Washington, the man
The front porch at Mount Vernon
Even in 2010, George Washington is a looming presence in D.C. Perhaps it’s inevitable, as his presence and legacy surrounds us. Mount Vernon is just a short drive from here, and the Washington Monument towers over the District. When you visit the Capitol, it’s clear that the young republic struggled with the extent to which they should deify Washington. They planned to build a giant tomb for him in the Capitol, but the Washington family wanted to keep him on the grounds of Mount Vernon. Then there is the Apotheosis of George Washington painting in the Rotunda, which appears to show Washington being assumed into heaven.
People here talk about George Washington as if he’s still around. “He’s like George Washington,” I overheard, “he walks into a room and he’s the leader.” In contrast, what I remember about George Washington from U.S. History is a collection of factoids: he’s the father of our country, he was tall, he had ill-fitting wooden teeth, he was commander in the American Revolution. He sounds more like a saint than a person. I wondered: What was it about him that so led people to trust and revere him so?
A visit to Mount Vernon (free today only!) helps fill out his portrait. It is a stately mansion by even modern standards, with a gorgeous view of the Potomac. The grounds and gardens are extensive, and a small village of blacksmiths, workers and slaves kept it running for him. He was an entrepreneur, who built a grist mill and found whiskey a high-profit way to store the surplus grain he was producing. Each spring, he netted thousands of pounds of herring that passed through the Potomac and preserved the fish in barrels of salt to feed his staff all winter. (”Salted herring again?”) He and Martha, the tiny, wealthy, beautiful widow he married when he was 26 and she was 27, had no children of their own, but he raised her two children.
The attached museum is even more instructive, with several wax figures created by forensics experts to reconstruct how Washington looked as a young man, up through the time of his death at age 62. It is highly interactive, with maps and quizzes meant to engage schoolchildren (Q. Who started the French and Indian War? A. George Washington). Other displays show the wretched conditions of Revolutionary soldiers.
The museum also touched on the Newburgh conspiracy, an episode of near-mutiny among the Continental Army explained in more detail in an op-ed in today’s New York Times by historian John R. Miller. Congress had failed to give soldiers their back pay and pensions, and there was talk among the Army of marching on Philadelphia to seize the government. General Washington showed up at the meeting of 500 angry officers and moved them to tears with his own commitment to the new government, stopping the rebellion in its tracks, and, as Miller noted, setting a path for the young republic to be led by civilians, not military leaders.
More::
- The Library of Congress has scanned copies of many of Washington’s papers and journals online.
- My photos on Flickr
