Washington
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Not all of Washington’s advisers thought he should attend. Humphreys reminded him of the potentially illegal nature of the gathering and, consequently, the huge reputational risk. “I concur fully in sentiment with you concerning the inexpediency of your attending the convention,” he wrote.14 Knox favored Washington’s going but felt obliged to point out that the Philadelphia convention might be “an irregular assembly,” even an illegal one, since it would operate outside the amendment process spelled out in the Articles of Confederation. It might even expose delegates to conspiracy charges. On the other hand, Washington’s presence would draw New England states that had boycotted the Annapolis conference, converting it into a truly national gathering. To pique Washington’s interest, Jay sent him a clairvoyant sketch of a new government divided into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. “Let Congress legislate,” he told Washington. “Let others execute. Let others judge.”15 The letter foreshadowed the exact shape of the future government.
During February and March 1787 Washington alternated between passionate concern for saving the union and an insistence that he couldn’t go to Philadelphia. He likened the confederacy to a “house on fire,” saying that unless emergency measures were taken, the building would be “reduced to ashes”; but somebody else would apparently have to extinguish the blaze.16 Washington’s internal deliberations began to shift on February 21, when Congress approved a convention “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.”17 While the convention ended up exceeding this mandate, the decision momentarily retired the legality issue. With the country “approaching to some awful crisis,” he told Knox, he began to fret about a public outcry if he didn’t go to Philadelphia.18 Suddenly he seemed to lean in the other direction. “A thought, however, has lately run through my mind, which is attended with embarrassment,” he confided to Knox in early March. “It is, whether my non-attendance in this convention will not be considered as a dereliction to republicanism.”19
Wisely, Washington had allowed the issue to percolate for months, encouraging the perception that he was following rather than leading events. On March 19 Knox sent him a letter that may have clinched his decision. He said that he took it for granted that Washington would be elected president of the convention. If the convention still faltered and produced only a “patchwork to the present defective confederation, your reputation would in a degree suffer.” But if the convention forged a vigorous new federal government, “it would be a circumstance highly honorable to your fame . . . and doubly entitle you to the glorious republican epithet ‘The Father of Your Country.’”20 This was the perfect double-barreled appeal to Washington’s vanity and patriotism. Because of the high caliber of the delegates selected, Knox wagered that the convention would spawn a superior new system, and “therefore the balance of my opinion preponderates greatly in favor of your attendance.”21
In retrospect, it seems foreordained that Washington, with his unerring sense of duty, would go to Philadelphia. He was a casualty of his own greatness, which dictated a path in life from which he couldn’t deviate. Had he turned down the call to duty, he would have felt something incomplete in his grand mission to found the country, but he patently had to convince himself and the world of his purely disinterested motives. Now he could proceed as if summoned from self-imposed retirement by popular acclaim.
On March 28 Washington wrote to Governor Randolph and submitted to his fate: he would indeed attend the convention. He made it clear that he was doing so involuntarily and only submitting to the entreaties of friends. In Washington’s life, however, one commitment led ineluctably to the next, and he acknowledged that his attendance would have “a tendency to sweep me back into the tide of public affairs.” 22 To solve his dilemma with the Cincinnati, he planned to go to Philadelphia a week early and address the group, so they would not attribute his attending the Constitutional Convention instead “to a disrespectful inattention to the Society.”23 Henry Knox was bowled over by Washington’s decision. “Secure as he was in his fame,” he wrote to Lafayette, “he has again committed it to the mercy of events. Nothing but the critical situation of his country would have induced him to so hazardous a conduct.”24 Having made his decision, Washington gave unstinting support to a convention that would do far more than just tinker with the Articles of Confederation: like Madison, he wanted root-and-branch reform. He told Knox that the convention should “probe the defects” of the Articles of Confederation “to the bottom,” and he worried that some states might not send delegates or would hobble them with “cramped powers,” fostering an impasse.25 By this point, Washington was clearly primed for decisive action in Philadelphia.
BEFORE TAKING ON THE BURDEN OF AMERICA, Washington had to deal with a piece of unfinished family business: the chronic discontent of his mother. Mary Washington, with her flinty independence, was still stewing with grievances. Right before John Augustine died in early January, she had written to him to complain of an absence of corn at her four-hundred-acre farm in the Little Falls quarter of the Rappahannock River. “I never lived soe pore in my life,” she insisted.26 Had it not been for succor from a neighbor and her daughter, Betty, she contended, “I should be almost starvd, butt I am like an old almanack, quit out of date.”27 After Mary’s wartime petition to the Virginia legislature, John Augustine, at George’s behest, had taken charge of her mismanaged property. This letter about her supposed poverty shows that she did not restrict her whining to her famous son. She had mixed feelings about allowing others to govern her business. When her late son-in-law, Fielding Lewis, volunteered to take over her business affairs, Mary Washington had shot back, “Do you, Fielding, keep my books in order, for your eyesight is better than mine, but leave the executive management to me.”28
News that Mary was again denigrating him drifted back to George, who wrote to her in mid-February and enclosed another fifteen guineas. In this stilted letter, Washington revealed that his relations with her had grown so frosty that the two hadn’t even communicated after Jack’s death. Indignant at his mother’s accusation that he was being stingy, he poured out his grievances, explaining in brutal detail the miserable state of his finances:I have now demands upon me for more than 500£, three hundred and forty odd which is due for the tax of 1786; and I know not where, or when, I shall receive one shilling with which to pay. In the last two years, I made no crops. In the first I was obliged to buy corn and this year have none to sell and my wheat is so bad that I cannot neither eat it myself nor sell it to others, and tobacco I make none. Those who owe me money cannot or will not pay it without [law]suits . . . whilst my expenses . . . for the absolute support of my family and the visitors who are constantly here are exceedingly high; higher indeed than I can support, without selling part of my estate, which I am disposed to do rather than run in debt . . . This is really and truly my situation.29
Washington went on to protest that, despite their business agreement, he had received not a penny from his mother’s farm, even though he had paid 122 pounds in annual rent for her plantation and slaves; either Mary or her overseer had skimmed off the profits and forwarded nothing to him. Beyond that, he had given her more than 300 pounds in unpaid loans over a dozen years—all carefully documented in his ledgers. As a result of her accusations, he told her, “I am viewed as a delinquent and considered perhaps by the world as [an] unjust and undutiful son.”30 Once again Washington was preoccupied with a world that might sit in disapproving judgment upon him. To relieve his mother’s distress, he suggested that she hire out her servants and live with one of her children. In fact, shortly before his death, John Augustine had volunteered to take her in.
Anticipating her next request, Washington said that she was welcome to live at Mount Vernon, but he warned her that “in truth it may be compared to a well-resorted tavern, as scarcely any strangers who are going from north to south, or from south to north, do not spend a day or two at it. This would, were you to be an inhabitant of it, oblige you
to do one of 3 things, 1st to be always dressing to appear in company, 2d to come into [it] in a dishabille or 3d to be, as it were, a prisoner in your own chamber.”31 This image of Mount Vernon as a crowded, noisy inn, swarming with strangers, was not exactly an inviting one, and Mary never came to live there. The letter is conspicuously devoid of warmth or family affection: Washington and his mother were simply locked in an unhappy business relationship. Washington’s reasons for dissuading his mother from living at Mount Vernon confirm that he perceived her as a coarse countrywoman who would be ill at ease in more polished society.
On March 7 Washington returned to Fredericksburg for what he imagined would be the “last act of personal duty”—that is, the last time he might see his aged mother.32 Then in late April, as he prepared to leave for Philadelphia, he was summoned to Fredericksburg by news that both Mary, who was apparently suffering from breast cancer, and his sister, Betty, were gravely ill. Even though his arm now rested in a sling from rheumatic pain, Washington made the urgent trip to Fredericksburg, telling Henry Knox that he was “hastening to obey this melancholy call, after having just bid an eternal farewell to a much loved brother.”33 In correspondence, Washington always sounded like the conscientious son, telling Robert Morris that he had been called to Fredericksburg for “the last adieu to an honored parent and an affectionate sister.”34
Although the trip proved a false alarm, Washington found his mother vastly changed, her illness having “reduced her to a skeleton, tho[ugh] she is somewhat amended.”35 Oddly, Washington had made no previous reference to her medical situation, which made her complaining far more comprehensible. Betty had improved as well and was now out of danger. One Fredericksburg resident was shocked by the transformation in Washington’s own appearance: “Gen[era]l Washington has been here to see his mother, who has been ill . . . The Gen[era]l is much altered in his person, one arm swung with rheumatism.”36 After a few days Washington returned to Mount Vernon, but the trip must have formed a sobering backdrop to his journey to the Constitutional Convention.
On May 9, 1787, shortly after sunrise, George Washington set off for Philadelphia. While his rheumatic misery had abated, he was beset by other complaints, including a violent headache and an upset stomach—perhaps the somatic expression of his dread about the convention. Until this time Martha Washington had been the loyal, submissive wife in dealing with her husband’s career. Now, as she saw George sentenced to life imprisonment in American politics, she began to rebel and decided to skip the Constitutional Convention. “Mrs. Washington is become too domestic, and too attentive to two little grandchildren to leave home,” Washington explained to Robert Morris, “and I can assure you, sir, that it was not until after a long struggle [that] I could obtain my own consent to appear again in a public theater.”37 This was a more independent Martha than the one who had rushed off to her husband’s winter camps despite her fears of travel and gunfire.
On Sunday, May 13, Washington arrived at Chester, Pennsylvania, and was escorted into Philadelphia by a long procession of dignitaries and a troop of light horse. Greeted by booming artillery and saluting officers, Washington must have been reminded of the worshipful attention he had generated during the war. Despite inclement weather, the sidewalks were densely packed with enthusiastic throngs. Noted the Pennsylvania Packet, “The joy of the people on the coming of this great and good man was shown by their acclamation and the ringing of bells.”38 Washington having shed his arm sling, the newspaper expressed joy in finding “our old and faithful commander in the full enjoyment of his health and fame.”39 Washington saw nothing incongruous about arriving in Philadelphia flanked by three of his slaves, Giles, Paris, and the durable Billy Lee; the fate of such slaves would form a contentious issue at the convention. Although James Madison hoped that the entire Virginia delegation would stay at the same lodging house, hard by the Pennsylvania State House, Washington succumbed to the entreaties of Robert Morris and stayed with him and his wife, Mary.
Guided by a fine sense of decorum, Washington made his first courtesy call on the venerable Benjamin Franklin, whom he had not seen since 1776, and his elderly host broke open a cask of dark beer to receive him. Washington had long revered Franklin as a “wise, a great and virtuous man.”40 Throughout the war he had addressed the older man with exquisite respect, extending to him the title “Your Excellency” that the rest of the world also applied to him. After the war Franklin had tried to woo Washington into a joint tour of Europe, which would have made a sensation by uniting the two most famous Americans. Now, as president of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania, Franklin was Washington’s only serious rival for the convention presidency. His medical situation, however, militated against his selection: he was tormented by gout and kidney stones, even though he tossed off witticisms about the latter. “You may judge that my disease is not grievous,” he said, “since I am more afraid of the medicines than of the malady.” 41
The assembly of demigods got off to a rather sluggish start. Although the convention was supposed to begin on May 14, only the Virginia and Pennsylvania delegations arrived on time, forcing a delay. A punctual man, Washington was irritated by the absence of a quorum of seven states and groused to George Augustine that the deferrals were “highly vexatious to those who are idly and expensively spending their time here.”42 Throughout his time in Philadelphia, Washington plied George Augustine with detailed advice about Mount Vernon, just as he had with Lund Washington during the war. Two days after the convention opened, he asked his nephew if he had “tried both fresh and salt fish as a manure” and recommended that he plant buckwheat.43 As a farmer, it frustrated him that Philadelphia was being drenched with rain while drought prevailed in Virginia.
The delay thrust Washington into a knotty predicament vis-à-vis the Society of the Cincinnati, for it suddenly gave him time to attend their meetings. Reluctant to become more deeply involved, he came up with a clever alternative. Instead of attending meetings, he dined on May 15 with twenty members of the society, thus preserving a self-protective distance. Because he didn’t wish to affront old comrades, he accepted reelection as president on May 18, making clear that the actual duties would devolve on the vice president. That he steered clear of the Cincinnati was fine with the more diehard members, one saying, “I could almost wish for the absence of the illustrious chief, whose extreme prudence and circumspection . . . may cool our laudable and necessary ebullition with a few drops, if not a torrent, of cold water.”44
While awaiting the convention’s start, Washington hobnobbed with tony members of Philadelphia society, starting with Robert and Mary White Morris. Among his other hosts were the wealthy William Bingham and his beautiful wife, Anne Willing Bingham, whose splendid house on Third Street formed the centerpiece of Philadelphia society. There was nothing surprising in Washington’s seeking out such rich company: their social milieu was the same as his at home. Very receptive, as always, to the ladies, he noted in his diary any feminine company he shared. He attended a charity event with Mary White Morris “and some other ladies” to hear a Mrs. O’Connell deliver a discourse on eloquence.45 Later in the week he attended a wedding for the daughter of Benjamin Chew, whose stone house in Germantown had presented such a costly obstacle to the Continental Army. He evidently enjoyed it: “Drank tea there in a very large circle of ladies.”46 One wonders whether Washington enjoyed this brief vacation from Martha’s company.
Washington renewed an important friendship, formed during the First Continental Congress, with the wealthy, laconic Samuel Powel, a former mayor of Philadelphia, and his sophisticated, entrancing wife, Elizabeth (or Eliza). The Powels inhabited a three-story rococo mansion on Third Street that was so tastefully opulent that the Chevalier de Chastellux had praised this “handsome house . . . adorned with fine prints and some very good copies of the best Italian paintings.”47 But during the First Continental Congress, the puritanical John Adams had recoiled from the “sinful feast” he attended there, which had everyt
hing that “could delight the eye or allure the taste.”48 George Washington had no such trouble with the regal atmosphere at the Powels’ and was a frequent guest at their soirées.
An immensely charming, erudite, and witty woman, who wrote with literary flair and elegance, Elizabeth Willing Powel eclipsed her stolid husband and could have held her own in the spirited repartee of any European salon. The daughter as well as the wife of a mayor, this socially proficient and politically opinionated hostess loved to flirt with powerful men, and George Washington fell under her spell. A portrait by Matthew Pratt shows an extremely handsome older woman whose low-cut yellow dress and purple sash amply display her voluptuous figure. She looks calm and poised, with a penetrating eye and a slightly melancholy air after the death of her two sons. Elizabeth Powel provided virtually the only instance in his later years when Washington befriended a couple but was much closer with the wife. She revered Washington, whom she saw on a par with the loftiest heroes of antiquity. As with George William and Sally Fairfax, Washington was careful to stay on good terms with Samuel Powel and equally careful to include Martha Washington in the friendship. Nevertheless, his friendship with Elizabeth Powel was his only deep, direct one with a woman who qualified as an intellectual peer and treated him as such. In this relationship Washington escaped the narrow bounds of marriage, met Powel alone for teas, and corresponded with her. We have no evidence that their closeness ever progressed beyond that, but if George Washington ever contemplated romance with another woman, it surely must have been Elizabeth Powel.