Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery, 37.

  31. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, 59; Virginia Gazette (Rind’s), January 25, 1770; to William Stuart, Hiland Crow, and Henry McCoy, 14 July 1793, GWP; Greene, Colonel Landon Carter Diary 2:628 (12 September 1771). In 1775, Lund Washington feared that a runaway servant might return to Mount Vernon and incite a more general resistance. From Lund Washington, 6 November and 3 December 1775, GWP.

  32. Philip D. Morgan and Michael L. Nicholls, “Slave Flight: Mount Vernon, Virginia, and the Wider Atlantic World,” in Harvey and O’Brien, George Washington’s South, 197, 200; Greene, Colonel Landon Carter Diary 1:290–91 (25 March 1766); Diary, 18 April 1760, GWP (return of “my negro fellow Boson who ran away”); from Lund Washington, 30 March 1767, GWP; Isaac, Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom, 7; Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, 34, 56, 106.

  33. Diary, 18 April 1760, GWP; “Advertisement for Runaway Slaves,” 11 August 1761, GWP; Diary, 2 August 1771, GWP; “Cash Accounts,” 2 August 1771, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), May 4, 1775; “Cash Accounts,” April 1775, GWP (29 April, reward “for pursuing runaway servants”); Advertisement for runaway servants, 23 April 1775, GWP; Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, New York: 37 Ink/Atria (2017).

  34. To Joseph Thompson, 2 July 1766, GWP; “Cash Accounts,” July 1772, GWP (July 23); Morgan and Nicholls, “Slave Flight,” in Harvey and O’Brien, George Washington’s South, 198.

  35. Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:10–11, 21; Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 106.

  36. “To the Overseers at Mount Vernon,” 14 July 1793, GWP.

  37. Mary V. Thompson, “‘And Procure for Themselves a Few Amenities’: Recreation & Private Enterprise in the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon,” Talk at Gunston Hall, November 9, 2006, 4 (Published in Virginia Cavalcade 48:183 [Autumn, 1999]); “Farm Reports, 26 November 1785–15 April 1786,” note 1, GWP; to William Pearce, 18 December 1793, GWP; Jessie MacLeod, “Enslaved People of Mount Vernon—Biographies,” in Schoelwer, Lives Bound Together, 40–41.

  20. THE BACKBENCHER ADVANCES

  1. Diary, 10 November 1762, 5 May 1768 and Note, 3–13 and 18 May 1769, GWP. The six-chimneys house, which featured an acclaimed garden in earlier years, was rented out to Martha’s brother for a time, then to William Byrd III, and then to a variety of less distinguished occupants. Mary A. Stephenson, “Custis Square Historical Report, Block 4 Lot 1–8,” Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library (1990), 24–28.

  2. Knollenberg, George Washington: The Virginia Period, 101. The leading student of the House of Burgesses described the process for winnowing leaders of the House, calling the chamber “the theater for political talents, and only those who turned in superb performances could expect to secure a leading role
.” Greene, Negotiated Authorities, 272–73; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 61.

  3. McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:142–43 (9 and 10 November 1759).

  4. McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:141 (8 November 1759), 9:147, 9:150 (14 November 1759), 9:147–48, 9:152 (15 November 1759); 9:143 (7 November 1759).

  5. Diary, 17 and 18 May 1760, GWP; from Robert Stewart, 3 June 1760, GWP; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:188 (8 October 1760).

  6. McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:246 (2 April 1761), 9:236 (28 March 1761), 9:189 (9 October 1760), 9:209 (11 March 1761), 9:228 (24 March 1761), 9:241 (31 March 1761).

  7. McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:248 (7 April 1761), 9:251 (9 April 1761), 9:257 (10 April 1761).

  8. McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:223 (21 March 1761), 9:227 (24 March 1761), 9:252, 9:253 (8 April 1761), 9:257 (10 April 1761); Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:153–54.

  9. From Robert Stewart, 25 February 1762, 14 April 1760, GWP; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 64; from George Mercer, 17 February 1760, GWP; to Van Swearingen, 15 May 1761, note 4, GWP.

  10. From Robert Stewart, 15 February 1761, GWP.

  11. Freeman 3:61; Sayen, “A Compleat Gentleman,” 233, Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 65–66.

  12. To Van Swearingen, 15 May 1761, GWP.

  13. Hening, Statutes at Large 3:236–46 (1705 “act for regulating the elections of burgesses”); “Frederick County, Virginia, May 18, 1761, Election Poll (List of Voters),” in GW/LOC Digital Collection, Series 4.