7. From Lund Washington, 8 April 1778, GWP; to Lund Washington, 15 August 1778, 24 February 1779, GWP.
8. From Lafayette, 5 February 1783, 6 February 1786, GWP; to Lafayette, 5 April 1783, 10 May 1786, GWP.
9. To John Francis Mercer, 6 and 24 November 1786, GWP; to Alexander Spotswood, 23 November 1794, GWP; to Henry Lee Jr., 4 February 1787, GWP; to John Fowler, 2 February 1788, GWP; to John Dandridge, 18 November 1788, GWP; to Betty Washington Lewis, 18 November 1788, GWP. Washington avidly pursued reimbursement by the state for the value of a slave who was executed following criminal prosecution. To John Pendleton, 1 March 1788, GWP; to David Stuart, 11 December 1787, GWP, note 2.
10. To Robert Morris, 12 April 1786, GWP; to John Francis Mercer, 9 September 1786, GWP.
11. Diary, 26 May 1785, GWP; Thomas Coke, Extracts of the Journals of the Late Rev. Thomas Coke, L. L. D., Dublin: R. Napper (1816), 73; Albert Matthews, “Notes on the Proposed Abolition of Slavery in Virginia in 1785,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications 6:370 (1904); from Madison, 11 November 1785, GWP.
12. To David Stuart, 15 June 1790, GWP; Fisher Ames to [William Eustis], 17 March 1790, in DHFFC 19:891.
13. To Lear, 12 April 1791, GWP.
14. From Lear, 24 April 1791, GWP.
15. Niemcewicz, Under Their Vine, 104. Washington, with his usual methodical approach, had calculated the likely financial result from leasing a parcel of land contiguous to Mount Vernon along with the twenty-three enslaved people who would come with the lease. Totaling costs for clothing, food, doctors’ visits, midwife, and so on, he concluded that expenses would run about 20 percent higher than revenue. “Estimate of the cost of Mrs. French’s Land and Negroes on Dogue Creek, compared with the produce by which it will be seen what the tenant is to expect” [1790/1786?], GWP; to William Triplett, 25 September 1786, note 3, GWP.
16. Zagarri, Humphreys 78; Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 272–73.
17. To Arthur Young, 12 December 1793, GWP.
18. To Arthur Young, 9 November 1794, GWP; to Tobias Lear, 6 May 1794, note 13, GWP (quoting separate note enclosed with the letter).
19. Advertisement, 1 February 1796, GWP; Lease Terms, 1 February 1796, GWP; to William Strickland, to John Sinclair, to the Earl of Buchan, 20 February 1796, GWP; Flexner 4:260–61.
20. To William Pearce, 27 January and 7 February 1796, GWP; to David Stuart, 7 February 1796, GWP. Stuart was skeptical of Washington’s plan, writing that emancipation had to be gradual. He suggested an approach like the one followed by Lafayette: “to select some one of the most intelligent and responsible negroes, and rent to him a farm with so many hands furnished with every necessary implement,” and providing that “if they conducted themselves well they should be at perfect liberty at the expiration of two or three years either to remain on the farm, or seek employment elsewhere.” The process could be repeated until all were freed, upon paying “a moderate sum to their masters for two or three years.” Stuart also cautioned that it would be necessary to give freed slaves the right to testify against whites in cases of trespass or robbery, because blacks would be vulnerable to robbery and mistreatment if they could not do so.
21. To Tobias Lear, 13 March 1796, GWP; to William Pearce, 20 March 1796, GWP.
22. Ferdinando Fairfax, “Plan for Liberating the Negroes Within the United States,” American Museum, 285–87 (1 December 1790); Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery, 82, 86, 91–105; Kenneth R. Bowling, “George Washington’s Vision for the United States,” in Robert McDonald and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Revolutionary Prophecies: The Founders on America’s Future, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia (2020), 102.
23. Gary B. Nash, Race and Revolution, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield (1990), 18; William Buckner McGroarty, “Elizabeth Washington of Hayfield,” VMHB 33:154, 159, 161 (1925); Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,” 298; Melvin Ely, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2004), 44–50; William Macfarlane Jones, “Will of Richard Randolph, Jr., of ‘Bizarre,’” VMHB 34:72–76 (1926) (Richard Randolph manumitting his slaves, denouncing the “lawless and monstrous tyranny” of slavery imposed by “iniquitous laws”); Robert Levy, The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, the Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves, New York: Random House (2005); to Stephen Milburn, 15 May 1797, GWP.
24. Parkinson, A Tour in America in 1798, 1799, and 1800 2:420; to Robert Lewis, 17 August 1799, GWP; to John Dandridge, 28 May 1795, GWP; to Mildred Thornton Washington, 18 October 1798, GWP.
25. Dunbar, Never Caught; to Oliver Wolcott Jr., 1 September 1796, GWP; to Joseph Whipple, 28 November 1796, GWP; from Joseph Whipple, 22 December 1796, GWP; to Burwell Bassett Jr., 11 August 1799, GWP; to George Lewis, 13 November 1797, GWP; to Frederick Kitt, 10 January 1798, GWP; to Roger West, 19 September 1799, GWP.
26. To Alexander Spotswood, 23 November 1794, GWP; Bernard, Retrospections of America, 91; to Spotswood, 14 September 1798, GWP.
27. To Robert Lewis, 17 August 1798; 7 December 1799, GWP; to Benjamin Dulany, 15 July 1799, 12 September 1799, GWP.
28. To Lawrence Lewis, 4 August 1797, GWP.
29. Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 332, 338, 351–52; Martha Washington to Fanny Bassett Washington, 24 May 1795, in Fields, Worthy Partners, 287–88; Martha Washington to Elizabeth Willing Powel, 20 May 1797, in Fields, Worthy Partners, 302.
30. “Washington’s Slave List,” June 1799, GWP.
53. FAREWELL FOREVER
1. Tobias Lear, “The Diary Account,” 14 December 1799, GWP; Mary V. Thompson, In the Hands of a Good Providence: Religion in the Life of George Washington, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press (2008), 169–70; Peter R. Henriques, The Death of George Washington: He Died as He Lived, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press (2002), 32–33. Physicians have argued about the medical treatment afforded to Washington in his last illness. Some have denounced it as tantamount to murder; others have defended it as the best efforts of practitioners in 1799. That the doctors removed about eighty ounces of his blood has been universally lamented, but such was the treatment of the time. Dr. Dick, the third doctor to arrive, later complained that Dr. Craik refused to allow him to perform a tracheotomy to relieve Washington’s breathing. Elisha Dick, “Facts and Observations Relative to the Disease of Cynanche Trachealis, or Croup,” Philadelphia Medical & Physical Journal, 1809 (May, Supplement 3), 242, 244–45, 252–53 (October 7, 1808). The current historico-medical consensus is that a tracheotomy likely would have killed the patient, particularly if performed in 1799 conditions by a physician like Dr. Dick, who was inexperienced with the procedure. Recent commenters conclude that Washington began with a strep or staph infection in his throat, which led to epiglottitis, an acute swelling of the epiglottis, which closed up his throat and suffocated him, minute by agonizing minute. John Reid, “Observations on the Medical Treatment of General Washington’s Last Illness,” Medical and Physical Journal 3:473 (1800); Solomon Solis Cohen, “Washington’s Death and the Doctors,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine 64:945 (1899); W. A. Wells, “Last Illness and Death of Washington,” Virginia Medical Monthly 53:629 (1927); David M. Morens, “Death of a President,” N. Eng. J. Med. 341:1845 (1999); Michael L. Cheatham, “The Death of George Washington: An End to the Controversy?” American Surgeon 74:770 (2008).
2. Thomas Law to Edward Law, 18 December 1799, in Henriques, The Death of George Washington, 57; from John Adams to United States Senate, 23 December 1799, AFP.
3. “George Washington’s Last Will and Testament,” 9 July 1799, GWP. The other executors were William Augustine Washington, George Steptoe Washington, Samuel Washington, Lawrence Lewis, and George Washington Parke Custis.
4. Those few freed dower slaves were connected to or related to Will Costin, a mixed-race enslaved worker at Mount Vernon who purchased his own freedom and went
on to become an employee of the National Bank of Washington and a recognized figure in early Washington City, and also to purchase the freedom of several relatives from Thomas and Eliza Law. Costin may have been descended from a reputed half-sister of Martha Dandridge Washington who had been enslaved at the Dandridge plantation in New Kent County, a family story among Costin descendants that has credible elements. The freeing of Costin-related slaves—when no other dower slaves were liberated—offers striking parallels to the experience of the Hemingses of Monticello and their connection to Thomas Jefferson. Unfortunately, however, researchers have been unable to connect the Costins and the Dandridges, in part because the property records for New Kent County were destroyed in at least two courthouse fires across the centuries. Thompson, “The Unavoidable Subject of Regret,” 142–43; Wiencek, Imperfect God, 284–90.
5. Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, 21 December 1800, typescript, Fred W. Smith Library, Mount Vernon; Bushrod Washington to Unknown, 27 December 1799, in Fields, Worthy Partners, 329; Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,” 311.
6. Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,” 316–17; Flexner 4:447; Eugene E. Prussing, The Estate of George Washington, Deceased, Boston: Little, Brown & Co. (1927), 159.
7. In 1821, nephew Bushrod Washington was criticized for the different judgment he made when he sold fifty-four slaves to cover losses he endured after inheriting Mount Vernon. The sales were justified, Bushrod wrote, because he had to pay his debts, because the slaves were insubordinate, and because he feared they would escape to the North, which would impoverish him further. Gerald T. Dunne, “Bushrod Washington and the Mount Vernon Slaves,” Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook, 1980, 25, 27–28.
8. Mary Thompson, who has devoted her career to studying Washington and his world, has noted a provocative connection between Washington’s awakening to the sin of slavery during the Revolution and his decision at the time to stop taking communion at the end of Anglican church services. Upon reaching that point in Sunday services, his practice was to leave, which was not uncommon among Virginians attending Anglican services. Jacob M. Blosser, “Unholy Communion: Colonial Virginia’s Deserted Altars and Inattentive Anglicans,” VMHB 127:266, 273, 280 (2019). Those departures by a man of Washington’s celebrity and physical size, however, could hardly have been more conspicuous. The ministers minded that the commander in chief, then the president, strode from the building rather than take communion. After one clergyman made a point of stating that prominent men should not leave holy services before communion, Washington’s response was to stop attending that minister’s church, or to attend services only when communion was not offered. John E. Remsburg, Six Historic Americans: Paine, Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, Grant, New York: The Truth Seeker Co. (1906), 119 (“he uniformly absent[ed] himself on communion days”); William White to Colonel Mercer, 15 August 1835, in Wilson, Memoir of the Life of the Right Reverend William White, 187–89; Rev. William B. Sprague, in Annals of the American Pulpit 5:394 (1859); Thompson, In the Hands of a Good Providence, 78–82. Washington never explained why he stopped taking communion. Thompson speculates that he was beset with guilt over his deep engagement in the deceptions and brutality of the slave system. In that blighted moral condition, her speculation continues, he could not accept holy communion. Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,” 76; Zagarri, Humphreys, 78.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
Note: Page numbers in italics denote images and captions.
abolitionism, 50, 403–5, 409, 414
Adams, Abigail, xiii, 120, 188, 335–36, 413, 496n18
Adams, John
and assumption-of-debt debate, 333
biographical sketch of, xiii
on the Boston Tea Party, 180
and Conway Cabal, 233, 237
and corruption allegations against Randolph, 383
and criticisms of Washington, 505n34
election and inauguration, 393–94, 527n19
and executive appointments conflict, 324–25
and First Continental Congress, 187–94
and Jay Treaty, 377, 379
and onset of Revolution, 197
on political skill of Washington, 157
presidency, 397–400
on Saratoga victory, 244
and Second Continental Congress, 202–3
on Society of the Cincinnati, 496n18
Supreme Court appointments, xx, 294
on veneration of Washington, 505n34
as vice president, 321–23
and Washington’s appointment to command, 204–5, 207, 209
and Washington’s death, 412
and Washington’s election to presidency, 311–12, 359, 505n40
Adams, Robert, 152
Adams, Samuel, xiii, 182, 187, 189, 191, 233, 390
Addison, Joseph, 19, 157, 254
African American soldiers, xviii, 401, 403, 529n5
Alexander, William (“Lord Stirling”), xiii, 231, 237, 239, 262, 265, 275, 453n15
Alexandria, Virginia, 24, 347, 471n1
Alton, Jonathan, 4
American Colonization Society, 408
Amherst, Jeffery, 92, 138, 140
Anglican Church, 149–50, 192, 464n5, 532n8
Anti-Federalists, 309, 310, 322, 503n12
Arnold, Benedict, 267, 275
Articles of Confederation, 243, 266, 298, 303–4, 314, 500n16
Association of 1769, 212–13
assumption-of-debt debate, 333, 338, 513n17, 515n31. See also Compromise of 1790
Aurora, 378, 381, 387–88
Baltimore, Maryland, 330, 339, 513n13
Bank of the United States debate, 345–53, 516nn15–16
Barbados, 26–28, 27, 431n16, 431n19
Barbary pirates, 291, 384
Bassett, Anna Maria Dandridge, xiii–xiv, 115, 121, 235
Bassett, Burwell, xiv, 115, 176, 207, 472n12
Battle of Brandywine Creek, 222, 230
Battle of Bunker Hill, 219, 221
Battle of Fallen Timbers, 371, 373
Battle of Fort Necessity, 41–50, 53, 56, 84, 92, 104, 135–36, 162–63, 210–11
Battle of Germantown, 222, 228, 230, 481n17
Battle of Long Island, 453n15
Battle of Monmouth Court House, 11, 66, 215, 260–64, 261, 263, 264–67, 492nn33–34, 529n5
Battle of Monongahela, 58–62, 62–67, 96, 104, 106, 436n13
Battle of Prestonpans, 51–52
Battle of Princeton, 220
Battle of Saratoga, 222, 230–31, 233, 238, 244, 248, 261, 264, 267–68
Battle of Trenton, 220–21
Battle of Yorktown, 268, 282
Bill of Rights, 303, 306, 323–24
Blair, John, 6, 297
Bland, Humphrey, 71
Bland, Richard, 139, 185
Board of War, 232–38, 243, 246–47, 251. See also Conway Cabal
Boston, Massachusetts, 74, 180–82, 199, 209, 219, 327, 378, 508n39
Boston Tea Party, 180–82
Botetourt, Norborne Berkeley, Baron de, 167, 169–70, 171
Boucher, Jonathan, 111, 428n1
bounty lands, 162, 466n1, 468–69n21
Bouquet, Henry, 94–97, 97–98, 101, 102
Bowling, Kenneth, 514n24
boycotts, 143–44, 145, 168–69, 181, 195, 476n4
Braddock, Edward, 52
contrasted with Forbes, 92
and Forbes’s expedition,
100–101, 104
and Fort Duquesne campaign, 55–58, 58–62, 62–64, 65, 440n2
and Washington’s career trajectory, 51–54, 69, 103–4, 190, 210–11
Braddock’s Field, 370
Braddock’s Road, 55–58, 57, 67, 95–97, 441nn7–8, 452n7
Bradford, William, 367, 371, 380, 383
British East India Company, 180–81
Brown, Gustavus, 411
Bryan, Helen, 456n10
Buchanan, William, 227
Bullitt, Thomas, 452n5
Bullskin Creek, 25, 30, 51, 55, 80, 95, 98, 129, 285
Burgoyne, John, 221, 230
Burke, Aedanus, 512n3
Burns’s Tavern, 206
Bushrod, Hannah, 80
Butler, Pierce, 335–36
Calvert, Eleanor, 175–76, 178
Caribbean, 252–53, 363, 378
Carlisle, Frederick Howard, Earl of, 254
Carlos III, King of Spain, 283
Carlyle, John
biographical sketch of, xiv
and Braddock expedition, 52
on French and Indian threat, 432–33n8
and Virginia politics, 71
and Washington’s command of Virginia Regiment, 69
and Washington’s election to presidency, 98
and Washington’s judicial work, 152
and the Washingtons’ social life, 105–6, 108, 178
Carroll, Charles, 342, 344, 487n19
Carroll, Daniel, 344, 514n29
Carter, Landon, 209–10, 438n32
Carter, Robert, III, 408
Catawbas, 76, 85
Cato (Addison), 107, 157, 254
Charleston, South Carolina, 219, 362
Charles XII, King of England, 221
Cherokee Indians, 76, 85, 325, 367
Chesapeake Bay, 287–88
Chickasaw Indians, 325
Choiseul, Etienne-François, duc de, 460n17
George Washington Page 74