February 19, 1996
PROF. JACK WARREN
ON THE PAPERS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

While truly a man to admire, the first president of the United States, George Washington, was not quite as saintly as folklore suggests. The story of a boy who refused to lie about cutting down a cherry tree, was only one of a number of myths created by Washington's first biographer, the clergyman Mason Locke Weems. (Other myths include stories about Washington throwing a silver dollar across the Rappahannock River, or falling in the snow to pray at Valley Forge.) In truth, the young George Washington was a complicated person, with a big temper and a large ego. But like many great leaders, as Washington matured, he learned moderation and patience. A chief mystery about Washington's character, according to University of Virginia professor, and Washingtonia expert, Jack D. Warren, is how the hot headed youth learned to control his anger, and develop the fortitude to lead the American Revolution.

Professor Warren is an editor for The Papers of George Washington, a project supported by the University of Virginia.

A question from Cathy Clark of Indianapolis, IN:

What has been your biggest difficulty with Washington's papers? Are you dealing with fragments and having to rebuild something Washington wrote? How many volumes could you produce?

Professor Warren responds:

Perhaps the biggest difficulty in working with the Washington papers is their shear volume. Washington was a meticulous record keeper, and his diaries alone fill six thick volumes. By the time the Washington Papers project is done, we expect to fill some 85 volumes, which will include virtually everything Washington ever wrote and everything anyone ever wrote to him.

Washington made letterbook copies of much of his outgoing correspondence, so we often have at least two copies of each letter to work with. In many cases, however, we have only one copy. Most of these documents are well-preserved --- in part because their historical value was recognized at an early date, and in part because the paper typically used in the eighteenth century has a high rag content, which helps it to survive better than the acidic wood-pulp paper of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Sometimes, however, we find a document that looks like part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Library of Congress called us in late last year to help reassemble the fragments of what they thought might be a Washington letter, and which, after reassembly, turned out to an important letter involving the management of slaves at Mount Vernon. Such situations are fairly rare, but they provide an interesting diversion from the typical work of documentary transcription and annotation.

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A question from Melville Conner of Marshall, VA:

Did Washington actively seek command of the Continental Army, - as evidenced by wearing a military uniform to meetings of the Continental Congress - or was command thrust upon him? In one of his few surviving letters to Martha, published in your article in The Washington Post on February 14, 1996, Washington indicates he 'had not sought' command but had avoided it.

Professor Warren responds:

No letter has been found in which Washington expresses anything but a reluctance to serve, and a conviction of his own inadequacy for the task of commanding the Continental Army. Yet by appearing on the floor of congress in his uniform, he was clearly advertising at least his availability for the post. He was the most experienced native-born military officer in the country, and he certainly expected to be recruited as a senior officer in the new army, if not as its commander.

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A question from Rick Sigrist of LaRue, Ohio:

How would Washington be able to lead the country in today's climate. It seems all strong, intelligent people fear politics and this seems to be hurting the country.

Professor Warren responds:

Quite right. I am afraid a man like Washington would not be involved in politics today. This fact reflects some of the gains as well as the problems of democracy.

Washington became a public leader in a hierarchical age, in which political power was a combination of wealth and social status. He never ran for office in the modern sense. The kind of self-promotion in which modern politicians engage would be incomprehensible to him. He lived for most of his life in a society where the rule of exceptional men like himself could be taken for granted --- where political power was wielded by very few in the name of everyone.

The active political society was so small in Washington's generation that for much of his life, public business could be conducted behind doors, by a very few gentlemen acting, presumably, in the public interest. Women, virtually all African-Americans, and many poor white males were excluded even from voting.

The revolution Washington led placed power in the hands of ordinary people to a degree never known before. As this democratic revolution has worked itself over the last 200 years, nearly all the groups excluded in Washington's day have been brought into the political process. But one cost of the political rise of the common man has been the political decline of uncommon leaders like Washington, or Adams, or Jefferson. I am not sure that this is too great a price to pay for democracy.

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A question from Carrie Flaxman of New Haven, CT:

Washington has received a lot of credit for freeing his slaves. Would he have freed his slaves if he had had any children? Or was it a true philosophical decision? In other words, he could have freed the slaves because there was no longer any use for them after Martha's death, not because he decided slavery was morally wrong.

Professor Warren responds:

This is a very insightful question, and a full answer to it would fill a book. No modern scholar has published a thorough treatment of Washington and slavery, and this is one of the most important gaps in the vast literature on Washington.

Perhaps Washington has gotten more credit than he deserves for freeing his slaves after his death. I can only wonder, with you, what he would have done if he had had a son. Yet I suspect he would have acted as he did.

Although Washington had no children of his own, he did have an enormous extended family to consider. Washington might have left his slaves to Bushrod Washington, the nephew to whom he left the Mount Vernon estate. Without the slaves, Washington knew, Bushrod would not be able to maintain the plantation as a working farm.

But he did not do this.

Washington was apparently a more humane slave-master than many of his peers. I know of only two recorded instances of whipping at Mount Vernon, and in neither case was Washington in residence at the time. He permitted slaves to sell their handicrafts in the Alexandria market and keep the money for themselves; he bought fish, ducks, and other game from slaves who caught or shot them during their time off; he permitted slaves to marry off the plantation as well, indicating that he permitted them to move around off the plantation to some extent.

Despite all of this, there is nothing in Washington's public or private statements to indicate that he thought slavery was a troubling moral evil.

So we are left with something of a puzzle. Although he never made any unequivocal public (or surviving private) statement in opposition to slavery, he did something that few of his peers did, by freeing his slaves. The puzzle is still waiting for a talented historian.

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Bruce Oates of Paw Paw, Illinois:

Though cordial on the surface, what did Washington think of his Vice President John Adams?

Professor Warren responds:

Washington and Adams socialized during the Washington administration. Their wives seem to have become close friends. Yet beyond their social interaction, there seems to have been a political coolness between the two men. Mr. Oates seems to suspect as much.

Washington and Adams first met as members of the Continental Congress in 1775. Adams supported the selection of Washington as commander in chief of the Continental Army. But later he opposed efforts to invest Washington with sweeping wartime powers. This seems to have earned him the enmity of Washington's principal wartime aide, Alexander Hamilton, if not of Washington himself.

Washington did not endorse a candidate for vice president in 1788, but he expressed satisfaction at Adams' election. When the new government convened in 1789, however, Adams was not a part of the inner circle in the administration. Washington relied mainly on John Jay and later Jefferson for advice on foreign affairs (Adams' area of expertise) and rarely asked Adams for advice on other matters.

Ultimately Adams' views, expressed in the Senate, that the president and other high federal officials should be invested with formal titles (the president might be referred to as "his highness, the president . . . ") did make him a political liability to the administration. Washington's close friend David Stuart wrote to him early in the administration that Adams' views were very unpopular in Virginia, and from that point on Washington seems to have kept the vice president at arms' length.

In the long term, of course, this has had a considerable effect on the office of the vice president. Ever since, it has been a largely irrelevant post.

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Alicia Braun of Baltimore, Maryland:

I remember learning that as a land surveyor, Mr. Washington kept some land out in West Virginia for himself. Was that legal, or was it the Whitewater scandal of his time?

Professor Warren responds:

Washington was a practicing professional land surveyor between the ages of 17 and 20, and during that time acquired title to some 2,315 acres, mostly in the Shenandoah Valley and parts of what is now West Virginia. He was officially surveyor of Culpeper County, but most of his surveys were made on the frontier of Thomas, Lord Fairfax's princely Northern Neck property, rather than in well-settled Culpeper. His surveys on this land were made with the full knowledge and indeed patronage of the powerful Fairfax family, who were neighbors of Washington's half-brother, Lawrence.

While surveying on the frontier, Washington had the opportunity to locate valuable, but previously unpatented land, and he applied to Fairfax and received grants to some of this property. He also purchased land from earlier grantees with the money he was earning as a surveyor. He was opportunistic, without question, but all of the transactions were perfectly legal and ethically above reproach.

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John Valenti of Bend, Oregon:

Is it true that George Washington on several occasions returned from battle with bullet holes in his uniform but never a bullet wound did he receive?

Professor Warren responds:

I know of only one such instance that is reliably documented. In describing his participation in the battle at the Monogahela River, Washington wrote in a letter to his brother John Augustine, that "I had 4 Bulletts through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me yet escaped unhurt, although death was levelling my companions on every side."

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G. R. Zempel of North Haven, CT

I've come away with the impression that GW was committed to democracy rather than monarchy, but to what extent was that a practical response to the popular anti-England feeling?

Professor Warren responds:

Although he was the leader of a revolution against monarchy, Washington was not in any meaningful sense a democrat. He was rather, a republican. He rose to public power in a society that was fundamentally hierarchical in nature. The revolution he embraced and led was based, at least ostensibly, on republican principles, not democratic ones. Like many leaders of the Revolution, Washington expected independent Americans to defer to their natural social leaders --- men of wealth and prominence like himself, whose personal circumstances made it possible (at least in principle) to set aside their private interests and lead with the good of the whole community in mind. He seems to have been profoundly disappointed at the end of his life, when it became apparent that the Revolution was leading to an unforeseen democratic outcome.

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Kenneth Burchell of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho:

Since the Jay Treaty was secretly negotiated and subject to extreme political manipulation.....is not George Washington also responsible for an imbalance of power favoring the Executive Branch?

Professor Warren responds:

Perhaps. Settling American relations with England was one of the Washington administration's most difficult problems. Jay was not the first American envoy, and the decision to proceed largely in secret reflects, in part, the frustration of the administration with repeated failures to negotiate an acceptable agreement with the British.

The Constitutional Convention, however, seems mostly to blame for the uncertain division of responsibility over foreign affairs that has plagued the nation for two centuries. The First Senate wrestled with Washington over control of foreign affairs from the first months of the administration, and this was an area in which Washington refused to give much ground. By the time Jay was dispatched to Britain, relations between the administration and Congress on this issue were strained, and it seems unlikely that much could have been achieved if the negotiations had been conducted openly.