March 4, 1797, began like any other day for President Washington. Up before dawn, he devoted time to reading some correspondence that had been unceremoniously dumped on his desk, and he noted the temperature in his diary. He donned a black suit and ate his customary light breakfast. Despite its inauspicious beginning, this day was not, however, a typical day. It was Washington’s last morning as president. Just before noon he strode alone to Congress Hall, entering to thunderous applause. He watched as Thomas Jefferson, his former secretary of state and the soon-to-be vice president, wearing a simple blue suit, made his rather unceremonious entrance. Finally the new president John Adams arrived, appearing more than a bit awkward in a pearl-colored suit with wrist ruffles, a powdered wig, and a cocked hat. Adams already looked as though he was not getting any sleep. His appearance must not have been a reassuring sign to those gathered in the chamber to watch the first ever transfer of presidential authority in the brief history of the United States. Adams glanced over at Washington, who by contrast looked positively tranquil, as if the weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders. Adams later wrote to his wife: “A solemn scene it was indeed, and it was made affecting to me by the presence of the General, whose countenance was as serene and unclouded as the day. He seemed to me to enjoy a triumph over me. Methought I heard him say, ‘Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be happiest!’”1 If Washington did not say it, he ought to have, because this day marked the beginning of his longed-for retirement. After decades of public service, Washington was at last taking his final leave of public life and heading back to Mount Vernon.
It is difficult to imagine the immense relief that Washington must have felt upon leaving Congress Hall as a private citizen. He could look forward to returning to Mount Vernon, which once again suffered from his long absences. Additionally as much as Mount Vernon needed Washington’s care, Washington needed Mount Vernon’s ability to rejuvenate him. His health had declined precipitously over the course of his presidency; the cares of office seemed to have rapidly accelerated the aging process.
The physical toll that the presidency took on Washington was a source of concern for him. During his presidency, his mother had succumbed to breast cancer, and his beloved nephew and estate manager, George Augustine Washington, had passed away. Shortly after he left office, his only surviving sister, Betty, also died.2 Moreover he knew that Washington men were not typically blessed with longevity, and he had recently celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday. Although he was elated to return home and he did recapture some energy in throwing himself back into the business of managing his estates, Washington seemed to sense that his end was drawing near.3 With that thought in mind, he focused his time and effort on setting all things right. Getting his financial affairs back on track was merely one aspect of this endeavor. Washington also devoted considerable time to a final attempt at shaping his legacy, and a major part of that undertaking was through building up his library.
As has been established previously, all of Washington’s reading was done purposefully with practical intent. Reading was a tool that helped him work through whatever particular circumstance he found himself in, and over the course of a lifetime of such study, he developed a deep appreciation for the power of reading. Chapter 4 illustrated how Washington used different forms of print media both to help craft his reputation and to measure his presidential performance. This chapter shows how in his final retirement Washington added to his library at Mount Vernon those works that would help refine his public image for the ages. This final, short phase of Washington’s life is noteworthy not so much because of what he read but because of what he deliberately acquired in order to set the record straight for posterity. Although the presidency exacted a toll on Washington’s carefully crafted reputation, he knew that interest in his life would only grow after his death, so he needed to spend whatever time he had left to put his records in order.
This chapter also explores one specific example of how Washington’s reading led him to make a momentous decision that would separate him from his fellow southern founders: in his will Washington emancipated his slaves. He was the only founding father to do so.4 Although the complexities of Virginia law only allowed him to free his own slaves and not those belonging to the Custis estate, Washington’s act of setting his slaves free is still immensely significant. His decision to make this provision in his will was not reached quickly or easily; indeed, his views on slavery developed thanks in part to his study of the subject.
Upon his return to Mount Vernon, Washington immediately resumed his old routine of rising before dawn, spending several hours in his library before breakfast, then touring his five farms. He quickly found that Mount Vernon needed more extensive repairs than he initially thought. This work left him little time for reading and caused him to fall behind on his correspondence. As he wrote to Secretary of War James McHenry, “I have not looked into a book since I came home, nor shall I be able to do it until I have discharged my workmen; probably not before the nights grow longer, when possibly I may be looking in [the] doomsday book.”5 Still Washington kept up remarkably well with current events by reading newspapers widely. Since he still thought them too biased, he asked Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott to tell him the real truth about certain issues.6 That Washington still set aside the time to keep up with the affairs of the nation through a wide array of printed sources reinforces the argument that Washington was indeed focused on shoring up his legacy for posterity. Given the demands Mount Vernon placed on his time, it would have been perfectly understandable for Washington to turn his attention away from politics and stay informed only through the news brought by the stream of visitors that once again besieged Mount Vernon on a daily basis. For Washington, however, sitting back and ignoring the news accounts simply would not do. He had given up domestic happiness and risked his health and reputation to legitimize the new government. He could not walk away without paying attention to whether the experiment would survive the test of his absence.
Washington devoted a set amount of time each day to arranging the papers in his vast personal collection. Before departing Philadelphia, he ordered his secretaries to pack up his papers and prepare them for shipment to Mount Vernon, leaving aside only those documents that President Adams required. In addition to arranging his correspondence into a more structured archive, Washington also collected copies of nearly every piece of legislation and every government record that he could get his hands on, from the records of the Continental Congress and the Confederation Congress to copies of the Congressional Record, beginning with the convening of the first Congress in 1789. Additionally he obtained copies of the Supreme Court’s decisions on major cases.7 These records from the legislative and judicial branches of the government combined with his archive of presidential and state papers would have constituted the first presidential library in the nation if he had had the chance to complete it. Long before there were such libraries in the United States, Washington seemed to have seriously considered the idea, for records indicate that he was planning to construct a separate building at Mount Vernon to house his voluminous archives. He had even gone so far as to order bookshelves for this new facility, but his death preempted its construction.8
To complement the official records of the governments he had both led and served, Washington purchased some of the latest books published on American history, including James Thomson Callender’s The History of the United States for 1796.9 Washington also collected separately published commentaries on his different policies, pieces of legislation, and treaties such as Albert Gallatin’s An Examination of the Conduct of the Executive of the United States.10 Gallatin’s commentary, unlike most tracts Washington collected, was critical of the president’s conduct. For example, Gallatin charged that Washington “has interpreted the same parts of the Constitution, variously at different times; and that he has thereby converted the great charter of our country into a thing of chance, liable to the direction of whim, caprice, or design.”11 Gallatin then launched into an attack on Washington’s personal handling of foreign affairs from when he took office in order to castigate the 1793 Proclamation of Neutrality and the Jay Treaty.12 Washington likely felt safe in his decision to keep this assessment in his collection because its stilted argument was balanced by Alexander Addison’s refutation, Observations on the Speech of Albert Gallatin, in the House of Representatives of the United States, on the Foreign Intercourse Bill.13 Addison’s refutation does not offer a celebratory review of Washington’s presidential performance. Instead, Addison provided a point-by-point defense of Washington’s conduct according to the parameters set forth in the Constitution. In other words, Addison’s work presented a defense of presidential power and Washington’s use of it.14
The possibility that the United States could be drawn into the ongoing war between Great Britain and France was one diplomatic issue of continued relevance to Washington after he left office. President Adams did his best to sustain Washington’s policy of strict neutrality, but fallout at home over the Jay Treaty had not subsided and American shipping was continually menaced on the high seas. Washington’s position on the matter remained unchanged, and as he was keenly aware of the ramifications the war would have on the future of the United States, he naturally wanted to stay current on the debate and the latest developments. Washington collected numerous commentaries on the French wars. Some were gifts from their respective authors such as Sir Francis d’Ivernois’s Reflections on the War: In Answer to Reflections on Peace, Addressed to Mr. Pitt, and the French Nation. Washington also kept from d’Ivernois A Cursory View of the Assignats and Remaining Resources of French Finance (September 6, 1795): Drawn from the Debates of the Convention and State of the Finances and Resources of the French Republic, to the 1st of January 1796: Being a Continuation of the Reflections on the War, and of the Cursory View of the Assignats; and Containing an Answer to the Picture of Europe, by Mr. De Calonne. Washington also received Baron Thomas Erskine’s A View of the Causes and Consequences of the Present War with France.15 Erskine’s work was a response to Edmund Burke’s Two Letters Addressed to a Member of the Present Parliament, on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France. If Washington had not read Burke’s work for himself, he almost certainly would have heard of it from his nephew Bushrod Washington, who owned a copy and was often present at Mount Vernon throughout this period.16 Burke argued that “out of the tomb of the murdered Monarchy in France, has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination . . . going Straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist.”17 Erskine, by contrast, offered a defense of the French Revolution by illustrating the nature of the oppression that the people endured under the ancien régime. He highlighted the differences between the American and French Revolutions, citing that the Americans rebelled against corruption in the British government that came at a specific point in time whereas the French had overthrown an old order so corrupt in every way that they had no other alternative to rebellion. Erskine used this comparison to justify the excesses of the French Revolution and to explain the causes of the war between Great Britain and France.18 Both Englishmen took a dark view of the war with France, and their contrasting interpretations of the French Revolution provided Washington with balanced evidence to justify his position that the best course of action for the United States was maintaining its neutrality.
As matters seemed to escalate toward war, Adams solicited Washington’s advice on appointing officers for a newly raised army and let it slip that Washington was going to be named its commander in chief. The thought of being pulled back into federal service again demanded Washington’s attention. He spent considerable time and effort to becoming apprised of the situation and to determining, first and foremost, how realistic this prospect actually was. He increasingly began to pay particular attention to the defensive posture of the United States and to the readiness of the army. Timothy Pickering sent him nearly every speech and report that government officials produced on the subject of the war including copies of the Report from the Department of War, Relative to the Fortifications of the Ports and Harbors of the United States and the Report of the Committee, Appointed to Enquire into the Actual State of the Naval Equipment Ordered by a Former Law of the United States, and to Report Whether Any and What Further Provision Is Necessary to Be Made on This Subject.19 Pickering also purchased a copy for Washington of John Gifford’s A Letter to the Hon. Thomas Erskine: Containing Some Strictures on His View of the Causes and Consequences of the Present War with France.20 Pickering had been purchasing various printed works for Washington for quite some time; therefore, he was well aware of what Washington would find particularly useful. In this case Pickering was careful to read the pamphlet before sending it to Washington and commended it as a “very able work.” Washington’s possession of Erskine’s work and his knowledge of Burke’s position on the subject would have given him the necessary context to absorb Pickering’s latest recommendation. In this pamphlet Gifford pointed out Erskine’s defense of the French Revolution and used it to make the argument that the United States should not become involved in the ongoing war.21 Pickering also sent Washington a copy of a letter he wrote to Mr. Pinckney, the minister plenipotentiary at Paris. Pickering’s letter, written during Washington’s administration and at his urging, offered a pointed defense of the neutrality policy and responded to specific charges from the French minister that the United States had abandoned its treaty obligations in favor of establishing a more lucrative relationship with Great Britain.22
All of this reading in fact became necessary because Adams did commission Washington as the commander in chief of the newly reconstituted United States Army as war fever began to grip the nation. At once Washington was irritated with Adams, who did not seek his permission before ushering the appointment through the Senate. Washington insisted that he would not take the field unless absolutely necessary. Instead of commanding in person, he was confident that he could remain at Mount Vernon and allow a trusted second in command to run the daily administration of the army in his absence.23 Washington further conditioned his acceptance of the commission on the assertion that he would select the general officers. Adams acquiesced but immediately regretted it because Washington’s first choice was none other than Hamilton. Washington’s other choices for subordinate generals — Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Henry Knox, in that order — were also sources of tension for Adams.24 Adams suggested other men — Daniel Morgan, Horatio Gates, and Benjamin Lincoln — but Secretary of War James McHenry rebuffed all of them. Completely at a loss Adams sent Washington’s suggested names to the Senate for confirmation but reversed the order, insisting that Knox had legal precedence over the others and that Pinckney must outrank Hamilton.25 This maneuver created complete confusion and forever damaged the relationship between Washington and Adams. Eventually Hamilton did get the commission as second in command, and as the plans for the new army began to take shape, Washington appeared more and more to be a figurehead. By 1798 Adams decided to use diplomacy and negotiated a way out of the quasi war with France, and by 1800 the army was disbanded.26 Washington never had to leave his plantation to take the field again.
As Washington entered what would be his final year of life and the last thoughts of war faded, he turned his attention to his estate and the question of how to properly arrange his affairs for after his death. In mulling over the complex question of how to dispense his vast amounts of property, Washington’s mind kept returning to a dilemma that pricked at his conscience: what should he do with his slaves? Washington was born and raised in a world that ran on the backs of slaves, and over time he had one of the largest slaveholdings in Virginia. His life experiences, however, particularly in the American Revolution, where he saw firsthand that black soldiers were as fully capable as their white counterparts, began to change his mind on slavery. He wrote to Robert Morris in 1786, “There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.”27 In fact, the seed for change was apparently in place even before the Revolution began, for he was one of the authors of the Fairfax Resolves that in 1774 called for a ban on the importation of slaves. As this seed grew in the years following the Revolution, Washington knew that the proper way to accomplish the abolition of slavery was through national-level legislation, but as president, he quickly found it to be politically impossible.28 Now that he approached the end of his life, Washington actively wrestled with the topic on a personal level as he rewrote his will.
Washington’s decision to rewrite his will apparently was spurred by a dream he had one night in July 1799 that foreshadowed his death. This story emerged in the nineteenth century from historian Benson Lossing, who was a friend of the Custis family and had heard this piece of family folklore from one of Martha’s descendants. Since then more recent historians, who have a healthy distrust for the highly romanticized histories of their nineteenth-century forebearers, have called the story into question. Whether the 1799 anecdote is actually true or not, evidence suggests that Washington began seriously contemplating a manumission project as early as 1794, when he suffered an illness that he mistook for cancer.29
At the end of 1793 Washington contacted the renowned British agricultural reformer Arthur Young, asking for assistance in locating “substantial farmers, of wealth and strength,” to lease four of the five farms that made up the Mount Vernon estate. In the plan he outlined to Young, Washington intended to only keep the Mansion House farm for his “residence, occupation, and amusement in agriculture.” He was even prepared to rent to groups or to further subdivide the four other farms to make the rent more affordable. The main object, however, was to obtain “good farmers” as tenants who would provide Washington with a steady income, fulfilling his “wish to live free from care, and as much at my ease as possible” for the rest of his life.30 The desire to rest easy in his declining years, however, was just a half-truth. At the same time, Washington instructed Tobias Lear to begin selling off his western lands. He initially gave Lear the same reason he had given to Young for wanting to sell off the real estate, but then he added one other reason that was “more powerful than all the rest”: the money obtained from the western land sales would hopefully be enough to allow Washington “to liberate a certain species of property which I possess, very repugnantly to my own feelings.”31 This idea was revolutionary indeed in 1794.
Part of Washington’s evolving view that slavery was abhorrent came from his reading on the subject. Beginning in the 1760s when he became a burgess, he began collecting writings on slavery. Some were filled with a strong sense of abolitionism; others simply analyzed cost versus benefit. By the end of his life, Washington had in his library more than twenty works that in one way or another addressed the questions of slavery and emancipation. Among them were Granville Sharp’s An Appendix to the Representation (Printed in 1769) of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery; Anthony Benezet’s The Potent Enemies of America Laid Open: Being Some Account of the Baneful Effects Attending the Use of Distilled Spirituous Liquors, and the Slavery of the Negroes; David Cooper’s A Serious Address to the Rulers of America, on the Inconsistency of Their Conduct Respecting Slavery: Forming a Contrast between the Encroachments of England on American Liberty, and American Injustice in Tolerating Slavery; Joseph Woods’s Thoughts on Slavery: Debates in the British House of Commons, Wednesday, May 13th, 1789, on the Petitions for the Abolition of the Slave Trade; and August Nordensköld’s A Plan for a Free Community upon the Gold Coast of Africa, under the Protection of Great Britain; but Intirely Independent of All European Laws and Governments.32 These publications and the other works in his collection presented Washington with views on slavery from both American and British voices. While some of them, particularly the religious ones by Sharp and Benezet, simply called for the complete abolition of slavery, Nordensköld’s work is of particular interest because it proposed a plan for what to do with the slaves once they were set free. Nordensköld proposed returning freed slaves to Africa and establishing a colony on the Gold Coast. The colony would fall under the protection of Great Britain, but the people would enjoy complete self-government. Nordensköld argued that it was the best option for the freed slaves, for absorbing them into white society presented too many challenges.
Such reading must have led Washington to the conclusion that merely emancipating his slaves would not be enough. How could they be expected to support themselves in free society without any training or preparation? Washington churned this question over in his mind for a considerable period before he sat down to rewrite his will. In his particular case whatever plan he devised would be fraught with legal difficulties. First, because he had no biological children, he had no direct heir, and that case itself carried a host of potential issues under Virginia law. Second, from the time that he had married Martha forty years earlier, the Washington and Custis slaves had intermarried and produced children. Under the law Washington could only free the slaves who were his; he had no such power over the Custis slaves. Therefore, if he were to free his slaves, what would the immediate impact be on their spouses and their children? Third, what should he do about the slaves who were too young, too old, or too ill to care for themselves? For these slaves, freedom might actually prove worse than servitude because they would have no guaranteed way of meeting their basic needs.
Washington eventually devised extraordinary answers to all of his questions. In his will he first addressed the matter of ownership. He, in fact, owned only 123 of Mount Vernon’s 316 slaves. Of the remainder, 40 were rented, and the rest were the property of the Custis estate and would pass to Martha’s heirs upon her death.33 He acknowledged the legal complexity as follows:
Upon the decease of my wife, it is my Will & desire that all the Slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom. To emancipate them during her life, would, tho’ earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties on account of their intermixture by Marriages with the dower Negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations, if not disagreeable consequences from the latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same Proprietor; it not being in my power, under the tenure by which the Dower Negroes are held, to manumit them.34
The language that Washington used in this passage is intriguing because he is effectively trying to appeal to Martha, or really the Custis heirs, to emancipate the Custis slaves along with his to make the entire process smoother.
Washington next addressed the welfare of the small, sick, and aged slaves who would be unable to care for themselves in free society: “And whereas among those who will receive freedom according to this devise, there may be some, who from old age or bodily infirmities, and others who on account of their infancy, that will be unable to support themselves; it is my Will and desire that all who come under the first and second description shall be comfortably cloathed & fed by my heirs while they live.”35 On the surface this provision might seem unnecessary to those who assume that slave owners were benevolent and always cared for their slaves, even when they were unable to work; however, Washington was well aware that such assumptions were often horrendously incorrect. As such he further stipulated “that a regular and permanent fund be established for their support so long as there are subjects requiring it; not trusting to the uncertain provision to be made by individuals.”36
The following passage was the most extraordinary aspect of Washington’s manumission plan:
[The children who] have no parents living, or if living are unable, or unwilling to provide for them, shall be bound by the Court until they shall arrive at the age of twenty five years; and in cases where no record can be produced, whereby their ages can be ascertained, the judgment of the Court, upon its own view of the subject, shall be adequate and final. The Negros thus bound, are (by their Masters or Mistresses) to be taught to read & write; and to be brought up to some useful occupation, agreeably to the Laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing for the support of Orphan[s] and other poor Children.37
The idea of not only freeing but also educating slaves put Washington’s thinking out of step from that of his contemporaries. This clause seems to suggest that Washington did not necessarily believe that blacks were inherently inferior to whites; instead, he appeared to attribute any deficiencies as being the result of enslavement and to believe that with education and employment opportunities, freed slaves could prosper.
What came next implied in no uncertain terms that Washington did not trust his executors: “I do hereby expressly forbid the sale, or transportation out of the said Commonwealth, of any Slave I may die possessed of, under any pretense whatsoever. And I do moreover most pointedly, and most solemnly enjoin it upon my Executors hereafter named, or the Survivors of them, to see that this clause respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place; without evasion, neglect, or delay.”38 In being so specific, Washington made it clear that the freed slaves would have a right to live in Virginia and would not or could not be forced to flee somewhere else.
Washington crafted a very particular slave clause for his personal servant, William Lee:
And to my Mulatto man William (calling himself William Lee) I give immediate freedom; or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which have befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so. In either case, however, I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his natural life, which shall be independent of the victuals and cloaths he has been accustomed to receive, if he chuses the last alternative; but in full, with his freedom, if he prefers the first; & this I give him as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.39
For Washington, this act of justice was in return for the more than thirty years that Lee had served him faithfully as a personal slave. Washington’s motive was not likely affection, for no other evidence anywhere in the written records indicates that Washington considered Lee a favorite. Washington maintained different degrees of aloofness from just about everyone except his wife, so it would not make sense that he shared an exceptionally close friendship with a slave. However, almost above friendship, Washington valued loyalty, and by offering Lee immediate freedom or care for life, Washington reciprocated it.
Washington’s decision to free his slaves was the final way that he set himself apart from his fellow founders. Although nearly all of them professed at least a theoretical abhorrence of slavery, none of the other southern founders emancipated their slaves. Washington’s manumission program brought the ideals of the Revolution home to those who were otherwise excluded from the American dream. On a personal level, in making his will, Washington also made peace with his conscience — the conscience that evidently had been plaguing his mind since he helped pen the Fairfax Resolves decades earlier. There are no records of how his slaves received the news. Typically a wave of terror broke with news of an impending death of a master, but at least for some Mount Vernon slaves, terror likely turned to elation. Washington’s executors dutifully followed the letter of the will as far as the law allowed. The executor’s ledger of Lawrence Lewis indicates that the estate paid out the final support payment to a former slave named Gabriel in 1839. Unfortunately Virginia law prohibited teaching slaves to read and write (a fact that Washington evidently chose to ignore or assumed would be waived given his uniquely exalted status), so that provision was never honored.40
A further examination of Washington’s will beyond the passages on slavery reveals another bequest that demonstrates how much he valued reading and how much he lamented that he never had the opportunity to study at a university. In his will he made good on his promise to use Virginia’s gift of stock in the Potomac and James River Companies for public education. He bequeathed fifty shares to help establish a national university in the new capital. Washington had long advocated for the establishment of such an institution. He hoped to curtail the practice of sending American youth to be educated in Europe, where they contracted “too frequently not only habits of dissipation & extravagance, but principles unfriendly to Republican Government, and to the true and genuine liberties of mankind.”41 A national university would also bring together students from across the country, thereby breaking them of “local prejudices and habitual jealousies . . . which, when carried to excess, are never failing sources of disquietude to the Public mind, and pregnant of mischievous consequences to this country.”42 Washington also provided a hundred shares of stock in the James River Company to Liberty Hall Academy in Rockbridge, Virginia, and twenty shares of stock in the Bank of Alexandria to Alexandria Academy. Washington could not have known that the bid to establish a national university would never get off the ground. There was little support for it in Congress, and by 1828 the shares of Potomac River stock were worthless. The Alexandria Academy survived, however, eventually becoming a part of the city’s public school system. Liberty Hall Academy also survived and has since become known as Washington and Lee University.43
At the end of his life, Washington looked back and saw all that he was able to achieve by diligently reading carefully selected works. He valued reading and the useful knowledge that could be deduced from the pages of a well-structured piece of writing. Furthermore as the consummate American leader of the time, Washington wanted to see his fellow Americans become intellectually independent from Europe. He thoroughly believed that the country’s future success rested on the ability to raise good citizens who could carry the nation forward into the next century and beyond. That ability would be hindered if the best minds were continually exported to Europe, where they risked corruption. America’s future depended on a virtuous citizenry educated at home and thus imbued with a strong sense of national identity.
In dispensing with the rest of his personal property, Washington clearly did not intend for Mount Vernon to become a shrine to his memory. He broke up his real estate holdings among his many relatives including the grandchildren whom he and Martha had reared. He gave away many of his cherished personal items and furnishings to trusted friends, relatives, and colleagues. Notably he bequeathed his massive archive and library to his nephew Bushrod Washington, who also inherited Mount Vernon and the Mansion House Farm. Washington’s choice of Bushrod as the beneficiary of the home and archive that he had painstakingly built over the course of more than forty years made sense. Washington had a fairly close relationship with Bushrod, who had been appointed an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1798. He would therefore need a place to live and entertain on an appropriate scale that was close to the new capital. Moreover, since Bushrod was one of his most educated relatives, Washington likely felt that his library and archive would be in safe hands and would be used appropriately. Washington may have been dismantling his vast estate in his final act; however, he was not about to do the same to his legacy. The evidence that substantiated all that Washington had done was in that library, and he wanted to entrust it to someone who would appreciate and preserve it.
In the last three years of his life, Washington devoted the majority of his time and effort to putting his affairs in order. This endeavor was far more involved than making simple home repairs and minor updates to his will. Washington was intent on both renovating and preserving both his home and his legacy. With respect to his legacy, he dramatically expanded his library to include nearly every official record from his many years of public service in order to complement his vast repository of correspondence. With the exception of his attempt to prepare himself for war with France following Adams’s decision to recall him to duty, this phase of Washington’s life was not so much punctuated by what he read but by what reading material he collected.
Washington’s exceptional decision to free his slaves reflects the impact that his life experience and his long-term reading had on his intellectual development. His manumission plan was the culmination of a personal moral revolution. Washington had grown up with slavery, but over time he had become uncomfortable with the institution. His changing personal convictions were tempered with the considerable amount of reading that he had done over a long period during which he took time to reflect on the knowledge he had gained. Although all the historians who have ever discussed Washington’s will remark on the extraordinary nature of this decision, far too little attention has been paid to the fact that it shows how completely Washington inculcated the ideology of the American Revolution. His decision marks a coming together of Washington’s intellectual development, his sense of morality, and his life experience to produce the most profound push for abolition by an elite southerner before the Civil War.
Washington’s educational endowments signified the degree to which he valued education and believed that the ultimate key to the success of this American republican experiment lay with the next generation of Americans. These bequests mark another merging of Washington’s lessons learned with his dreams for a better future. Even though some of Washington’s wishes went unfulfilled, as in the examples of the freed slaves not being taught to read and write and his wish for a national university, not even the harshest critic can effectively argue that Washington failed. Washington’s former cavalry lieutenant Harry Lee was both sincere and correct when he eulogized Washington as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”44