George Washington was born in 1732 into a Virginia that was British, Anglican, wary of Indians, dependent upon slaves, and aware that some of her citizens may have come to the New World due to a breach of the common law, or to escape the power of the crown. The concerns that molded the new civilization helped form the character of Washington. To understand Washington, we must have a working knowledge of colonial Virginia.
In the last part of the sixteenth century, while Elizabeth sat on the throne, emissaries of the Virgin Queen began the colonization of the New World and named the territory “Virginia” in her honor. The first two attempts (including the “Lost Colony of 1587”) failed, presumably because of violent interactions with the Native Americans. The first English settlement in Virginia to survive began in 1607. The first permanent city of the colony was named Jamestown for the reigning monarch, King James, whose legacy lives on in the popular name for the authorized version of the English Bible, the King James Version (KJV), published in 1611. Thus it is no accident that the King’s Church, the Anglican Church, came with the settlers to “The Old Dominion.”
One of the first acts of the settlers of Jamestown when they landed in Virginia in 1607 was to erect a wooden cross on the shore at Cape Henry, giving symbolic expression to the Virginia Charter of 1606.2 It declared that one of the reasons for coming to America was to spread the Christian faith to the Indians—that is, to those who “as yet live in Darkness.” Furthermore, words given to the settlers as they departed England for the New World reminded them of the necessity of God’s providential care, declaring “every plantation which our heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted out.”3
Virginia’s first governing body was called the House of Burgesses, which was under the superior rule of the King and his ministers in London. As a spiritual community, Virginia observed the established Church of the motherland, which meant that church and state were intimately connected.
In 1611, the year of the publishing of the King James Version of the Bible, the colonists wrote one of America’s first civil documents, the Third Charter of Virginia and in 1619, the first representative assembly in America was held in the church of Jamestown. Thus, to the original settlers of Virginia, there was a visible and unmistakable link between church and state. Reverend Richard Bucke led the House of Burgesses in prayer that God would guide and sanctify their proceedings to his own glory and the good of the plantation. They issued laws requiring church attendance, believing that men’s affairs could not prosper where God’s service was neglected. In 1619, they also observed the first American Day of Thanksgiving.4
THE CHALLENGES FACING VIRGINIA’S FIRST CHURCH AND CLERGYMEN
The Anglican faith, following the ancient tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, was governed by a hierarchy of Bishops. But the Anglican Church in Virginia eventually became relatively independent, in comparison to the English mother church, since there were no Bishops in the new world to oversee the church’s growth and development. After years without the oversight and concern of a caring Episcopate, many pulpits were empty. By the time of George Washington’s birth, spiritual care usually fell to the laity5 of the parish since many churches were cared for by a single traveling curate who had to first travel to England to receive “holy orders” from the hands of the Bishop of London.6
Some Virginian Anglican priests had initially been professionals, such as physicians and lawyers, who were serving as vestrymen and churchwardens and were persuaded by the laity to take up the clerical vocation due to the severe ecclesiastical shortfall. In the early years of the colony, the pay was so low for a Virginia clergyman that daughters from upper class English families were rarely allowed to marry an Anglican priest who was planning to minister in the New World.7 Although some clergymen were wealthy Virginians who entered ministry as a second career, ministers were more likely to be poor, single, and of less than exemplary piety, and often those who could not find a call in England.8 Eventually the compensation for the clergy improved, but if the colonial clergymen’s gifts were perhaps not as strong as their English counterparts, the law of supply and demand and the law of the King that guaranteed and established their religious positions had a tendency to make them largely unaccountable.9 Since the cash crop for the colony and the means of payment for the clergy was tobacco, tobacco production was destined to be the primary emphasis in Virginia.10
TOBACCO—VIRGINIA’S MEANS OF EXCHANGE
As an undeveloped culture, early Virginia lacked many of the foundations of a civilized culture, including roads and currency. The settlers lived close to the land and depended upon the rivers as their only sure roads to the city of Jamestown and to the international markets across the sea. And insomuch as money is a means of exchange, tobacco was, in effect, the money for colonial Virginia for much of its existence. To farmers and planters, tobacco was the cash crop that paid the clergy and the many other bills for goods that had to be imported from the mother country. Indeed, George Washington, like most Virginia planters, paid for his pastor’s salary in tobacco.11
What the English government and investors expected from their colony in America was a strong return for their past investments, accompanied by an unquestioning obedience. This is amply illustrated by the well-known story of Reverend James Blair’s efforts to obtain an endowment for his proposed college in Virginia (a forerunner to William and Mary which never materialized). He obtained the charter and a grant of 2,000 British pounds. Sir Edward Seymour, one of the leading figures of Virginian politics, objected to the grant. Reverend Blair told Commissary Seymour that the college was designed to educate ministers and that people in Virginia had souls to be saved as well as people in England. In one of the more striking historical disagreements between a civil and a religious leader, Seymour intoned: “Souls! Damn your souls! Make tobacco.”12
INDIANS, CONVICTS, AND SLAVES
By the time George Washington was out surveying the wilderness tracts of land for Lord Fairfax, the proprietor of the Northern Neck’s vast expanse, the Indians were no longer an immediate menace, since they had been driven far back into the forests by the previous generations of armed colonists. The Native Americans were still, however, the masters of the vast unsurveyed lands of the upper reaches of the rivers that extended into the Virginian frontier, which at that time included parts of Maryland and Western Pennsylvania. As a young man, George Washington engaged in a surveying expedition into this frontier. He kept a journal of this expedition, and he noted his impressions of some of their customs, such as the Indians’ strange way of dancing.13
Adding to the woes of the already spiritually impoverished Virginia, King James decided to turn the Colony into a destination for English convicts. One-hundred convicts arrived in America in 1619, the first of many such shipments. (Even a captain that sailed one of George Washington’s commercial ships had commanded a convict ship for many years before being employed by Washington.) This commerce did not end until the Revolution closed American ports to the crown’s penal exile of English criminals. Australia’s Botany Bay would eventually become the next home for these unwanted prisoners of the crown.
In fact, Washington’s first teacher had been “bought” by George’s father and brought to America to tutor the young George. As a white English convict who had run afoul of the common law, he found a new opportunity in the colony as an indentured servant, serving simultaneously as a sexton for the church, a gravedigger for the cemetery, and a teacher of a small field school. Soon thereafter, also in 1619, a Dutch vessel delivered to Jamestown the first shipload of slaves ever brought to American shores. Indeed, to make tobacco in large enough quantities to satisfy the needs and the quotas from markets in England, the Virginia nobility—the true gentlemen farmers—became accustomed to building and maintaining their vast plantations by the utilization of great numbers of slaves, who cared not only for their masters’ fields, but also for their bodies, their horses, their houses, and their children. In fact, one of George Washington’s closest friends was William “Billy” Lee, “my Mulatto man William (calling himself William Lee).”14 In his will, Washington emancipated Billy and provided him with a lifetime annuity.15
Virginia’s culture and its laws were thus a reflection of its unique origins as the first English settlement in the new world. From 1607 on, the interpenetration of the English state, the Anglican Church, the farm, the Indian, the slave and the convict continued. There needed to be laws for the church, the state, and the soldier.
VIRGINIA’S DIVINE, MARTIAL, AND MORAL LAW
As we have already seen, the beginning of the Episcopal Church of Virginia was inseparably connected with the planting of the colony. The First Charter of Virginia was written in 1606, followed by revisions in 1609 and 1611. Thus, Virginia’s code of law developed when “religion was painted upon banners” and law was “divine, martial and moral”—in the words of Bishop William Meade.16 Bishop Meade’s contemporary, B. B. Minor, put it this way, “No one can properly study, write, or appreciate Virginia history who does not largely and heartily enter into those parts relating and devoted to religion and the Church.”17 The roots of religion were planted all the more deeply, given the understanding by the colonists that it must have been God’s Providence that had allowed Virginia to survive so many close calls with extinction, due to sheer struggle with the wilderness and fierce warfare with the local aboriginal masters of the New World. This was the culture Washington’s ancestors found when they arrived in Virginia around 1657.
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MISSION TO THE INDIANS
When the first colonists arrived in 1607, Captain John Smith soon became their leader. Reverend John Hunt, the colony’s first preacher, provided its spiritual leadership. A 1631 pamphlet described their spiritual life in their rustic original church with a roof made of an old sail, and pews of “unhewed trees and a pulpit of a bar of wood nailed to two neighbouring trees.” The pamphlet adds:
. . . yet we had daily Common Prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons, and every three months the holy communion, till our minister died, (the Reverend Mr. Hunt.) . . . Our order was daily to have prayer with a psalm, at which solemnity the poor savages much wondered.18
Concern for the souls of the “savages” was part of the mission into Virginia. When this courageous band had been sent off from England, the Reverend Mr. William Crashaw reminded the colonists, “that the end of this voyage is the destruction of the devil’s kingdom, and the propagation of the Gospel.”19 The King’s 1606 patent for Virginia explained that the purpose of their mission to the New World was that:
So noble a work may, by the Providence of God, hereafter tend to the glorie of his divine majestie, in propagating of Christian religion to such people as sit in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages (living in those parts) to human civility and quiet government.20
The King’s instructions included that “all persons should kindly treat the savages and heathen people in these parts, and use all proper means to draw them to the true service and knowledge of God.”21 As early as 1588, Sir Walter Raleigh had given 100 pounds for the “propagation of Christianity in Virginia.”22
Two centuries later, when Washington spoke of the “earnestly desired” and “laudable undertaking” of “converting the Indians to Christianity,” he reflected the concern of Sir Walter Raleigh. This can be seen in Washington’s May 2, 1788, response to a March 28, 1788, letter and pamphlet that he received from Reverend John Ettwein, a Bishop of the Society of the United Brethren.23 Washington responded: “So far as I am capable of judging, the principles upon which the society is founded and the rules laid down for its government, appear to be well calculated to promote so laudable and arduous an undertaking, and you will permit me to add that if an event so long and so earnestly desired as that of converting the Indians to Christianity and consequently to civilization, can be effected, the Society of Bethlehem bids fair to bear a very considerable part in it. I am, Reverend Sir, with sentiments of esteem, &c.”24
The principles and rules upon which the society was founded, were deeply Christian.25 Washington approved their principles and rules, which he deemed “well calculated to promote so laudable and arduous an undertaking.”26 The text of the Brethren’s pamphlet read and approved by Washington included, in part,
Whereas we the subscribers are fully convinced of the Christian zeal and godly concern, wherewith the evangelical Church, known by the name of the Unitas Fratrum or United Brethren, has at all times endeavored to spread the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and to carry the same even to the remotest Heathen nations; for which purpose also in this part of the world a mission among several Indian nations was begun by said Church, and with blessing and good success continued near fifty years: And as we ourselves are members of said Church, which has the salvation of men so near at heart, we cannot but most ardently wish to further this great work of God, conversion of the Heathen, by all just and possible means.
Therefore we have resolved, in the name of God, to form ourselves into a Society by the name of ‘A Society of the United Brethren for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen’ And do herewith unanimously agree upon the following articles as the stated rules of this Society….
Article XIV.
And as we have hereby no other view or aim but the furtherance and propagation of the knowledge of Jesus Christ among the poor benighted Heathen, …promise to do all that they do for the benefit of the Society, gratis.
Article XV.
…Therefore the missionaries and their assistants shall, in conformity to the rules of the Brethren, set aside all temporal views and interests, and their sole and only care and endeavours shall be, to preach the gospel to the Heathen, to instruct them faithfully in the doctrine of Jesus and his apostles, and so by their word and examples to encourage them to virtue and industry.27
George Washington clearly shared the foundational Virginian concern to “Christianize the savages” dwelling in the Virginia Colony. On July 10, 1789, in response to an address from the directors of the Society of The United Brethren for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathen, Washington stated:
In proportion as the general Government of the United States shall acquire strength by duration, it is probable they may have it in their power to extend a salutary influence to the Aborigines in the extremities of their Territory. In the meantime, it will be a desirable thing for the protection of the Union to co-operate, as far as circumstances may conveniently admit, with the disinterested [unselfish] endeavours of your Society to civilize and Christianize the Savages of the Wilderness.28
A Deist, by definition, rejected Christianity and accepted the equivalence of all religions’ worship of God. So no Deist could see the plan for the “conversion of the heathen” outlined by Bishop Ettwein and the Brethren as both “laudable” and “earnestly desired.” Yet those are Washington’s words. Nor could a Deist say, as Washington wrote, “It will be a desirable thing …to co-operate, as far as circumstances may conveniently admit, with the disinterested endeavours of your Society to civilize and Christianize the Savages of the Wilderness.” Washington’s assessment of the Brethren’s Christian missionary work to the Indians not only reflected his historic Anglican and Virginian roots, but his own Christian faith as well.
THE STARVING TIME
The 1607 colony and its spiritual mission were nearly a total failure, almost meeting extinction as the earlier settlements had. When the next ship arrived in 1610 under the lead of Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Summers, accompanied by the Reverend Mr. Richard Bucke, the 500 settlers had been reduced to a mere sixty emaciated survivors, who called this period “the starving time.” The staggering loss of life was due to both famine and the assaults of the Native Americans. Hunger pains brought on the most desperate inhumanity:
So great was our famine, that a savage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him, and so did divers one another, boiled and stewed with roots and herbs. And one of the rest did kill his wife, powdered her, and had eaten part of her before it was known, for which he was executed, as he well deserved.29
According to Reverend William Crashaw, the early historian of this period, upon seeing the tragic state of the colony, Gates, Summers, and Bucke went immediately to the ruined and empty church and rang its bell. Crashaw writes: “Such as were able to crawl out of their miserable dwellings repaired thither that they might join in the zealous and sorrowful prayer of their faithful minister, who pleaded in that solemn hour for his afflicted brethren and himself before the Lord their God.”30 Years later, in 1774, when George Washington and his fellow Virginians participated in a colony-wide day of prayer and fasting in the face of the looming crisis with England, it continued a faith tradition of the earliest Virginians who also prayed for divine aid in severe trial.31
The sixty survivors entered the ship that only had a few days’ provisions left and prepared to sail to safer harbors in Newfoundland, with “none dropping a tear, because none had enjoyed one day of happiness.”32 They had suffered so much, they were beyond weeping. The last act of the rescued colonists was to bury their weapons and armor. As they began to sail from Jamestown, their farewell to the abandoned colony was given with a woeful “peal of shot,” and they began going down the river, leaving behind hundreds of graves, a failed colony, and a ghost town. But at that precise moment, a second ship unexpectedly arrived under the command of Lord De la War (whose name later designated a colony and then a state—Delaware).
Bishop Meade writes: “Behold the hand of Heaven from above, at the very instant, sent in the Right Honorable De la War to meet them at the river’s mouth, with provision and comforts of all kind. If he had stayed but two tides longer [in other words, just a day later], he would have come into Virginia and found not one Englishman.”33
They returned to Jamestown immediately, where, upon landing, Lord De la War fell to his knees and prayed a lengthy silent prayer. This was next followed by a sermon by Reverend Mr. Bucke. And only then, did Lord De la War present to the people his documents authorizing his leadership over the colony. At once he gave orders for the church to be repaired.34 With the “starving times” behind them, the colony of Virginia was securely established, and began to make the illustrious history for which it is renowned.
RENEWAL OF THE MISSION TO THE INDIANS
Lord De la War’s short stay concluded in 1611, but the settlement had been resuscitated and its Gospel mission to the Indian inhabitants of the new land was remembered. A 1612 pamphlet “The New Life of Virginia” expressed the spiritual concerns for the salvation of the Indians:
And for the poor Indians, what shall I say? But God, that hath many ways showed mercy to you, make you show mercy to them and theirs, and howsoever they may seem unto you so intolerably wicked and rooted in mischief that they cannot be moved, yet consider rightly and be not discouraged. …This is the work that we first intended, and have published to the world, to be chief in our thoughts, to bring those Infidel people from the worship of Devils to the service of God.…
Take their children and train them up with gentleness, teach them our English tongue and the principles of religion. Win the elder sort by wisdom and discretion; make them equal to you English in case of protection, wealth, and habitation, doing justice on such as shall do them wrong. Weapons of war are needful, I grant, but for defence only…. 35
This was the program that George Washington approved many years later. In a speech to the Delaware Chiefs on May 12, 1779, he encouraged “…You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention; and to tie the knot of friendship and union so fast, that nothing shall ever be able to loose it.”36
The most famous story of reaching a Native American for the Gospel is that of Pocahontas.37 A painting of her Christian baptism is one of the eight massive murals painted for the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building.38
REQUIRED DAILY PRAYERS AND PRAYERS FOR THE SALVATION OF THE HEATHEN
As was mentioned above, the colonists “had daily common prayer morning and evening.” This practice of daily prayer in the colony of Virginia is worth a further consideration. The daily religious services enjoined by this early colonial Virginia were linked directly with the work parties as they assembled. The day was infused with prayer and worship, including early morning, midday, and evening.39
The idea of morning and evening prayer led by a military officer was part of the Virginia in which Washington was raised.40 Along with the prayers of the Book of Common Prayer, a special prayer was composed, particularly for the Morning and Evening Guard. It was to be offered up by “the Captain himself, or some one of his principal men or officers.” Some nine substantive paragraphs of prayer in all, the sixth implored the Lord for the salvation of the unbelieving Gentiles that surrounded them.
And now, O Lord of mercy! O Father of the spirits of all flesh! Look in mercy upon the Gentiles who yet know thee not! And seeing thou hast honoured us to choose us out to bear they name unto the Gentiles, we therefore beseech thee to bless us, and this our plantation, which we and our nation have begun in thy fear, and for thy glory. We know, O Lord! We have the Devil and all the gates of Hell against us; but if thou, O Lord, be on our side, we care not who be against us! Oh, therefore vouchasafe to be our God, and let us be a part and portion of thy people; confirm thy covenant of grace and mercy with us, which thou hast made to thy Church in Christ Jesus. And seeing, Lord, the highest end of our plantation here is to set up the standard and display the banner of Jesus Christ even here where Satan’s throne is, Lord, let our labour be blessed in labouring for the conversion of the heathen. And because thou usest not to work such mighty works by unholy means, Lord, sanctify our spirits, and give us holy hearts, that so we may be thy instruments in this most glorious work.41
As the spiritual vitality of Jamestown began to flourish again, a Cambridge graduate, Alexander Whittaker, left his mark. The Reverend Whittaker, a son of an illustrious theologian who helped draft the Lambeth Articles in 1595,42 wrote a stirring call to England for greater support in the ministry to the colonists and the missionary outreach to the Indians, which by then he himself had pursued for three years. His message to his clerical peers in England was based on the text, “Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after many days.” He called on them to join him in the evangelization of the original inhabitants of Virginia:
Wherefore, my brethren, put on the bowels of compassion, and let the lamentable estate of these miserables enter into your consideration. One God created us. They have reasonable souls and intellectual faculties as well as we. We all have Adam for our common parent; yea, by nature the condition of us both is all one, the servants of sin and slaves of the Devil. Oh, remember, I beseech you, what was the state of England before the Gospel was preached in our country.43
Although Virginia had a promising start to evangelize the Indians,44 it proved to be very slow-going.45 Few Indians accepted the Gospel, and the Native Americans and the new settlers by-and-large had many conflicts.46 Subsequently, it was not a promising mission field to would-be ministers (or missionaries).47 No Bishop would be willing to serve in the wild world of Virginia. In fact, America as a whole never had a bishop until the Revolutionary War had ended.
WASHINGTON’S “CONNEXION” WITH LADY HUNTINGDON’S MISSION
Washington’s involvement and interest in the “Christianization” of the Indians reached its climax in a connection with British royalty and the evangelist George Whitefield, strange connections, indeed, for the leader of the American Revolution and an alleged Deist! The royal figure that made this connection was a “well-connected” woman, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (1707-91), the daughter of Earl Ferrers. In 1728, she married the Ninth Earl of Huntingdon, Theophilus Hastings. His sister, Mary Hastings, introduced Selina to the Methodist message. In 1739, she became a member of the first Methodist Society in Fetter Lane and was a supporter and friend of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist movement in England. Eventually, she founded what became known as “Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion.”
The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion was part of the eighteenth century Evangelical Revival closely associated with John Wesley and George Whitefield. Although touching the upper class, it was a religious movement that touched the local population as well. It had a college for the training of ministerial skills and established several interconnected chapels in England. Following the pattern of Wesley, the movement, although originating in the Anglican fold, eventually seceded, and The Connexion became a denomination of its own with its own creed and ordination.48
Washington’s first connection with “Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion” was probably in late 1774, either during or just after his return from the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In his diary for 1774, November 5, we read: “Mr. Piercy a Presbeterian [sic] Minister dined here.” It is possible that Washington had met Piercy while in Philadelphia. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Thwohig, editors of Washington’s Diaries write,
Mr. Piercy was probably William Piercy (Percy), a Calvinistic Methodist and disciple of George Whitefield. Piercy was chaplain to Selina Hastings, countess of Huntingdon, a devoted follower of the new Methodist movement. In order to give protection to Methodist preachers, she appointed large members of them to the nominal position of chaplain in her household. She had sent Piercy from London to Georgia in 1772 to act as president of Whitefield’s Orphan House, or college, at Bethesda, near Savannah, and to preach wherever he could collect an audience in the colonies. Piercy had preached at various locations in Philadelphia during the year. He had given a farewell sermon in late October at the Arch Street Presbyterian meetinghouse, and was probably at this time on his return to his headquarters in Georgia.49
The day after Piercy’s visit was Sunday, and Washington’s diary says, “November 6. Went to Pohick Church.” From this point on until the end of the Revolutionary War, there is no mention of Lady Huntingdon’s ministry in Washington’s writings.
However, at the conclusion of the American Revolution, Washington heard personally from Lady Huntingdon, who wrote to him in 1783, when she was seventy-six years of age. Unfortunately, while her February 20, 1783, letter is not extant we do have Washington’s letter in response that allows us to construct what the Countess had in mind. Washington responded to Lady Huntingdon’s letter from Headquarters on August 10, 1783:
My Lady: Within the course of a few days I have received the Letter you was pleased to Honor me with from Bath, of the 20th of febry. and have to express my respectful Thanks to your Goodness, for the marks of Confidence and Esteem contained therein.
Your Ladyships benevolent Designs toward the Indian Nations, claim my particular Attention, and to further so laudable an Undertaking will afford me much pleasure, so far as my Situation in Life, surrounded with many and arduous Cares will admit. To be named as an Executor of your Intentions, may perhaps disappoint your Ladyships Views; but so far as my general Superintendence, or incidental Attention can contribute to the promotion of your Establishment, you may command my Assistance.
My Ancestry being derived from Yorkshire in England, it is more than probable that I am entitled to that honorable Connection, which you are pleased to mention; ...50
The Lady’s letter had obviously asked Washington to be an executor of her missionary plan to the Indians, and in the same letter had proposed the possibility that Washington and Lady Huntingdon were related. Historians have established that the common ancestor of the Countess and Washington was Lawrence Washington of Sulgrave Manor (1500-1584).51 But Washington, true to form, never bothered to establish the connection.52 Yet Washington was interested in the Countess’ mission to the Indians. Although his plans for retirement prevented taking on the task of executor, he pledged himself to her cause “so far as my general Superintendence, or incidental Attention can contribute to the promotion of your Establishment, you may command my Assistance.”53
This offer of assistance was more than enough for the royal Lady’s purposes. She wrote back on March 20, 1784, with striking words. She did not merely call upon Washington to assist her in her American version of her Gospel Connexion, namely, the evangelization of the Indians; instead, she addressed him with Messianic terms as she boldly applied the biblical texts of Isaiah 41:2 and 8 to the triumphant American commander in chief. If Washington were a Deist, this would have been a most awkward misunderstanding. Lady Huntingdon wrote,
Sir, I should lament the want of expression extremely did I believe it could convey with the exactness of truth the sensibility your most polite kind and friendly letter afforded me. Any degree of your consideration for the most interesting views of my grant which stands so connected with the service of the Indian nations eminently demands my perpetual thanks.
No compliments can be accepted by you, the wise providence of God having called you to, and so honoured you in, a situation far above many of your equals. And as one mark of His favour to His servants of old was given—“the nations to your sword and as the driven stubble to your bow” [Isa. 41:2]—[this] allows me then to follow the comparison till that character shall as eminently belong to you—“He was called the friend of God.” [Isa. 41:8]. May therefore the blessings obtained for the poor, so unite the temporal with the eternal good of those miserable neglected and despised nations that they may be enabled to bless you in future ages whose fatherly hand has yielded to their present and everlasting comfort.
I am obliged to say that no early or intemperate zeal, under a religious character, or those various superstitious impositions, too generally taken up for Christian piety, does in any measure prevail with my passions for this end. To raise an altar for the knowledge of the true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent “where ignorance alike of him and of themselves so evidently appears” is my only object. And this to convey the united blessings of this life, with the lively evidence of an eternity founded on the sure and only wise testimony of immutable truth is all my wants or wishes in this matter. And my poor unworthy prayers are for those providences of God that may best prepare the way to so rational and great an end.54
How would a Deist answer this biblical plea to help an evangelical establish Christian missionaries “to raise an altar for the knowledge of the true God and Jesus Christ”? While various letters between the Countess of Huntingdon and Washington have not survived, we do have several which establish Washington’s views of Lady Huntingdon’s Gospel mission to the Indians. His responses are those of a Christian. Washington wrote to Lady Huntingdon on February 27, 1785,
My Lady: …With respect to your humane and benevolent intentions towards the Indians, and the plan which your Ladyship has adopted to carry them into effect, they meet my highest approbation; and I should be very happy to find every possible encouragement given to them. ….I have written fully to the President of Congress, with whom I have a particular intimacy, and transmitted copies of your Ladyships plan, addresses and letter to the several States therein mentioned, with my approving sentiments thereon. …55
Writing on January 25, 1785, to Sir James Jay, friend of the Countess and the brother of American political leader John Jay, Washington says,
I am clearly in sentiment with her Ladyship, that Christianity will never make any progress among the Indians, or work any considerable reformation in their principles, until they are brought to a state of greater civilization; and the mode by which she means to attempt this, as far as I have been able to give it consideration, is as likely to succeed as any other that could have been devised…As I am well acquainted with the President of Congress, I will in the course of a few days write him a private letter on this subject giving the substance of Lady Huntington’s plan and asking his opinion of the encouragement it might expect to receive from Congress if it should be brought before that honorable body. …Without reverberating the arguments in support of the humane and benevolent intention of Lady Huntington to Christianize and reduce to a state of civilization the Savage tribes within the limits of the American States, or discanting upon the advantages which the Union may derive from the Emigration which is blended with, and becomes part of the plan, I highly approve of them…56
Writing to Richard Henry Lee, the President of the Congress on February 8, 1785, Washington explains:
Towards the latter part of the year 1783 I was honored with a letter from the Countess of Huntington, briefly reciting her benevolent intention of spreading Christianity among the Tribes of Indians inhabiting our Western Territory; and Expressing a desire of my advice and assistance to carry this charitable design into execution.…Her Ladyship has spoken so feelingly and sensibly, on the religious and benevolent purposes of the plan, that no language of which I am possessed, can add aught to enforce her observations. …57
Writing finally with the disappointing news of lack of success to the Countess of Huntingdon on June 30, 1785, Washington explained that resistance to the plan had been encountered in Congress for various reasons, including the concern of placing British subjects on America’s frontier as a possible future source of political destabilization:
My Lady: In the last letter which I had the honor to write to you, I informed your Ladyship of the communication I had made to the President of Congress of your wishes to obtain Lands in the Western Territory for a number of Emigrants as a means of civilizing the Savages, and propagating the Gospel among them. …I will delay no longer to express my concern that your Ladyships humane and benevolent views are not better seconded.58
Nevertheless, when General Washington became President Washington, he continued to view “a System corresponding with the mild principles of Religion and Philanthropy towards an unenlightened race of Men” to “be as honorable to the national character as conformable to the dictates of sound policy.”59
The last we hear of Lady Huntingdon in Washington’s writings is on January 8, 1792. Washington wrote a brief note of acknowledgment to Robert Bowyer for an engraved portrait print of the Countess of Huntingdon, made from Bowyer’s painting.60 The Countess had died the year before. Obviously Washington did not want the “connection” with Lady Huntingdon to end. We honestly wonder how many Deists through the years have secured engraved portraits of the world’s great Christian missionaries and evangelical philanthropists.
WASHINGTON’S VIRGINIA ROOTS
Washington was an American and a Virginian. He never forgot his rich legacy. In the first draft of his Farewell Address, President Washington accented his roots:
I retire from the Chair of government . . . I leave you with undefiled hands, an uncorrupted heart, and with ardent vows to heaven for the welfare and happiness of that country in which I and my forefathers to the third or fourth progenitor drew our first breath.61
In fact, when he was retiring, our first president attempted to trace his roots. He was asked by a high ranking British official for this information. So on November 15, 1796, when he was in Philadelphia, George Washington wrote to his nephew, Captain William Augustine Washington:
Without any application, intimation, or the most remote thought or expectation of the kind, on my part; Sir Isaac Heard, Garter and principal King at Arms, wrote to me some years since enclosing our Armorial [coat of arms]; and requesting a genealogical account of our progenitors since the first arrival of them in this country. …and although I have not the least Solicitude to trace our Ancestry, yet as this Gentleman appears to interest himself in the research, common civility requires that he should obtain the aids he asks, if it is in our power to give it to him. Let me request of you, therefore, to give me what assistance you can to solve the queries propounded in his letter, if you have only old papers which have a tendency towards it: if not, or whether or not, by examining the Inscriptions on the Tombs at the Ancient Vault, and burying ground of our Ancestors, which is on your Estate at Bridges Creek. And if you are able to do it, trace the descendents of Lawrence Washington who came over with John, our Progenitor. 62
In other words, Washington was asking his nephew for help in tracing his roots back to England, including reading tombstones, if necessary. Although Washington had no personal interest in his family’s genealogy, he had already been thinking about his ancestors’ tombstones for over a decade. On December 18, 1784, Washington wrote that he “might soon expect to be entombed in the dreary mansions of my father’s.”63 We don’t know what inscriptions Washington’s nephew found on the tombs of their early Virginian ancestors. But we do know what Washington’s ancestors ultimately put on his Mount Vernon tomb. Should you visit Washington’s tomb at Mount Vernon, you will read “I am the resurrection and the Life.” (John 11:25), the very first words of the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer. Strange indeed that the immediate descendants of a Deist would have a Gospel text quoting Jesus’ teaching on the resurrection on the alleged Deist’s tomb! Either Washington’s heirs were quite confused about the faith of Virginia’s greatest son, or they knew George Washington’s faith better than most recent historians do.
CONCLUSION
Thus, the tapestry of early Virginia was intricately interwoven with the commerce of tobacco production, a sincere commitment to the church and the Christian mission to the Native Americans, alongside the tragic realities of trading in slaves, the assimilation of convicts and conflict with Native Americans. It was to this faltering yet consciously Christian colony that Washington’s family emigrated some fifty years after the establishment of Jamestown. Accordingly, Washington’s life was deeply marked by the culture and values of Virginia, “that country in which” he and his “forefathers to the third or fourth progenitor drew” their “first breath.”64 Whether as General, a private citizen, or as president, Washington never swerved from an expressed commitment to the Christian evangelistic mission to the Native Americans that was a legacy bequeathed to him by the very first Anglican settlers of the colony of Virginia. The skeptics who argue for Washington the Deist must explain his lifelong and heartfelt commitment to Christian missionary work. Moreover, nothing less than both written evidence and recorded deeds from Washington himself will be sufficient to explain how he could simultaneously explicitly advocate Christian missionary evangelism, and yet as a Deist deny the teachings of Christianity.