Washington- The Indispensable Man

by James Thomas Flexner

  After several false starts, Washington found an efficient secretary. A self-reliant Yankee, Tobias Lear was at first afraid that his famous employer would try to dominate him into “servility,” and was then hurt by what he considered Washington’s “reserve and coldness.” However, when Washington got over what Lear now decided had only been caution and prudence, he “drew me towards him by every tender and endearing tie.” After two years, Lear wrote that he had had “occasions to be with him in every situation in which a man is placed in his family—have ate and drank with him constantly, and almost every evening played at cards with him, and I declare that I have never found a single thing that could lessen my respect for him. A complete knowledge of his honesty, uprightness, and candor in all his private transactions have sometime led one to think him more than a man.”

  Visitors, family, secretary: all these left Washington, the endlessly gregarious, lonely for an intimate friend. He invited his former military aide David Humphreys for an indefinite visit: “The only stipulations I shall contend for are that in all things you shall do as you please—I will do the same—and that no ceremony may be used or any restraint be imposed on anyone.” Washington added, “My manner of living is plain. I do not mean to be put out of it. A glass of wine and a bit of mutton are always ready, and such as will be content to partake of them are welcome. Those who expect more will be disappointed, but no change will be affected by it.”

  Although Mount Vernon could have been contained more than twenty times in a great English country house, and guests had to sleep three or four to what we would today consider a small room, Washington’s “manner of living” was not, according to American standards “plain.” The mansion house was finely furnished, if more simply than its English counterparts. Humphreys noted, “Whether there be company or not, the table is always prepared by its elegance and exuberance for their reception.”

  Dinner was served at two in the afternoon. Washington commonly ate only a single dish but drank half a pint of Madeira. If the company was agreeable, he would sit “an hour after dinner in familiar conversation and convivial hilarity.” Towards evening, he drank “one small glass of punch, a draught of beer, and two dishes of tea.” Although a “very elegant” supper was served to his guests, he did not usually appear, and went to bed at nine. However, if intimate friends or men with interesting news arrived towards evening, Washington would come to the supper table. Then he would drink several glasses of champagne, get “quite merry,” and “laugh and talk … a great deal.”

  A pair of paintings of Mount Vernon made by an unidentified artist about 1792. Above: the east front overlooking the Potomac. Below: the west front with the circular driveway in the foreground (Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union)

  The mansion house grounds at Mount Vernon, engraved by Von Glomer after a plan drawn in 1785 by Samuel Vaughan and corrected by Washington. The inscriptions read:

  “N.B. From the house to Maryland is a perspective view. The lawn in view from the house is about 100 paces, from thence is a descent down to the river, about 400 paces adorned with a hanging wood with shady walks.

  References

  “a

  The Mansion House

  b

  Smith’s Shop

  c

  White Servants’ appartment

  d

  Kitchen

  e

  Repository for Dung

  f

  Spinning House

  g

  h

  Shoemakers and Tailors appartment

  i

  Storehouse, etc.

  k

  Smokehouse

  l

  Work House

  mm

  Coach House

  n

  Quarters for Families

  ooo

  Stables

  ppp

  Necessaries

  q

  Green House

  rr

  Cow Houses

  s

  Barn and Carpenters Ap.

  t

  School House

  u

  Summer House

  w

  Dairy

  xx

  Kitchen Gardens”

  The high point of grandeur at Mount Vernon was the two-story banquet hall, which Washington, always his own architect, had designed before he rode off to the Revolution. Finishing the interior was now one of his many concerns. His desire to have the walls decorated, according to the latest taste, with designs worked in stucco, inspired a long-frustrating search for suitably accomplished workmen, but in the end he achieved much of the result he desired. Although the banquet hall is not one of America’s great rooms, it has delicacy and lightness, blends high spirits with decorum.

  Many more strangers impinged on Washington through the mails than through actual visits. He complained that he was bothered concerning a thousand “matters with which I ought not to be troubled more than the Great Mogul,” but he believed that every correspondent had a right to a courteous answer.

  Washington was amused when one of his Philadelphia friends, Francis Hopkinson, dedicated to him Seven Songs for the Harpsichord, although he could “neither sing one of the songs nor raise a single note on any instrument.” Washington philosophized to Hopkinson, “We are told of the amazing powers of music in ancient times.… The poets of old (whatever they may do in these days) were strangely addicted to the marvelous; and if I before doubted the truth of their relations with respect to the power of music, I am now fully convinced of their falsity, because I would not, for the honor of my country, allow that we are left by the ancients at an immeasurable distance in everything; and if they could soothe the ferocity of wild beasts, could draw the trees and stones after them, and could even charm the powers of Hell by their music, I am sure that your productions would have had at least virtue enough in them (without the aid of voice or instrument) to melt the ice of the Delaware and Potomac, and in that case you should have had an earlier acknowledgment of your favor of the first of December.”

  Since Washington had never missed an opportunity to buy or rent land contiguous to Mount Vernon, the property was now huge: it stretched for some ten miles along the Potomac and penetrated inland at its widest point for about four. There were now five distinct farms, each with its own overseer and work force. These were separated by extensive areas of scrub growth, which testified to the poorness of the soil by producing little wood substantial enough for fencing. Almost every morning except Sunday, Washington rode the circuit of these farms.

  As he had in the army, he arose early, with dawn in midsummer, in other seasons by candlelight. He shaved himself, but his black valet, Will, brushed his long hair, pulling it back tightly in a “military manner” (no curls at the side) and tying the queue with a ribbon. Washington kept busy around the house until seven o’clock, when he finally had breakfast: “three small Indian hoecakes (buttered) and as many dishes of tea (without cream).” Then he was off on his horse, moving at a canter, for he liked to ride quickly.

  He seems never to have tired of the innumerable small details of farming. Not only did he supervise what every work gang was doing in every field, but he later relived each happening by recording it extensively in one of his journals. Jefferson was to comment that these notations occupied the leisure time that a more bookish man would devote to reading.

  As before, Washington was concerned with agricultural experimentation. He copied out long passages from English agricultural journals but when asked to contribute to one, refused on the grounds that for such an amateur as he that would be “ostentation.” The major reforms he tried to work out for his neighbors were the growing of grass specifically for grazing (cows were then normally let loose to forage in the woods, which meant that they could not be milked nor could their manure be collected as fertilizer); the establishment of economic wool production through a superior line of sheep; the development of fertilizers indigenous to Virginia (t
hat fertilizers might be manufactured chemically was a revolutionary idea that came to Washington as a bizarre surprise); the invention of a method of rotating crops that would replenish the fertility of the fields; and the founding of a line of supermules.

  Washington’s adventures with the mules have, despite their comic side, been taken with great seriousness by equine historians, who state that the jackasses he imported underpinned the whole race of mules still prevalent in the South. (A mule, itself sterile, is the offspring of an ass and a mare.)

  The origins of the drama were, on the one hand, Washington’s desire to secure from Spain, although such export was forbidden, a high-born jackass; and, on the other hand, the desire of the King of Spain to keep, through his possession of Louisiana, American frontiersmen from using the Mississippi as a trading outlet to the world. The Spanish foreign office decided that it would be advantageous to sweeten the disposition of the most influential American, and the King personally made Washington a present of two otherwise unprocurable jackasses.

  Only one jack survived the ocean crossing. Washington was greatly excited by the news that he had landed in Boston. The former Commander in Chief planned the donkey’s march overland to Mount Vernon as carefully as he had ever planned a military campaign. In order to have waiting a large harem of mares, he deprived his Arabian stallion, Magnolio.

  On his arrival, Royal Gift (as Washington named the jackass) revealed a most impressive physique. But when a mare was placed in his paddock, he sniffed her and turned disdainfully away. After he had proved no more stimulated by a succession of equine charmers, Washington was torn between the suspicion that the Spanish King had played a trick on him by sending an impotent beast and amusement at the ridiculous denouement of his expectations. He wondered whether the jackass was, as a king’s former favorite, too great a snob to have anything to do with plebeian American horses; or whether, like a true courtier, he based his behavior on that of his former master, who was too old to respond with alacrity to “female allurements.” Washington commented that His Most Catholic Majesty surely could not “proceed with more deliberation and majestic solemnity to the act of procreation.”

  That Royal Gift proceeded at all was due to a ruse that Washington finally worked out. He would tantalize the jackass with a female of his own species, and when the royal beast was excited, quickly remove the donkey and substitute a mare. Upon occasion, the jackass was allowed to finish with the donkey, which produced younger jackasses whom Washington sent touring the countryside to his own profit and the great improvement of the mules in each region. He intended, he announced, to hitch only mules to the elegant coach which had been given Martha by the government of Pennsylvania. Mrs. Washington seems quietly to have warded off this enthusiasm.

  Washington wrote that of all occupations he found “agricultural pursuits and rural amusements … most congenial with my temper.” As in the case of the mules, it was hard to determine where serious pursuits ended and play began. He was still much concerned with breeding horses and hounds, with races and hunts, with landscaping and with gardening for aesthetic as well as practical ends. It is indeed surprising how various and extensive were the hobbies Washington engaged in at times like this, when the pressure of great events allowed him leisure. Guests noted how much more cheerful he seemed than in the military camps, how much more relaxed. His step-grandson was to write that his retirement after the Revolution was the happiest period of Washington’s life.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Canals and Conventions

  (1783–1787)

  On Washington’s return from the Revolution, he found his business records in utter disorder. They had been scrambled by being hastily moved on the several occasions when Mount Vernon had been in danger of being burned by the British. Washington was now full of good resolutions to determine, by sorting the papers, his overall financial situation. During the summers, he stated he would do it in the winter when his farms were less demanding. In the winters, he preferred doing other things.

  Finally, his new secretary, Lear, discovered that during the war Washington had lost at least ten thousand pounds sterling. This was in part because he had felt it his duty to back the prestige of the Continental currency by accepting payment of old debts in new paper that actually represented only a fraction of the value; in part, because he had been reimbursed in an unsatisfactory manner for many of his military expenditures. He had himself paid not only his own expenses but often those of the whole headquarters operation. At moments of crisis, he had advanced money for various other military needs from his own pocket. After he had presented his expense account, Congress, being as always short of cash, had met much of what they owed with certificates of indebtedness. Subsequently, like many another government creditor, Washington had raised cash by selling certificates, at a great discount, to speculators.

  Washington’s current finances were in a serious situation because the Mount Vernon plantation was losing money. Births in his slave quarters combined with his unwillingness to sell any slaves had resulted in an uneconomically large labor force. The official entertaining forced on him, combined with his private entertaining and his unwillingness to do anything in a “niggardly” manner, ran him into great expense. Finding himself chivied by bill collectors, he complained that his previous experience had never taught him how “to parry a dun.”

  Various governmental bodies expressed eagerness to come to Washington’s assistance. However, he remained determined to receive no reward for his military service except gratitude. He would not even accept public help towards his official entertaining. When Virginia forced a gift on him, he announced that he would devote it to a public charity.

  The relinquishment that undoubtedly came hardest to Washington was of the bounties in western lands which were voted to veterans: his share, as commander in chief, would have been tremendous. And he had by no means lost his lust for western lands.

  Those he had amassed before the Revolution were now his best hope for meeting his annual deficit. He offered his acres for rent or for sale, making in September, 1784, a trip across the mountains to see what he could achieve by being himself on the ground. The area around the Forks of the Ohio (now Pittsburgh), which he had first known as a howling wilderness, was filling up with settlers. This created economic possibilities, but what he saw also inspired political fears. The new inhabitants were to a considerable extent immigrants who had “no particular predilection” towards the United States.

  Beyond the Alleghenies, the Ohio-Mississippi river system offered the only method, according to the transportation possibilities of those days, by which bulky farm products could be moved away for sale. Rising in British Canada and disgorging through French Louisiana, the liquid highways bypassed the existing states. If, in their search for commercial outlets, the settlers allied themselves with England or Spain, they might, Washington wrote, become extremely dangerous neighbors to the United States. And they stood, “as it were on a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way.”

  Gambling at Mount Vernon. On the rounded protrusions from the card table, which were designed to hold lighting fixtures, are devices newly invented when Washington acquired them: argon lamps, which consumed their own smoke, in the process giving off more light. The various-sized ivory fish are betting chips (Courtesy of the photographer, Robert Riger)

  Fortunately (in Washington’s opinion) both European powers were keeping their ends of the waterway closed out of a desire to stifle migration across the Alleghenies which they felt would change the western balance of power to the advantage of the United States. An opportunity was thus presented which Washington felt ought not to be lost. To cement relations between the frontier and the older settlements, the trade of the West should be quickly—before either England or Spain became wiser and changed her policy—drawn eastward over the mountains and through the older United States.

  This new vision overlapped a plan Washington had formerly developed for his own economic a
dvantage and that of his neighborhood. During his young manhood, in peace and in war, Washington had wandered the Potomac to its headwaters and had gone on over the mountains to where other waterways flowed downward to the Ohio River system. If the rivers were to be made navigable to high points that could be joined by a short wagon road, the trade of the West would be induced to move along the Potomac. At the fall line, where ocean navigation ceased, all goods would be transshipped from canal boats to larger vessels. The community at the fall line was Alexandria, Mount Vernon’s near neighbor, for which Washington as a youthful surveyor had made the first town plan. Alexandria would become (as New York was actually to do with the opening of the Erie Canal) the metropolis of the United States.

  Before the Revolution, Washington had secured approval from the Virginia legislature for a stock company that would improve the navigation of the river and then charge tolls. But, since Maryland was on the Potomac’s north bank, the approval of that state was also necessary. The opposition of the Baltimore merchants, who saw their city bypassed, had then proved invincible.