The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers

by Thomas Fleming

  Martha was at George’s bedside constantly. On the sixth day, one of the doctors grimly predicted the president’s imminent death. About four o’clock that afternoon, George broke into a terrific sweat—a sign the disease had reached its crisis. Within two hours, he was smiling at Martha and speaking in a low voice. Probably at Martha’s urging, he was soon taking rides with her in their carriage to escape the perpetual pressures of the presidency.

  The realization that Washington was mortal may have influenced the politicians to reach a major compromise. Jefferson agreed to round up southern votes for Hamilton’s financial plan and the New Yorker persuaded northerners to support a bill placing the permanent capital of the nation on the Potomac River in a newly created District of Columbia, carved from Maryland and Virginia. In the meantime, the federal government would move to Philadelphia, presumably less corrupt than New York. President Washington signed both bills and political tensions relaxed for a while. A booming market in government bonds and shares in the Bank of the United States began creating prosperity throughout the nation.

  XI

  There were times when Martha tired of public attention. It was often overwhelming. At one point she told her niece Fanny Bassett that she felt “more like a state prisoner than anything else.” When Washington left her in New York while he visited the New England states, she almost slipped into a depression. She wrote a remarkably frank letter to Abigail Adams’s friend Mercy Otis Warren, in response to a “very friendly” letter Mercy had sent her. Martha said she was pleased by “the demonstrations of respect and affection” that the president had received from the American people. It made the burdens of the presidency tolerable for him—and for her. “You know me well enough to…believe that I am only fond of what comes from the heart,” she wrote.

  But Martha still yearned for Mount Vernon, where she had thought when the Revolutionary War ended she and George would be “left to grow old in solitude and tranquility together.” Her problem, Martha confessed, was how acutely she missed her “grandchildren and domestic connections” in Virginia. But she was determined to be cheerful. “Everybody and everything conspire to make me as contented as possible.” She had learned from experience that “the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not upon our circumstances.”16

  After seventeen months on public display, President Washington decided he and Martha could take a vacation. They headed back to Mount Vernon, where grandchildren and grandnieces rushed to join them. At one point there were no fewer than ten young people, from teenagers to toddlers, rampaging around the house. Martha loved every minute of the chaos. Washington rode out regularly to his outlying farms and soon regained his health. He and Martha began discussing a topic that would absorb them for the next year. Should he accept a second term? The answer, they jointly decided, was an emphatic NO. The president asked James Madison to help him write a farewell address to the American people.

  XII

  The Washingtons were soon forced to change their minds. Frantic letters from Hamilton, Jefferson, and numerous other politicians warned the president that the country would come apart if he did not serve for another four years. Once more, Washington bowed to necessity. He knew Martha was deeply disappointed, but he also knew that she would remain at his side as his loyal partner. By this time they had settled into a comfortable mansion on Market Street in Philadelphia and were enjoying the numerous amenities of this sophisticated city. Close friends such as merchant Robert Morris added to their pleasures. But politics soon soured their lives in a tumultuous new way.

  The second term had scarcely begun when news arrived from Paris that King Louis XVI, the monarch who had supported America’s revolution, had been guillotined, along with his Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette. Within weeks came word that England had joined a coalition of European nations that were determined to crush France’s revolution. At first the Marquis de Lafayette, a man for whom Washington had deep, almost paternal affection, had been among the leaders. But the marquis had been forced to flee and was now in an Austrian prison. Radicals known as Jacobins had seized control of France and had launched a reign of terror that sent thousands of people to grisly deaths beneath the guillotine’s relentless blade.

  Theoretically, the treaty America had signed with France in 1778 obligated the United States to join the war on her side. But Washington decided that the murder of Louis XVI, the man who had signed the treaty, meant France was now a different country. He also knew that the United States could not fight a war without wrecking its fragile economy, which depended heavily on trade with Britain. A grim President Washington issued a Proclamation of Neutrality—and immediately became violently unpopular among the thousands of Americans who saw the French Revolution as a sacred cause in the ongoing struggle for worldwide liberty.

  These angry voters soon turned Washington’s second term into a nightmare. More than once, thousands of people jammed Market Street in front of the president’s house, shouting insults and waving pro-French slogans and banners. Newspapers castigated the president as a pro-English lackey who was betraying the American Revolution. At a public dinner in Virginia, journalist James Thomson Callender proposed a toast to “a speedy death to General Washington.”17 Tom Paine published an open letter to the president in which he raged, “the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an imposter; whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any.”18 Martha soon acquired an intense dislike for Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was the leader of this new Republican party.

  At one point Washington exploded into a gigantic rage at a particularly obnoxious newspaper story written by Benjamin Franklin Bache, Ben’s fanatically pro-French grandson. In a rant that left no doubt he was Mary Ball Washington’s son, the president pounded his desk and shouted that he was sick of being treated like a “common pickpocket.” He swore he would rather be in his grave than put up with another day of this thankless job. For a half hour, he sat at his desk drained and dazed before he regained his equilibrium.

  The public never saw—or heard about—this explosion. Nor did Martha. It was witnessed by only a few anxious secretaries. The public saw only the serene, dignified leader, who never showed the slightest evidence that he took seriously the abuse that was showered on him. One day, Washington was sitting for a portrait by Gilbert Stuart. Martha was nearby on a sofa, probably knitting while joining in the conversation. The painter considered himself an amateur psychologist. He remarked that he was fascinated by Washington’s physiognomy—his face was that of a man with a terrific temper and violent passions.

  Martha was shocked. “You take a great deal upon yourself, Mr. Stuart!” she said.

  “Ah but Madam, let me finish,” Stuart said with a bow in her direction. “Mr. Washington has these qualities under perfect control.”

  “He’s right,” Washington said with a smile.

  Ninety-nine percent of the time Stuart’s intuition was on target. Otherwise, Washington would never have survived his second term.

  XIII

  The president found Martha’s company and the world of their family a welcome escape from the nation’s increasingly rancid politics. He was especially interested in Martha’s granddaughters and their thoughts and feelings as they grew to womanhood. His favorite, Nelly, was strikingly beautiful, and suitors thronged from all directions. Nelly told Washington they all left her cold. She had begun to think she would never marry because she could not imagine the callow “youth of the present day” approaching the awesome stature of the man she admired most—her grandfather. She was determined never to give herself “a moment’s uneasiness on account of any of them.” Washington took her announcement with the utmost seriousness and wrote her an earnest letter:

  Dear Nellie…. men and women feel the same inclinations for each other now that they always have done, and which they will continue to do until there is a new order of things, and you, as others have done, may f
ind, perhaps, that the passions of your sex are easier raised than allayed. Do not therefore boast too soon or too strongly of your insensibility to, or resistance of, its powers. In the composition of the human frame there is a good deal of inflammable matter, however dormant it may lie for a time….

  When the fire is beginning to kindle, and your heart growing warm, propound these questions to it: Who is this invader? Have I a competent knowledge of him? Is he a man of good character: a man of sense? For, be assured, a sensible woman can never be happy with a fool. What has been his walk in life? Is he a gambler, a spendthrift, or drunkard? Is his fortune sufficient to maintain me in the manner I have been accustomed to live?

  Finally, Washington urged Nelly to remember that the declaration of love must come from the man, without any invitation on her part, in order “to make it permanent and valuable.” Her task was to draw the line “between prudery and coquetry.” He had no doubt that she would do this and find a good husband “when you want and deserve one.”19

  In 1799, Nelly married Captain Lawrence Lewis, son of Washington’s sister, Betty, on Washington’s birthday at Mount Vernon. The man she admired most escorted her up the aisle.20

  XIV

  At last came the day in March of 1797 when Washington’s second term ended, and he and Martha and Nelly returned to Mount Vernon. Sixteen-year-old George Washington Parke Custis was studying at Princeton and wrote the ex-president a charming letter, wishing him a happy retirement. Martha told one of her friends, Lucy Knox, wife of the secretary of war, that she and the general [a title she preferred to president] “feel like children just released from school or from a hard taskmaster.” It was wonderful to have a home again “after being deprived of one for so long.” Nothing would ever tempt them to leave their “sacred roof-tree again, except…private business or pleasure.”21

  The Washingtons were still unpacking when the ex-president opened a letter from Eliza Powel, the widow of the mayor of Philadelphia. She had become one of their closest friends. Behind them in their Philadelphia house they had left several pieces of furniture they could not use in Mount Vernon. One of them was a handsome rolltop French desk, which Mrs. Powel had bought. She informed the ex-president that in a secret drawer of the desk she had found “love letters of a lady addressed to you under the most solemn sanction; and a large packet too.” She teased him for several lines about her shock to discover that he, a “votary” of the goddess of prudence, who never made a single mistake as president, could commit such a blunder. Then she informed him that she was describing “a large bundle of letters from Mrs. Washington, bound up and labeled with your usual accuracy.” She assured him she had not read a line of them and they would be “kept inviolable until I deliver them.”22

  Washington cheerfully thanked her for rescuing him from what we would call a senior moment. He assured Mrs. Powel that he would have no hesitation in telling Martha about his lapse. She would be as amused by the discovery as he was. If Mrs. Powel had peeked at them, the letters would have been found to be “more fraught with expressions of friendship than of enamoured love.” If they had been discovered by someone with inclinations of “the romantic order,” he would have had to set them on fire to get any warmth from them.23

  Though his tone was joshing to match Mrs. Powel’s arch prose, those lines about friendship were a significant tribute to Martha Custis. In the eighteenth century, a man could choose to be a husband with all the panoply and power that word implied in a world that gave him virtually absolute authority over a wife. Or he could seek and hopefully find in his life’s companion a person with whom he could share his deepest hopes and fears and ambitions. Francis Bacon, the English philosopher whose Essays exerted a profound influence on the founders’ pursuit of fame, wrote: “A man cannot speak to his son but as a father, to his wife but as a husband…whereas a friend may speak as the case requires.” For George and Martha, the years had deepened the word “friend” until it became a synonym for happiness.

  XV

  The final years at Mount Vernon were not as tranquil as Martha had hoped they would be. Washington remained involved in the nation’s politics. President John Adams, in an unwise act of deference to Washington, retained the members of his predecessor’s cabinet and they wrote regularly to the ex-president, frequently expressing their doubts about Adams’s unstable presidential style. For a while, a war with Revolutionary France looked possible, and General Washington was summoned from retirement to head a new 10,000-man army. He appointed Alexander Hamilton as his second in command and let him do most of the work. The “Quasi-War,” as it came to be called, was fought mostly at sea, and the U.S. Navy soon forced the French to start talking peace.

  Washington firmly rejected several overtures to persuade him to accept a third term as president. He had no enthusiasm for another four years of insults and attacks on his reputation. His fame was beyond the reach of carping critics now, and he had no desire to add anything to it. More and more, he was content to be “Farmer George,” the master of Mount Vernon. He still worried about his country’s future, of course. There were many problems that had to be solved, if the federal union he had given so much time and attention to constructing was to endure. As a step in this direction, when he made his will, he freed all his slaves. He hoped this example might be a signal to other southerners to consider a similar step. He knew that most northern states had begun programs to gradually abolish slavery within their borders.

  More than once, when he rode out to visit one of his distant farms, his route would bring him within sight of Belvoir. A fire had reduced the once handsome house to a charred ruin. In the spring of 1798, Washington learned that Bryan Fairfax, Sally’s brother-in-law, was going to England to inherit the dukedom. George William Fairfax had lost his lawsuit and died in 1787, a disappointed man. Washington gave Bryan a letter to deliver to Sally, who was living in Bath.

  He told her that “many important events have occurred and changes in men and things have taken place” since they parted in 1773. They were too complicated to discuss in a letter. What he wanted to say to her was simpler—and more important. None of those events, “nor all of them together have been able to eradicate from my mind the recollection of those happy moments, the happiest in my life, that I have enjoyed in your company.”24

  In the same packet, he enclosed a letter from Martha. She assured Sally that “although many years have elapsed since I have either received or written [a letter] to you…my affection and regard for you have undergone no diminution.” In fact, now that she was “again fixed (I hope for life) at this place” [Mount Vernon], among her greatest regrets was “not having you as a neighbour and companion.”

  Martha went on to tell Sally that “the changes which have taken place in this county since you left…are in one word, total.” In Alexandria, there was not a single family left “with whom you had the smallest acquaintance.” In their neighborhood, she reported that Colonel George Mason and many other nearby landowners “have left the stage of human life.” But they had been replaced by a younger generation, some of them Fairfax relatives. She described their marriages and in some cases early deaths in womanly detail.

  Martha devoted a more cheerful paragraph to her own family, noting the marriages and offspring of Jack Custis’s two older daughters and her fondness for their siblings, Nelly and Wash, who were still living at Mount Vernon. Martha signed the letter “Your affectionate friend M Washington.”25

  XVI

  Life continued serenely at Mount Vernon for the next two years. The usual stream of visitors, some invited, some little more than intruders, flowed through the bedrooms and dining room. At one point, Washington told a correspondent that “unless someone pops in unexpectedly, Mrs. Washington and I will do what has not been [done] by us in nearly 20 years—that is set down to dinner by ourselves.”26 Martha corresponded cheerfully with friends from Philadelphia, especially witty Eliza Powel. They joked about growing old and what the next generation would th
ink of them. In one letter Martha referred to George as “the withered proprietor” of Mount Vernon. Mrs. Powel said she would prefer to visit Mount Vernon in the winter. She did not want to contrast herself with “all the bloom that will pervade that delightful spot” in the spring.27

  Except for an occasional cold, the Washingtons were in excellent health. When Nelly Custis married at Mount Vernon, she asked George to wear his Revolutionary War general’s uniform when he gave her away. It fit him perfectly. Nelly returned from a five-month honeymoon pregnant and gave birth to a daughter in November 1799. The birth was difficult, and the doctor ordered her to stay in bed for several weeks. The weather was cold and rainy, and she did not object. Martha was constantly at her bedside, cooing over the new arrival.

  At about 10 a.m. on December 12, 1799, Washington rode out to inspect some of his more distant farms. He was in the midst of reorganizing Mount Vernon to improve the profitability and efficiency of the entire operation. He had not gone far when the weather became vile. A cutting northeast wind brought swirls of snow, then a shower of hail, and settled into an icy rain that gradually turned to snow again. Washington spent about five hours riding through this storm. His heavy greatcoat gave him some protection, but when he strode into Mount Vernon that afternoon, flecks of snow clung to his hair and neck. His secretary, Tobias Lear, noticed this testimony to the storm. But Washington assured him the greatcoat had kept him dry.

  Without changing his clothes, he sat down to dinner and chatted cheerfully with Martha and Lear. The next day, he had a cold and the weather was even more unpleasant, with heavy snow whirling in the wind until about 4 p.m. That left another hour of cold, clear daylight, and Washington ventured out on the lawn to mark some trees he wanted to remove. That night after dinner he was hoarse, and Lear urged him to take something for his cold. Washington waved the suggestion aside. He never took anything for a cold. He would “let it go as it came.”