George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  39. To Knox, 20 September 1795, GWP; Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, 440; “Washington’s Notes on the Treaty with Spain,” 22–26 February 1796, GWP; to United States Senate, 26 February 1796, GWP; to United States Senate and House of Representatives, 1 March 1796, GWP; Senate Exec. Journal, 4th Cong., 1st Sess., 203 (3 March 1796).

  40. Estes, “The Jay Treaty Debate,” VMHB 109:154; to United States Senate and House of Representatives, 1 March 1795, GWP; Gazette of the United States, March 1, 1796; Estes, “The Jay Treaty Debate,” VMHB 109:152.

  41. Annals of Congress, 4th Cong., 1st Sess., 759–60; from Hamilton, 7 March 1796, GWP; from Charles Lee, 26 March 1796, GWP; from James McHenry, 26 March 1796, GWP; to House of Representatives, 30 March 1796, GWP; Todd Estes, “The Art of Presidential Leadership: George Washington and the Jay Treaty,” VMHB 109:127, 137; Amanda C. Demmer, “Trick or Constitutional Treaty? The Jay Treaty and the Quarrel over the Diplomatic Separation of Powers,” Journal of the Early Republic 35:579, 579–80, 587–88 (2015). Washington specifically noted that the House could properly request the papers for an impeachment inquiry, but that the demand before him did not relate to an impeachment.

  42. Estes, “The Jay Treaty Debate,” VMHB 109:163–68 (listing pro-treaty meetings in New York City; Boston, Newburyport, Beverly, Hingham, and Marblehead in Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; Allegheny County, Pennsylvania; the Federal City and Frederick, Prince George’s County, Maryland, Georgetown, Maryland; Albany and Lansingburgh, New York); Jerald A. Combs, The Jay Treaty: Political Battleground of the Founding Fathers, Berkeley: University of California Press (1970), 178–81; Joseph Charles, “The Jay Treaty: The Origins of the American Party System,” WMQ 12:581, 600 (1955); William Plumer, “Autobiography,” in Plumer Papers, Box 23, Reel 4, LOC; Madison to James Madison, Sr., 25 April 1796, PJM; Chauncey Goodrich to Oliver Wolcott Sr., 23 April 1796, in Gibbs, Wolcott Memoirs 1:331; Annals of Congress 5:1239–63 (28 April 1796). John Adams to Abigail Adams, 30 April 1796, AP; John Quincy Adams to Charles Adams, 9 June 1796, in Worthington Ford, Writings of John Quincy Adams, New York: The Macmillan Co. (1913) 1:493.

  43. To Thomas Pinckney, 22 May 1796, GWP; Combs, The Jay Treaty, 186–87; Jefferson to Monroe, 12 June 1796, PTJ. In another letter, Jefferson blamed the Republican failure on “the colossus of the president’s merits with the people.” Jefferson to Monroe, 10 July 1796, PTJ; Benjamin Rush to John Adams, 13 June 1811, in Butterfield, Letters of Benjamin Rush 2:1084.

  44. To McHenry, 8 May 1796, GWP: to McHenry, 27 June 1796, GWP; from James Ross, 18 August 1796, GWP.

  45. To United States Senate, 27 May 1794, GWP; from Hamilton, 5 May 1796, GWP; from Charles Lee, 4 July 1796, GWP. Monroe’s intemperate support for the French government would lead Washington to recall him as well.

  46. To Hamilton, 8 May 1796, GWP.

  50. FAREWELL, AGAIN

  1. Louise V. North, ed., The Travel Journal of Henrietta Marchant Liston, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (2014), 17. Liston’s observations accord with those of Bishop William White, who described himself as often in Washington’s company (Bishop William White to the Rev. B.C.C. Parker, 28 November 1832, Bird Wilson, Memoir of the Life of the Right Reverend William White, D.D., Philadelphia: James Kay, Jr. & Brother [1839], 189–90):

  I knew no man who seemed so carefully to guard against the discoursing of himself or of his acts, or of anything pertaining to him . . . His ordinary behavior, although unexceptionably courteous, was not such as to encourage obtrusion on what might be in his mind.

  2. Philadelphia Aurora, October 12 and November 26, 1796 (“Pittachus”).

  3. The Political and Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Paine, London: R. Carlile (1819) 2:36; Philadelphia Aurora, November 23, 1796 (“The Political Creed of 1795”) and December 23, 1796 (“Correspondent”); Flexner 4:49; see James D. Tagg, “Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Attack on George Washington,” PMHB 100:191, 194 (1976).

  4. Jefferson to Madison, 9 June 1793, PTJ; to Hamilton, 26 June 1796, GWP; to Jefferson, 6 July 1796, GWP.

  5. To Madison, 20 May 1792, GWP; from Hamilton, 10 May 1796, GWP; John Avlon, Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations, New York: Simon & Schuster (2017), 45–46, 76.

  6. To Hamilton, 15 May 1796, GWP.

  7. From Hamilton, 5 July, 30 July, and 10 August 1796; to Hamilton, 25 August 1796, GWP; Jay to Judge Peters, 29 March 1811, in Victor Hugo Paltsits, Washington’s Farewell Address, New York: New York Public Library (1935), 271; Avlon, Washington’s Farewell, 75–77.

  8. Avlon, Washington’s Farewell, 84–85; Nelly Custis Lewis to Lewis Washington, 31 January 1852, in Fred W. Smith Library, Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association; Claypoole’s Daily Advertiser and the Gazette of the United States, September 19, 1796.

  9. “General Order 16, February 18, 1862,” in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, New York: Bureau of National Literature (1897) 7:3306; Avlon, Washington’s Farewell, 242–43.

  10. To Jefferson, 6 July 1796, GWP; Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 31 December 1795, PTJ.

  11. Edmund S. Morgan, The Genius of George Washington, Washington, DC: The Society of the Cincinnati (1980), 6.

  12. Avlon, Washington’s Farewell, 104.

  13. Charles, “Hamilton and Washington,” WMQ 12:217, 266–67 (1955); Isaac Weld, Travels Through the States of North America . . . During the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, London: John Stockdale (1799) 1:105.

  14. To the Senate and the House of Representatives, 7 December 1796, GWP; to Hamilton, 1 September and 10 November 1796, GWP; from Hamilton, 4 September 1796, GWP. An avalanche of resolutions thanking and praising Washington arrived from communities across the nation. E.g., from John Hoskins Stone (Maryland), 16 December 1796, GWP; from Robert Branwell, 20 December 1796, GWP (South Carolina Assembly); from David Ramsey, 21 December 1796, GWP (South Carolina Senate); to Daniel Rogers, 2 February 1797 (Delaware resolution); from Charles Hall, 20 February 1797, GWP (from Citizens and Grand Jury of Northumberland County); to James Irvine, 22 February 1797, GWP (Militia of the City and County of Philadelphia); from John Pierce, 22 February 1797, GWP (from public meeting at James City County, Virginia); to Theodore Sedgwick, 24 February 1797, GWP (Massachusetts legislature); from Enos Hitchcock, 25 February 1797, GWP (Providence, Rhode Island, public meeting); from Francis Gurney, 27 February 1797, GWP (Select Council of Philadelphia); from Arthur Fenner, 10 March 1797, GWP (transmitting Address from Rhode Island General Assembly).

  15. North, Travel Journals of Henrietta Marchant Liston, 17; to James Anderson, 5 November 1796 and 8 January 1797, GWP; Ed Crews, “Rattle-Skull, Stonewall, Bogus, Blackstrap, Bombo, Mimbo, Whistle Belly, Syllabub, Sling, Toddy, and Flip: Drinking in Colonial America,” Colonial Williamsburg Journal (Holiday, 2007).

  16. Diary, 9 January, 6, 27, and 28 February 1797, GWP (theater and concerts); Diary, 7 and 13 January 1797, GWP (riding); Diary, 12 January, 26 February 1797, GWP (entertaining dignitaries); Diary, 11 February 1797, GWP note; Flexner 4:332; Claypoole’s Advertiser, February 23, 1797; James Iredell to Mrs. Iredell, 24 February 1797, in Griffith J. McRee, Life and Correspondence of James Iredell, One of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, New York: D. Appleton and Co. (1857) 2:493.

  17. Flexner 4:308–9.

  18. John Adams to Abigail Adams, 5 and 9 March 1797, AP; Baker, Character Portraits of Washington, 343–45; New York Herald, March 11, 1797; Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609–1884, Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co. (1884) 1:488.

  19. Washington Irving, The Life of George Washington, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (1876) 2:749. In describing this scene, Irving noted his source as William A. Duer, former president of Columbia College and son of Hamilton’s disgraced deputy at the treasury, who had been seventeen years old in 1797 when he attended the Adams inauguration. The y
ounger Duer lived until 1858, several years after Irving completed his research on the Washington biography, which appeared in several volumes published between 1855 and 1859.

  20. Diary, 12 March 1797 (and note), GWP; Gazette of the United States, March 16, 1797; Diary, 15 March 1797, GWP; from George Lewis, 9 April 1797, GWP.

  21. To Elizabeth Willing Powel, 26 March 1797, GWP; to James Anderson (Scotland), 7 April 1797, GWP.

  51. HOME FOR GOOD

  1. To Oliver Wolcott Jr., 15 May 1797, GWP; to James Anderson (Scotland), 4 November 1797, GWP; to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, 24 June 1797, GWP; to John Quincy Adams, 25 June 1797, GWP; “Lady Henrietta Liston’s Journal,” PMHB 95:516–17.

  2. To Oliver Wolcott Jr., 15 May 1797, GWP; to the Earl of Buchan, 4 July 1797, GWP; to Miles Smith, 27 March 1797, GWP; to Lafayette, 8 October 1797, GWP; Martha Washington to Elizabeth Willing Powel, 17 December 1797, GWP (quoting Washington); to William Washington, 28 December 1798, GWP; to Richard Washington, 20 October 1761, GWP; to Burgess Ball, 22 September 1799, GWP.

  3. Metchie J. E. Budka, ed. and tr., Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels Through America in 1797–1799, 1805, with Some Further Account of Life in New Jersey, Elizabeth: Grassman Publishing Co. (1965), 87; John Bernard, Retrospections of America, 1797–1811, New York: Harper and Brothers (1887), 89. Niemcewicz’s first impression of Washington was equally ecstatic: “I had not eyes enough to look on him. His is a majestic figure in which dignity and gentleness are united. . . . He is nearly six feet tall, square set, and very strongly built; aquiline nose, blue eyes, the mouth and especially the lower jaw sunken, a good head of hair,” Under Their Vine, 84.

  4. To James McHenry, 29 May 1797, GWP; to Tobias Lear, 31 July 1797, GWP.

  5. Michael A. Palmer, Stoddert’s War: Naval Operations During the Quasi-War with France, 1798–1801, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press (1987), 5–6; Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815, New York: Oxford University Press (2009), 239; from Oliver Wolcott Jr., 18 May and 15 June 1797, GWP; from William Vans Murray, 1 November 1797, GWP; to James McHenry, 4 March 1798, GWP. By the end of the hostility with France, that nation had seized more than 2,000 American vessels. Palmer, Stoddert’s War, 5.

  6. From Alexander White, 8 and 18 April 1798, GWP; from Timothy Pickering, 11 April 1798, GWP.

  7. From John Adams, 22 June 1798, GWP.

  8. To James McHenry, 4 July 1798, GWP; to John Adams, 4 July 1798, GWP.

  9. Alexander DeConde, The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons (1966), 96–97; Flexner 4:397; from James McHenry, 3 July 1798, GWP; from John Adams, 7 July 1798, GWP.

  10. To Timothy Pickering, 11 July 1798, GWP; to Hamilton, 14 July 1798, GWP; from Timothy Pickering, 1 September 1798, GWP. The tussle over seniority cost Washington one more old friend. Henry Knox, offended by Washington’s support for Hamilton over him, declined any role in the new army. From Henry Knox, 4 November 1798, GWP.

  11. From John Adams, 9 October 1798, GWP; to Hamilton, 25 February 1799, GWP; from Hamilton, 27 March 1799, GWP; from Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, 20 April 1799, GWP; from McHenry, 19 September 1798, GWP; to McHenry, 10 August 1798, 14 September 1798, GWP; Diary, 5 and 10 November 1798, GWP; Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), November 10 and 12, 1798. Washington’s diary records his social commitments in Philadelphia (14–16, 20, 22–24, and 28–30 November 1798, GWP), which included dining with Robert Morris inside the prison where he was confined for nonpayment of his debts, Diary, 27 November 1798, GWP.

  12. To McHenry, 17 November 1798, GWP; from Pickering, 21 February 1799; to John Adams, 3 March 1799, GWP.

  13. To McHenry, 20 September 1798, GWP; from McHenry, 5 October 1798, GWP; to Rufus King, 25 June 1797, GWP; to Lafayette, 25 December 1798, GWP; “Comments on Monroe’s A View of the Conduct of the Executive of the United States,” March 1798, GWP. For the 1799 elections, Washington recruited Patrick Henry to run for the Virginia legislature as a Federalist, and future Chief Justice John Marshall to stand for Congress. Both were successful, though Henry died before he could take office. To David Stuart, 4 January 1799, GWP; to Patrick Henry, 15 January 1799, GWP; from Patrick Henry, 12 February 1799, GWP; Diary, 5 and 6 September 1798, GWP; from Edward Carrington, 25 April 1799, GWP; from John Marshall, 1 May 1799, GWP; to John Marshall, 5 May 1799, GWP; to Bushrod Washington, 5 May 1799, GWP.

  14. To Hamilton, 14 July 1798, GWP; to John Adams, 25 September 1798, GWP; from Henry Knox, 29 July 1798, GWP.

  15. To Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 21 July 1799, GWP; Diary, 7 August 1797 (and note), 15 January 1798, 7 February 1798 (and note), GWP; from Tobias Lear, 8–10 March 1798, GWP; Diary, 8 February and 21 September 1798, GWP; to Commissioners of the District of Columbia, 27 October 1798, GWP; to William Herbert, 25 June 1799, GWP.

  16. To James Anderson, 18 June 1797, 15 September 1798, GWP.

  17. Flexner 4:373; to Samuel Washington, 12 July 1797, GWP; to James Ross, 2 July 1797, GWP; from Israel Shreve, 21 December 1798, GWP; from James Welch, 24, 29 November 1797, GWP; to James Keith, 1 and 12 December 1797, GWP; “Schedule of Property,” 9 July 1799, GWP; Diary, 24 November and 9 December 1797, and 10–11 October 1798; Mary V. Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press (2019), 58. A failed land sale to James Welch involved 23,000 acres on the Kanawha River. It was a measure of Washington’s eagerness to sell that he tried to conclude the transaction even though Welch was reputed to be unreliable in business matters, which soon proved to be true.

  52. WRESTLING WITH SIN

  1. Dalzell and Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 130; Flexner 1:286; Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,” xiii.

  2. Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,” 269–90; 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; “Circular to William Stuart, Hiland Crow, and Henry McCoy,” 14 July 1793, GWP; to Anthony Whiting, 20 January 1793, 5 May 1793, GWP; to William Pearce, 30 March 1794, GWP; to James Anderson, 20 February 1797, GWP; Tobias Lear to William Prescott Jr., 4 March 1788, in “A Lear Letter,” Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association Annual Report (1958), 24; Morgan, “Virginia and the French and Indian War,” VMHB 81:23, 45–46 (1973); John Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?” VMHB 94:307, 317 (1986); McGaughy, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, 62; Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1:10–11; Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1968), 376.

  3. Alfred W. Blumrosen and Ruth G. Blumrosen, Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution, Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks (2005), 1–12; Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 240, 244; Jordan, White over Black, 342; Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe (2014), 137–38; Kukla, Patrick Henry, 238, 359, 361; Patrick Henry to Robert Pleasants, 18 January 1773, in Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches 1:152.

  4. Chastellux, Travels in North America 2:439; Richard Henry Lee to Landon Carter, 15 August 1765, in Ballagh, The Letters of Richard Henry Lee 1:11–12; Hening, Statutes at Large 11:39–40; St. George Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery, with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It in the State of Virginia, Philadelphia: Matthew Carey (1796), 71; James Curtis Ballagh, A History of Slavery in Virginia, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1902), 120.

  5. General Orders, 12 November 1775, GWP; Pete Maslowski, “National Policy Toward the Use of Black Troops in the Revolution,” South Carolina Hist. Mag. 73:1, 2–4 (1972); General Orders, 30 December 1775, GWP; to Jo
hn Hancock, 31 December 1775, GWP; Lender and Stone, Fatal Sunday, 142; Trussell, Birthplace of an Army, 78; Philip D. Morgan, “George Washington and Slavery,” in Schoelwer, Lives Bound Together, 68–69. A manpower accounting prepared several weeks after the Battle of Monmouth Court House recorded 755 Negro soldiers in the army. “Return of Negroes in the Army,” 24 August 1778, in W. B. Hartgrove, “The Negro Soldier in the American Revolution,” J. of African American Hist. 1:110, 127 (1916). After praising Phillis Wheatley’s talents in correspondence, Washington may have hosted her for a visit to army headquarters. James G. Basker, ed., Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660–1810, New Haven: Yale University Press (2002), 181–82; to Phillis Wheatley, 28 February 1776, GWP; James G. Basker, “A Poem Links Unlikely Allies in 1775: Phillis Wheatley and George Washington,” History Now (2014).

  6. From Brig. General James Mitchell Varnum, 2 January 1778, GWP; to Varnum, 2 January 1778, GWP; from the Rhode Island Council of War, 19 January 1778, GWP; from Nicholas Cooke, 23 February 1778, GWP; Evelyn M. Acomb, ed. and tr., The Revolutionary Journal of Baron Ludwig von Closen, 1780–1783, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1958), 102; to Major General William Heath, 29 June 1780, GWP; Douglas R. Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America, New York: Oxford University Press (2007), 75, 77; John Laurens to Henry Laurens, 14 January, 2 February, and 9 March 1778, in Chesnutt and Taylor, Laurens Papers 12:305, 12:390–91, 12:532; Henry Laurens to John Laurens, 6 February 1778, in Chesnutt and Taylor, Laurens Papers 12:412; to Henry Laurens, 20 March 1779, GWP; Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 222–26, 243. The Continental Congress approved John Laurens’s proposal so long as Georgia and South Carolina also consented, JCC 18:385–89 (29 March 1779); those two Southern states never consented. From John Laurens, 19 May 1782, GWP.