Part 2

DANCING AGREEMENT This gives only the first few names, many more following. The original was formerly in the possession of Mr. Thomas Biddle, of Philadelphia.

BOOK-PLATE OF WASHINGTON This is a slight variation from the true Washington coat of arms, the changes being introduced by Washington. From the original in the possession of the author.

SURVEY OF WAKEFIELD Washington’s birthplace. The survey was made in 1743, on the property coming into the possession of Augustine Washington (second) from his father, with the object of readjusting the boundary-lines. Original in the possession of Mr. William F. Havemeyer, of New York.

WASHINGTON FAMILY BIBLE This record, with the exception of the interlined note concerning Betty Washington Lewis, is in the handwriting of George Washington, and was written when he was about sixteen years old. Original in the possession of Mrs. Lewis Washington, of Charlestown, West Virginia.

MINIATURE OF MRS. WASHINGTON By an unknown artist. From the original in the possession of General G.W. Custis Lee, of Lexington, Virginia.

EARLIEST AUTOGRAPH OF WASHINGTON On a fly-leaf of the volume to which this title belongs is written, “This autograph of Genl. Washington’s name is believed to be the earliest specimen of his writing, when he was probably not more than 8 or 9 years of age.” This is a note by G.C. Washington, to whom Washington’s library descended. Original in the possession of the Boston Athenaeum.

RULES OF CIVILITY First page of Washington’s boyish transcript, written when he was about thirteen years of age. Used here by courtesy of Mr. S.M. Hamilton and “Public Opinion,” who are preparing a fac-simile edition of the entire rules.

LIFE MASK BY HOUDON Taken by Houdon in October, 1785. From the replica in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

TITLE-PAGE OF JOURNAL OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1754 Of this first edition but two copies are known. From the original in the Lenox Library.

PRESIDENTIAL HOUSE IN PHILADELPHIA Philadelphia offered to furnish the house for the President during the time Congress sat in that city, but Washington “wholly declined living in any public building,” and rented this house from Robert Morris. Though it was considered one of the finest in the city, Washington several times complained of being cramped.

Note

In every country boasting a history there may be observed a tendency to make its leaders or great men superhuman. Whether we turn to the legends of the East, the folk-lore of Europe, or the traditions of the native races of America, we find a mythology based upon the acts of man gifted with superhuman powers. In the unscientific, primeval periods in which these beliefs were born and elaborated into oral and written form, their origin is not surprising. But to all who have studied the creation of a mythology, no phase is a more curious one than that the keen, practical American of to-day should engage in the same process of hero-building which has given us Jupiter, Wotan, King Arthur, and others. By a slow evolution we have well-nigh discarded from the lives of our greatest men of the past all human faults and feelings; have enclosed their greatness in glass of the clearest crystal, and hung up a sign, “Do not touch.” Indeed, with such characters as Washington, Franklin, and Lincoln we have practically adopted the English maxim that “the king can do no wrong.” In place of men, limited by human limits, and influenced by human passions, we have demi-gods, so stripped of human characteristics as to make us question even whether they deserve much credit for their sacrifices and deeds.

But with this process of canonization have we not lost more than we have gained, both in example and in interest? Many, no doubt, with the greatest veneration for our first citizen, have sympathized with the view expressed by Mark Twain, when he said that he was a greater man than Washington, for the latter “couldn’t tell a lie, while he could, but wouldn’t” We have endless biographies of Franklin, picturing him in all the public stations of life, but all together they do not equal in popularity his own human autobiography, in which we see him walking down Market Street with a roll under each arm, and devouring a third. And so it seems as if the time had come to put the shadow-boxes of humanity round our historic portraits, not because they are ornamental in themselves, but because they will make them examples, not mere idols.

If the present work succeeds in humanizing Washington, and making him a man rather than a historical figure, its purpose will have been fulfilled. In the attempt to accomplish this, Washington has, so far as is possible, been made to speak for himself, even though at times it has compelled the sacrifice of literary form, in the hope that his own words would convey a greater sense of the personality of the man. So, too, liberal drafts have been made on the opinions and statements of his contemporaries; but, unless the contrary is stated or is obvious, all quoted matter is from Washington’s own pen. It is with pleasure that the author adds that the result of his study has only served to make Washington the greater to him.

The writer is under the greatest obligation to his brother, Worthington Chauncey Ford, not merely for his numerous books on Washington, of which his “Writings of George Washington” is easily first in importance of all works relating to the great American, but also for much manuscript material which he has placed at the author’s service. Hitherto unpublished facts have been drawn from many other sources, but notably from the rich collection of Mr. William F. Havemeyer, of New York, from the Department of State in Washington, and from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. To Mr. S.M. Hamilton, of the former institution, and to Mr. Frederick D. Stone, of the latter, the writer is particularly indebted for assistance.

THE TRUE GEORGE WASHINGTON

I FAMILY RELATIONS

Although Washington wrote that the history of his ancestors was, in his opinion, “of very little moment,” and “a subject to which I confess I have paid very little attention,” few Americans can prove a better pedigree. The earliest of his forebears yet discovered was described as “gentleman,” the family were granted lands by Henry the Eighth, held various offices of honor, married into good families, and under the Stuarts two were knighted and a third served as page to Prince Charles. Lawrence, a brother of the three thus distinguished, matriculated at Oxford as a “generosi filius” (the intermediate class between sons of the nobility, “armigeri filius,” and of the people, “plebeii filius”), or as of the minor gentry. In time he became a fellow and lector of Brasenose College, and presently obtained the good living of Purleigh. Strong royalists, the fortunes of the family waned along with King Charles, and sank into insignificance with the passing of the Stuart dynasty. Not the least sufferer was the rector of Purleigh, for the Puritan Parliament ejected him from his living, on the charge “that he was a common frequenter of ale-houses, not only himself sitting dayly tippling there … but hath oft been drunk,”—a charge indignantly denied by the royalists, who asserted that he was a “worthy Pious man, … always … a very Modest, Sober Person;” and this latter claim is supported by the fact that though the Puritans sequestered the rich living, they made no objection to his serving as rector at Brixted Parva, where the living was “such a Poor and Miserable one that it was always with difficulty that any one was persuaded to accept of it.”

Poverty resulting, John, the eldest son of this rector, early took to the sea, and in 1656 assisted “as second man in Sayleing ye Vessel to Virginia.” Here he settled, took up land, presently became a county officer, a burgess, and a colonel of militia. In this latter function he commanded the Virginia troops during the Indian war of 1675, and when his great-grandson, George, on his first arrival on the frontier, was called by the Indians “Conotocarius,” or “devourer of villages,” the formidable but inappropriate title for the newly-fledged officer is supposed to have been due to the reputation that John Washington had won for his name among the Indians eighty years before.

Both John’s son, Lawrence, and Lawrence’s son, Augustine, describe themselves in their wills as “gentlemen,” and both intermarried with the “gentry families” of Virginia. Augustine was educated at Appleby School, in England, like his grandfather followed the sea for a time, was interested in iron mines, and in other ways proved himself far more than the average Virginia planter of his day. He was twice married,—which marriages, with unconscious humor, he describes in his will as “several Ventures,”—had ten children, and died in 1743, when George, his fifth child and the first by his second “Venture,” was a boy of eleven. The father thus took little part in the life of the lad, and almost the only mention of him by his son still extant is the one recorded in Washington’s round school-boy hand in the family Bible, to the effect that “Augustine Washington and Mary Ball was Married the Sixth of March 17-30/31. Augustine Washington Departed this Life ye 12th Day of April 1743, Aged 49 Years.”

The mother, Mary Washington, was more of a factor, though chiefly by mere length of life, for she lived to be eighty-three, and died but ten years before her son. That Washington owed his personal appearance to the Balls is true, but otherwise the sentimentality that has been lavished about the relations between the two and her influence upon him, partakes of fiction rather than of truth. After his father’s death the boy passed most of his time at the homes of his two elder brothers, and this was fortunate, for they were educated men, of some colonial consequence, while his mother lived in comparatively straitened circumstances, was illiterate and untidy, and, moreover, if tradition is to be believed, smoked a pipe. Her course with the lad was blamed by a contemporary as “fond and unthinking,” and this is borne out by such facts as can be gleaned, for when his brothers wished to send him to sea she made “trifling objections,” and prevented his taking what they thought an advantageous opening; when the brilliant offer of a position on Braddock’s staff was tendered to Washington, his mother, “alarmed at the report,” hurried to Mount Vernon and endeavored to prevent him from accepting it; still again, after Braddock’s defeat, she so wearied her son with pleas not to risk the dangers of another campaign that Washington finally wrote her, “It would reflect dishonor upon me to refuse; and that, I am sure, must or ought to give you greater uneasiness, than my going in an honorable command.” After he inherited Mount Vernon the two seem to have seen little of each other, though, when occasion took him near Fredericksburg, he usually stopped to see her for a few hours, or even for a night.

Though Washington always wrote to his mother as “Honored Madam,” and signed himself “your dutiful and aff. son,” she none the less tried him not a little. He never claimed from her a part of the share of his father’s estate which was his due on becoming of age, and, in addition, “a year or two before I left Virginia (to make her latter days comfortable and free from care) I did, at her request, but at my own expence, purchase a commodious house, garden and Lotts (of her own choosing) in Fredericksburg, that she might be near my sister Lewis, her only daughter,—and did moreover agree to take her land and negroes at a certain yearly rent, to be fixed by Colo Lewis and others (of her own nomination) which has been an annual expence to me ever since, as the estate never raised one half the rent I was to pay. Before I left Virginia I answered all her calls for money; and since that period have directed my steward to do the same.” Furthermore, he gave her a phaeton, and when she complained of her want of comfort he wrote her, “My house is at your service, and would press you most sincerely and most devoutly to accept it, but I am sure, and candor requires me to say, it will never answer your purposes in any shape whatsoever. For in truth it may be compared to a well resorted tavern, as scarcely any strangers who are going from north to south, or from south to north, do not spend a day or two at it. This would, were you to be an inhabitant of it, oblige you to do one of 3 things: 1st, to be always dressing to appear in company; 2d, to come into [the room] in a dishabille, or 3d to be as it were a prisoner in your own chamber. The first you’ld not like; indeed, for a person at your time of life it would be too fatiguing. The 2d, I should not like, because those who resort here are, as I observed before, strangers and people of the first distinction. And the 3d, more than probably, would not be pleasing to either of us.”

Under these circumstances it was with real indignation that Washington learned that complaints of hers that she “never lived soe poore in all my life” were so well known that there was a project to grant her a pension. The pain this caused a man who always showed such intense dislike to taking even money earned from public coffers, and who refused everything in the nature of a gift, can easily be understood. He at once wrote a letter to a friend in the Virginia Assembly, in which, after reciting enough of what he had done for her to prove that she was under no necessity of a pension,—“or, in other words, receiving charity from the public,”—he continued, “But putting these things aside, which I could not avoid mentioning in exculpation of a presumptive want of duty on my part; confident I am that she has not a child that would not divide the last sixpence to relieve her from real distress. This she has been repeatedly assured of by me; and all of us, I am certain, would feel much hurt, at having our mother a pensioner, while we had the means of supporting her; but in fact she has an ample income of her own. I lament accordingly that your letter, which conveyed the first hint of this matter, did not come to my hands sooner; but I request, in pointed terms, if the matter is now in agitation in your Assembly, that all proceedings on it may be stopped, or in case of a decision in her favor, that it may be done away and repealed at my request.”

Still greater mortification was in store for him, when he was told that she was borrowing and accepting gifts from her neighbors, and learned “on good authority that she is, upon all occasions and in all companies, complaining … of her wants and difficulties; and if not in direct terms, at least by strong innuendoes, endeavors to excite a belief that times are much altered, &c., &c., which not only makes her appear in an unfavorable point of view, but those also who are connected with her.” To save her feelings he did not express the “pain” he felt to her, but he wrote a brother asking him to ascertain if there was the slightest basis in her complaints, and “see what is necessary to make her comfortable,” for “while I have anything I will part with it to make her so;” but begging him “at the same time … to represent to her in delicate terms, the impropriety of her complaints, and acceptance of favors, even when they are voluntarily offered, from any but relations.” Though he did not “touch upon this subject in a letter to her,” he was enough fretted to end the renting of her plantation, not because “I mean … to withhold any aid or support I can give from you; for whilst I have a shilling left, you shall have part,” but because “what I shall then give, I shall have credit for,” and not be “viewed as a delinquent, and considered perhaps by the world as unjust and undutiful son.”

In the last years of her life a cancer developed, which she refused to have “dressed,” and over which, as her doctor wrote Washington, the “Old Lady” and he had “a small battle every day.” Once Washington was summoned by an express to her bedside “to bid, as I was prepared to expect, the last adieu to an honored parent,” but it was a false alarm. Her health was so bad, however, that just before he started to New York to be inaugurated he rode to Fredericksburg, “and took a final leave of my mother, never expecting to see her more,” a surmise that proved correct.

Only Elizabeth—or “Betty”—of Washington’s sisters grew to womanhood, and it is said that she was so strikingly like her brother that, disguised with a long cloak and a military hat, the difference between them was scarcely detectable. She married Fielding Lewis, and lived at “Kenmore House” on the Rappahannock, where Washington spent many a night, as did the Lewises at Mount Vernon. During the Revolution, while visiting there, she wrote her brother, “Oh, when will that day arrive when we shall meet again. Trust in the lord it will be soon,—till when, you have the prayers and kind wishes for your health and happiness of your loving and sincerely affectionate sister.” Her husband died “much indebted,” and from that time her brother gave her occasional sums of money, and helped her in other ways.

Her eldest son followed in his father’s footsteps, and displeased Washington with requests for loans. He angered him still more by conduct concerning which Washington wrote to him as follows:

“Sir, Your letter of the 11th of Octor. never came to my hands ’till yesterday. Altho’ your disrespectful conduct towards me, in coming into this country and spending weeks therein without ever coming near me, entitled you to very little notice or favor from me; yet I consent that you may get timber from off my Land in Fauquier County to build a house on your Lott in Rectertown. Having granted this, now let me ask you what your views were in purchasing a Lott in a place which, I presume, originated with and will end in two or three Gin shops, which probably will exist no longer than they serve to ruin the proprietors, and those who make the most frequent applications to them. I am, &c.”