The Washingtons

by Flora Fraser

  As the children grew older, their schooling and their holidays governed Martha’s movements. Lear wrote to the president, while he was still in the south, that after the Easter holidays, Wash, ten, would be “put to Cyphering immediately.” Particular attention would be paid to “his writing, reading & as well as to Latin.” Both children—Nelly was now twelve—were taught to dance by English émigré James Robardet. In January 1791 Martha warmly invited “Miss [Caroline Amelia] Smith,” Abigail Adams’s granddaughter—to join the class. A year later Washington praised Robardet’s “attention to my grandchildren, and the progress which they have made under his instruction.” Dancing slippers as well as the necessary accouterments for learning—slates and pencils, a “silver pencil case,” “Elements of Geography”—were purchased for Nelly. She now did her lessons, including French, drawing, and watercolor, with masters at home and was becoming an accomplished musician under the supervision of Alexander Reinagle, who had followed Congress to the city.

  Martha did not forget her elder grandchildren. She sent Bet and Pat—now fifteen and fourteen and known as Betsy and Patty—muffs, stays made by “Mr. Serres,” and painting materials: “1 palette, 3/9 [that is, 3s 9d in New York money], a cake of black paint 5/. Ditto of white do 1/10, 4 brushes 2/1, 1 Indian rubber 1/10.” Members of the extended clan, including Fanny and Harriot Washington and Nelly Stuart, too, received stays, ribbon, cambric, nankeen, and shoes. But her attention was focused on Nelly and Wash. Martha made, with purchases for herself at fashionable emporia, others for Nelly—gloves, muffs, cloaks, bonnets, hats, handkerchiefs, and fans, as well as costly fabric for habits, dresses, and gowns. Suitable friends—the Robert Morrises’ daughter, Maria; Attorney General Randolph’s daughter, Susan; and a cousin of Miss Randolph, Elizabeth Bordley—provided companionship for Nelly.

  Both Washingtons were uneasy on a number of scores about their home in Virginia. George Augustine was spitting blood and had a severe pain in his chest that no “blister”—liniment—could relieve. At the end of August he went over the mountains to Berkeley Springs in search of a cure. Anthony Whitting, hired to manage the mansion farm alone, administered the estate. There were other causes for concern about George Augustine. He exercised little control over the overseers and expressed dismay when a slave, whom he had authorized an overseer to punish, subsequently died. As aide-de-camp to Lafayette during the war, the young man had often heard the marquis express his horror of the institution of slavery. His stewardship of Mount Vernon may have sat uncomfortably with ideas he had imbibed from the marquis, ideas that indeed underlay recent legislation in other states as well as Pennsylvania. Only in Massachusetts, in 1783, had immediate abolition been enacted. But New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island too had passed acts for the “gradual abolition of slavery,” following the Pennsylvanian model of March 1780, which deemed all children of slaves born in the state thereafter to be free.

  The president had no high opinion of the overseers’ humanity at Mount Vernon. He relied, however, on these managers to extract the due portion of work from a “people” disinclined to render it. Lear, writing home to New Hampshire, noted: “The negroes are not treated as blacks in general are in this Country. They are clothed and fed as well as any labouring people whatever, and they are not subject to the lash of a dominating overseer—but still they are slaves.” The president did his duty, as he saw it, by his “people,” including, in a memorandum this summer for his nephew, the instruction: “Huts, or some kind of covering will be wanting at Dogue-run; some of the People at that place complain much of the Leakiness of their Houses.”

  Though the Washingtons, approaching sixty, were still energetic, many of the house slaves on whom they had relied at home were now “past service.” Doll, whose housekeeping skills Martha had respected, was listed four years earlier by Washington as “almost past service.” George Augustine’s wife, Fanny, was not a good housekeeper; nor did she exercise sufficient authority at the mansion house. Frank Lee, steward, was prone to drink, and Nathan, the cook, was slovenly. Martha wrote in August of Charlotte, seamstress, to Fanny, “She is so indolent, that she will do nothing but what she is told. She knows what work is to be done.” Martha dismissed out of hand the slave servants’ protests to her niece that they were fully occupied, making “the people’s clothes”—the clothing given out annually to the field slaves. “If you suffer them to go on so idle, they will in a little time do nothing but work for themselves.”

  Martha, adamant that Fanny must stir herself, wrote of an impending visit home in September: “I shall leave all the housekeeping to you.” There would be “company” staying, she informed her niece, the whole time she and the president were in residence: “I shall not concern in the matter at all. Make Nathan clean his kitchen and everything about it very well.” Charlotte and her fellow seamstresses must endeavor to get all other business done “as fast as they can.” Martha would be bringing up “work”—or sewing—from Philadelphia for them to do.

  Those for whom the Washingtons felt responsibility were many. The president had reflected the previous autumn, “The easy and quiet temper of Fanny is little fitted, I find, for the care of my Niece Harriot Washington, who is grown almost, if not quite a Woman.” Ultimately the girl was dispatched to her aunt, Betty Lewis at Fredericksburg, with this injunction from her uncle: “I wish you would examine her Cloaths, and direct her in the use and application of them—for without this they will be (I am told) dabbed about in every hole & corner—& her best things always in use.”

  Harriot continued to press for “best things,” asking her uncle in subsequent years to fund a dress and a “silk jacket and a pair of shoes,” for her to wear on “the Birth night” [Washington’s birthday]. If Harriot was unsatisfactory, their uncle approved of her brothers, George Steptoe and Lawrence. They were now studying at the College in Philadelphia, and the president had judged them in 1790 “well disposed Youths—neither of them wanting capacity; and both, especially the first, very desirous of improvement.” One of Martha’s nephews, Bartholomew Dandridge, served Washington as an assistant secretary, and he or the Washingtons’ boys sometimes accompanied the children to the “play” or concerts.

  Martha and the president had plenty of curiosity themselves to see the sights of the city. In 1792 Washington paid to view a “sea leopard [leopard seal]” on display. Martha visited at least once the famous “flower garden”—or botanic garden—that John Bartram had established outside the city. Bowen’s Waxworks—now transposed to Philadelphia and incorporating a scene from The School for Scandal—was another destination. The whole family inspected the natural history exhibits at Charles Willson Peale’s museum that included in 1792 an “Otaheitian [Tahitian] dress.”

  Martha had firm ideas about the upbringing of the children, including the need to control their diet. When her niece Fanny Washington was later to write that her young daughter Maria was ill, Martha was swift in her diagnosis: “Children that eat everything as they like and feed as heartily as yours does must be full of worms. Indeed my dear Fanny I never saw children stuffed as yours was when I was down.” Mr. Spence, dentist, cleaned the children’s teeth and supplied toothbrushes and tooth powder. In addition, Washington’s own hairdresser, Durang, attended to her grandson’s hair. A “pair of skeats [skates],” noted in the household accounts, in December 1792, as well as innumerable handkerchiefs and items such as “10 pairs of stockings,” hint at Wash’s predilection for outdoor activities.

  At Georgetown this summer Washington inspected, as he wrote to Lear from Mount Vernon, “many well conceived & ingenious plans for the Public buildings in the New City.” It had been “a pleasure indeed, to find—in an infant Country—such a display of Architectural abilities.” Irish immigrant James Hoban had been chosen to design the President’s House, and they were digging out its foundations. Washington had written to Jefferson in April 1791: “The most superb edifices may be erected.” He wished their inhabitants much happiness. “I
shall never be of their number myself.”

  The Washingtons’ sojourn at Mount Vernon in the summer and autumn of 1792 was tinged with sadness on more than one account. This year the Stuarts, with the Parke Custis girls and their many half-siblings, removed to a smaller and more isolated home, Hope Park, some way west of Alexandria. Abingdon, the estate Jacky had acquired with such enthusiasm, was sold. Moreover, Washington wrote to Lear on September 21, George Augustine was “but the shadow of what he was; he has not been out of his room & scarcely from his bed these six weeks.”

  Washington was in a quandary. Should he yield to the pleas of his friends, as well as cabinet colleagues of all political colors, and serve a second presidential term? Doing so was not merely contrary to his inclination; George Augustine’s wasted state added, as he wrote to Lear in September, “not a little to my distress & perplexity on a subject you are already acquainted with.” If he were to serve again, to whom should he look to manage the estate?

  Whether he served a second term or not, he must renew the lease on the Morris house in Philadelphia. It would soon expire, even before the presidential term was up in April 1793. When Lear called on Mr. Morris in July to secure another year, the financier “hoped to God” that love of country would persuade the president to serve another term. “He thought,” reported Lear, “the reasons for your continuing were, if possible, more strong than those which first induced your acceptance of the Office.” Lear had taken other soundings, at Washington’s request. He noted: “The general idea seemed to be, to say nothing of the fatal effects expected from divisions & parties, that most of the important things hitherto done under this government, being, as it were, matters of experiment, had not yet been long enough in operation to give satisfactory proof whether they are beneficial or not.” A second term would accord an opportunity for a “fair experiment.”

  “Divisions and parties” already played a lively part in governmental politics. Madison and others vehemently favored the empowerment of the different states and opposed the establishment of a national bank. Hamilton in the Senate was prominent among those who wished further powers to accrue to the federal government. Jefferson, inimical to Hamilton and all “monarchical” tendencies and tired of the Federalist press attacks, wrote to Washington in September of his own wish to retire. When the secretary of state called in at Mount Vernon in early October on his way to Philadelphia, however, Washington was persuasive. It was important, he said, to preserve what he called “the check” of his fellow Virginian’s opinions in the administration. The president denied that Hamilton, Adams, and others wished to transform the country into a constitutional monarchy on the British model.

  Washington, at this exchange of views, was still undecided whether to serve another term. He told Jefferson, as the secretary of state reported: “nobody disliked more the ceremonies of his office, and he had not the least taste or gratification in the execution of its function.” Declaring himself “happy at home alone” at Mount Vernon, the president observed that “his presence there was now peculiarly called for by the situation of Major Washington whom he thought irrecoverable.” If his aid, however, was thought necessary to “save the cause to which he had devoted his life principally,” he would “make the sacrifice of a longer continuance.”

  The question was unresolved when the Washingtons returned to Philadelphia. George Augustine, Fanny, and their three children made a slow journey to Eltham, where attempts would be made to nurse the invalid back to health. Frank Lee, steward, and his wife, Lucy, were deputed to look after the mansion house. The plantation was left in the hands of Anthony Whitting. The president closed a long list of instructions for the manager: “Although it is last mentioned, it is foremost in my thoughts, to desire you will be particularly attentive to my Negros in their sickness.” Every overseer, moreover, was to do likewise and to send for Dr. Craik if the case demanded it. “I am sorry to observe that the generality of them [the overseers], view these poor creatures in scarcely any other light than they do a draught horse or Ox; neglecting them as much when they are unable to work; instead of comforting & nursing them when they lie on a sick bed.” This ill treatment had cost him dear, he wrote severely. He had “lost more Negros last Winter, than I had done in 12 or 15 years before, put them altogether.”

  In conversation with Jefferson in February 1793, Washington was to declare that “strong solicitations” the previous autumn led to his remaining in office. But he also told his fellow Virginian that he mentioned “his purpose of going out,” or intention not to serve a second term, to no one except to his cabinet colleagues and Mr. Madison. In fact, among those with whom he had discussed his quandary was Mrs. Powel, with whom he entered into the subject in a conversation in Philadelphia on Thursday November 1, 1792. She docketed a draft of a letter that she subsequently sent Washington: “To the President of the United States on the Subject of his Resignation November the 4th 1792.” She began: “After I had parted with you on Thursday, my Mind was thrown into a Train of Reflections in Consequence of the Sentiments that you had confided to me.” The arguments which she marshaled proved she knew well the man she addressed:

  Your Resignation wou’d elate the Enemies of good Government and cause lasting Regret to the Friends of humanity.

  The “enemies of good government”—anti-Federalists—would, she continued, “urge that you, from Experience, had found the present System a bad one, and had, artfully, withdrawn from it that you might not be crushed under its Ruins.” They would use his resignation as an argument for dissolving the Union. The Federalists were keen to hand him the presidency, she wrote. They “gave what a great and generous People might offer with Dignity and a noble Mind receive with Delicacy.” Would he withdraw his aid “from a Structure that certainly wants your Assistance to support it? Can you, with Fortitude, see it crumble to decay?”

  Mrs. Powel went to so far as to attack his wish to live in retirement at Mount Vernon as selfish and misguided: “you have frequently demonstrated that you possess an Empire over yourself. For Gods sake do not yield that Empire to a Love of Ease, Retirement, rural Pursuits, or a false Diffidence of Abilities which those that best know you so justly appreciate.” One wonders if Washington showed this letter to Martha. Mrs. Powel went on to ask: “admitting that you could retire in a Manner exactly conformable to your own Wishes and possessed of the Benediction of Mankind, are you sure that such a Step would promote your Happiness? Have you not often experienced that your Judgement was fallible with Respect to the Means of Happiness? Have you not, on some Occasions, found the Consummation of your Wishes the Source of the keenest of your Sufferings?”

  Washington did not withdraw his name, but made “the sacrifice of a longer continuance.” He was returned unanimously by the electoral college on December 5, 1792. The 132 electors supplied by the states, now numbering fifteen with new-minted Vermont and Kentucky, had two votes. Adams received seventy-seven of the second votes and was elected vice president once more. John Adams wrote on December 28 to his wife in Massachusetts: “The Noise of Election is over.…Four years more will be as long as I shall have a Taste for public Life or Journeys to Philadelphia. I am determined in the meantime to be no longer the Dupe, and run into Debt to Support a vain Post which has answered no other End than to make me unpopular.” Washington too harped on his reluctance to serve. Early in the new year, in response to a letter of congratulation, he wrote to Henry Lee in Virginia: “my particular, & confidential friends well know, that it was after a long and painful conflict in my own breast, that I was withheld…from requesting, in time, that no votes might be thrown away upon me.”

  Before Washington took the oath of office in Philadelphia, on March 4, 1793, any faint hopes that George Augustine might recover his strength and return to manage Mount Vernon were blasted. Washington’s nephew died at Eltham in early February. Nevertheless, as Washington wrote to widowed Fanny, offering her and her children a home at Mount Vernon, matters there were “now so arranged as t
o be under the care of responsible persons.” Whitting was proving a conscientious estate manager, and Catherine Ehlers, wife of the German gardener, supervised the “spinners,” following instruction from Martha.

  Had the president had the gift of second sight, he might have quailed at the four years of faction and personal attacks on him that lay ahead. The anti-Federalists were calling for the government to support republican France. Washington and his fellow Federalists, however, favored strengthening ties with Britain, America’s principal trading partner since the war. Mrs. Powel had prophesied the previous autumn that if he retired, “a great Deal of the well earned Popularity that you are now in Possession of will be torn from you by the Envious and Malignant.” As it turned out, he was to be stripped of it in office.

  27

  Second Term, 1793–1797

  “the Turpitude of the Jacobins touches him more nearly than he owns”

  WHEN WASHINGTON TOOK HIS OATH of office on March 4, 1793, news of Louis XVI’s execution in Paris on January 21 had not yet reached Philadelphia. Reports the previous year, however, had thrilled anti-Federalists. In August 1792 a coup in Paris had placed radicals in power in France, driving from office the constitutional government that Lafayette, among others, had done much to establish. The marquis fled the country. Against all expectations, a French army then defeated Austrians and Prussians at Valmy on September 20, 1792. The French monarchy was abolished the day after, and a republic was established.

  Edward Thornton, a secretary to the British legation in Philadelphia, wrote in early February 1793: “the doctrines of liberty, and equality gain daily proselytes; public dinners, congratulations, civic feasts in honour of the French Victories are given throughout the United States, and the appellation of citizen is used on all these occasions.” In this libertarian atmosphere, the style if not the substance of Washington’s own government came under attack. The General Advertiser, an anti-Federalist paper, purported, on January 2, to seek a poet laureate: “monarchical prettinesses must be highly extolled, such as levies, drawing rooms, stately nods instead of shaking hands, titles of office, seclusion from the people, &c. &c.”