Washington at Mount Vernon.—A Soldier’s Repose.—Plans of Domestic
Life.—Kind Offer of the Council of Pennsylvania.—Historical
Applications.—News of Jacob Van Braam.—Opening of
Spring.—Agricultural Life resumed.—Recollections of the
Fairfaxes.—Meeting of the Order of Cincinnati.—Tour of Washington
and Dr. Craik to the West.—Ideas of Internal Improvement.—Parting
with Lafayette.
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 reveille.
“Strange as it may seem,” writes he to General Knox, “it is nevertheless
true, that it was not until very lately I could get the better of my
usual custom of ruminating as soon as I waked in the morning, on the
business of the ensuing day; and of my surprise at finding, after
revolving many things in my mind, that I was no longer a public man, nor
had anything to do with public transactions. I feel now, however, as I
conceive a weary traveller must do, who, after treading many a weary
step, with a heavy burthen on his shoulders, is eased of the latter,
having reached the haven to which all the former were directed, and from
his house-top is looking back, and tracing, with an eager eye, the
meanders by which he escaped the quicksands and mires which lay in his
way; and into which none but the all-powerful Guide and Dispenser of
human events could have prevented his falling.”
And in a letter to Lafayette he writes: “Free from the bustle of a camp
and the busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself with those
tranquil enjoyments which the soldier, who is ever in pursuit of fame,
the statesman, whose watchful days and sleepless nights are spent in
devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of
other countries—as if this globe was insufficient for us all; and the
courtier, who is always watching the countenance of his prince in hopes
of catching a gracious smile, can have very little conception. I have
not only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring within
myself, and shall be able to view the solitary walk, and tread the paths
of private life with heartfelt satisfaction. Envious of none, I am
determined to be pleased with all; and this, my dear friend, being the
order of my march, I will move gently down the stream of life until I
sleep with my fathers.”
And subsequently, in a letter to the Marchioness de Lafayette, inviting
her to America to see the country, “young, rude, and uncultivated as it
is,” for the liberties of which her husband had fought, bled, and
acquired much glory, and where everybody admired and loved him, he adds:
“I am now enjoying domestic ease under the shadow of my own vine and my
own fig-tree, in a small villa, with the implements of husbandry and
lambkins about me.... Come, then, let me entreat you, and call my
cottage your own; for your doors do not open to you with more readiness
than mine would. You will see the plain manner in which we live, and
meet with rustic civility; and you shall taste the simplicity of rural
life. It will diversify the scene, and may give you a higher relish for
the gayeties of the court when you return to Versailles.”
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 mean time the supreme council of Pennsylvania, properly
appreciating the disinterestedness of his conduct, and 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 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.
Applications began to be made to him by persons desirous of writing the
history of the Revolution, for access to the public papers in his
possession. He excused himself from submitting to their inspection those
relative to the occurrences and transactions of his late command, until
Congress should see fit to open their archives to the historian.
His old friend, Dr. Craik, made a similar application to Washington in
behalf of a person who purposed to write his memoirs. He replied, that
any memoir of his life distinct and unconnected with the general history
of the war, would rather hurt his feelings than flatter his pride, while
he could not furnish the papers and information connected with it
without subjecting himself to the imputation of vanity, adding; “I had
rather leave it to posterity to think and say what they please of me,
than, by any act of mine, to have vanity or ostentation imputed to me.”
It was a curious circumstance, that scarce had Washington retired from
the bustle of arms and hung up his sword at Mount Vernon, when he
received a letter from the worthy who had first taught him the use of
that sword in these very halls. In a word, Jacob Van Braam, his early
teacher of the sword exercise, his fellow campaigner and unlucky
interpreter in the affair of the Great Meadows, turned up once more. His
letter gave a glance over the current of his life. It would appear that
after the close of the French war, he had been allowed half pay in
consideration of his services and misadventures; and, in process of
time, had married, and settled on a farm in Wales with his wife and his
wife’s mother. He had carried with him to England a strong feeling in
favor of America, and on the breaking out of the Revolution had been
very free, and, as he seemed to think, eloquent and effective in
speaking in all companies and at country meetings against the American
war. Suddenly, as if to stop his mouth, he received orders from Lord
Amherst, then commander-in-chief, to join his regiment (the 60th), in
which he was appointed eldest captain in the 3d battalion. In vain he
pleaded his rural occupations; his farm cultivated at so much cost, for
which he was in debt, and which must go to ruin should he abandon it so
abruptly. No excuse was admitted—he must embark and sail for East
Florida, or lose his half pay. He accordingly sailed for St. Augustine
in the beginning of 1776, with a couple of hundred recruits picked up in
London, resolving to sell out of the army on the first opportunity. By a
series of cross-purposes he was prevented from doing so until 1779,
having in the interim made a campaign in Georgia. “He quitted the
service,” he adds, “with as much pleasure as ever a young man entered
it.”
He then returned to England and took up his residence in Devonshire; but
his invincible propensity to talk against the ministry made his
residence there uncomfortable. His next move, therefore, was to the old
fertile province of Orleannois in France, where he was still living near
Malesherbes, apparently at his ease, enjoying the friendship of the
distinguished personage of that name, and better versed, it is to be
hoped, in the French language than when he officiated as interpreter in
the capitulation at the Great Meadows. The worthy major appeared to
contemplate with joy and pride the eminence to which his early pupil in
the sword exercise had attained.
“Give me leave, sir, before I conclude,” writes he, “to pour out the
sentiments of my soul in congratulations for your successes in the
American contest; and in wishing you a long life, to enjoy the blessing
of a great people whom you have been the chief instrument in freeing
from bondage.”
So disappears from the scene one of the earliest personages of our
history.
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 had 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. She has been
remarked for an inveterate habit of knitting. It had been acquired, or
at least fostered, in the wintry encampments of the Revolution, where
she used to set an example to her lady visitors, by diligently plying
her needles, knitting stockings for the poor destitute soldiery.
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; and those strong
sympathies with the honest cultivators of the soil, and that paternal
care of their interests to be noted throughout his military career, may
be ascribed, in a great measure, to the sweetening influences of Mount
Vernon. Yet as spring returned, and he resumed his rides about the
beautiful neighborhood of this haven of his hopes, he must have been
mournfully sensible, now and then, of the changes which time and events
had effected there.
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. He
paid a sad visit to that happy resort of his youth, and contemplated
with a mournful eye its charred ruins, and the desolation of its once
ornamented grounds. 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; still, though an exile,
he continued in heart a friend to America, his hand had been open to
relieve the distresses of Americans in England, and he kept up a cordial
correspondence with Washington.
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.[103]
The time was now approaching when the first general meeting of the Order
of Cincinnati was to be held, and Washington saw with deep concern a
popular jealousy awakened concerning it. Judge Burke, of South Carolina,
had denounced it in a pamphlet as an attempt to elevate the military
above the civil classes, and to institute an order of nobility. The
legislature of Massachusetts sounded an alarm that was echoed in
Connecticut, and prolonged from State to State. The whole Union was put
on its guard against this effort to form a hereditary aristocracy out of
the military chiefs and powerful families of the several States.
Washington endeavored to allay this jealousy. In his letters to the
presidents of the State societies, notifying the meeting which was to be
held in Philadelphia on the 1st of May, he expressed his earnest
solicitude that it should be respectable for numbers and abilities, and
wise and deliberate in its proceedings, so as to convince the public
that the objects of the institution were patriotic and trustworthy.
The society met at the appointed time and place. Washington presided,
and by his sagacious counsels effected modifications of its
constitution. The hereditary principle, and the power of electing
honorary members, were abolished, and it was reduced to the harmless,
but highly respectable footing on which it still exists.
In notifying the French military and naval officers included in the
society of the changes which had taken place in its constitution, he
expressed his ardent hopes that it would render permanent those
friendships and connections which had happily taken root between the
officers of the two nations. All clamors against the order now ceased.
It became a rallying place for old comrades in arms, and Washington
continued to preside over it until his death.
In a letter to the Chevalier de Chastellux, for whom he felt an especial
regard, after inviting him to the meeting, he adds: “I will only repeat
to you the assurances of my friendship, and of the pleasure I should
feel in seeing you in the shade of those trees which my hands have
planted; and which, by their rapid growth, at once indicate a knowledge
of my declining years, and their disposition to spread their mantles
over me, before I go hence to return no more.”
On the 17th of August he 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. The way they
were to travel may be gathered from Washington’s directions to the
doctor: “You will have occasion to take nothing from home but a servant
to look after your horses, and such bedding as you may think proper to
make use of. I will carry a marquee, some camp utensils, and a few
stores. A boat, or some other kind of vessel, will be provided for the
voyage down the river, either at my place on the Youghiogheny or Fort
Pitt, measures for this purpose having already been taken. A few
medicines, and hooks and lines, you may probably want.”
This soldier-like tour, made in hardy military style, with tent,
pack-horses, and frugal supplies, took him once more among the scenes of
his youthful expeditions when a land surveyor in the employ of Lord
Fairfax, a leader of Virginia militia, or an aide-de-camp of the
unfortunate Braddock. A veteran now in years, and a general renowned in
arms, he soberly permitted his steed to pick his way across the
mountains by the old military route, still called Braddock’s Road, over
which he had spurred in the days of youthful ardor. 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; having, since the 1st of September, travelled on
horseback six hundred and eighty miles, for a great part of the time in
wild, mountainous country, where he was obliged to encamp at night.
This, like his tour to the northern forts with Governor Clinton, gave
proof of his unfailing vigor and activity.
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.
Political as well as commercial interests, he conceived, were involved
in the enterprise. He had noticed that the flanks and rear of the United
States were possessed by foreign and formidable powers, who might lure
the Western people into a trade and alliance with them. The Western
States, he observes, stood as it were upon a pivot so that the touch of
a feather might turn them any way. They had looked down the Mississippi
and been tempted in that direction by the facilities of sending
everything down the stream; whereas they had no means of coming to us
but by long land transportations and rugged roads. The jealous and
untoward disposition of the Spaniards, it was true, almost barred the
use of the Mississippi; but they might change their policy, and invite
trade in that direction. The retention by the British government, also,
of the posts of Detroit, Niagara, and Oswego, though contrary to the
spirit of the treaty, shut up the channel of trade in that quarter.
These posts, however, would eventually be given up; and then, he was
persuaded, the people of New York would lose no time in removing every
obstacle in the way of a water communication; and “I shall be mistaken,”
said he, “if they do not build vessels for the navigation of the lakes,
which will supersede the necessity of coasting on either side.”
It behooved Virginia, therefore, to lose no time in availing herself of
the present favorable conjuncture to secure a share of western trade by
connecting the Potomac and James rivers with the waters beyond the
mountains. The industry of the western settlers had hitherto been
checked by the want of outlets to their products, owing to the
before-mentioned obstacles: “But smooth the road,” said he, “and make
easy the way for them, and then see what an influx of articles will pour
upon us; how amazingly our exports will be increased by them, and how
amply all shall be compensated for any trouble and expense we may
encounter to effect it.”
Such were some of the ideas ably and amply set forth by him in a letter
to Benjamin Harrison, Governor of Virginia, who, struck with his plan
for opening the navigation of the western waters, laid the letter before
the State Legislature. The favor with which it was received induced
Washington to repair to Richmond and give his personal support to the
measure. He arrived there on the 15th of November. On the following
morning a committee of five members of the House of Assembly, headed by
Patrick Henry, waited on him in behalf of that body, to testify their
reverence for his character and affection for his person, and their
sense of the proofs given by him, since his return to private life, that
no change of situation could turn his thoughts from the welfare of his
country. The suggestions of Washington in his letter to the governor,
and his representations, during this visit to Richmond, gave the first
impulse to the great system of internal improvement since pursued
throughout the United States.
At Richmond he was joined by the Marquis de Lafayette; who since their
separation had accompanied the commissioners to Fort Schuyler, and been
present at the formation of a treaty with the Indians; after which he
had made a tour of the Eastern States, “crowned everywhere,” writes
Washington, “with wreaths of love and respect.”[104]
They returned together to Mount Vernon, where Lafayette again passed
several days, a cherished inmate of the domestic circle.
When his visit was ended, Washington, to defer the parting scene,
accompanied him to Annapolis. On returning to Mount Vernon, he wrote a
farewell letter to the marquis, bordering more upon the sentimental than
almost any other in his multifarious correspondence.
“In the moment of our separation, upon the road as I have travelled, and
every hour since, I have felt all that love, respect, and attachment for
you, with which length of years, close connection, and your merits have
inspired me. I often asked myself, as our carriages separated, whether
that was the last sight I ever should have of you? And though I wished
to answer No, my fears answered Yes. I called to mind the days of my
youth, and found they had long since fled to return no more; that I was
now descending the hill I had been fifty-two years climbing, and that,
though I was blessed with a good constitution, I was of a short-lived
family, and might soon expect to be entombed in the mansion of my
fathers. These thoughts darkened the shades, and gave a gloom to the
picture, and consequently, to my prospect of ever seeing you again.”
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