by Ron Chernow
Hagiographic biographies poured from the presses with indecent haste. The first and most influential was by Parson Mason L. Weems, an itinerant book peddler and Episcopal priest who had once been introduced to Washington by Dr. Craik. Weems had already published tracts on the perils of everything from gambling to masturbation. Eager to cash in on Washington mania, he wrote to his publisher in mid-January 1800, “Washington, you know is gone! Millions are gaping to read something about him.”36 Weems rushed out the first edition of The Life of Washington in pamphlet form that year. In that and succeeding editions, he manufactured enduring myths about Washington refusing to lie about chopping down the cherry tree, hurling a silver dollar across the Rappahannock, and praying at Valley Forge. Weems imagined future schoolchildren asking, “What was it that raised Washington to his godlike height of glory?”37 Perhaps sensing something too stern and difficult about the real Washington, Weems tried to humanize him through treacly fables designed to inculcate patriotism and morality. He showed no scruples about inventing scenes whole cloth. Weems claimed that when Washington’s father died, George “fell upon his father’s neck . . . kissed him a thousand and a thousand times and bathed his clay-cold face with scalding tears.”38 To improve sales and with an eye on the main chance, Weems deleted all partisan references, boasting to his publisher, “Adams and Jefferson both will approve our little piece.”39
If Parson Weems foisted a false image of a stiff, priggish Washington on American schoolchildren, Washington did not fare much better at first with more serious biographers. Bushrod Washington had inherited Washington’s papers and knew they would be the ideal source material for a biography. To write an authorized life, he wooed one of Washington’s foremost admirers, John Marshall, who wrote the book after he became chief justice and joined Bushrod on the Supreme Court. Marshall devoted five volumes to inflating Washington into a figure sculpted from marble. For all his deep knowledge of Washington, however, he could not make his old friend come alive, prompting one disgruntled critic to grumble, “We look in vain . . . for any sketch or anecdote that might fix a distinguishing feature of private character in the memory.”40 Like Weems, Marshall edited out Washington’s more turbulent, unruly emotions. John Adams mocked the biography as “a mausoleum, 100 feet square at the base and 200 feet high.”41 The public didn’t warm to the Marshall biography, which presented Washington as a distant figure, and sales flagged. In the 1820s Jared Sparks, later president of Harvard, prevailed upon Bushrod Washington and John Marshall to let him publish the first edition of Washington’s papers, which ran to twelve volumes. So began the scholarly process of disinterring Washington from the many legends that had already encrusted his life.
MARTHA WASHINGTON HAD SACRIFICED so much privacy during her married life that after her husband died, she evened the score by burning their personal correspondence—to the everlasting chagrin of historians. By the standards of her day, her act was neither unusual nor wanton. After Alexander Hamilton died in a duel in 1804, Elizabeth Hamilton burned all her letters to him, although she did take care to preserve, with loving fidelity, his letters to her.
However much Martha sought to be a brave, cheerful widow, she was inconsolable in her grief. “I listened with tender interest to a sorrow, which she said was truly breaking her heart,”reported a British companion.42 A miniature portrait by Robert Field shows her pale, round face closely framed by a frilly white cap and surrounded by the black ribbon that betokened widowhood. Martha was not so much learning to live with bereavement as marking time until she could rejoin her husband. She refused to enter his study or the bedroom they had shared; she took up residence in a tiny attic chamber on the third floor at Mount Vernon, where she met with her sewing circle of slaves. Since Washington Custis kept a room on the same floor, she enjoyed some distraction by doting anxiously on her grandson. She haunted the narrow footpath that ran down to the family vault and often sounded a despairing note. “I always have one complaint or another,” she told a correspondent. “I never expect to be well as long as I live in this world.”43
Always warmly hospitable to visitors, Martha made no effort to mask her bottomless sadness and distributed locks of her husband’s hair like so many saintly relics. Sally Foster Otis detected the contradiction when Martha spoke “of death as a pleasant journey which is in contemplation,” while at the same time being “cheerful [and] anxious to perform the most minute civility and unerring in every duty.”44 Having buried two husbands, four children, and seven siblings, she saw herself as living on borrowed time. When the Reverend Manasseh Cutler visited, she reminisced about her husband with tremendous affection while “viewing herself as left alone, and her life protracted, until she had become a stranger in the world . . . She longed for the time to follow her departed friend.”45
One insuperable problem that shadowed her was the fate of more than 120 slaves designated for freedom by her husband. Because Washington had not consulted her about his will, some scholars have speculated that she did not share his critical views about slavery. Impatient to claim their promised freedom, some of Washington’s own slaves decided to escape at once: the remainder knew that the second Martha died, they could cast off their shackles. Unnerved by the situation, Martha admitted to a confidant that she “was made unhappy by the talk in the [slave] quarters of the good time coming to the ones to be freed as soon as she died.”46 For all his thoroughness, Washington had committed this one glaring oversight, thrusting Martha into a nightmarish situation. On a visit to Mount Vernon, Abigail Adams observed Martha’s extreme distress as she confided that “she did not feel as though her life was safe in [the slaves’] hands,” since many of them “would be told that it was their interest to get rid of her.”47 A suspicious event may have settled things for Martha. “There had been at least one alarming incident, when Judge Bushrod Washington was urgently called from the circuit court . . . because there had been an attempt to set fire to Mount Vernon,” writes biographer Helen Bryan. “It was widely believed that some of the Mount Vernon slaves were implicated.”48 To quiet his aunt’s fears, Bushrod Washington recommended that she get “clear of her negroes” by freeing them at once, and she decided to heed his advice.49
A year after George Washington’s death, on January 1, 1801, Martha Washington signed an order freeing his slaves. Even this move did not entirely end her troubles, since at least one dower slave tried to escape by portraying himself as one of Washington’s freed slaves. Many of the emancipated slaves, having never strayed far from Mount Vernon, were naturally reluctant to try their luck elsewhere. Some refused to abandon spouses or children still held as dower slaves and stayed at or near the estate. Following Washington’s instructions, funds were used to feed and clothe the young, aged, and sickly slaves until the early 1830s.
Even though he had received his freedom and an annuity under Washington’s will, Billy Lee stayed on at Mount Vernon, residing in his own house, working as a shoemaker, and emerging as something of a local tourist attraction. He remained a voluble raconteur about the war and its generals, and when one British baronet stopped by, Lee inquired “very earnestly after Lord Cornwallis.” 50 Despite his apparent drinking problem, Lee managed to survive until 1810.
Politically, Martha had become a vocal Federalist and kept up her husband’s antipathy to Thomas Jefferson. Even as he sat in the Senate chamber in a chair cloaked in black, Jefferson nursed private grievances against Washington and stayed away from the memorial service for him in December 1799, an action that may have embittered Martha. In private, Jefferson predicted a “resuscitation” of the “republican spirit” because the Federalists would no longer be able to hide behind Washington’s stature and popularity.51
In early January 1801 Jefferson made a pilgrimage to Mount Vernon to see Martha, a visit with an unspoken political agenda. A few weeks earlier it had become clear in the presidential race that Aaron Burr would tie him in the Electoral College, throwing the race into a House of Representatives dominate
d by Federalists. Jefferson may have thought a well-publicized trip to Mount Vernon would curry favor with Federalist congressmen. If he did, he got precious little thanks from Martha, who fully shared her husband’s cynicism about Jefferson. A friend recalled, “She assured a party of gentlemen, of which I was one . . . that next to the loss of her husband, [the visit] was the most painful occurrence of her life. He must have known, she observed, that we then had the evidence of [Jefferson’s] perfidy in the house.”52
Taking the high road in his first inaugural address, President Jefferson named Washington as “our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country’s love.”53 Martha Washington was not assuaged. “Her remarks were frequently pointed and sometimes very sarcastic on the new order of things and the present administration,” wrote Manasseh Cutler. “She spoke of the election of Mr. Jefferson, whom she considered as one of the most detestable of mankind, as the greatest misfortune our country has ever experienced. Her unfriendly feelings toward him were naturally to be expected from the abuse he offered to Gen. Washington while living, and to his memory since his decease.”54
For many years Martha had been plagued by a stomach disorder termed bilious fever, which recurred in early May 1802. This time, despite the careful ministrations of Dr. Craik, it proved fatal. On May 22, 1802, Martha Washington breathed her last, just short of her seventy-first birthday. She died with courage and an uncomplaining acceptance of her fate, which had been her trademarks since her husband rode off to Cambridge to take command of the Continental Army in June 1775, transforming her life forever. “Fortitude and resignation were displayed throughout,” wrote a relative, who said that Martha had called for a clergyman to administer the sacrament. “She met death as a relief from the infirmities and melancholy of old age.”55 In accordance with her wishes, her coffin was placed in the dim, gloomy vault next to the illustrious husband whose fortunes she had so intimately shared and whose success she had so conspicuously aided. Finally, after many detours, many wanderings, and many triumphs, George and Martha Washington had come home to rest at Mount Vernon for good.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Any biographer of George Washington must stand in awe of the scholarly feat accomplished by the eminent team of editors at the Papers of George Washington project, which operates out of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. By gathering 130,000 relevant documents from around the globe, they have produced a modern edition of Washington’s papers that eclipses the far more modest edition published by John C. Fitzpatrick back in the 1930s and early 1940s. Whereas Fitzpatrick, in his thirty-nine volumes, limited himself to letters written by Washington, the new edition—sixty volumes of letters and diaries and still counting—includes letters written to him as well as excerpts from contemporary letters, diaries, and newspapers. Expert commentary appears at every step along the way. Strange as it may seem, George Washington’s life has now been so minutely documented that we know far more about him than did his own friends, family, and contemporaries.
I am grateful to the community of Washington scholars for being receptive to a biography written by someone outside their professional ranks. Theodore J. Crackel, editor in chief of the Washington papers, was kind enough to vet the early chapters of the book and give me a sneak preview of two forthcoming volumes. Two of the best Washington scholars agreed to give the manuscript a sharp-eyed and tough-minded critique. Peter R. Henriques, author of Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington and emeritus professor of history at George Mason University, gave early encouragement to the book and closely reviewed the chapters dealing with Washington’s pre- and post-Revolutionary War years. Edward G. Lengel, senior editor of the Washington papers and author of General George Washington, generously scrutinized the many chapters dealing with the Revolutionary War and gave copious commentary. Caroline Weber, a biographer of Marie-Antoinette and a professor of French and comparative literature at Columbia University, trained her erudite eye on the sections dealing with Washington and the French Revolution. All four scholars rescued me from errors of fact and interpretation and added subtlety and shading to the book. I thank them all sincerely. Any remaining errors are my sole responsibility.
Starting with president James C. Rees, the superb staff at Mount Vernon has been exemplary in providing help for the book. I was lucky to benefit from the new visitors’ center and museum that opened as I labored. Stephen McLeod handled the arrangements for my visit to Mount Vernon, and John Marshall set up an early tour of the Mansion House before the crowds started piling in for the day. Mary V. Thompson, a major resource for any Washington scholar, enhanced my understanding of Washington’s views on religion, slavery, and many other central issues. Carol Borchert Cadou lent welcome expertise on the hitherto-neglected subjects of Washington’s furnishings and objets d’art. Dawn Bonner helped with illustrative material for the book. I was especially pleased to tour the grounds with J. Dean Norton, who expounded on Washington’s talents as a gardener, and Dennis Pogue, who unlocked the mysteries of the distillery, gristmill, and pioneer farm. Gay Gaines, the former head of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, was a warm early supporter of this project.
In trying to retrace Washington’s footsteps at Revolutionary War battlefields, I encountered many informative guides, curators, and park rangers. At Washington Crossing Historic Park on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River, and at Washington Crossing State Park on the New Jersey side, I profited from discussions with Jennifer April and W. Clay Craig-head. At Cliveden, the former home of Benjamin Chew, Fred Achenbach gave me a superb tour of the house and a knowledgeable review of the Battle of Germantown. I enjoyed a long, stimulating chat with Jim Raleigh, president of the Friends of the Monmouth Battlefield, about the conflict fought at that lovely spot. The enthusiastic staff at the Old Barracks Museum in Trenton made Washington’s two battles there come alive. At Yorktown, Tim Gorde gave a fine overview of the historic victory. Special thanks as well to two valued friends who accompanied me on my research journeys: Bruce McCall (to Princeton and Valley Forge) and Arthur Hirsch (Washington Crossing and Monmouth).
George Washington slept, ate, and worked at so many places that I was kept busy moving up and down the eastern seaboard. At Colonial Williamsburg, I enjoyed the intelligent commentary of Lisa Epton, Joe Spruill, Louise Lareau, and Jared Lorio. I am especially grateful to Linda Baumgarten, curator for textiles and costumes there, who educated me on eighteenth-century dress and shed light on Washington’s height, hair, and clothing. At Ferry Farm in Fredericksburg, Linda Westerman and Noelle Hall patiently answered my many questions. I profited greatly from a talk with Paul M. Nasca, staff archaeologist for the George Washington Foundation, who recounted the exciting discovery of the archaeological remains of Washington’s boyhood home and how it has transformed our understanding of his boyhood. At Kenmore Plantation, the residence of Betty and Fielding Lewis, Jane Huffman gave a most informative tour. I thank Lindsey Hobbs and Carla Wing for their hospitable reception at the Mary Washington House.
At the Powel House in Philadelphia, Kathie Dunn helped to re-create the world of Washington’s social life with Elizabeth Willing Powel. David W. Maxey was especially helpful in deepening my understanding of that remarkable woman. In Washington, Ellen McCallister Clark, library director at the Society of the Cincinnati, gave me the benefit of her prodigious knowledge of Washington’s library. In New York, Steve Laise of the National Park Service helped to unearth some Washington materials still in storage. Michael Amato and Michael Callahan provided guidance at Federal Hall National Memorial, the site of Washington’s first inauguration. At the Morgan Library and Museum, curator Jennifer Tonkovich not only allowed me to examine the Houdon life mask of Washington but helped me to ponder its mysteries. Suzanne Prabucki, the curator at the Fraunces Tavern Museum, supplied information about Washington’s famous farewell to his officers and biographical information about Sam Fraunces. At the Ne
w-York Historical Society, curator Kathleen Hulser gave me a splendid backstage tour of Washington paintings and memorabilia, arranged by society president Louise Mirrer. Pam Schafler and Sandra Tenholm provided me with a notebook of highlights from the George Washington and Henry Knox Collection, part of the Gilder-Lehrman Collection housed at the society. Thanks also to the staff at the Morris Jumel mansion in upper Manhattan, one of Washington’s wartime residences. In Boston, Anita Israel conducted me on a private tour of the Vassall house, now the Longfellow National Historic Site, which was Washington’s principal residence during the siege of Boston. Edward A. Smyk, the Passaic County historian, let me see a draft of his paper on the Dey Mansion in Wayne Township, New Jersey. Andrew Connell, a history teacher at the Appleby Grammar School in England, supplied invaluable information about the Washington’s family’s association with that school. Jeffrey H. Schwartz, a physical anthropologist at the University of Pittsburgh who re-created Washington’s appearance for Mount Vernon, gave helpful hints for the book. Dick Scully, a Washington family descendant, kindly answered questions for me.
Many librarians and archivists contributed to the creation of this book. At the Massachusetts Historical Society, Peter Drummey and Stephen T. Riley led me through relevant collections, and I was especially pleased to handle there Washington’s historic Newburgh address to his officers. At the Boston Athenaeum, Stanley Ellis Cushing and Mary Warnement provided guidance to a collection rich in nineteenth-century printed matter about Washington. Diane Windham Shaw at the Skillman Library at Lafayette College gave me a personal tour of an exhibition on the Marquis de Lafayette and helped with material about him. At the New York Public Library, Thomas Lannon offered direction to the Washington Irving materials. Bruce Kirby at the Library of Congress in Washington steered me through John Marshall’s papers related to his early Washington biography. Special thanks to John Overholt at the Houghton Library at Harvard University, where I examined firsthand George Washington’s personal copy of James Monroe’s A View of the Conduct of the Executive . . . , complete with his venomous marginal comments. At the Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary, Anne Johnson answered queries about special collections. Nelson D. Lankford, editor of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, rushed into my hands a copy of the magazine’s excellent bicentennial issue on George Washington.
