Martha Washington

by Patricia Brady

  Rather than going to Virginia, George and Martha and the children moved back out to Germantown, where he could be readily available as the crisis continued. It was cooler there than in Philadelphia, and everyone feared a repetition of the previous year’s epidemic—unnecessarily, as it happened.

  After negotiations between the rebels and federal representatives broke down, the president called up several state militias in late September, riding along with them in his light buggy as far as Carlisle. In the face of a large army, the rebels gave in without a battle, a number of arrests were made, and two leaders were sentenced to death (later pardoned by Washington).

  Republicans were outraged for one or all these reasons: they opposed excise taxes; they opposed an attack against western farmers, their constituents; the hated Alexander Hamilton was at the president’s side; and the army raised had been unnecessarily large and overwhelming. Washington believed that the large army had prevented bloodshed; a smaller force would have encouraged the rebels to fight.

  Freneau might be gone, but other pro-Republican party newspapers had started up throughout the nation. In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Bache, Franklin’s grandson, was a master of invective who made Freneau look mild. Soon to become known as the Aurora, his paper was pro-Republican, anti-Federalist, pro-French, anti-British, and the president, who in his view led the opposition, was fair game for vicious attacks. Innuendo, accusation, even the publication of forged letters from the days of the Revolution—he felt justified in using whatever weapon came to hand. Washington had never imagined the lengths to which a free press could go. He was hurt by the barrage but never suggested any action against the papers. Martha’s anger and pain on her husband’s behalf were no secret; she couldn’t brush off attacks on the man who was her hero as well as the nation’s.

  Washington grimly held on to his mission of establishing the government on firm foundations. First Knox and then Hamilton resigned their positions to attend to their own business affairs. What about his neglected acres? Rather than friends and innovators, his cabinet was composed of second-rate men. His pleasure in life now came largely from close friends and family, planning and sending instructions to Mount Vernon, and dreaming of retirement. The family returned to Philadelphia that fall without making their usual trip home during the congressional recess.

  One danger to the nation down, a new one loomed. Great Britain had never evacuated her forts in the Northwest Territory of the United States; agents there encouraged Indian attacks along the frontier. At sea, she refused to accept American neutrality and right to trade with France and seized American sailors to man British ships. John Jay left in the fall to negotiate a treaty and avoid war.

  Jay’s Treaty was even more divisive than the Whiskey Insurrection. When it was published and, at Washington’s insistence, ratified in June 1795, many Americans were outraged. Mobs burned Jay’s effigy in the streets, and the newspapers howled. Even though the treaty avoided war and provided limited trade between the nations, Republicans saw it as treason to France and beneficial only to city merchants.

  After the disappointment the previous year, Martha and the children went home in July for a long stay. Nelly Stuart was seriously worried that her namesake daughter, now sixteen, was being spoiled beyond redemption by her grandmother and the high life of Philadelphia. She insisted that the girl should spend the winter with her at Hope Park, and Martha agreed that an entire year apart was too long. Young Nelly was aghast. Not that she didn’t love her own mother, but her grandmother had become the mother of her heart. The Washingtons and Washington Custis left for the capital on October 12, leaving Nelly with her mother and stepfather and the Stuart children.

  Nelly’s hurt feelings quiver in her letter to a friend: “No one believed I should be left behind. However it is so. To part from Grandmama is all I dread. . . . It is impossible to love any one, more than I love her.” She adapted to her situation, though, especially when she and her older sister went to stay in town with their married sister, Patty Peter. Betsy, as her grandparents still called her, had restyled herself Eliza, a far more elegant name.

  But Nelly wasn’t the only one who suffered. Martha’s letters were redolent of loneliness. Besides all sorts of gifts from a gold chain to a pincushion, she sent just as much unneeded advice—for Nelly to clean her teeth every day, keep her feet dry when out in the cold, and take good care of her clothes.

  Patty had just given birth to her first baby, a girl, Martha’s first great-grandchild. When Eliza and her mother went home, Nelly stayed behind “as housekeeper, Nurse—(and a long train of Etcetra’s).” The baby was named Martha Eliza Eleanor Peter: “Thus all the names of its nearest relations are taken in at once. . . . I approve very much of this way of getting quit of all the family names.”

  Soon afterward, Eliza became engaged and got married in a flurry, to her later deep regret. She disliked her stepfather and home situation and envied her married sister. The man she chose was Thomas Law, an Englishman who had made his fortune in India; in the new federal district, he became a land speculator on a grand scale. Twenty years her senior, he had two sons by an unmentioned mother. Martha and George were upset that he was a foreigner who might take Eliza away from the country. Because he was a stranger to them all, although apparently respectable, George strongly advised David Stuart to insist on an ample settlement as a matter of prudence. Eliza assured her grandparents, who were disturbed by the secrecy and swiftness of her engagement, that she did indeed love Thomas Law. Although they were always civil and welcoming to Law, they never felt the same friendship for him that they did for Thomas Peter.

  The controversy over Jay’s Treaty had not died down over the winter; in fact, it had become worse by spring. France had weighed in, declaring that the treaty broke their former agreement of alliance with the United States. Now they claimed the right to board American ships at sea and began to do so in the West Indies. The new French minister used the pages of Bache’s Aurora to attack the president as pro-British, an affront for a man who had remained on guard against British machinations since the Revolution.

  A related matter deeply troubled both George and Martha. Lafayette’s wife, along with their daughters, had joined the imprisoned hero, but she had sent their son George Washington Motier Lafayette to America with his tutor, expecting that he would live with the Washingtons. Although the president had sent money to the Lafayettes and requested that envoys look after their well-being, the explosive relationship with revolutionary France and its American supporters made him fearful of taking the boy in. For some months, young George lived with the Hamiltons in New York. Finally, with the support of Republican political leaders, the boy and his tutor arrived in Philadelphia, joining the president’s family in April.

  Another June came, and another escape to Mount Vernon. But just before they left, there was an escape of a different sort that shocked Martha to the core. Her maid Oney Judge slipped away from the house to take shelter with free black friends before escaping to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by ship. To Martha’s mind, the young woman had no reason to leave; she was a favorite whose workload was light, and she was always treated with affection. She and George decided that only a man—perhaps a Frenchman?—could have seduced her away. Martha felt a responsibility for the unsophisticated girl under her care, especially since her mother and sister were expecting to see her back at Mount Vernon.

  What she could never understand was that there was no seducer, just a simple desire to be free. Ona, as she preferred to call herself, wanted to live where she pleased, do what work she pleased, and learn to read and write. Her flight was precipitated by Martha’s telling her she would be left to her granddaughter Eliza Custis, who was capricious and ill-tempered.

  Ona Judge professed a great regard for Martha and the way she had been treated, but she couldn’t face a future as a slave for herself and her children. Despite attempts by Washington’s friends to convince or recapture Ona, she stayed put, living out her lif
e as a free woman. And Martha never understood why she had fled.

  At Mount Vernon, Nelly rejoined the family, and there was much visiting among the Washingtons, Stuarts, Peters, and Laws. The house was crowded with all sorts of company, including “the ministers of France, Great Britain, and Portugal, in succession . . . besides other strangers,” including a dozen Catawba Indian leaders. As often happened in the Tidewater, both Martha and Nelly had recurrent spells of malaria, suffering bouts of chills and fevers.

  George made a trip to Philadelphia in September to consult on foreign affairs and to publish his Farewell Address as president. He wanted to make it clear well in advance that there would be no third term. In the address, drafted by Hamilton, he set out what he saw as the accomplishments of the first presidency, along with his hopes and advice for the future of the nation. He gave the manuscript to a friendly newspaper publisher and then returned to escort the family on their last trip north in October. He wrote to Bob Lewis in advance, “I shall make my last journey, to close my public life the 4th of March; after which no consideration under heaven, that I can foresee, shall again withdraw me from the walks of private life.” We can almost hear Martha applauding in the background.

  The Farewell Address made for a somewhat more civil political environment, though Ben Bache was intransigent. Knowing that Washington would soon retire allowed some of his critics to remember their former admiration for him. He indicated no preference for his replacement and didn’t allow himself to be enticed into any partisanship in the fall election.

  The cold was ferocious that winter. By late December, it was possible to walk across the Delaware on the ice. Within a week, thousands of walkers, skaters, horse-drawn sleighs, and booths selling refreshments could be seen on the frozen river. The last year of what Martha had come to think of as their imprisonment—1797—dawned windy, clear, and cold. After church, she and the president received crowds of callers who had come to the presidential mansion “to compliment the season” for the last time. Every event, every assembly, had a melancholy feeling—each was the last time for their many friends and admirers before they withdrew permanently to Virginia.

  Martha and George enjoyed themselves more than they had in years. The large and elegant New Theatre was only a couple of blocks from their house. Boasting a talented professional stock company with new scenery and costumes, the theater advertised some performances as “by request” of the president and his family. A historical play, Columbus; of a World Discovered, included a storm, an earthquake, a volcano eruption, and a procession of Indians.

  The owners of the Pantheon and Rickett’s Amphitheatre were similarly inspired to present special performances of acrobatics on horseback and other dangerous equestrian feats. Concerts, exhibitions by artists, lectures, assemblies, teas, and endless addresses from grateful federal, state, and local governmental bodies took up their time. The official entertainments to which Washington had committed them eight years earlier rolled on. The president’s levees, his lady’s drawing rooms, and the Thursday dinners continued to punctuate their weeks. Everyone in government who should have been invited to dinner was entertained. It took four separate dinners to accommodate a very large delegation of Cherokee chiefs.

  And then there was Washington’s last birthday celebration—his sixty-fifth, elderly indeed. Congress adjourned early, and most of its members came to pay their respects. Cannons fired the requisite federal salute—now sixteen rounds rather than thirteen, with the addition during his presidency of Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee as states. Of all the social activities during the Washington administration, these birthday celebrations were the most detested by his critics. They indicated a reverence for the man rather than the institution and smacked suspiciously of monarchy. Nonetheless, that year’s birthnight ball, which had become such a fixture of Philadelphia society, was the grandest ever. The retiring president offered a toast, again his last: “May the members thereof [the dancing assembly] and the Fair who honor it with their presence long continue the enjoyment of an amusement so innocent and agreeable.”

  The British minister’s wife thought Mrs. Washington’s heart seemed a little melted, “as she never expects to see Philadelphia again.” She was wrong. Just a week before they left forever, Martha wrote about their last season in Philadelphia and her hopes for retirement: “The winter has been very sevear hear . . . but is now moderating and drawing to a close, with which the curtain will fall on our public life, and place us in a more tranquil theater.”

  Beginning during the Revolution, certain letters like this one—to accomplished women like Mercy Warren or Eliza Powel or her official responses to tendered gifts—were drafted for her by Washington and later by Lear. She then copied the drafts and signed them as her own. But the formal correspondence with its consciously literary turns of phrase lacks the charm of her own letters to intimates. Those were affectionate, down-to-earth, and frequently lightened with self-deprecating humor—much like the lady herself. Whatever sentiments she asked her ghostwriters to express, she wasn’t a woman to sign anything she didn’t mean.

  Remaining only long enough to attend the inauguration of John Adams as president on March 4, 1797, the Washingtons bade farewell to their friends in Philadelphia. As he wrote to his wife back home in Massachusetts, Adams understood that Washington was well out of an unpleasant situation and that he, Adams, had gotten himself well into it. Neither of them, however, quite realized that Abigail Adams would also be fair game for partisan criticism.

  Aided by Tobias Lear, Bat Dandridge remained behind to see to the cleaning of the mansion for the Adamses, the packing of the furniture and other things they were taking home, and the sale or distribution as gifts of items not wanted for Mount Vernon. George and Martha loaded the children, young Lafayette and his tutor, aides, slaves, Nelly’s dog, Frisk, and a parrot, and mountains of baggage into two groaning coaches. The overflow—ninety-seven boxes, fourteen trunks, forty-three casks, thirteen packages, three hampers, and ever so much more—was sent by ship. Despite a very heavy cold and cough, Martha Washington refused to hear of any delay in setting off for Virginia.

  One absentee surprised her as much as the earlier flight of Oney Judge. Their chief cook, a slave named Hercules, called by the children “Uncle Harkless,” disappeared from the house on the day they were scheduled to leave for Virginia. Although liked and valued by all the family, he apparently had not relished the role of enslaved old retainer. His flight, however, didn’t affect Martha in the same way as Oney’s; she didn’t love him as she did the young woman. Although Washington continued halfheartedly asking his friends to be on the lookout for Hercules for a few months, he was gone forever. A good cook never had to search too far for employment.

  It took them a week to get home, and their progress was impeded by the crowds who came out to honor the retiring president. Militia troops escorted them, kicking up clouds of dust, and everywhere people in carriages, on horseback, and on foot appeared along their route, as Nelly observed, “to see, & be seen & Welcome My Dear Grandpapa.”

  Like many later First Ladies, Martha Washington was exhausted by the calls on her time and angered by the attacks on her husband. After the doubtful pleasures of the presidency, she left for Mount Vernon as though they were departing for the promised land.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Under Their Vine and Under Their Fig Tree”

  Grape vines and fig trees appear more than twenty times in the Old Testament as emblems of peace, plenty, and contentment. For Martha and George Washington, familiar as they were with the King James version of the Bible, two verses were especially potent symbols for their retirement and often appeared in their correspondence. The book of First Kings described a sort of earthly paradise under the wise and powerful rule of King Solomon: “And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree” (1 Kings 4:25). The book of Micah prophesied a day when there would be no more war and men would “beat their swords into pl
owshares.” In the next verse, that peace was described: “But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:3-4).

  For a tired old soldier who had just returned from eight years of vicious political warfare, the vision of a place where he could sheathe his sword and turn his hand to the plow was pretty close to heaven. Even more so for Martha. As much as George had suffered from the Republicans’ newspaper attacks, Martha had suffered twice as much for her husband because she was helpless to protect him. The second term had been hell.

  When they arrived home on March 15, 1797, they found Mount Vernon much as it had been at the end of the Revolution—the absence of its owners had led to deterioration and dilapidation, but this represented a new challenge for the intrepid pair. As Martha exulted: “We once more (and I am very sure never to quit it again) got seated under our own Roof, more like new beginners than old established residenters, as we found every thing in a deranged [state], & all the buildings in a decaying state.” George threw himself into a whirlwind of construction, garden plans, and farming—complaining about the neglect while clearly enjoying himself mightily.

  Martha reorganized the housekeeping. She had grown accustomed to having a steward in the presidential mansion and at sixty-five no longer wanted to oversee all the housekeeping herself. After she discovered that a steward or housekeeper from Philadelphia would demand outrageous wages to move south, she made do with a local woman, who worked under her direction.

  Martha also half-jokingly appointed Nelly, now a sprightly girl of eighteen, as the “deputy housekeeper.” Nelly relished her informal household training and helped entertain guests by playing the harpsichord, singing, and conversing amiably. By her own account, she was also “deputy nurse” for ailing members of the family. Her duties weren’t so onerous, though, that she couldn’t spend weeks at a time with her sisters in the future federal capital, becoming known as Washington City, or with friends in Alexandria, attending dances, parties, and the theater. The purpose of these visits, of course, was to introduce her to society and to help find a suitable husband.