|
 GEORGE WASHINGTON
(1732-1799), the first president of the United States, was born
at Bridges Creek, Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 22nd
of February 1732. The genealogical researches of Mr. Henry E.
Waters seem to have established the connection of the family
with the Washingtons of Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, England.
The brothers John and Lawrence Washington appear in Virginia
in 1658. John took up land at Bridges Creek, became a member
of the House of Burgesses in 1666, and died in 1676. His eldest
son, Lawrence, married Mildred Warner, by whom he had three children:
John, Augustine (1694-1743) and Mildred. Augustine Washington
married twice. By the first marriage, with Jane Butler, there
were four children, two of whom, Lawrence and Augustine, grew
to manhood. By the second marriage, in 1730, with Mary Ball,
descendant of a family which migrated to Virginia in 1657, there
were six children: George, Betty, Samuel, John, Charles and Mildred.
Upon the death of the father, Lawrence inherited the estate at
Hunting Creek, on the Potomac, later known as Mount Vernon, and
George the estate on the Rappahannock, nearly opposite Fredericksburg,
where his father usually lived.
Of Washington's early life little is known, probably because
there was little unusual to tell. The story of the hatchet and
the cherry-tree, and similar tales, are undoubtedly apocryphal,
having been coined by Washington's most popular biographer, Mason
Weems. There is nothing to show that the boy's life was markedly
different from that common to Virginia families in easy circumstances;
plantation affairs, hunting, fishing, and a little reading making
up its substance. From 1735 to 1739 he lived at what is now called
Mount Vernon, and afterwards at the estate on the Rappahannock.
His education was only elementary and very defective, except
in mathematics, in which he was largely self-taught; and although
at his death he left a considerable library, he was never an
assiduous reader. Although he had throughout his life a good
deal of official contact with the French, he never mastered their
language. Some careful reading of good books there must have
been, however, for in spite of pervading illiteracy, common in
that age, in matters of grammar and spelling, he acquired a dignified
and effective English style. The texts of his writings, as published
by Jared Sparks, have been so edited in these respects as to
destroy their value as evidence; but the edition of Mr. Worthington
C. Ford restores the original texts. Washington left school in
the autumn of 1747, and from this time we begin to know something
of his life. He was then at Mount Vernon with his half-brother
Lawrence, who was also his guardian. Lawrence was a son-in-law
of William Fairfax, proprietor of the neighboring plantation
of Belvoir, and agent for the extensive Fairfax lands in the
colony. Lawrence had served with Fairfax at Cartagena, and had
made the acquaintance of Admiral Edward Vernon, from whom Mount
Vernon was named. The story that a commission as midshipman was
obtained for George through the good offices of the admiral,
but that the opposition of the boys mother put an end to the
scheme, seems to lack proof. In 1748, however, through the influence
of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, the head of the family, who had come
to America to live, Washington, then only sixteen years of age,
was appointed surveyor of the Fairfax property; and an appointment
as public surveyor soon followed. The next three years were spent
in this service, most of the time on the frontier. He always
retained a disposition to speculate in western lands, the ultimate
value of which he early appreciated; many of his later investments
of this character are treated in C. W. Butterfield's Washington-Crawford
Letters (1877). He seems, too, to have impressed others already
with his force of mind and character. In 1751 he accompanied
his half-brother Lawrence, who was stricken with consumption,
to the West Indies, where he had an attack of small-pox which
left him marked for life. Lawrence died in the following year,
making George executor under the will and residuary heir of Mount
Vernon; and the latter estate became his in 1761.
In October 1753, on the eve of the last French and Indian
war, Washington was chosen by Governor Robert Dinwiddie as the
agent to warn the French away from their new posts on the Ohio,
in western Pennsylvania. He accomplished the winter journey safely,
though with considerable danger and hardship; and shortly after
his return was appointed lieutenant-colonel of a Virginia regiment,
under Colonel Joshua Fry. In April 1754 he set out with two companies
for the Ohio, defeated (28th May) a force of French and Indians
at Great Meadows (in the present Fayette county, Pennsylvania),
but at Fort Necessity in this vicinity was forced to capitulate
(3rd July), though only after a vigorous defence. For his services
he received the thanks of the House of Burgesses. When General
Edward Braddock arrived in Virginia in February 1755,Washington
wrote him a diplomatically worded letter, and was presently made
a member of the staff, with the rank of colonel. His personal
relations with Braddock were friendly throughout, and in the
calamitous defeat he showed for the first time that fiery energy
which always lay hidden beneath his calm and unruffled exterior.
He ranged the whole field on horseback, making himself the most
conspicuous target for Indian bullets, and, in spite of what
he called the dastardly behaviour of the regular troops, saved
the expedition from annihilation, and brought the remnant of
his Virginians out of action in fair order. In spite of his reckless
exposure, he was one of the few unwounded officers. In August,
after his return, he was commissioned commander of the Virginia
forces, being then twenty-three years old. For about two years
his task was that of defending a frontier of more than 350 miles
with 700 men, a task rendered the more difficult by the insubordination
and irregular service of his soldiers, and by irritating controversies
over official precedence. To settle the latter question he made
a journey to Boston, in 1756, to confer with Governor William
Shirley. In the winter of 1757 his health broke down, but in
the next year he had the pleasure of commanding the advance guard
of the expedition under General John Forbes which occupied Fort
Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt. At the end of the year he
resigned his commission, the war in Virginia being at an end,
and in January 1759 married Martha Dandridge (1732-1802), widow
of Daniel Parke Custis.
For the next fifteen years, Washington's life at Mount Vernon,
where he made his home after his marriage, was that of a typical
Virginia planter of the more prosperous sort, a consistent member
and vestryman of the Established (Episcopal) Church, a large
slave-holder, and a widely trusted man of affairs. His extraordinary
escape in Braddock's defeat had led a colonial preacher to declare
in a sermon his belief that the young man had been preserved
to he the saviour of his country; but if there was any such impression
it soon died away, and Washington gave his associates no reason
to consider him a man of uncommon endowments. His marriage brought
him an increase of about $100,000 in his property, making him
one of the richest men in the colonies; and he was able to develop
his plantation and enlarge its extent. His attitude towards slavery
has been much discussed, but it does not seem to have been different
from that of many other planters of that day; he did not think
highly of the system, but had no invincible repugnance to it,
and saw no way of getting rid of it. In his treatment of slaves
he was exacting, but not harsh, and was averse to selling them
save in case of necessity. His diaries show a minutely methodical
conduct of business, generous indulgence in hunting, comparatively
little reading and a wide acquaintance with the leading men of
the colonies, but no marked indications of what is usually considered
to be greatness. As in the case of Lincoln, he was educated into
greatness by the increasing weight of his responsibilities and
the manner in which he met them. Like others of the dominant
planter class in Virginia, he was repeatedly elected to the House
of Burgesses, but the business which came before the colonial
assembly was for some years of only local importance, and he
is not known to have made any set speeches in the House, or to
have said anything beyond a statement of his opinion and the
reasons for it. He was present on the 29th of May 1765, when
Patrick Henry introduced his famous resolutions against the Stamp
Act. That he thought a great deal on public questions, and took
full advantage of his legislative experience as a means of political
education, is shown by his letter of the 5th of April 1769 to
his neighbor, George Mason, communicating the Philadelphia non-importation
resolutions, which had just reached him. In this he considers
briefly the best means of peaceable resistance to the policy
of the ministry, but even at that early date faces frankly and
fully the probable final necessity of resisting by force, and
endorses it, though only as a last resort. In May following,
when the House of Burgesses was dissolved, he was among the members
who met at the Raleigh tavern and adopted a non-importation agreement;
and he himself kept the agreement when others did not. Though
on friendly terms with Governor Norborne Berkeley, Baron Botetourt
and his successor, John Murray, earl of Dunmore, he nevertheless
took a prominent part, though without speechmaking, in the struggles
of the Assembly against Dunmore, and his position was always
a radical one. As the breach widened, he even opposed petitions
to the king and parliament, on the ground that the claims to
taxation and control had been put forward by the ministry on
the basis of right, not of expediency, that the ministry could
not abandon the claim of right and the colonies could not admit
it, and that petitions must be, as they already had been, rejected.
Shall we, he writes in a letter, after this whine and cry for
relief?
On the 5th of August 1774, the Virginia convention appointed
Washington as one of seven delegates to the first Continental
Congress, which met at Philadelphia on the 5th of September,
and with this appointment his national career, which was to continue
with but two brief intervals until his death, begins. His letters
during his service in Congress show that he had fully grasped
the questions at issue, that he was under no delusions as to
the outcome of the struggle over taxation, and that he expected
war. More blood will be spilled on this occasion, he wrote, if
the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, than
history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of
North America. His associates in Congress at once recognized
his military ability, and although he was not a member of any
of the committees of the Congress, he seems to have aided materially
in securing the endorsement by Congress of the Suffolk county,
Massachusetts, resolves looking towards organized resistance.
On the adjournment of the Congress he returned to Virginia, where
he continued to be active, as a member of the House of Burgesses,
in urging on the organization, equipment and training of troops,
and even undertook in person to drill volunteers. His attitude
towards the mother country at this time, however, must not be
misunderstood. Much as he expected war, he was not yet ready
to declare in favor of independence, and he did not ally himself
with the party of independence until the course of events made
the adoption of any other course impossible. In March 1775, he
was appointed a delegate from Virginia to the second Continental
Congress, where he served on committees for fortifying New York,
collecting ammunition, raising money and formulating army rules.
It seems to have been generally understood that, in case of war,
Virginia would expect him to act as her commander-in-chief, and
it was noticed that, in the second Congress, he was the only
member who habitually appeared in uniform. History, however,
was to settle the matter on broader lines. The two most powerful
colonies were Virginia and Massachusetts. The war began in Massachusetts,
troops from New England flocking to the neighborhood of Boston
almost spontaneously; but the resistance, if it was to be effective,
must have the support of the colonies to the southward, and the
Virginia colonel who was serving on all the military committees
of Congress, and whose experience in the Braddock campaign had
made his name favorably known in England, was the obvious as
well as the politic choice. When Congress, after the fights at
Lexington and Concord, resolved that the colonies ought to be
put in a position of defence, the first practical step was the
unanimous selection (June 15) of Washington as commander-in-chief
of the armed forces of the United Colonies. Refusing any salary
and asking only the reimbursement of his expenses, he accepted
the position, asking every gentleman in the room, however, to
remember his declaration that he did not believe himself to be
equal to the command, and that he accepted it only as a duty
made imperative by the unanimity of the call. He reiterated this
belief in private letters even to his wife; and there seems to
be no doubt that, to the day of his death, he was the most determined
sceptic as to his fitness for the positions to which he was successively
called. He was commissioned on the 17th of June 1775, set out
at once for Cambridge, Mass., and on the 3rd of July took command
of the levies there assembled for action against the British
garrison in Boston. The battle of Bunker Hill had already taken
place, news of it reaching him on the way north. Until the following
March, Washington's work was to bring about some semblance of
military organization and discipline, to collect ammunition and
military stores, to correspond with Congress and the colonial
authorities, to guide military operations in widely separate
parts of the country, to create a military system for a people
entirely unaccustomed to such a thing and impatient and suspicious
under it, and to bend the course of events steadily towards driving
the British out of Boston. He planned the expeditions against
Canada under Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold, and sent
out privateers to harass British commerce. It is not easy to
see how Washington survived the year 1775; the colonial poverty,
the exasperating annoyances, the outspoken criticism of those
who demanded active operations, the personal and party dissensions
in Congress, the selfishness or stupidity which cropped out again
and again among some of the most patriotic of his coadjutors
were enough to have broken down most men. They completed his
training. The change in this one winter is very evident. If he
was not a great man when he went to Cambridge, he was both a
general and a statesman in the fullest sense when he drove the
British out of Boston in March 1776. From that time until his
death he was admittedly the foremost man of the continent.
Washington's retreat through New Jersey; the manner in which
he turned and struck his pursuers at Trenton and Princeton, and
then established himself at Morristown, so as to make the way
to Philadelphia impassable; the vigour with which he handled
his army at Brandywine and Germantown; the persistence with which
he held the strategic position of Valley Forge through the dreadful
winter of 1777-1778, in spite of the misery of his men, the clamours
of the people and the impotence and meddling of the fugitive
Congress all went to show that the fibre of his public character
had been hardened to its permanent quality. These are the times
that try mens souls, wrote Thomas Paine at the beginning of 1776,
and the words had added meaning in each year that followed; but
Washington had no need to fear the test. The spirit which culminated
in the treason of Benedict Arnold was a serious addition to his
burdens; for what Arnold did others were almost ready to do.
Many of the American officers, too, had taken offence at the
close personal friendship which had sprung up between the marquis
de La Fayette and Washington, and at the diplomatic deference
which the commander-in-chief felt compelled to show to other
foreign officers. Some of the foreign volunteers were eventually
dismissed politely by Congress, on the ground that suitable employment
could not be found for them. The name of one of them, Thomas
Conway, an Irish soldier of fortune from the French service,
is attached to what is called Conway's Cabal, a scheme for superseding
Washington by General Horatio Gates, who in October 1777 succeeded
in forcing Burgoyne to capitulate at Saratoga, and who had been
persistent in his depreciation of the commander-in-chief and
in intrigues with members of Congress. A number of officers,
as well as of men in civil life, were mixed up in the plot, while
the methods employed were the lowest forms of anonymous slander;
but at the first breath of exposure every one concerned hurried
to cover up his part in it, leaving Conway to shoulder both the
responsibility and the disgrace. The treaty of alliance of 1778
with France, following the surrender of Burgoyne, put an end
to all such plans. It was absurd to expect foreign nations to
deal with a second-rate man as commander-in-chief while Washington
was in the field, and he seems to have had no further trouble
of this kind. The prompt and vigorous pursuit of Sir Henry Clinton
across New Jersey towards New York, and the battle of Monmouth,
in which the plan of battle was thwarted by Charles Lee, another
foreign recruit of popular reputation, closed the military record
of Washington, so far as active campaigning was concerned, until
the end of the war. The British confined their operations to
other parts of the continent, and Washington, alive as ever to
the importance of keeping up connection with New England, devoted
himself to watching the British in and about New York City. It
was in every way fitting, however, that he who had been the mainspring
of the war from the beginning, and had borne far more than his
share of its burdens and discouragements, should end it with
the campaign of Yorktown, conceived by himself, and the surrender
of Cornwallis (October 1781). Although peace was not concluded
until September 1783, there was no more important fighting. Washington
retained his commission until the 23rd of December 1783, when,
in a memorable scene, he returned it to Congress, then in session
at Annapolis, Md., and retired to Mount Vernon. His expenses
during the war, including secret service money, aggregated about
$64,000; in addition he expended a considerable amount from his
private fortune, for which he made no claim to reimbursement.
By this time the popular canonization of Washington had fairly
begun. He occupied a position in American public life and in
the American political system which no man could possibly hold
again. He may be said to have become a political element quite
apart from the Union, or the states, or the people of either.
In a country in which newspapers had at best only a local circulation,
and where communication was still slow and difficult, the knowledge
that Washington favored anything superseded, with very many men,
both argument and the necessity of information. His constant
correspondence with the governors of the states gave him a quasi-paternal
attitude towards government in general. On relinquishing his
command, for example, he was able to do what no other man could
have done with either propriety or safety: he addressed a circular
letter to the governors, pointing out changes in the existing
form of government which he believed to be necessary, and urging
an indissoluble union of the states under one federal head, a
regard to public justice, the adoption of a suitable military
establishment for a time of peace, and the making of those mutual
concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity. His
refusal to accept a salary, either as commander-in-chief or as
president, might have been taken as affectation or impertinence
in any one else; it seemed natural and proper enough in the case
of Washington, but it was his peculiar privilege. It is even
possible that he might have had a crown, had he been willing
to accept it. The army, at the end of the war, was justly dissatisfied
with its treatment. The officers were called to meet at Newburgh,
and it was the avowed purpose of the leaders of the movement
to march the army westward, appropriate vacant public lands as
part compensation for arrears of pay, leave Congress to negotiate
for peace without an army, and mock at their calamity and laugh
when their fear cometh. Less publicly avowed was the purpose
to make their commander-in-chief king, if he could be persuaded
to aid in establishing a monarchy. Washington put a summary stop
to the whole proceeding. A letter written to him by Colonel Lewis
Nicola, on behalf of this coterie, detailed the weakness of a
republican form of government as they had experienced it, their
desire for mixed government, with him at its head, and their
belief that the title of king would be objectionable to but few
and of material advantage to the country. His reply was peremptory
and indignant. In plain terms he stated his abhorrence of the
proposal; he was at a loss to conceive what part of his conduct
could have encouraged their address; they could not have found
a person to whom their schemes were more disagreeable; and he
charged them, if you have any regard for yourself or posterity,
or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and
never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment
of the like nature. His influence, and his alone, secured the
quiet disbanding of the discontented army. That influence was
as powerful after he had retired to Mount Vernon as before the
resignation of his command. The Society of the Cincinnati, an
organization composed of officers of the late war, chose him
as its first president; but he insisted that the Society should
abandon its plan of hereditary membership, and change other features
of the organization against which there had been public clamour.
When the legislature of Virginia gave him 150 shares of stock
in companies formed for the improvement of the Potomac and James
rivers, and he was unable to refuse them lest his action should
be misinterpreted, he extricated himself by giving them to educational
institutions. His voluminous correspondence shows his continued
concern for a standing army and the immediate possession of the
western military posts, and his interest in the development of
the western territory. From public men in all parts of the country
he received such a store of suggestions as came to no other man,
digested it, and was enabled by means of it to speak with what
seemed infallible wisdom. In the midst of a burden of letterwriting,
the minute details in his diaries of tree-planting and rotation
of crops, and his increasing reading on the political side of
history, he found time to entertain a stream of visitors from
all parts of the United States and from abroad. Among these,
in March 1785, were the commissioners from Virginia and Maryland,
who met at Alexandria to form a commercial code for Chesapeake
Bay and the Potomac, and made an opportunity to visit Mount Vernon.
From that moment the current of events, leading into the Annapolis
Convention of 1786 and the Federal Convention of the following
year, shows Washington's close supervision at every point.
When the Federal Convention met at Philadelphia in May 1787
to frame the present constitution, Washington was present as
a delegate from Virginia, though much against his will; and a
unanimous vote at once made him the presiding officer. Naturally,
therefore, he did not participate in debate; and he seems to
have spoken but once, and then to favor an amendment reducing
from 40,000 to 30,000 the minimum population required as a basis
of representation in the House. The mere suggestion, coming from
him, was sufficient, and the change was at once agreed to. He
approved the constitution which was decided upon, believing,
as he said, that it was the best constitution which could be
obtained at that epoch, and that this or a dissolution awaits
our choice, and is the only alternative. As president of the
convention he signed the constitution, and kept the papers of
the convention until the adoption of the new government, when
they were deposited in the Department of State. All his vast
influence was given to secure the ratification of the new instrument,
and his influence was probably decisive. When enough states had
ratified to assure the success of the new government, and the
time came to elect a president, there was no hesitation. The
office of president had been cut to fit the measure of George
Washington, and no one thought of any other person in connection
with it. The unanimous vote of the electors made him the first
president of the United States; their unanimous vote elected
him for a second time in 1792-1793; and even after he had positively
refused to serve for a third term, two electors voted for him
in 1796-1797.
While the success of the new government was the work of many
men and many causes, one cannot resist the conviction that the
factor of chief importance was the existence, at the head of
the executive department, of such a character as Washington.
It was he who gave to official intercourse formal dignity and
distinction. It was he who secured for the president the power
of removal from office without the intervention of the Senate.
His support of Hamilton's financial plans not only insured a
speedy restoration of public credit, but also, and even more
important, gave the new government constitutional ground on which
to stand; while his firmness in dealing with the Whisky Insurrection
taught a much-needed and wholesome lesson of respect for the
Federal power. His official visits to New England in 1789, to
Rhode Island in 1790 and to the South in 1791 enabled him to
test public opinion at the same time that they increased popular
interest in the national government. Himself not a political
partisan, he held the two natural parties apart, and prevented
party contest, until the government had become too firmly established
to be shaken by them. Perhaps the final result would not in any
case have failed, even had blood and iron been necessary to bring
it about; but the quiet attainment of the result was due to the
personality of Washington, as well as to the political sense
of the American people.
It would be a great mistake to suppose, however, that the
influence of the president was fairly appreciated during his
term of office, or that he himself was uniformly respected. Washington
seems never to have understood fully either the nature, the significance,
or the inevitable necessity of party government in a republic.
Instead, he attempted to balance party against party, selected
representatives of opposing political views to serve in his first
cabinet, and sought in that way to neutralize the effects of
parties. The consequence was that the two leading members of
the cabinet, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, exponents
for the most part of diametrically opposite political doctrines,
soon occupied the position, to use the words of one of them,
of two same-cocks in a pit. The unconscious drift of Washington's
mind was toward the Federalist party; his letters to La Fayette
and to Patrick Henry, in December 1798 and January 1799, make
that evident even without the record of his earlier career as
president. It is inconceivable that, to a man with his type of
mind and his extraordinary experience, the practical sagacity,
farsightedness and aggressive courage of the Federalists should
not have seemed to embody the best political wisdom, however
little he may have been disposed to ally himself with any party
group or subscribe to any comprehensive creed. Accordingly, when
the Democratic Republican party came to be formed, about 1793,
it was not to be expected that its leaders would long submit
with patience to the continual interposition of Washington's
name and influence between themselves and their opponents; but
they maintained a calm exterior. Some of their followers were
less discreet. The president's proclamation of neutrality, in
the war between England and France, excited them to anger; his
support of Jay's treaty with Great Britain roused them to fury.
His firmness in thwarting the activities of Edmond Charles Edouard
Genet, minister from France, alienated the partisans of France;
his suppression of the Whisky Insurrection aroused in some the
fear of a military despotism. Forged letters, purporting to show
his desire to abandon the revolutionary struggle, were published;
he was accused of drawing more than his salary; his manners were
ridiculed as aping monarchy; hints of the propriety of a guillotine
for his benefit began to appear; he was spoken of as the stepfather
of his country. The brutal attacks, exceeding in virulence anything
that would be tolerated to-day, embittered his presidency, especially
during his second term: in 1793 he is reported to have declared,
in a cabinet meeting, that he would rather be in his grave than
in his present situation, and that he had never repented but
once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and
that was every moment since. The most unpleasant portions of
Jefferson's notes are those in which, with an air of psychological
dissection, he details the storms of passion into which the president
was driven by the newspaper attacks upon him. There is no reason
to believe, however, that these attacks represented the feeling
of any save a small minority of the politicians; the people never
wavered in their devotion to the president, and his election
would have been unanimous in 1796, as in 1792 and 1789, had he
been willing to serve.
He retired from the presidency in 1797 and returned to Mount
Vernon, his journey thither being marked by popular demonstrations
of affection and esteem. At Mount Vernon, which had suffered
from neglect during his absence, he resumed the plantation life
which he loved, the society of his family, and the care of his
slaves. He had resolved some time before never to obtain another
slave, and wished from his soul that Virginia could be persuaded
to abolish slavery; it might prevent much future mischief; but
the unprecedented profitableness of the cotton industry, under
the impetus of the recently invented cotton gin, had already
begun to change public sentiment regarding slavery, and Washington
was too old to attempt further innovations. Visitors continued
to flock to him, and his correspondence, as always, took a wide
range. In 1798 he was made commander-in-chief of the provisional
army raised in anticipation of war with France (He had previously,
under date of the 17th of September 1796, issued a notable Farewell
Address to the American people.) and was fretted almost beyond
endurance by the quarrels of Federalist politicians over the
distribution of commissions. In the midst of these military preparations
he was struck down by sudden illness, which lasted but for a
day, and died at Mount Vernon on the 14th of December 1799. His
disorder was an oedematous affection of the wind-pipe, contracted
by exposure during a long ride in a snowstorm, and aggravated
by neglect and by such contemporary remedies as bleeding, gargles
of molasses, vinegar and butter and vinegar and sage tea, which
almost suffocated him, and a blister of cantharides on the throat.
He died as simply as he had lived; his last words were only business
directions, affectionate remembrances to relatives, and repeated
apologies to the physicians and attendants for the trouble he
was giving them. Just before he died, says his secretary, Tobias
Lear, he felt his own pulse; his countenance changed; the attending
physician placed his hands over the eyes of the dying man, and
he expired without a struggle or a sigh. The third of the series
of resolutions introduced in the House of Representatives five
days after his death, by John Marshall of Virginia, later chief-justice
of the Supreme Court, states exactly, if somewhat rhetorically,
the position of Washingtion in American history: first in war,
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. (This
characterization originated with Henry Lee.) His will contained
a provision freeing his slaves, and a request that no oration
be pronounced at his funeral. His remains rest in the family
vault at Mount Vernon.
All contemporary accounts agree that Washington was of imposing
presence. He measured just 6 ft. when prepared for burial; but
his height in his prime, as given in his orders for clothes from
London, was 3 in. more. La Fayette says that his hands were the
largest he ever saw on a man. Custis says that his complexion
was fair, but considerably florid. His weight was about 220 lbs.
Evidently it was his extraordinary dignity and poise, forbidding
even the suggestion of familiarity, quite as much as his stature,
that impressed those who knew him. The various and widely-differing
portraits of him find exhaustive treatment in the seventh volume
of Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America.
Winsor thinks that the favorite profile has been. unquestionably
Houdon's, with Gilbert Stuart's canvas for the full face and
probably John Trumbull's for the figure. Stuart's face, however,
with its calm and benign expression, has fixed the popular notion
of Washington.
Washington was childless: the people of his time said he was
the father only of his country. Collateral branches of the family
have given the Lees, the Custises, and other families a claim
to an infusion of the blood.
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| This article is
reprinted from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition.
New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica Co., 1911. |
|
