WASHINGTON AT MOUNT VERNON.
For some time after his return to Mount Vernon, Washington was in a
manner locked up by the ice and snow of an uncommonly rigorous winter,
so that social intercourse was interrupted, and he could not even pay
a visit of duty and affection to his aged mother at Fredericksburg.
But it was enough for him at present that he was at length at home at
Mount Vernon. Yet the habitudes of the camp still haunted him; he
could hardly realize that he was free from military duties; on waking
in the morning he almost expected to hear the drum going its stirring
rounds and beating the reveillé.
During the winter storms he anticipates the time when the return of
the sun will enable him to welcome his friends and companions in arms
to partake of his hospitality; and lays down his unpretending plan of
receiving the curious visitors who are likely to throng in upon him.
"My manner of living," writes he to a friend, "is plain, and I do not
mean to be put out of it. A glass of wine and a bit of mutton are
always ready; and such as will be content to partake of them, are
always welcome. Those who expect more will be disappointed." Some
degree of economy was necessary, for his financial concerns had
suffered during the war, and the products of his estate had fallen off
during his long absence.
In the meantime the supreme council of Pennsylvania, properly
appreciating the disinterestedness of his conduct, aware that popular
love and popular curiosity would attract crowds of visitors to Mount
Vernon, and subject him to extraordinary expenses, had instructed
their delegates in Congress to call the attention of that body to
these circumstances, with a view to produce some national reward for
his eminent services. Before acting upon these instructions, the
delegates were directed to send a copy of them to Washington for his
approbation.
He received the document while buried in accounts and calculations,
and when, had he been of a mercenary disposition, the offered
intervention in his favor would have seemed most seasonable; but he at
once most gratefully and respectfully declined it, jealously
maintaining the satisfaction of having served his country at the
sacrifice of his private interests.
As spring advanced, Mount Vernon, as had been anticipated, began to
attract numerous visitors. They were received in the frank,
unpretending style Washington had determined upon. It was truly
edifying to behold how easily and contentedly he subsided from the
authoritative commander-in-chief of armies into the quiet country
gentleman. There was nothing awkward or violent in the transition. He
seemed to be in his natural element. Mrs. Washington, too, who
presided with quiet dignity at head-quarters, and cheered the wintry
gloom of Valley Forge with her presence, presided with equal amenity
and grace at the simple board of Mount Vernon. She had a cheerful good
sense that always made her an agreeable companion, and was an
excellent manager.
In entering upon the out-door management of his estate, Washington was
but doing in person what he had long been doing through others. He had
never virtually ceased to be the agriculturist. Throughout all his
campaigns he had kept himself informed of the course of rural affairs
at Mount Vernon. By means of maps on which every field was laid down
and numbered, he was enabled to give directions for their several
cultivation, and receive accounts of their several crops. No hurry of
affairs prevented a correspondence with his overseer or agent, and he
exacted weekly reports. Thus his rural were interwoven with his
military cares; the agriculturist was mingled with the soldier.
The Fairfaxes, the kind friends of his boyhood, and social companions
of his riper years, were no longer at hand to share his pleasures and
lighten his cares. There were no more hunting dinners at Belvoir.
George William Fairfax, its former possessor, was in England; his
political principles had detained him there during the war, and part
of his property had been sequestered. Old Lord Fairfax, the Nimrod of
Greenway Court, Washington's early friend and patron, with whom he had
first learned to follow the hounds, had lived on in a green old age at
his sylvan retreat in the beautiful valley of the Shenandoah; popular
with his neighbors and unmolested by the Whigs, although frank and
open in his adherence to Great Britain. He had attained his
ninety-second year, when tidings of the surrender of Yorktown wounded
the national pride of the old cavalier to the quick, and snapped the
attenuated thread of his existence.
On the 17th of August, Washington was gladdened by having the Marquis
de Lafayette under his roof, who had recently arrived from France. The
marquis passed a fortnight with him, a loved and cherished guest, at
the end of which he departed for a time, to be present at the ceremony
of a treaty with the Indians.
Washington now prepared for a tour to the west of the Appalachian
Mountains, to visit his lands on the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers. Dr.
Craik, the companion of his various campaigns, and who had accompanied
him in 1770 on a similar tour, was to be his fellow-traveller. His
original intention had been to survey and inspect his lands on the
Monongahela River; then to descend the Ohio to the great Kanawha,
where also he had large tracts of wild land. On arriving on the
Monongahela, however, he heard such accounts of discontent and
irritation among the Indian tribes, that he did not consider it
prudent to venture among them. Some of his land on the Monongahela was
settled; the rest was in the wilderness, and of little value in the
present unquiet state of the country. He abridged his tour, therefore;
proceeded no further west than the Monongahela; ascended that river,
and then struck southward through the wild, unsettled regions of the
Alleghanies, until he came out into the Shenandoah Valley near
Staunton. He returned to Mount Vernon on the 4th of October.
During all this tour he had carefully observed the course and
character of the streams flowing from the west into the Ohio, and the
distance of their navigable parts from the head navigation of the
rivers east of the mountains, with the nearest and best portage
between them. For many years he had been convinced of the
practicability of an easy and short communication between the Potomac
and James Rivers, and the waters of the Ohio, and thence on to the
great chain of lakes; and of the vast advantages that would result
therefrom to the States of Virginia and Maryland. He had even
attempted to set a company on foot to undertake at their own expense
the opening of such a communication, but the breaking out of the
Revolution had put a stop to the enterprise. One object of his recent
tour was to make observations and collect information on the subject;
and all that he had seen and heard quickened his solicitude to carry
the scheme into effect. [He set forth his views upon the subject to
Benjamin Harrison, governor of Virginia, urging its importance to the
State, and predicting that New York would lose no time in forming
communication by water with the western lakes. The governor laid the
letter before the State legislature, and Washington was induced to go
to Richmond to give the measure his personal support.]
In a letter to Richard Henry Lee, recently chosen President of
Congress, he urged it upon his attention; suggesting that the western
waters should be explored, their navigable capabilities ascertained,
and that a complete map should be made of the country. In the latter
part of December he was at Annapolis, at the request of the Assembly
of Virginia, to arrange matters with the Assembly of Maryland
respecting it. Through his indefatigable exertions two companies were
formed under the patronage of the governments of these States, for
opening the navigation of the Potomac and James Rivers, and he was
appointed president of both. By a unanimous vote of the Assembly of
Virginia, fifty shares in the Potomac, and one hundred in the James
River Company, were appropriated for his benefit.
Washington was exceedingly embarrassed by the appropriation. To
decline so noble and unequivocal a testimonial of the good opinion and
good will of his countrymen might be construed into disrespect, yet he
wished to be perfectly free to exercise his judgment and express his
opinions in the matter, without being liable to the least suspicion of
interested motives. While, however, he declined to receive the
proffered shares for his own benefit, he intimated a disposition to
receive them in trust, to be applied to the use of some object or
institution of a public nature. His wishes were complied with, and the
shares were ultimately appropriated by him to institutions devoted to
public education. Yet, though the love for his country would thus
interfere with his love for his home, the dream of rural retirement at
Mount Vernon still went on.
At the opening of the year (1785) the entries in his diary show him
diligently employed in preparations to improve his groves and
shrubbery. On the 10th of January he notes that the white thorn is
full in berry. On the 20th he begins to clear the pine groves of
undergrowth. In February he transplants ivy under the walls of the
garden to which it still clings. In March he is planting hemlock
trees, that most beautiful species of American evergreen, numbers of
which had been brought hither from Occoquan. In April he is sowing
holly berries in drills, some adjoining a green-briar hedge on the
north side of the garden gate; others in a semicircle on the lawn.
Many of the holly bushes thus produced, are still flourishing about
the place in full vigor.
We find in his diary noted down with curious exactness each day's
labor and the share he took in it; his frequent rides to the Mill
Swamp, the Dogue Creek, the "Plantation of the Neck," and other places
along the Potomac in quest of young elms, ash trees, white thorn,
crab-apples, maples, mulberries, willows and lilacs; the winding walks
which he lays out, and the trees and shrubs which he plants along
them. Now he sows acorns and buck-eye nuts brought by himself from the
Monongahela; now he opens vistas through the Pine Grove, commanding
distant views through the woodlands; and now he twines round his
columns scarlet honeysuckles, which his gardener tells him will blow
all the summer.
The ornamental cultivation of which we have spoken was confined to the
grounds appertaining to what was called the mansion-house farm; but
his estate included four other farms, all lying contiguous, and
containing three thousand two hundred and sixty acres; each farm
having its bailiff or overseer, with a house for his accommodation,
barns and out-houses for the produce, and cabins for the negroes. On a
general map of the estate, drawn out by Washington himself, these
farms were all laid down accurately and their several fields numbered;
he knew the soil and local qualities of each, and regulated the
culture of them accordingly. In addition to these five farms there
were several hundred acres of fine woodland, so that the estate
presented a beautiful diversity of land and water. In the stables near
the mansion-house were the carriage and saddle horses, of which he was
very choice; on the four farms there were 54 draught horses, 12 mules,
317 head of black cattle, 360 sheep, and a great number of swine,
which last ran at large in the woods.
In the management of his estate he was remarkably exact. No negligence
on the part of the overseers or those under them was passed over
unnoticed. He seldom used many words on the subject of his plans;
rarely asked advice; but, when once determined, carried them directly
and silently into execution; and was not easily dissuaded from a
project when once commenced.
While Washington was thus calmly employed, came a letter from Henry
Lee, who was now in Congress, conveying a mournful piece of
intelligence: "Your friend and second, the patriot and noble Greene,
is no more. Universal grief reigns here." Greene died on the 18th of
June, at his estate of Mulberry Grove, on Savannah River, presented to
him by the State of Georgia. His last illness was brief; caused by a
stroke of the sun; he was but forty-four years of age. The news of his
death struck heavily on Washington's heart, to whom, in the most
arduous trials of the Revolution, he had been a second self. He had
taken Washington as his model, and possessed naturally many of his
great qualities. Like him, he was sound in judgment; persevering in
the midst of discouragements; calm and self-possessed in time of
danger; heedful of the safety of others; heedless of his own. Like
him, he was modest and unpretending, and like him he had a perfect
command of temper.
Other deaths pressed upon Washington's sensibility about the same
time. That of General McDougall, who had served his country faithfully
through the war, and since with equal fidelity in Congress. That, too,
of Colonel Tench Tilghman, for a long time one of Washington's
aides-de-camp, and "who left," writes he, "as fair a reputation as
ever belonged to a human character." "Thus," adds he, "some of the
pillars of the Revolution fall. Others are mouldering by insensible
degrees. May our country never want props to support the glorious
fabric!"