Washington was conflicted about retiring from public service almost from the outset. “How far upon more mature consideration I may depart from the resolution I had formed of living perfectly at ease—exempt from all kinds of responsibility, is more than I can, at present, absolutely determine,” he conceded to Jefferson scarcely three months after returning to Mount Vernon.15 In some letters from 1784, Washington wrote about his family being “short-lived”—his father and three half brothers died before reaching age fifty—and his own expectation of soon being “entombed in the dreary mansions of my fathers.”16 Given such “gloomy apprehensions,” as Jefferson called them, and a lack of descendants to provide for, early retirement made sense.17
Another letter from the same year leaves a different impression of Washington’s sense of survival and fecundity, however. In it, he asked Congress to return his military commission as a keepsake for his grandchildren. Although Martha had grandchildren, two of whom lived at Mount Vernon, they came from her son by a prior marriage. Washington never regarded them as his. Devoted to his wife, he knew that he would only have descendants if he outlived her and married a younger woman. Although he wrote about that possibility in confidence to friends, it seems too remote to account for his preoccupation with business and statecraft after the Revolutionary War.18 He could have retired at ease.
Perhaps in the end, Washington’s postwar activities simply reflected his desire to leave a legacy, make a difference, and exemplify republican virtue. He suggested as much in two 1784 letters that wax philosophic about cultivating tender plants and tending tall trees on his plantation. Even in retirement, he counseled a recently retired patriot leader, we should cultivate young plants toward their perfection.19 And the tall trees that he planted as seedlings in his youth, Washington observed to Chastellux, trees whose very height now measured his own decline, show him gratitude by providing shade. “Before I go hence to return no more,” he vowed, “for this, their gratitude, I will nurture them while I stay.”20 Whether writing metaphorically about nurturing the nation that he had planted or simply justifying his ongoing agricultural pursuits at Mount Vernon, Washington clearly intended to continue working in retirement. He might die soon, he confessed to Lafayette late in 1784, “but I will not repine—I have had my day.”21 He would have many more.
AFTER SPENDING THE FIRST NINE MONTHS of his so-called retirement trying to restore order to his Mount Vernon estate, Washington headed west to inspect his frontier properties in western Virginia and Pennsylvania. Having become accustomed to deference, if not adoration, the chilly reception that the former commander in chief received in the West, especially from squatters on his land, heightened his already considerable fears for the country’s future. Despite its inclusion into the United States by the peace treaty with Britain, the trans-Appalachian West—so central to nationalists’ hope for America’s future—was not yet integrated into the new republic. Washington’s desire to link East to West, motivated by mixed personal and public concerns, inevitably pulled him back into the nation’s service. In a sense, his long journey back from retirement to the Constitutional Convention and the presidency began with his trip to the frontier in 1784. Expecting an adventure worthy of record, Washington resumed an earlier practice of keeping a daily diary.
The trip began well enough. Washington set out by horseback on September 1 with three slaves or servants and his longtime friend and physician James Craik for a planned six-week overland trek. Craik’s son and Washington’s nephew soon joined them. More had asked to go along but, as Washington explained to his brother, he did not want to take anyone “who would soon get tired & embarrass my movements.”22 Washington knew roughly what to expect. He had crisscrossed the territory several times as a young surveyor in the 1740s and as a colonial militia officer fighting the French and their Native American allies in the 1750s. On those trips, he sometimes traveled light and often slept under only a blanket.
Not this time. Although the party planned to stay in public houses or private homes whenever possible, for nights without lodging they carried an officer’s marquee or grand tent for the four gentlemen and a horseman’s tent for the attendants. Other baggage included bedding, sheets, silver cups and spoons, Madeira and port wine (again for the gentlemen), two kegs of rum for the frontier folk they would encounter, all manner of cooking equipment, assorted spices, extra horseshoes, and Washington’s fishing lines. The differentiation of supplies for gentlemen, frontier folk, and slaves or servants, plus Washington’s failure to name the accompanying attendants in any letter or diary entry, reflected an aristocratic sense of class that survived the American Revolution. On an earlier trip to the region, Washington described some settlers “as Ignorant a Set of People as the Indians,” and always retained that view of frontiersmen.23 He might respect their knowledge of the region and their ability to survive in it, but he never saw them as his equals and always remained aloof from them. And they recognized it.
The party’s outbound route followed the Potomac River in a westerly direction from Mount Vernon to Cumberland, Maryland, and then, leaving the river, took a more northerly tack across the Allegheny Mountains on Braddock’s Road toward Pittsburgh. The Potomac, which literally cuts through a parallel series of low ridges before turning south at Cumberland, marks the boundary between Virginia and Maryland. On this trip, Washington favored the Virginia side, where he owned scattered tracts that he leased to farmers. The river was navigable only to a few miles above Mount Vernon, where Alexandria, Virginia, and Georgetown, in what was then Maryland, stood at the terminus of shipping. Above these towns, the Potomac’s Little and Great Falls, with a combined drop of over 110 feet, blocked river traffic. Between them and Cumberland—a distance of 170 miles—the river, though sometimes shallow and rapid, was rarely obstructed by more than an occasional rapids or low falls. In 1754, a twenty-two-year-old Washington ran it in a canoe with only modest difficulty at a few points. Now fifty-two and trotting on his great horse at a gait of about five miles per hour with frequent stops, he reached Cumberland on the trip’s tenth day.
Opened for settlement by Virginia and Maryland prior to the Revolutionary War, the Potomac Valley below Cumberland had become an integral part of the eastern states by 1784. Many of its settlers had cast their lot with the patriot cause in 1776 and now gave Washington a hero’s welcome. His tenants, strained by a decade of war and recession, paid what they could toward their long-past-due rents and cheered him on his way. Impressed by commercial development around the warm mineral springs at Bath, where he had taken the waters in earlier years, Washington contracted to build a house there. He already owned land in the area—some of his most valuable inland property. James Rumsey, a local builder, showed him a model for a mechanical boat allegedly capable of propelling itself upstream against the Potomac’s strong current. Long interested in opening the river for traffic to his western properties, Washington gave Rumsey a certificate attesting to the boat’s “usefulness in our inland navigation” and wrote to Virginia’s governor about its potential value for securing “a large portion of the trade of the Western Country” for the state.24 Capitalizing on Washington’s name, Rumsey used the certificate to obtain patents and patrons for his innovative but ultimately inoperable invention. To this point, the trip could hardly have gone better.
FOR WASHINGTON, the troubles began after he left the settled lands east of the Alleghenys and began ascending Braddock’s Road into southwest Pennsylvania. As a colonial militia officer serving under British general Edward Braddock during the French and Indian War in 1755, Washington had helped cut this pathway through the wilderness to support and supply a massive British assault on French positions in the Ohio Valley, and had retreated in terror across it after Braddock’s crushing defeat. Now, twelve days after leaving Mount Vernon, the road took him by Great Meadows, the former site of Fort Necessity, which Washington had surrendered to the French in 1754 and later privately acquired as investment property.
The a
utumn rains had begun by this time, turning Braddock’s Road into a muddy trough. His tenement here, Washington noted, was “little improved, tho’ capable of being turned to great advantage.”25 In reality, it was as much a sodden fen in 1784 as when he surrendered it to the French thirty years earlier. Washington had posted it for lease, but so far had no takers. He did not linger. Great Meadows surely brought back bitter memories because here, in an unmarked grave to protect it from being mutilated by pursuing Native Americans, he had buried Braddock’s body.
With his baggage bogged down by rain and mud, Washington rushed ahead with a single attendant to reach his much larger tract at a place called Washington’s Bottom in time for the scheduled auction of a gristmill that he owned with Gilbert Simpson. Since 1772, Simpson had been Washington’s agent in managing this 1,644-acre track and his partner in developing a farm and mill on part of it. Washington advanced the capital; Simpson provided the labor; they would share the profits. But there were no profits, or at least none that Simpson reported. Only promises.
Rarely charitable when it came to business, by 1775 Washington dismissed Simpson as a man of “extreme stupidity,” but he was too preoccupied by war to wind down the partnership.26 By the war’s end, Washington suspected Simpson of something much worse: fraud. “How profitable our partnership has been, you best can tell,” Washington wrote to Simpson in a February 1784 letter demanding a full accounting and payment, “& how advantageous my Mill has been, none can tell so well as yourself.”27 When a reply came back in April offering nothing but excuses, Washington exploded. More than anything, resolving this long-festering dispute with Simpson prompted Washington’s trip west. In July, Washington advertised the farm for lease, its stock and slaves for sale, and the mill for auction. He went west to see these matters through.
Washington was accustomed to having his way with subordinates, and so his frustrations only mounted when he encountered his weaselly “partner” on Simpson’s home turf. On inspection, the watermill, built by Simpson with Washington’s money without Washington having seen it, lacked sufficient waterpower to operate. And the plots leased by Simpson as Washington’s agent to individual settlers while Washington was at war offered little promise. “I do not find the land in general equal to my expectation of it,” Washington wrote. “The Tenements with respect to the buildings, are but indifferently improved.”28 The tenants struck him “as people of a lower order.”29 He collected what he could from them in rent and arranged some new leases but when he tried to auction the mill, no one bid. It was worthless. To the suggestion that he invest more to improve it, Washington replied that he’d rather “let her return to dust” than lose another cent.30 As for the house and farm occupied by Simpson, only Simpson bid. He renewed his lease for nothing down and five hundred bushels of wheat per year, but absconded before the first harvest, taking the farm’s six slaves with him.
Washington wanted to get out of this place as soon as possible after the auction but a settled rain forced him to stay on with Simpson for three more nights. If this seemed like Washington’s purgatory, then hell awaited at the next stop.
A FORETASTE OF THE COMING TORMENT arrived while Washington was still with Simpson. It came in the form of Seceders from his 2,813-acre track about thirty miles farther west at Miller’s Run. The American frontier always attracted more than its share of religious groups seeking their Zion in the howling wilderness. Members of one such band, the Seceders—a poor but earnest sect of Scotch-Irish Calvinists—had the misfortune of staking their claim to a frontier haven on land already claimed by the father of their country. Since they freely submitted themselves only to God, and Washington always insisted on controlling his land, a clash of wills ensued.
Having known for a decade that Washington claimed the land where they squatted, upon learning that he was on his way to assert his rights they sent out a delegation to deter and dissuade him. The Seceders “came here to set forth their pretensions,” Washington wrote in his diary about this initial meeting, “and to enquire into my rights.” But he saw through their pretext of reasonableness. They really only wanted “to discover all the flaws they could in my Deed.”31 They saw themselves as called by Christ to Miller’s Run and would not submit to a landlord who did not share their religious beliefs.
Named Seceders for good reason, they had seceded from ungodly society. While Washington typically said little in public about his personal religious faith beyond expressing a profound sense of divine providence, close friends variously characterized it as anything from Episcopalian to deist. Nothing in that range would satisfy a Seceder. Still battling Simpson when the Seceders showed up, Washington was in no mood to extend Christian charity to a band of self-righteous freeloaders. They had caught him on a bad day and, with the matter unresolved, would have to continue the conversation at Miller’s Run.
Washington reached Miller’s Run by week’s end, but he put off meeting with the Seceders. “Being Sunday,” he wrote in a diary entry that questioned the religiosity of anyone who disregarded property rights, “and the People living on my land, apparently very religious, it was thought best to postpone going among them till tomorrow.” He later characterized them as “willful and obstinate Sinners” for “persevering . . . in a design to injure” him.32 Inventorying the tract prior to the meeting, Washington identified fourteen separate Seceder households and listed the buildings, fencing, and acreage under cultivation of each. He found these farms in better condition than those on his other tracts, which impressed him.
When the two sides finally met on Monday, both asserted their right to the land. Such conflicts were common on the frontier. At the time, claimants to undeveloped land could base their rights either on a government grant, survey, and some improvement, or on occupancy, whichever happened first. Washington and most speculators used the former method; the Seceders and many other frontiersmen used the latter. For the Miller’s Run tract, Washington had purchased a warrant issued to a soldier in payment for service in the French and Indian War, then hired a local agent, William Crawford, to survey the land in 1771 and to build a small cabin on it in 1772. The tract being otherwise empty, the Seceders moved onto it in 1773 and claimed the land by occupancy. Crawford told Washington about them but, at least once the war began, he could do little about it.
At a raucous confrontation on Monday, Washington insisted that the Seceders lease the land from him. They refused but offered to pay a modest price for it “to avoid contention.”33 Washington favored renting over selling his frontier property because he wanted to oversee its development. In this, he acted the part of a traditional English country gentleman tending his estate. Some Virginians still followed this model, but it was giving way to the practice of buying, dividing, and selling frontier tracts. Washington dismissed the new approach as rank speculation and always denied being a speculator. “It cannot be laid to my charge that I have been either a monopolizer, or land-jobber, for I never sold a foot of Land in the Country,” he wrote in 1786 about his transactions west of the Alleghenys.34 Washington styled himself a landlord and improver of property.
As the Seceders recounted their hardships in clearing the land and explained their religious convictions against leasing it, Washington softened somewhat. He offered to sell, but the sides could not agree on a fair price. Rather than pay much, the Seceders would fight the validity of Washington’s warrant and survey in court. Barely able to control his temper, Washington called each one out and demanded that they individually declare whether they would accept his offer or see him at trial. If he thought that some might yield, then he underestimated the collective mind-set of this sect. “They severally answered that they meant to stand suit,” Washington noted.35 Local legend has him emitting an oath, for which he was fined. One of the Seceders’ children later recalled him dangling a silk cloth by its corner and taunting, “Gentlemen, I will have this land just as surely as I now have this handkerchief.”36 Washington devoted considerable time over the next two years
to assembling evidence to substantiate his warrant and survey for the tract. Both were shaky. In the end, thanks to a good lawyer, Washington won the case and the Seceders moved on with the frontier. (It did not hurt that the judge hearing the case, Thomas McKean, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and old friend of Washington’s.)
From Miller’s Run, Washington planned to proceed southwest to his largest frontier holdings: nearly thirty thousand acres in various tracts near the confluence of the Ohio and Great Kanawha Rivers in what is now West Virginia. This property, which Washington described in 1784 as “rich bottom land, beautifully situated on these rivers & abounding plenteously in Fish, wild fowl, and Game of all kind,” was undeveloped.37 Washington had advertised it for rent earlier in the year and hoped to attract settlement groups, such as religious societies or bands of European immigrants, who would enter into long-term leases to develop entire tracts. Cooperative Seceders might do.
Word had spread of danger ahead, however. “The Indians, it is said, were in too discontented a mood, for me to expose myself to their insults,” Washington wrote.38 They were provoked by incursions onto land northwest of the Ohio River, “which they claim as their territory,” and by the failure of Congress to negotiate a peace treaty with them following the Revolutionary War.39
The Return of George Washington Page 5
