Book: George Washington, Vol. II

H >> Henry Cabot Lodge >> George Washington, Vol. II



[Illustration: MARTHA WASHINGTON]

American Statesmen

STANDARD LIBRARY EDITION


[Illustration: Mount Vernon]


* * * * *


GEORGE WASHINGTON

BY

HENRY CABOT LODGE

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.

1899


* * * * *


CONTENTS

CHAPTER.

I. WORKING FOR UNION
II. STARTING THE GOVERNMENT
III. DOMESTIC AFFAIRS
IV. FOREIGN RELATIONS
V. WASHINGTON AS A PARTY MAN
VI. THE LAST YEARS
VII. GEORGE WASHINGTON

INDEX




ILLUSTRATIONS


MARTHA WASHINGTON

From the painting by Gilbert Stuart in the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston. This painting is owned by the Boston Athenaeum and is known as
the Athenaeum portrait.

Autograph from letter written from Valley Forge, March 7, 1778, now in
the possession of Hon. Winslow Warren.


The vignette of Mount Vernon is from a photograph.


WASHINGTON RESIGNING HIS COMMISSION AT ANNAPOLIS

From the original painting by Trumbull in the Art Gallery of Yale
University.


LAFAYETTE

From a contemporary French folio engraving in the Emmet collection,
New York Public Library, Lenox Building.


HENRY KNOX

From the original portrait by Gilbert Stuart in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston.

Autograph from Winsor's "America."


NATHANAEL GREENE

From the original painting by C.W. Peale, by kind permission of its
present owner, Mrs. Wm. Brenton Greene, Jr., Princeton, N.J.

Autograph from Winsor's "America."


* * * * *


GEORGE WASHINGTON




CHAPTER I

WORKING FOR UNION


Having resigned his commission, Washington stood not upon the order of
his going, but went at once to Virginia, and reached Mount Vernon the
next day, in season to enjoy the Christmas-tide at home. It was with
a deep sigh of relief that he sat himself down again by his own
fireside, for all through the war the one longing that never left his
mind was for the banks of the Potomac. He loved home after the fashion
of his race, but with more than common intensity, and the country life
was dear to him in all its phases. He liked its quiet occupations and
wholesome sports, and, like most strong and simple natures, he loved
above all an open-air existence. He felt that he had earned his rest,
with all the temperate pleasures and employments which came with it,
and he fondly believed that he was about to renew the habits which he
had abandoned for eight weary years. Four days after his return he
wrote to Governor Clinton: "The scene is at last closed. I feel myself
eased of a load of public care. I hope to spend the remainder of my
days in cultivating the affections of good men and in the practice of
the domestic virtues." That the hope was sincere we may well suppose,
but that it was more than a hope may be doubted. It was a wish, not a
belief, for Washington must have felt that there was still work which
he would surely be called to do. Still for the present the old life
was there, and he threw himself into it with eager zest, though age
and care put some of the former habits aside. He resumed his hunting,
and Lafayette sent him a pack of splendid French wolf-hounds. But they
proved somewhat fierce and unmanageable, and were given up, and after
that the following of the hounds was never resumed. In other respects
there was little change. The work of the plantation and the affairs of
the estate, much disordered by his absence, once more took shape and
moved on successfully under the owner's eye. There were, as of old,
the long days in the saddle, the open house and generous hospitality,
the quiet evenings, and the thousand and one simple labors and
enjoyments of rural life. But with all this were the newer and deeper
cares, born of the change which had been wrought in the destiny of the
country. The past broke in and could not be pushed aside, the future
knocked at the door and demanded an answer to its questionings.

He had left home a distinguished Virginian; he returned one of the
most famous men in the world, and such celebrity brought its usual
penalties. Every foreigner of any position who came to the country
made a pilgrimage to Mount Vernon, and many Americans did the same.
Their coming was not allowed to alter the mode of life, but they were
all hospitably received, and they consumed many hours of their host's
precious time. Then there were the artists and sculptors, who came
to paint his portrait or model his bust. "_In for a penny, in for
a pound_ is an old adage," he wrote to Hopkinson in 1785. "I am so
hackneyed to the touches of painters' pencils that I am now altogether
at their beck, and sit 'like patience on a monument,' whilst they are
delineating the lines of my face. It is a proof, among many others, of
what habit and custom can accomplish." Then there were the people who
desired to write his memoirs, and the historians who wished to have
his reminiscences, in their accounts of the Revolution. Some of these
inquiring and admiring souls came in person, while others assailed him
by letter and added to the vast flood of correspondence which poured
in upon him by every post. His correspondence, in fact, in the
needless part of it, was the most formidable waste of his time. He
seems to have formed no correct idea of his own fame and what it
meant, for he did not have a secretary until he found not only that he
could not arrange his immense mass of papers, but that he could not
even keep up with his daily letters. His correspondence came from all
parts of his own country, and of Europe as well. The French officers
who had been his companions in arms wrote him with affectionate
interest, and he was urged by them, one and all, and even by the king
and queen, to visit France. These were letters which he was only too
happy to answer, and he would fain have crossed the water in response
to their kindly invitation; but he professed himself too old, which
was a mere excuse, and objected his ignorance of the language, which
to a man of his temperament was a real obstacle. Besides these letters
of friendship, there were the schemers everywhere who sought his
counsel and assistance. The notorious Lady Huntington, for example,
pursued him with her project of Christianizing the Indians by means of
a missionary colony in our western region, and her persistent ladyship
cost him a good deal of time and thought, and some long and careful
letters. Then there was the inventor Kumsey, with his steamboat, to
which he gave careful attention, as he did to everything that seemed
to have merit. Another class of correspondents were his officers, who
wanted his aid with Congress and in a thousand other ways, and to
these old comrades he never turned a deaf ear. In this connection also
came the affairs of the Society of the Cincinnati. He took an active
part in the formation of the society, became its head, steered it
through its early difficulties, and finally saved it from the wreck
with which it was threatened by unreasoning popular prejudice. All
these things were successfully managed, but at much expense of time
and thought.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON RESIGNING HIS COMMISSION AT ANNAPOLIS]

Then again, apart from this mass of labor thrust upon him by
outsiders, there were his own concerns. His personal affairs required
looking after, and he regulated accounts, an elaborate business always
with him, put his farms in order, corresponded with his merchants
in England, and introduced agricultural improvements, which always
interested him deeply. He had large investments in land, of which from
boyhood he had been a bold and sagacious purchaser. These investments
had been neglected and needed his personal inspection; so in
September, 1784, he mounted his horse, and with a companion and a
servant rode away to the western country to look after his property.
He camped out, as in the early days, and heartily enjoyed it, although
reports that the Indians were moving in a restless and menacing manner
shortened his trip, and prevented his penetrating beyond his settled
lands to the wild tracts which he owned to the westward. Still he
managed to ride some six hundred and eighty miles and get a good taste
of that wild life which he never ceased to love, besides gathering a
stock of information on many points of deeper and wider interest than
his own property.

In the midst of all these employments, too, he attended closely to his
domestic duties. At frequent intervals he journeyed to Fredericksburg
to visit his mother, who still lived, and to whom he was always a
dutiful and affectionate son. He watched over Mrs. Washington's
grandchildren, and two or three nephews of his own, whose education
he had undertaken, with all the solicitude of a father, and at the
expense again of much thought and many wise letters of instruction and
advice.

Even from this brief list it is possible to gain some idea of the
occupations which filled Washington's time, and the only wonder is
that he dealt with them so easily and effectively. Yet the greatest
and most important work, that which most deeply absorbed his mind, and
which affected the whole country, still remains to be described. With
all his longing for repose and privacy, Washington could not separate
himself from the great problems which he had solved, or from the
solution of the still greater problems which he had done more than any
man to bring into existence. In reality, despite his reiterated wish
for the quiet of home, he never ceased to labor at the new questions
which confronted the country, and the old issues which were the legacy
of the Revolution.

In the latter class was the peace establishment, on which he advised
Congress, much in vain; for their idea of a peace establishment was
to get rid of the army as rapidly as possible, and retain only a
corporal's guard in the service of the confederation. Another question
was that concerning the western posts. As has been already pointed
out, Washington's keen eye had at once detected that this was the
perilous point in the treaty, and he made a prompt but unavailing
effort to secure these posts in the first flush of good feeling when
peace had just been made. After he had retired he observed with regret
the feebleness of Congress in this matter, and he continued to write
about it. He wrote especially to Knox, who was in charge of the war
department, and advised him to establish posts on our side, since we
could not obtain the withdrawal of the British. This deep anxiety as
to the western posts was due not merely to his profound distrust of
the intention of England, but to his extreme solicitude as to the
unsettled regions of the West. He repeatedly referred to the United
States, even before the close of the war, as an infant empire, and he
saw before any one else the destined growth of the country.

No man of that time, with the exception of Hamilton, ever grasped and
realized as he did the imperial future which stretched before the
United States. It was a difficult thing for men who had been born
colonists to rise to a sense of national opportunities, but Washington
passed at a single step from being a Virginian to being an American,
and in so doing he stood alone. He was really and thoroughly national
from the beginning of the war, at a time when, except for a few
oratorical phrases, no one had ever thought of such a thing as a
practical and living question. In the same way he had passed rapidly
to an accurate conception of the probable growth and greatness of
the country, and again he stood alone. Hamilton, born outside the
colonies, unhampered by local prejudices and attachments, and living
in Washington's family, as soon as he turned his mind to the subject,
became, like his chief, entirely national and imperial in his views;
but the other American statesmen of that day, with the exception
of Franklin, only followed gradually and sometimes reluctantly in
adopting their opinions. Some of them never adopted them at all, but
remained imbedded in local ideas, and very few got beyond the region
of words and actually grasped the facts with the absolutely clear
perception which Washington had from the outset. Thus it was that when
the war closed, one of the two ruling ideas in Washington's mind was
to assure the future which he saw opening before the country. He
perceived at a glance that the key and the guarantee of that future
were in the wild regions of the West. Hence his constant anxiety as to
the western posts, as to our Indian policy, and as to the maintenance
of a sufficient armed force upon our borders to check the aggressions
of Englishmen or of savages, and to secure free scope for settlement.
In advancing these ideas on a national scale, however, he was rendered
helpless by the utter weakness of Congress, which even his influence
was powerless to overcome. He therefore began, immediately after his
retreat to private life, to formulate and bring into existence such
practical measures as were possible for the development of the West,
believing that if Congress could not act, the people would, if any
opportunity were given to their natural enterprise.

The scheme which he proposed was to open the western country by means
of inland navigation. The thought had long been in his mind. It had
come to him before the Revolution, and can be traced back to the early
days when he was making surveys, buying wild lands, and meditating
very deeply, but very practically, on the possible commercial
development of the colonies. Now the idea assumed much larger
proportions and a much graver aspect. He perceived in it the first
step toward the empire which he foresaw, and when he had laid down
his sword and awoke in the peaceful morning at Mount Vernon, "with
a strange sense of freedom from official cares," he directed his
attention at once to this plan, in which he really could do something,
despite an inert Congress and a dissolving confederation. His first
letter on the subject was written in March, 1784, and addressed
to Jefferson, who was then in Congress, and who sympathized with
Washington's views without seeing how far they reached. He told
Jefferson how he despaired of government aid, and how he therefore
intended to revive the scheme of a company, which he had started in
1775, and which had been abandoned on account of the war. He showed
the varying interests which it was necessary to conciliate, asked
Jefferson to see the governor of Maryland, so that that State might
be brought into the undertaking, and referred to the danger of being
anticipated and beaten by New York, a chord of local pride which he
continued to touch most adroitly as the business proceeded. Very
characteristically, too, he took pains to call attention to the fact
that by his ownership of land he had a personal interest in the
enterprise. He looked far beyond his own lands, but he was glad to
have his property developed, and with his usual freedom from anything
like pretense, he drew attention to the fact of his personal
interests.

On his return from his tour in the autumn, he proceeded to bring
the matter to public attention and to the consideration of the
legislature. With this end in view he addressed a long letter to
Governor Harrison, in which he laid out his whole scheme. Detroit was
to be the objective point, and he indicated the different routes by
which inland navigation could thence be obtained, thus opening the
Indian trade, and affording an outlet at the same time for the
settlers who were sure to pour in when once the fear of British
aggression was removed. He dwelt strongly upon the danger of Virginia
losing these advantages by the action of other States, and yet at the
same time he suggested the methods by which Maryland and Pennsylvania
could be brought into the plan. Then he advanced a series of arguments
which were purely national in their scope. He insisted on the
necessity of binding to the old colonies by strong ties the Western
States, which might easily be decoyed away if Spain or England had the
sense to do it. This point he argued with great force, for it was now
no longer a Virginian argument, but an argument for all the States.

The practical result was that the legislature took the question up,
more in deference to the writer's wishes and in gratitude for his
services, than from any comprehension of what the scheme meant. The
companies were duly organized, and the promoter was given a hundred
and fifty shares, on the ground that the legislature wished to take
every opportunity of testifying their sense of "the unexampled merits
of George Washington towards his country." Washington was much touched
and not a little troubled by this action. He had been willing, as he
said, to give up his cherished privacy and repose in order to forward
the enterprise. He had gone to Maryland even, and worked to engage
that State in the scheme, but he could not bear the idea of taking
money for what he regarded as part of a great public policy. "I would
wish," he said, "that every individual who may hear that it was a
favorite plan of mine may know also that I had no other motive for
promoting it than the advantage of which I conceived it would be
productive to the Union, and to this State in particular, by cementing
the eastern and western territory together, at the same time that it
will give vigor and increase to our commerce, and be a convenience to
our citizens."

"How would this matter be viewed, then, by the eye of the world, and
what would be the opinion of it, when it comes to be related that
George Washington has received twenty thousand dollars and five
thousand pounds sterling of the public money as an interest therein?"
He thought it would make him look like a "pensioner or dependent"
to accept this gratuity, and he recoiled from the idea. There is
something entirely frank and human in the way in which he says "George
Washington," instead of using the first pronoun singular. He always
saw facts as they were; he understood the fact called "George
Washington" as perfectly as any other, and although he wanted
retirement and privacy, he had no mock modesty in estimating his own
place in the world. At the same time, while he wished to be rid of the
kindly gift, he shrank from putting on what he called the appearance
of "ostentatious disinterestedness" by refusing it. Finally he took
the stock and endowed two charity schools with the dividends. The
scheme turned out successfully, and the work still endures, like the
early surveys and various other things of a very different kind to
which Washington put his hand. In the greater forces which were
presently set in motion for the preservation of the future empire,
the inland navigation, started in Virginia, dropped out of sight, and
became merely one of the rills which fed the mighty river. But it was
the only really practical movement possible at the precise moment when
it was begun, and it was characteristic of its author, who always
found, even in the most discouraging conditions, something that could
be done. It might be only a very little something, but still that was
better than nothing to the strong man ever dealing with facts as they
actually were on this confused earth, and not turning aside because
things were not as they ought to be. Thus many a battle and campaign
had been saved, and so inland navigation played its part now. It
helped, among other things, to bring Maryland and Virginia together,
and their combination was the first step toward the Constitution of
the United States. There is nothing fanciful in all this. No one would
pretend that the Constitution of the United States was descended from
Washington's James River and Potomac River companies. But he worked at
them with that end in view, and so did what was nearest to his hand
and most practical toward union, empire, and the development of
national sentiment.

Ah, says some critic in critic's fashion, you are carried away by your
subject; you see in a simple business enterprise, intended merely to
open western lands, the far-reaching ideas of a statesman. Perhaps
our critic is right, for as one goes on living with this Virginian
soldier, studying his letters and his thoughts, one comes to believe
many things of him, and to detect much meaning in his sayings and
doings. Let us, however, show our evidence at least. Here is what he
wrote to his friend Humphreys a year after his scheme was afoot: "My
attention is more immediately engaged in a project which I think big
with great political as well as commercial consequences to the
States, especially the middle ones;" and then he went on to argue the
necessity of fastening the Western States to the Atlantic seaboard
and thus thwarting Spain and England. This looks like more than a
money-making scheme; in fact, it justifies all that has been said,
especially if read in connection with certain other letters of this
period. Great political results, as well as lumber and peltry, were
what Washington intended to float along his rivers and canals.

In this same letter to Humphreys he touched also on another point
in connection with the development of the West, which was of vast
importance to the future of the country, and was even then agitating
men's minds. He said: "I may be singular in my ideas, but they are
these: that, to open a door to, and make easy the way for those
settlers to the westward (who ought to advance regularly and
compactly), before we make any stir about the navigation of the
Mississippi, and before our settlements are far advanced towards that
river, would be our true line of policy." Again he wrote: "However
singular the opinion may be, I cannot divest myself of it, that the
navigation of the Mississippi, _at this time_ [1785], ought to be no
object with us. On the contrary, until we have a little time allowed
to open and make easy the ways between the Atlantic States and the
western territory, the obstructions had better remain." He was right
in describing himself as "singular" in his views on this matter, which
just then was exciting much attention.

At that time indeed much feeling existed, and there were many sharp
divisions about the Mississippi question. One party, for the sake of a
commercial treaty with Spain, and to get a troublesome business out of
the way, was ready to give up our claims to a free navigation of
the great river; and this was probably the prevalent sentiment in
Congress, for to most of the members the Mississippi seemed a very
remote affair indeed. On the other side was a smaller and more violent
party, which was for obtaining the free navigation immediately and
at all hazards, and was furious at the proposition to make such a
sacrifice as its opponents proposed. Finally, there was Spain herself
intriguing to get possession of the West, holding out free navigation
as a bait to the settlers of Kentucky, and keeping paid agents in that
region to foster her schemes. Washington saw too far and too
clearly to think for one moment of giving up the navigation of the
Mississippi, but he also perceived what no one else seems to have
thought of, that free navigation at that moment would give the western
settlements "the habit of trade" with New Orleans before they had
formed it with the Atlantic seaboard, and would thus detach them from
the United States. He wished, therefore, to have the Mississippi
question left open, and all our claims reserved, so that trade by
the river should be obstructed until we had time to open our inland
navigation and bind 'the western people to us by ties too strong to
be broken. The fear that the river would be lost by waiting did not
disturb him in the least, provided our claims were kept alive. He
wrote to Lee in June, 1786: "Whenever the new States become so
populous, and so extended to the westward, as really to need it,
there will be no power which can deprive them of the use of the
Mississippi." Again, a year later, while the convention was sitting in
Philadelphia, he said: "My sentiments with respect to the navigation
of the Mississippi have been long fixed, and are not dissimilar to
those which are expressed in your letter. I have ever been of opinion
that the true policy of the Atlantic States, instead of contending
prematurely for the free navigation of that river (which eventually,
and perhaps as soon as it will be our true interest to obtain it, must
happen), would be to open and improve the natural communications
with the western country." The event justified his sagacity in all
respects, for the bickerings went on until the United States were able
to compel Spain to give what was wanted to the western communities,
which by that time had been firmly bound to those of the Atlantic
coast.

Much as Washington thought about holding fast the western country,
there was yet one idea that overruled it as well as all others. There
was one plan which he knew would be a quick solution of the dangers
and difficulties for which inland navigation and trade connections
were at best but palliatives. He had learned by bitter experience, as
no other man had learned, the vital need and value of union. He felt
it as soon as he took command of the army, and it rode like black care
behind him from Cambridge to Yorktown. He had hoped something from the
confederation, but he soon saw that it was as worthless as the utter
lack of system which it replaced, and amounted merely to substituting
one kind of impotence and confusion for another. Others might be
deceived by phrases as to nationality and a general government, but
he had dwelt among hard facts, and he knew that these things did not
exist. He knew that what passed for them, stood in their place and
wore their semblance, were merely temporary creations born of the
common danger, and doomed, when the pressure of war was gone, to fall
to pieces in imbecility and inertness. To the lack of a proper
union, which meant to his mind national and energetic government, he
attributed the failures of the campaigns, the long-drawn miseries, and
in a word the needless prolongation of the Revolution. He saw, too,
that what had been so nearly ruinous in war would be absolutely so in
peace, and before the treaty was actually signed he had begun to call
attention to the great question on the right settlement of which the
future of the country depended.

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