The Return of George Washington

by Edward Larson

  Seven years of occupation by a hostile army that viewed even Loyalists with suspicion and contempt had left the city badly scarred. No tree stood anywhere and even the fences had been dismantled for kindling. Many of the city’s finest homes were ruined. Damage from a massive fire that ravaged the city less than a week after the British captured it in 1776 remained starkly visible on the lower west side. Yet the remaining citizens turned out en masse to cheer the procession. Except for the empire’s continued presence in frontier forts, the United States were at long last free of British troops.

  Washington stood at the center of weeklong victory celebrations in lower Manhattan that far exceeded those occurring elsewhere in the country. They began on the first day with a banquet in the city hosted by Clinton, an ardent patriot who had served in Poughkeepsie as the state’s governor since 1777 even as the British occupied Manhattan and the lower Hudson River valley. Despite his warm friendship with Washington, his notable war record, and his future service as Vice President under Jefferson and Madison, Clinton had emerged as a champion of state sovereignty. His banquet concluded without toasting Congress or the nation. “May a close Union of the States guard the Temple they have erected to liberty” was as near as these revelers came to acknowledging a general government in their thirteen toasts—a total chosen to correspond with the number of states.48

  Ensuing days brought speeches, dinners, and balls. Celebrations culminated on December 2 with a fireworks display touted as the largest of its kind ever seen in America. Opening with a band playing popular tunes and interrupted by loud huzzahs for spectacular blasts, it lit up New York Harbor for over an hour with illuminated spirals, fire trees, exploding serpents, Chinese fountains, and repeated flights of thirteen rockets. Washington declared it “splendid.”49 He left after one more day, following a final farewell to his few remaining officers. Washington scheduled this good-bye for noon on the fourth in an upper room at Fraunces Tavern, which stood at the corner of Broad and Pearl Streets near the docks in lower Manhattan.

  Deprived of the opportunity for a final dinner with officers after the mass furloughs in June or general discharge in November due to bitterness over back pay, Washington clearly wanted to get it right with this small remnant. The tavern was widely regarded as New York’s finest public house and had acted as a meeting place for patriots prior to British occupation of New York, and for Loyalists during it. Constructed out of imported Dutch bricks as the town home for the wealthy DeLancey family in 1719, the handsome, five-story building became a tavern in 1762 when purchased by Samuel Fraunces, a popular cook and innkeeper believed to have come from the West Indies and possibly of mixed French and African ancestry. He served American officers before the fall of New York, British officers after it, and as steward of the presidential household during Washington’s first term. He claimed to have passed critical information on British troop movement to Washington during the war and smuggled food to American prisoners. For Washington’s farewell dinner, he laid an elaborate banquet, though little was consumed.

  After everyone had a full glass of wine, Washington raised his in a shaking hand to toast the officers. “With an heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you: I must devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy, as your former ones have been glorious and honourable.”50 Choked with emotion, he could not say more; nor could the others. Historians have debated whether it was simply sentiment about his retirement or also regret over his failure to get any officers their due. Whatever the cause, the result was the same. Washington wept. Then, after embracing each man, he left.

  Governor Clinton, other officials, and leading citizens of New York were assembled outside the tavern to escort Washington to the nearby Whitehall wharf. They passed through lines of light infantry drawn from the First and Second New York Regiments, which had seen duty with Washington at the battles of Monmouth and Yorktown. A ceremonial barge with twenty-two oarsmen waited at the wharf to ferry the General across the Hudson River to New Jersey on the first leg of an emotional journey to deliver his commission to the Congress in Annapolis. What one newspaper described as “a great concourse of people” crowded every available viewpoint around the wharf to witness the departure.51 Hamilton, who had moved back into the city upon its liberation, was noticeably absent. Biographer Ron Chernow blamed Hamilton’s absence on “some secret wound” dividing him from Washington.52 Certainly Hamilton should not have felt welcome among the officers at Fraunces Tavern if they knew how he had used them during the Newburgh Conspiracy.

  FROM NEW YORK TO ANNAPOLIS, it was a triumphant two-week journey by the General and a few of his closest aides across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Something of a victory lap, it took them through the region where Washington’s army had spent most of the war, suffered most of its casualties, and at one time or other lost and then liberated most of the towns. They passed through battle sites, such as Trenton, and near others, including Brandywine and Germantown. Citizens turned out everywhere to cheer them on their way. Official delegations welcomed them to each town. Bonfires lit the night. Baltimore hosted a ball lasting past 2 A.M. The legislatures of four states received them.

  Many people thought this would be their final chance to see Washington; certainly he suggested as much. “Altho I now am returning to a much wished for retirement, yet I cannot bid adieu . . . without experiencing a certain pleasing, melancholly sensation,” he said to the citizens of New Brunswick, New Jersey, “pleasing because I leave my Country in full possession of Liberty and Independence; Melancholly because I bid my friends a long, perhaps a last farewell.”53 To the Common Council of Wilmington, Delaware, he added, “Tho’ I shall no more appear on the great Theatre of Action, the Wellfare of our infant States can never be indifferent to me.”54 Simply put, his message was similar at each stop: America was free, now make the most of it.

  Aside from New York, Philadelphia offered the warmest and most extended welcome to Washington. He was escorted into the city by a delegation that included state officials, several generals, Robert Morris, and a cavalry unit. A cannon salute announced his arrival at the city gates. People flooded the streets to cheer him. The State House bell that had rung for liberty upon the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence now rang for him.

  Washington was the toast of the town for a week. He thanked the University of Pennsylvania for awarding him an honorary degree and the American Philosophical Society for making him a member. “To you,” a committee of local merchants declared, “your country turns her admiring eyes, and hails you her Favourite Son.”55 John Adams later complained to a Philadelphian that people would remember the Revolutionary War as simply “that Dr. Franklin’s electric rod smote the earth and out sprang George Washington. Then Franklin electrified him . . . and thence forward those two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislations, and War.”56 If so, then the deification of America’s two preeminent leaders was happening already as Washington entered Franklin’s city.

  Washington at last reached Annapolis—Congress’s moving seat—on December 19, less than a week before his promised return to Mount Vernon for Christmas, and stayed there for four nights. “His Excellency’s arrival was announced by the discharge of cannon,” newspapers reported.57 Horatio Gates, of all people, escorted him into town. Formal dinners occurred nightly hosted by the city, the state, or Congress, and Maryland’s governor invited some two hundred “persons of distinction”—as one observer depicted them—to a grand ball in Washington’s honor for the night before his departure.58 Hamilton and Madison had already resigned from Congress and gone home, but Jefferson and James Monroe were still present from Virginia. As a fellow member of Virginia’s House of Burgesses, Washington had known Jefferson since 1768, and, at age nineteen, James Monroe had crossed the Delaware River with Washington on that already legendary Christmas night in 1777 for the battles that revived the patriot cause. A favorite aide, James McHenry, also now served in Co
ngress. Washington was among friends even if a certain coldness frosted his relationship with another former aide, Congress president Thomas Mifflin.

  Washington clearly enjoyed himself in Annapolis. He danced every dance at the governor’s ball, accommodating all the ladies who lined up for the privilege of getting a touch of him. After the thirteen formal toasts at Congress’s banquet, he added a concluding one of his own: “Competent Powers to Congress for general purposes.”59 It had become his mantra. As much as he wished to get home to Virginia, he was also at home here in the swirl of continental politics.

  Precisely at noon on December 23, playing his role in the grand pageant of American history, Washington walked into the tableau that would become frozen in Trumbull’s painting for the United States Capitol Rotunda. Declaring that he had “now finished the work assigned to me,” Washington returned his commission to Congress and, accompanied only by his aide-de-camp David Humphreys on fast riding horses, reached Mount Vernon late on the following afternoon.60 He was no longer the Virginian who had left that plantation more than eight years earlier, however. The war had made him an American—one of a new breed forged in revolution, dedicated to liberty, and actuated by republican virtue. In the months after the victory at Yorktown, as the powers of Congress eroded before the claims of state sovereignty, first Hamilton and later other officers suggested that Washington assume the reins of power. He rebuked them then and now retired. But he remained an American.

  1780 map of the northern and central United States, including the western lands visited by George Washington in 1784.

  CHAPTER 2

  Reeling in the West

  WASHINGTON FACED AN UNSETTLING TRANSITION. One day, he was the most powerful person in the American government, commander in chief of its armed forces, and intensely involved in all its affairs. The next day, he was a private citizen operating an extended tidewater plantation that was in some disarray due to the war and his nine-year absence. Overnight, he changed from leading a public effort to win freedom for Americans to managing a private enterprise based on slave labor. Adding to the shock, soon after Washington arrived home, an unusually severe spell of cold weather froze the rivers, closed the roads, and isolated Mount Vernon from outside contact for more than a month. Due to ice and snow, he could not even travel freely about his estate during much of January. The general had trouble adjusting. By early March, he begged Jefferson for news—“any News that you are at liberty to impart”—from Congress.1

  From the first, Washington referred to Mount Vernon as his “seat of retirement from the bustle of the busy world.”2 Yet he had plenty to do there. Washington wrote in mid-January 1784, “An almost entire suspension of every thing which related to my own Estate, for near nine years, has accumulated an abundance of work for me.”3 He did not trust his slaves and regularly complained that they shirked work, stole supplies, and broke tools.4 He felt a need to watch them daily to keep them on task. Sometimes he would measure their output in his presence and then demand similar productivity during the entire workday, which lasted from sunrise to sunset with two hours for lunch, or up to fifteen hours per day, six days a week, in summer.5 Washington often distrusted his hired overseers and paid workers as well, and closely monitored their efforts. He was a hands-on manager by nature, but conditions at Mount Vernon accented this trait. “I made no money from my Estate during the nine years I was absent from it, and brought none home with me,” Washington explained, and wanted to right this unsustainable situation.6

  After having the weight of a country and its people on his shoulders for nearly a decade, however, this work was retirement of a sort for Washington. “I am just beginning to experience that ease, and freedom from public cares which, however desirable, takes some time to realize,” he wrote in late February to his successor as army chief, Henry Knox. “It was not ’till lately that I could get the better of my usual custom of ruminating as soon as I waked in the Morning, on the business of the ensuing day; and of my surprise, after having revolved many things in my mind, to find that I was no longer a public Man, or had anything to do with public transactions.”7

  Still, despite his talk of retirement, Washington was only fifty-one years old when he resigned his commission and returned to Mount Vernon. Although life expectancy in the United States at the time was a mere thirty-five years, that number was significantly brought down by infant mortality. Fifty-one was not old for senior statesmen of the Revolutionary Era. More than a quarter century Washington’s senior, Benjamin Franklin gave no thought to retirement. Two years later, he began the first of three one-year terms as president of Pennsylvania. In 1784, Samuel Adams, ten years older than Washington, was the senate president in Massachusetts and later became its governor. George Clinton, John Hancock, and John Adams were only slightly younger than Washington but still burned with ambition. Clinton would be elected to four more three-year terms as New York’s governor and two as Vice President of the United States. Governor Hancock of Massachusetts held his post for another seven years. Adams lived to see the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The list could go on, including Roger Sherman, John Witherspoon, and George Wythe—all older than Washington but still fully engaged in civic affairs. Yet Washington intended to exit the public stage just as his country was born.

  Or so it sounded in the letters he wrote during his first months at home. “I am at length become a private citizen of America, on the banks of the Potowmac; where under my own Vine and my own Fig tree—free from the bustle of a camp & intrigues of a Court, I shall view the busy world, ‘in the calm lights of mild philosophy,’” he commented in a reflective note to the Chevalier de Chastellux, a French essayist and general who had served in the American Revolution. “I am not only retired from all public employments; but I am retireing within myself.”8

  In a similar letter to Lafayette, Washington expanded on what he meant by court intrigue. He described the statesman—a role he boasted of avoiding—as someone “whose watchful days & sleepless Nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own—perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if the Globe was insufficient for us all.” With Mount Vernon at its hub, Washington’s globe was sufficient for him. He wrote of treading the paths of private life “with heartfelt satisfaction” to the end of his days. “Envious of none,” he added, “I am determined to be pleased with all.”9

  Yet Washington was far from pleased with all. With the country still very much on his mind, Washington’s early postretirement letters from Mount Vernon railed about the Congress’s lack of authority, failure to pay public creditors, and inattention to business. During the first months of 1784, he sent scores of missives to governors, former military colleagues, and members of Congress dispensing advice and all but issuing orders. In a message to the wartime governor of Connecticut, who had also just stepped down, Washington no sooner mentioned “the serenity of retirement” than he began grousing about the “deranged state of public Affairs.”10 To Virginia’s states’ rights governor, Benjamin Harrison V, Washington wrote about his hope for expanded national powers, “I have no fears arising from this source; in my mind, but I have many, & powerful ones indeed which predict the worst consequences from a half starved, limping Government.”11 In such letters, Washington showed little sign of actually settling into an obscure private retirement.

  MOUNT VERNON ALONE would keep him busy. Washington had spent only ten out of the past three thousand days of war at his eight-thousand-acre working plantation, and its finances were confused. Ledgers and records were topsy-turvy from having been hastily packed and unpacked every time British forces passed near enough to threaten the estate. Intent on securing his fortune in land, prior to the war Washington had purchased farms adjoining Mount Vernon whenever they came on the market as well as undeveloped tracts on the frontier in western Virginia and Pennsylvania. He also had begun the process of expanding his residence into a proper manor house, with an eloquent banqueting hall, distincti
ve cupola, and grand piazza overlooking the Potomac River.

  Attentive to even minor details, upon his return from war Washington assumed personal responsibility for restoring Mount Vernon to profitability, capitalizing on his western land holdings and completing renovations on his residence. Each weekday morning, he rode a circuit of the five farms comprising his plantation and assigned tasks for his nearly two hundred workers, most of whom were black slaves and many of the rest indentured servants. Washington always expected 100 percent effort from able-bodied individuals whatever their station in life, and by the 1780s came to recognize the inefficiency of a slave economy even though he felt powerless to change it. He often vowed to acquire no new slaves beyond those born of his current ones but invariably broke this promise.12 Washington did free his own slaves after his death by his will, but these were only 123 of the 316 slaves then living at Mount Vernon. Most of the rest were the dower property of his wife, Martha, and they passed directly to her heirs upon her death in 1802.13

  Following his morning ride, Washington typically hosted a formal midafternoon meal with visitors who had made the trek to his country seat. Some of these were neighbors, former colleagues, or friends; many were travelers wanting to meet the man who had freed America. Washington often worked in his library or garden following dinner. He developed a passion for improving his livestock and soil productivity by applying new methods of scientific farming. Supper was less formal than dinner, with Washington only eating with visitors and overnight guests if they included close friends or persons with important news or business. With them, he might talk into the evening. Washington’s prewar hobbies of cards and foxhunting gave way to more serious pursuits. “His correspondence,” biographer John Ferling notes, “not only turned especially sober, but was restricted almost solely to business concerns or matters of state.”14 In short, he acted the part of a self-employed citizen-statesman with a national perspective and international reputation.