by Ron Chernow
No sooner had Washington rebounded from his illness than he had to bury his half brother Augustine, who at forty-one perpetuated the mournful tradition of Washington men dying young. Augustine had never been as close to George as Lawrence had been, but he had always written warmly to his younger half brother. Although he had suffered terribly from gout for years and had traveled to England in a vain quest to regain his health, Augustine had reassured George two years earlier that “I am at this time in a better state of health than I have been for the last seven years” and that he hoped to visit Mount Vernon in warm weather “such as will suit my gouty joints.”13 The early deaths of his father and two older half brothers, none of whom reached fifty, could only have heightened Washington’s already considerable sense of mortality after he celebrated his thirtieth birthday.
In October 1762 Washington became a vestryman of Truro Parish, a post he held for twenty-two years. The twelve-man vestry oversaw the temporal affairs of the church at Pohick, which formed part of the Anglican, or “established,” Church. During the next decade Washington performed standard vestry duties, such as helping to pay the minister, balance the church budget, choose a site for a new church, scrutinize its construction, and select furnishings for the communion table. When the new church was completed, he bought two pews and contributed funds to buy gold leaf for religious inscriptions emblazoned across the altarpiece. Washington also served three terms as churchwarden, a post in which he helped to care for poor people and orphans. Because Mount Vernon sprawled into Fairfax Parish as well, Washington bought another pew at Christ Church in Alexandria and joined the vestry there too. Washington’s extensive church activities schooled him in self-government and provided him with plenty of administrative experience.
Many mysteries have surrounded George Washington’s religious beliefs. A pair of notable acquaintances raised questions about his faith. Thomas Jefferson once remarked cynically that Washington “has divines [ministers] constantly about him because he thinks it right to keep up appearances but is an unbeliever.”14 Jefferson contended that when Washington stepped down as president, a group of clergy-men presented him with a list of requests to bolster public faith in Christianity; they noted he had refrained from public endorsements of the tenets of Christianity and beseeched him to declare openly his beliefs. According to Jefferson, “the old fox was too cunning” for the preachers and replied to all their points except the one about his personal faith.15 (It should be said that Jefferson’s source, Dr. Ashbel Green, later insisted that Jefferson had garbled the story.) Bishop William White of Pennsylvania, Washington’s pastor during his presidency in Philadelphia, also stated, “I do not believe that any degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation.”16
From family recollections, it seems indisputable that Washington grew up in a household steeped in piety. Mary Ball Washington was extremely devout and did not hesitate to invoke the aid of Jesus. “She was in the habit of repairing every day to a secluded spot, formed by rocks and trees near to her dwelling, where, abstracted from the world and worldly things, she communed with her Creator in humiliation and prayer,” Washington’s adopted grandson wrote.17
A stalwart member of two congregations, Washington attended church throughout his life and devoted substantial time to church activities. His major rites of passage—baptism, marriage, burial—all took place within the fold of the church. What has mystified posterity and puzzled some of his contemporaries was that Washington’s church attendance was irregular; that he recited prayers standing instead of kneeling; that, unlike Martha, he never took communion; and that he almost never referred to Jesus Christ, preferring such vague locutions as “Providence,” “Destiny,” the “Author of our Being,” or simply “Heaven.” Outwardly at least, his Christianity seemed rational, shorn of mysteries and miracles, and nowhere did he directly affirm the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Numerous historians, viewing Washington as imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment, have portrayed him as a deist. Eighteenth-century deists thought of God as a “prime mover” who had created the universe, then left it to its own devices, much as a watchmaker wound up a clock and walked away. God had established immutable laws of nature that could be fathomed by human reason instead of revelation. Washington never conformed to such deism, however, for he resided in a universe saturated with religious meaning. Even if his God was impersonal, with scant interest in individual salvation, He seemed to evince a keen interest in North American politics. Indeed, in Washington’s view, He hovered over many battlefields in the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. His influence was especially manifest during stirring patriotic victories and hairbreadth escapes from the enemy. Convinced that his life had been spared for some larger purpose, Washington later expressed gratitude to Providence, “which has directed my steps and shielded me in the various changes and chances through which I have passed from my youth to the present moment.”18 Throughout his life he descried signs of heavenly approbation and seemed to know that he operated under the overarching guidance of a benign Providence.
Many of Washington’s eminent contemporaries, ranging from Marshall to Madison, regarded him as “a sincere believer in the Christian faith, and a truly devout man,” as Marshall attested.19 Some of Washington’s religious style probably reflected an Enlightenment discomfort with religious dogma, but it also reflected his low-key personal style. He was sober and temperate in all things, distrusted zealotry, and would never have talked of hellfire or damnation. He would have shunned anything, such as communion, that might flaunt his religiosity. He never wanted to make a spectacle of his faith or trade on it as a politician. Simply as a matter of personal style, he would have refrained from the emotional language associated with evangelical Christianity. This cooler, more austere religious manner was commonplace among well-heeled Anglicans in eighteenth-century Virginia.
Washington’s pastor at Pohick Church before the war confirmed that he “never knew so constant an attendant at church as Washington.”20 His early biographer Jared Sparks recorded this comment from Washington’s nephew George W. Lewis: “Mr. Lewis said he had accidentally witnessed [Washington’s] private devotions in his library both morning and evening; that on those occasions he had seen him in a kneeling position with a Bible open before him and that he believed such to have been his daily practice.”21 General Robert Porterfield recalled that when he delivered an urgent message to Washington during the Revolutionary War, he “found him on his knees, engaged in his morning’s devotions.” When he mentioned this to Washington’s aide Alexander Hamilton, the latter “replied that such was his constant habit.”22 Washington’s adopted granddaughter saw his self-effacing religiosity as consistent with a hatred of pretension: “He was not one of those who act or pray ‘That they may be seen of men.’”23 Numerous people left vignettes testifying to Washington’s simple faith. On the other hand, he lacked a speculative bent and was never one to ponder the fine points of theology.
One thing that hasn’t aroused dispute is the exemplary nature of Washington’s religious tolerance. He shuddered at the notion of exploiting religion for partisan purposes or showing favoritism for certain denominations. As president, when writing to Jewish, Baptist, Presbyterian, and other congregations—he officially saluted twenty-two major religious groups—he issued eloquent statements on religious tolerance. He was so devoid of spiritual bias that his tolerance even embraced atheism. When he needed to hire a carpenter and a bricklayer at Mount Vernon, he stated that “if they are good workmen,” they could be “Mahometans, Jews, or Christian of any sect, or they may be atheists.”24 He took pleasure in dropping by Sunday services of other denominations. In Bishop White’s words, “If there was no Episcopal Church in the town in which he happened to be, he would attend the services of any other denomination with equal cheerfulness.”25
Washington loathed religious fanaticism, and on t
hat subject he sounded like a true student of the Enlightenment. “We have abundant reason to rejoice that, in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition,” President Washington wrote to one Baltimore church.26 “Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.”27 A convinced supporter of the separation of church and state, Washington declared that “no man’s sentiments are more opposed to any kind of restraint upon religious principles than mine are.”28
However ecumenical in his approach to religion, Washington never doubted its signal importance in a republic, regarding it as the basis of morality and the foundation of any well-ordered polity. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” he declared in his farewell address.29 For Washington, morality was so central to Christianity’s message that “no man who is profligate in his morals or a bad member of the civil community can possibly be a true Christian.”30
That Washington believed in the need for good works as well as faith can be seen in his extensive charity. George and Martha Washington never turned away beggars at their doorstep. “Let the hospitality of the house with respect to the poor be kept up,” Washington informed his estate manager after being named commander of the Continental Army. “Let no one go hungry away . . . provided it does not encourage them in idleness.”31 The Washingtons tried to practice anonymous charity even when it would have been politically expedient to advertise it loudly. Washington’s secretary, Tobias Lear, recorded hundreds of individuals, churches, and other charities that, unbeknownst to the public, benefited from presidential largesse. Even leftovers from the executive mansion were transferred to a prison for needy inmates. Washington had particular sympathy for those imprisoned for debt and gave generously to an organization—later called the Humane Society of the City of New York—that was formed to assist them. He took a special interest in the care and education of orphaned and indigent children and turned into a major benefactor of the Alexandria Academy, established for that purpose.
Washington’s generosity toward friends, neighbors, and relatives could be quite breathtaking. With typical munificence, he paid for the education of several children of his friend Dr. Craik. In 1768, when his friend William Ramsay encountered financial difficulties, Washington remembered that he had expressed a wish to send his son to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton). He therefore volunteered to donate twenty-five pounds per annum to educating the young man there. In making the offer, Washington told Ramsay, “No other return is expected or wished for . . . than that you will accept it with the same freedom and goodwill with which it is made and that you may not even consider it in the light of an obligation or mention it as such, for be assured that from me it will never be known.”32 The biographer Douglas Southall Freeman calls this lovely comment “the most generous sentence” that ever flowed from Washington’s pen.33 On countless occasions Washington served as an executor for friends and family members, with many such commitments costing him years of backbreaking legal work. It should also be noted that Washington was community-minded long before he entered national politics. Like his forebears, he held multiple public offices as a young man, becoming a justice of Fairfax County and a trustee of Alexandria in the 1760s.
George Washington always seemed in quiet revolt against the licentious Virginia culture of his upbringing. Many fellow planters, addicted to pleasure, thrived on a constant round of parties, dances, horse races, cockfights, boat races, and card playing. Washington was a far more driven and disciplined man than most of his neighbors, and his hardworking existence stood in stark contrast to their indolent ways. He was guided by a code of conduct that was crystal clear to him and that he frequently enunciated to young relatives. A man with a powerful conscience, he always feared that he was being watched from afar and made sure his conduct could stand up to the most severe critical standards.
Washington was moralistic about several vices ubiquitous in Tidewater Virginia: excessive drinking (he enjoyed drinking in moderation), gambling, smoking, and profanity. It is revealing that this famous Virginian later considered sending his adopted grandson to Harvard rather than to a Virginia college, because “the greater attention of the people [there] generally to morals and a more regular course of life [makes them] less prone to dissipation and debauchery than they are at the colleges south of it.”34 One of his duties as a Truro Parish churchwarden was to dispatch to the county court those guilty of gambling, drinking, profanity, breaking the Sabbath, and “certain other offences against decency and morality.”35 It would have suited Washington’s moralistic nature to pack off these offenders to condign punishment. The control of disruptive urges, for himself and others, always formed a central theme of his life.
Later on Washington developed a strong aversion to gambling, but it was likely the vice that most tempted his proper, upstanding nature. He had grown up in a raffish world where men gambled constantly at cards and billiards in smoky taverns and bet on races and cockfights. “Gambling is amazingly prevalent in Williamsburg,” one northern visitor exclaimed.36 Right before his marriage, Washington ordered from London a mahogany card table, two dozen packs of playing cards, and two sets of counters for quadrille, a popular card game. He enjoyed playing loo and whist for money and recorded small sums won and lost at cards and billiards, down to the last pence. His papers contain a fascinating list showing his card-playing expenses for 1772-74, revealing frequent indulgence. In Williamsburg, in the single month of May 1772, he gambled a dozen times, winning four times and losing eight. The following month he played six times and lost on five occasions—perhaps why his subsequent entries grew more infrequent. Washington even gambled once during the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, walking away with seven pounds.
One wonders whether this detailed list simply reflected Washington’s compulsive record keeping or whether it was a way to monitor a perceived moral failing. In 1783 he wrote to his nephew Bushrod and inveighed against gambling as one of many snares that trip up unsuspecting youths, his florid language suggesting that he knew about gambling from personal experience or close observation. “It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, and father of mischief. It has been the ruin of many worthy families, the loss of many a man’s honor, and the cause of suicide. To all those who enter the list, it is equally fascinating. The successful gamester pushes his good fortune till it is overtaken by a reverse. The losing gamester, in hopes of retrieving past misfortunes, goes on from bad to worse.”37
Washington had a far better record in controlling other urges. After a period in which he smoked his own tobacco in long-stemmed clay pipes, he seems to have forsworn the habit altogether. His swearing was so infrequent that people commented on it when it happened. Even though he took several glasses of wine with dinner, this was considered acceptable in an age of immoderate alcohol consumption. He once complained that Williamsburg’s social life was a continual round of dinners and that “it was not possible for a man to retire sober.”38 After the Revolutionary War, he told one visitor with evident relief that Virginians were “less given to intoxication; . . . it is no longer fashionable for a man to force his guests to drink and to make it an honor to send them home drunk.”39
Whether hiring overseers or appointing army officers, Washington insisted upon sobriety and saw no greater sign of weakness than a man’s inability to control his drinking. Alcoholism was a chronic problem that he had to combat among the hired help at Mount Vernon. On one occasion he capitulated to the drinking of a talented gardener whose sprees he agreed to tolerate so long as the man confined them to certain holidays. In his employment contract, Washington stated that he would be given “four dollars at Christmas with which to be drunk four days and four nights; two dollars at Easter, to effect the same purpose; two dollars at Whitsuntide to be drunk for two days; a dram in the morning and a
drink of grog at dinner at noon.”40 It was typical of Washington’s thoroughness to pin down such an agreement in writing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A World of His Own
IN 1763 the end of the French and Indian War appeared to foreshadow a halcyon season of peace and prosperity for the colonies, but the troubled aftermath sowed the seeds of conflict twelve years later. The national debt of Great Britain, inflated by military spending, had swollen to a stupendous 130 million pounds, with annual interest payments of 4.5 million pounds engrossing more than half the national budget. To shift this tax burden to its North American subjects, the British government introduced a stamp tax and other hated measures that ignited an insurrection in the colonies. At the same time, having banished the French from Canada, the war eliminated the colonists’ need for imperial protection to the north.
The Crown’s postwar policy caused colonists to feel penalized by a victory to which they had contributed. It outlawed the printing of paper money by the colonies—London merchants fretted over their losses from such depreciated paper—making currency scarce in Virginia. George Washington, suddenly unable to collect money from strapped debtors, predicted that the ban on colonial money might “set the whole country in flames.”1 Washington’s first stirrings of anti-British fervor had arisen from his failure to receive a royal commission, but they were now joined by disenchantment over pocketbook issues. Great Britain was simply bad for local business, a fact that would soon foster the historical anomaly of a revolution inaugurated by affluent, conservative leaders. As potentates of vast estates, lords of every acre they saw, George Washington and other planters didn’t care to truckle to a distant, unseen power.
