- My hair look.
(bird chirping) - That's it.
- Count me in from five. It's gotta be close. (chuckles) - [Matt] The best. And we're live. - Well, hello, everybody. I'm Doug Bradburn, the president and CEO of George Washington's Mount Vernon. Welcome, we are live streaming from this historic estate right now. You can see the great
building behind me here, George Washington's famous cupola, on top of this extraordinary house, which I'll talk a little bit about as we spend some time together here live. I look forward to answering any questions you all might have. The fact of the matter is, right now, it's really bittersweet
for me to be out here. It's sweet first, the good news, right? Because it's a beautiful, beautiful day. I can hear the birds. This place is gorgeous as
spring is starting to bloom. The daffodils are coming up,
the perennials are coming up in the Upper Garden, I can
see the vinca behind me blooming under the trees,
and this incredible landscape that I get to enjoy, as if alone, in fact, it's really unusual. And that also speaks I think
to the bitter part of it. I mean, we are in unusual
times here at Mount Vernon. As an institution, the Mount Vernon Ladies'
Association saved Mount Vernon in the 1850s, and I'll talk
a little bit about that, but we've been open to
the public since 1860. There were some disruptions during the Civil War of public visitation, but we've never really had
a sustained period like this where we're closed. And, in fact, I wouldn't be
able to do this right now if we were open this time of year. What you would see behind me
is a long line of school kids, kids on their school trips. Trips that have come to
Mount Vernon for generations. And in this case, this period in time, from now until the end of June really, we'd see somewhere between
250,000 and 300,000 school kids from all over the nation, in
fact from all over the world, a lot of adult groups, as well, and, of course, family visitation throughout the Easter holiday
period, the Passover holiday, all the great spring breaks
that are happening very soon. And so, that's the bitter part, because we love to share this place with people all the time. Our mission is to teach them about the preservation we do at this site and about the extraordinary life and times of George Washington
in all of its fullness. We are still doing that mission. We are still teaching, although you can't be here physically, you can be here virtually. And so for all the parents out there, I'd encourage you to take a look at MountVernon.org/digital. We have lots of resources for you. For those kids stuck at home, we got out tremendous virtual tour. So you can be like me standing
here in front of the mansion, but you can also walk
into the mansion itself, hear from our different curators, click on objects that
are of interest of you. We also have a great interactive
game called Be Washington, which is a chance for people to step into the boots
of George Washington. In fact, you can play this with a group all over the country. If everybody's sequestered somewhere else, you can all play together if you just get a code from our webpage. And there's four different scenarios that allow you to walk in the shoes of George Washington
during times of crisis. How did he deal with moments when he didn't know what
was gonna happen tomorrow, when he was dealing with the fog of war and had limited information? What are the choices you would make? What are the choices he made? We, of course, have our
incredible digital encyclopedia, which is an ongoing growing database of stories and entries about
all things George Washington, age of Washington. Some of your favorite historians
have written these entries. They cover everything from George Washington's historic estate here at Mount Vernon, to the enslaved people who
lived here and worked here and made George
Washington's life possible, to the battles he fought
in the American Revolution, to the Cabinet, to so many other items, and you really could spend days crawling through the encyclopedia. It's one of my favorite spots
to find the odd anecdote. We have videos, as well. Videos that have been
recorded over many years now. Our media team has been at the
forefront of education media, I think, for the last five years or so, and really have produced
a number of things that show how to make
candles, how to spin yarn, how to make blacksmith shop work, and how to do so many other items, and to talk again about the history of George Washington and this estate. For the teachers and the parents, we also have lesson plans available, which can guide you in
ways to use materials. How do you teach with an object? What are the things we can learn from a broken sherd of pottery about the people that lived long ago, about how it was made how it was used? What it meant to consume these items? And, of course, you can see that in all our great collections here. We have an extraordinary
collection of 18th century objects, objects in many cases owned by
George and Martha Washington, used by the enslaved people here, objects that all tell a
story in their own right, and can be used to really open up the past in a way that's really
tangible for people. It's all there online. Now we are kicking off
with my presentation here, which is more of a ramble. I'll actually start giving
you a little bit of history, but we're gonna kick off this
new live noontime opportunity from Mount Vernon on YouTube and Facebook every day with a new theme with a different expert
of the Mount Vernon staff and our education team,
our horticulture team, our collections team, the library. I want to make sure you
get to spend some time with the people who are dealing
with the lambs right now. That's very popular and very helpful. I also will be involved as much
as I can through this period taking questions and talking
about some of the places and the things I really
love about Mount Vernon. So the themes we're working with right now is we're gonna focus on
the mansion on Mondays. We're gonna focus on
teaching and ways to teach and items that you can teach
in lesson plans on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we're gonna
have Washington Wednesday. We're gonna focus on a lesson
from the age of Washington, stories about his leadership,
stories about his character, stories about his life and times that are gonna be dynamic and telling. We've got a tremendous
staff here at Mount Vernon who are some of the best
experts in the country. Now, Tranquil Thursday's is
the theme on one of these ideas and, I think, that's gonna be a chance to to take a little time
to reflect and relax and to be together with
some of the beautiful things we have at Mount Vernon here, our gorgeous gardens, the
lovely spaces at Mount Vernon, and talk a little bit
about this place, as well. And then, Casual Friday. Everything's could
happen on Casual Friday. You never know who might
show up on a Casual Friday. We're at social distancing, so there's only gonna be a
limited amount of people, but it'll be fun, it'll be casual. We try to keep people's mind
off constantly stressing about the news and the challenges that are going on right now. I think that's one of the lessons that immediately comes to my mind when I look at the history of this country and the way we've dealt with
extraordinary circumstances. This is going to be a
challenge for our community, for our nation, for our world, that will challenge our
generation and our spirit. And there'll be a lot of
things that are messed up. There'll be a lot of chaos. There'll be mistakes made. There'll be tragedies. There'll be venality. But, ultimately, we are an
incredibly persistent nation that has a great stock of
good feeling for our fellowmen and there's gonna be a lot of
sacrificing going on, as well, and a lot of people pulling
together as a community with all our great
institutions working together at the local, the national,
the international level, but also the public-private partnerships. One of the great things about being a nation based on liberty is we have so many
people who are empowered with wonderful ideas and
with wonderful opportunities and resources that can be brought to bear when we get ourselves
collectively organized. I think that's what
we're gonna see together. And so one thing to remember, I think, what history
can give us in this time is a real sense of perspective. It can give us balance. It's very common. I was reflecting on Thomas
Paine's great "Crisis" essay, "Number One" earlier this morning. "These are the times
that tried men's souls," the famous line that Paine
begins that essay with. One of the things Paine
is doing in that essay at a bleak moment in the
American Revolutionary crisis, I mean, it is basically lost. You'll remember that, George Washington, his army has been defeated in New York. They've been shattered. They lost a lot of lives,
a lot of people captured, and they're fleeing
against with unbeatable, Paine writes this essay
to help rally the country and give them perspective. In many ways, it's
obviously a polemical essay that's saying, "This is an
important time to come together. "These are the reason "why our cause is still
vibrant and it matters," but it's also a historical reflection. One of the lines in there
he has, which struck me was, "It's astonishing how in nations "how rapidly panic can
spread in a country." But then he went on to say, and he pointed to specific examples, going back to Joan of Arc, actually, and the panic that she
instilled in the English during the Hundred Years' War. And in the similar vein,
he then goes on to say, "But panic can be useful "'cause it can reveal where
we're failing and our weaknesses "but it creates resolve
and it prepares the mind "to deal with challenging
times moving forward." We're gonna see all kinds of
challenges moving forward here and history can be a thing that gives us a little bit of perspective. All right, so let's get
back to Mount Vernon. That was a little editorial
op-ed, off-the-cuff here since they told me just
to just wind me up and go, so here I'm going. I wanna talk a little bit about
this place where we're at. So here we are in the Bowling Green at George Washington's Mount Vernon. The landscape all around
me is intended to look as much as possible the way it looked when George Washington lived here. Now, he died in 1799. But this landscape was familiar to him because he laid it out. It was his design. In fact, the design we maintain now was really instituted by George Washington after he returned to Mount Vernon after the American Revolution. You'll remember he famously
gives up his commission in this world historical moment when he resigns his sword
and goes back to his farm under his vine and fig tree. There's a song about it
in the "Hamilton" musical. He comes back to Mount Vernon and he brings with him a notion that Mount Vernon is
going to be a showpiece for Americans about the
new Republican taste, the new style of the country, and he's also seen all
these different places in the last eight years
all over North America. He's interacting with people from Europe, from all over the world, and he puts in a design here that's intended, I think, to
reflect his latest thinking on what he thinks would be beautiful, what would be pleasing, particularly here in
the Mansion House Farm. So Washington is gonna engage in a major agricultural reform effort, but the Mansion House Farm
here, so he had five farms, this main core where where
the beautiful mansion is, it was intended to be
not only a working farm, but also a pleasure area. So these areas were designed
to enjoy the beauty of nature, to lay them out in a pattern
that were pleasing to the eye and pleasing to reflection. And so he designs this
beautiful Bowling Green area with the parallel serpentine paths. He lays out his gardens in a new manner to emphasize the importance
of the curved line and proportionality, and he lays out views and vistas through what looks
basically like woodland. It's intended, of course, to look natural, but it is all designed and all carved out. And so Washington is really here with us when we're at Mount Vernon. We're inside his head, in a sense. We're in a place that he thought about and designed and fretted
over all of his life really. Now, the mansion behind me, the most famous kind of element
of this landscape design, is really an extraordinary survivor. This is a home that's
built all of wood, okay? It's not built of stone. He intended it to look like stone, but there wasn't stone
available that he could afford in 18th century Virginia. And so it's a structure that
he inherited, originally. It started as a much smaller home than the one you see behind me. So the main mansion
house, I'm talking about, when George Washington
originally started coming here to live after his brother's death. So I think at the date, and you out there with the
Google's in front of you can correct me, but I think it's sometime around 1753, he comes to Mount Vernon,
comes to live here. He's renting it from his sister's widow. I'm sorry, his brother's widow. It's actually gonna
ultimately be inherited by his brother's young daughter. Now, Washington farms it
a little bit at that time as a Virginia planter would, but he's still engaged in
the French and Indian War. He's still engaged in
other pursuits out west. And so Mount Vernon doesn't
look really anything, at that time, like it looks today. Now ultimately, of course,
his poor sister will die and his sister's daughter will die and then George Washington
inherits the estate. And when he inherits the estate, the house that he inherited
here basically had one floor with a central passage and
and four rooms surrounding it with a small garret and he quickly extended that
to include another floor as he had a new arrival coming when he married Martha Washington in 1759. And that marriage to Martha
is fundamentally crucial to the story of this place. She brings a tremendous amount of wealth into George Washington's life. Not only wealth in cash,
but wealth in labor, and enslaved people who
come here to Mount Vernon or brought here in a Mount Vernon. And George Washington's able, therefore, to expand the agricultural
practices on the estate and he begins buying outlying
plantations, as well, and consolidating what we know today as the great Mount Vernon estate. So when he inherits it, it's roughly around 2,000 acres. When he dies, he has 8,000 acres contiguous on the Potomac River. So, today, you could drive your car from Mount Vernon down
the Memorial Parkway towards D.C. for 10
minutes before you leave George Washington's
original 8,000 acre estate. So it was a tremendous
estate for the 18th century and with it came Washington's ambitions to have a tremendous house, as well. Now, he never did tear down that original house and
rebuild, he added onto it, so he raised the roof, he
ultimately dug out a cellar, he extended the wings in the 1770s, and he put a cupola on top in the 1780s, and he put the grand
piazza off the back, also. An extraordinary architectural
achievement really for a man who was self-educated. He's all doing this by rule of thumb. He's doing it using a number of books that were prepared for
English country gentleman about how to do this kind of work and working with master
carpenters and craftsmen as is, essentially, his
contractors and sub-architects working on how to make this happen. And it really is an evolution
over the course of his life. So the mansion, as we know it though, would have looked like this
from the exterior roughly from the 1780s, so from 1785, '86. '87, I think, is when the cupola comes on and then it would have
been very recognizable. The interior, which you're
gonna hear more about through this series, is
continually worked on. In fact, some of the latest
embellishments are done in the interior decorating
and design of the mansion in the last year of
George Washington's life. We'll talk more about how
he was at the cutting edge of fashion at the time and he and Martha Washington
were projecting an image of what they thought not only fashionable, but appropriate decoration
for a young Republic would be. So all those things make
this a fascinating place to learn about. Now, I understand there's some
questions that are coming in, so let's go ahead and take some of those while I catch my breath. - [Matt] Great, thanks, Doug. So Scarlet wants to know, "Do you have any book recommendations "for us to read during the quarantine?" - Okay, so Scarlet asked whether there's book
recommendations to be read during the quarantine. Well, first of all, I'm a doctor. Let's remember that in this
moment of a health crisis and I always prescribe more books. I'm not the kind of
doctor that helps people. I'm the kind that says,
"You're not reading enough." But at any rate, there's always time to
read George Washington and particularly now when you're at home and looking for some things to
really sink your teeth into. Now, I love all the historians who've written about George Washington, so I don't wanna upset any
of my good friends out there by not mentioning their books. But I think we need to start with the idea of the definitive modern
biography of George Washington. Not perfect, but definitive, with the idea being that
it's trying to cover every story in his life using the latest research at the time, I think still is Ron
Chernow's "Washington." It's a giant tome. It is a great book to have as a reference, but I think you can go online and look at some of our videos. There's a video of me interviewing Ron and even he will admit that because he was trying
to write a definitive work, it has all these kinds of cul de sacs that sometimes don't go anywhere. I mean, that's the nature of a human life. Not everything we do
leads to something else. But everything that
Washington did is interesting because he was such a
significant, influential figure in his own time and still in our own age. So once you get past the big biographies, I think the two most compelling, shorter, single-volume biographies
and readable biographies that'll give you kind of a
tenure of the life as a whole in a more traditional biographical way would be Joe Ellis's "His Excellency" and Joe has a particular emphasis on Washington's transformation from the ambitious,
very ambitious young man to the man that we come and revere today, and then there's another one by a guy named John Rhodehamel called "George Washington:
The Wonder of the Age," came out in 2016. Another really good short biography. Rhodehamel does something different than a lot of historians of Washington. He says, "I'm not gonna try to do too much "with the private life
of George Washington "or the interior life of Washington "because George Washington
actually is holding us all "at a little bit of arm's length." But what Rhodehamel's trying to say is, "Let's first understand
why he was considered "the wonder of his age." What was his public
achievements in context? What did he achieve actually that made him the person
that would be the name of the capitol of a new nation, that would be this name that
has lasted through the ages? And I think Rhodehamel does
it in a very balanced way based on a lot of the
most recent scholarship. I want to mention two more
'cause I can go on and on and I want to get to some other questions, but I really love Flora Fraser's work called "The Washingtons," which is a study of the intimate life of George and Martha Washington. Flora is an extraordinary writer and biographer and researcher. She's a winner of the
George Washington Book Prize for that study of "The Washingtons," and she is tremendous with bringing out Martha out of the shadows a little bit. It's a little bit like
the kind of painting where you have to paint around to see what's what's actually not there when you're dealing with
women's history, generally. That's even the case with
someone as famous as Martha because so many of her
letters were likely destroyed, but there are many that exist. There's over 500 or so. And the other thing
that Flora really brings to a great attention is account books, material culture, a place, a context of gender in the 18th century, to really bring out the life
of that extraordinary couple, really the first couple. Finally, I think, I wanna
mention particularly Mary Thompson's work, which is a study of the enslaved
community at Mount Vernon and George Washington's own mastery, his own struggle with being a slave owner, and in his own evolution. It is a definitive study
based on 30 years of work. Mary Thompson has been
a member of the staff here at Mount Vernon for over 30 years, coming on 40 years this year. It's really a tremendous
part of who we are and the investment that the
Ladies' Association has made in trying to tell the
story of the enslaved is really coming to show
its great excellence in Mary Thompson's wonderful book, so I would encourage you to go out and get a copy of that, as well. What other questions do we have? - [Matt] Colleen wants to know, "What was George Washington's view "on vaccinations and public health? "How did he put those ideas into practice "in his leadership?" - The question is about,
Colleen asked a question about George Washington's views on vaccination and public health. Now, in George Washington's time, he knew of a practice called inoculation, which is not quite vaccination, which I'll let our real doctors or let's say our MDs out there step in to clarify the difference, but in the case of inoculation, we're talking about
inoculation for smallpox. Smallpox was one of the
most devastating diseases that was a regular
companion to human beings through much of our history. And in the early modern
world, in particular, it could spread very rapidly. As we know, smallpox was
one of the virulent diseases that decimated the Native
American population, which had had no exposure to it until Europeans arrived in North America. And so, you had these virgin epidemics on populations that
had never been touched. Smallpox would destroy them. And, similarly, you could have that with populations of Europeans or of anybody who were
together in large groups who hadn't had exposure, and particularly in times of war. In 18th century Europe, and as you saw the growth of urban areas, you'd get a lot of folks who
are coming from rural areas or soldiers who'd been farmers, they had no experience of being
around a lot of other people and all of a sudden, they're
together in one big group, and smallpox could hit
and decimate an army. Smallpox won more
victories than any general in the 18th century. George Washington was
himself a victim of smallpox. He didn't die. He got smallpox when he visited Barbados when he was 19 years
old, which, by the way, we have a lovely Barbados
diary of his trip there, which you can buy online
at MountVernon.org/shops, a good purchase for everybody. But, so he gets smallpox there and it's really good for
him because he survives it and therefore he is
inoculated against its effects for the rest of his life. So if you ever get smallpox
and survive, you're safe. And so, a practice started
in the early 18th century, it really started seeing
widespread use in North America. In the 1720s, there was a big
smallpox scare in New England and there's a great public debate about whether or not to
to allow inoculation. But what inoculation was was
you would cut open the skin in the arm likely of a healthy person and he would place live
smallpox pustules into the skin. And what was shown is that that would, more often than not, the
person would get smallpox, but it would be less
virulent, less deadly, than if you just randomly
caught it in the normal fashion. And so, if you inoculate
it then, you can somewhat, in a controlled environment where you have all the best medical care, which, by our standards, was terrible, but there's more likelihood
that people would survive and George Washington
instituted smallpox inoculations at his army at Morristown
and at other places during the American Revolution because there was a
tremendous smallpox outbreak during the American Revolution. There's a great book by a
woman named Elizabeth Fenn. The historian Elizabeth Fenn wrote a book called "Pox Americana," which is a great study
of the smallpox epidemic that ravaged North America, not just the battlefield area
of the American Revolution, but much of it. In fact, the American
Revolutionary War itself, the destiny of it was
shaped a lot by disease and managing disease. Malaria was also a big player
in the American Revolution, particularly devastating
to the British Army as it marched through the South
trying to get to Yorktown. So the Yorktown army that Cornwallis had that ultimately was
defeated by the Americans was very much weakened by malaria that had been challenging
those troops for a long time. So the story of infectious diseases and all kinds of diseases
has been a tremendous impact in our history. Washington believed in inoculation. He believed in using
the best, latest science to try to get an advantage, to try to protect lives, and he did. He saved lives because
he inoculated people in the American Revolution. What other questions, Matt? - [Matt] Well, Richard wants to know, "What's the color of the mansion outside?" - Yeah, great. So Richard asked a good question about the color of the mansion outside. Now, this was a really important question and the great thing is
here at Mount Vernon, we use the latest techniques, scientific, curatorial, archival, to find out the answer to that question. And so, there's a lot of
places we looked to answer it, so the one thing we know is, we, of course, have the
actual material culture of the mansion itself. So, in fact, if I pulled off a board from the front of the mansion, this is the west front as we call it, so the west front behind me, that board would be made of pine, yellow pine from this
region that has been cut to look like stone. That process is called rustication. So you're taking a wood board, plank, making it look like cut stone blocks. That's rustication. Okay, that piece of
board would have on it, maybe if we're lucky, a
remnant of the original paint that Washington used on the board and that paint was also mixed with sand 'cause George Washington not
only wanted to cut the boards to look like stone, but he wanted them to be textured in a way so that they resembled stone. And so what he would have done
is he would crush sandstone, Aquia Creek sandstone,
and he would throw it, or have slaves or other folks
throw it onto the boards while the boards were wet with paint, with a white paint at the time. And then he would have
linseed oil involved. Anyway, he would secure it all on there. And we have remnants of that, so we know exactly what
kind of stone he used, we know what kind of paint he used. and we've replicated it. In fact, last year, when
you came this time of year, you might have seen scaffolding
going up on the west front because we did a whole
process of restoring the west front of the mansion last year. We stripped every board
down to the original board. We documented which ones were original. And if you can believe it, 83% of the wood on the
west front of the mansion is from George Washington's time and the vast majority of the
nails are 18th century nails. It's really spectacular. And so we recreated the
process that is well-documented in George Washington's own correspondence of how he wanted this done. Matt's having some troubles. Are we okay? Oh, we're good. So Washington describes
how he wanted this done and we recreated it,
essentially, the same way. So it creates sort of a
tan look to the mansion. Now, a lot of people, when Mount Vernon first
started doing this research and first started recreating this method, might have been shocked to see because they think of
the mansion as white. And, indeed, it looks white. A, it it looks white from a distance. A little off-white, tannish, but also all the images of
Mount Vernon that you would see, basically, from 2007 and before, are of this bright, brilliant white house. Now, that kind of white
couldn't be produced in the 18th century. The zinc required in the paint to make it this brilliant
white didn't exist until the 19th century, so there's no way George Washington had a brilliant white house. And, in fact, when you go back and do the methods that
he used, and go back, and look at what people
actually said about the house, this sort of modeled appearance of stone is more accurate to what
he would have known. I think we can still fight
over which looks better. But I think that, as a whole,
when we fully restore it, you see the whiter windows,
you see the whiter cupola, these are areas that don't
always have the same sand on them and they really pop. So it gives it a little bit of texture and proportionality to it that would have been very appealing to George Washington's eye. What other questions have we got? - [Matt] Well, Leslie Ann wants to know, "Do you think the original house "looked a lot like a
small house behind you "next to the mansion?" The servants' hall.
- Oh, right, right, right. Oh, great question. So the question is, did the
original house kind of look like the small house to the
right of the mansion house? That's called the servants' hall. That's where servants of
guests of Washington stayed when they were here. That's what it was called
in Washington's time. Many of those folks
would have been enslaved. Some wouldn't have been though, as well. So a hall for your guests
to keep their valets, very nice to have, particularly when you're
trying to space people out. Now, in this case, I
think the original house would have looked something like that. That is a representation
that we show online when the garret was there but not necessarily a full upstairs where you have the Virginia architectural construction is very similar all over this region and so it's it's pretty easy to see what it would have been. And the scale is likely about right. It might have been a little
bit bigger than that hall. And that's a really good question. What other questions, Matt? - [Matt] Emily wants to know, what's your favorite part of the property? - Emily wants to know what's my favorite part of the property. I live here on the estate. I have a great privilege as being the 11th resident
director of Mount Vernon. There's only been 11 since 1860 because one guy had the job for 52 years and another one had it for 40 years. I don't think I'm gonna
be here quite that long but I do get the opportunity to live here and see all the nooks and
crannies of the estate. To have one favorite is very challenging. Let me give you two favorites. One is the piazza and
the view of the river. Now one of these shows
will do have to do it from the other side so we
can talk about how important our preservation of that
extraordinary view is, the story of how the
Ladies' Association did it and how we still do it but
also really just bask in it and let it roll over us, this extraordinary sense
of time being lost, the sense that you're in a place that has lasted from time immemorial, a place where thousands, millions of other people have enjoyed that same view with
their families over time. It's a tremendous amount of continuity and I always get inspired to be out there. But also, of course, one
of the things to remember about why Mount Vernon exists today is because it was so important
to the American people is because the tomb of George Washington and Martha Washington is here. And so it was a sign of
pilgrimage for Americans and for lovers of
liberty around the world, before the Mount Vernon
Ladies' Association even saved the house in the 1850s. So because the tomb is here, the tomb connects us
directly to the the remains of George Washington. He was a real man who
lived in challenging times. We are like him, we are the same, and we can draw from the successes and the failures and the weaknesses of his own struggles and
achieve great things. So the tomb is always
a really powerful place for me to visit on the estate. - [Matt] Great, Brandon wants to know, "What's the current temperature? "It looks very springy." - Brandon wants to know
the current temperature. It has got to be 65
degrees if it's 30 degrees. It is beautiful. It might be approaching 70. There's a slight breeze right now which probably keeps it down. - [Matt] 63. - Okay, Matt, Briony just checked
in on the on the magic box and he tells me 63, so that's pretty good. 65 is a pretty good guess. I'll take that any day of
the week, you're welcome. But it's gorgeous here and my only regret is that you can't be here with me and we have to do this remotely but it is so important that we do try to maintain all of our
quarantines and social distancing and shutdowns and and all those things, so that we can get
through this more quickly and with less pain and with less sickness, and so we are happy to be doing our part even though we're sad that you can't see the beautiful grounds right now. Questions, anything else, Matt? So as we are waiting in
this moment as the queue has opened up a little bit, let me talk a little
bit about Mount Vernon, how it's evolved over the years. So this structure exists today because of the incredible leadership and foresight of a remarkable woman named Ann Pamela Cunningham, who started a national
movement to organize a group of women first but then
the rest of the nation to rally around and
figure out a way to buy this extraordinary estate when
it was about to fall to dust. The last Washington owner of Mount Vernon was John Augustine Washington III. He was the great-great-grandnephew
of George Washington. George Washington didn't have any increase of his body as they say in the law and so he gave the estate
to Bushrod Washington who was a Supreme Court Justice for over 30 years on the Marshall Court, an interesting character in his own right. Bushrod also didn't have any children that he designated as his heirs and so he gave it to his nephew, John Augustine Washington II, and John Augustine Washington died young and his wife took care of Mount Vernon for at least a decade and a half, and then it descended to
John Augustine Washington III who ultimately sold it to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Now, John Augustine Washington
III had a lot of land, not only here but in
other places in Virginia, in what's now West Virginia as well, and so this was not a main farm for him, but yet he had to maintain it because it had become
this destination spot, this shrine to George Washington, and the family tomb was here. Ultimately, it was becoming impossible to maintain this wooden
structure behind us. I mean, think about Virginia's weather, the heat and humidity,
the extremes of cold that can happen in this region. It takes a battering as it is and we have modern techniques. Imagine yourself in the 19th
century trying to keep up this extraordinary place
in the face of tourists randomly rolling through and taking pieces of buildings as souvenirs and all this. He couldn't manage it
and so he was looking to unload it and sell it. He tried to sell it to
the national government. He tried to sell it to
the state government. They had no interest in taking care of it and so that was when Ann Pamela Cunningham famously rallying to the
cry if the men of America won't save the house of the
father of their country, then the woman's shall, and they did. And, of course, this is at a time, not only could women not vote, but most women couldn't even own property in their own right outside
of marriage or in marriage. And so it was really an
extraordinary thing for her to organize this group which we now know as the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. That is the name of our corporation, we're completely private,
we're not a national park, we're owned by this private group. The board is still the
Mount Vernon ladies. There's one lady per state
but not from every state. Our current regent right now is the vice regent from
Pennsylvania, Sarah Coulson, and their leadership has been crucial to maintaining this place for 160 years, since we first opened it up to guests, so this is our 160th year in 2020. I'd prefer a different year. As of right now, it's
looking pretty challenging but we're gonna get through it and we're gonna last another 160 years. We're built to last. Our mission is to maintain this place and to teach people all over the world. One final thing I'll say is
that the Ladies' Association has expanded its role as
a cultural institution and as an educational institution. Since 1860, we've had
about 90 million visitors to Mount Vernon under the operation of Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Last year, we had over a million visitors, 350,000 school kids. But beginning in the 1990s, we really expanded our
education efforts on the estate. We built a pioneer farm to show practices of 18th century agriculture
since George Washington was an innovative agriculture reformist. We built for instance an
example of his 16-sided barn which he designed when he was president. A barn that's really designed
to maximize the efficiency of threshing your wheat
so you can put the wheat and have it run on by
horses that run around and then the little wheat seeds fall through the floor to the bottom and it's the first separation
of the wheat from the shaft which then happens by hand. Really an extraordinary
remarkable building. We acquired George
Washington's original gristmill which was rebuilt in the 1930s and now restored it to be
a functioning gristmill which you can visit when we reopen and you can see it online. We also then began a
process of teaching teachers from all over the country, what we call our Teacher Institute. Now, we bring 160 teachers
a year to Mount Vernon to learn about best practices and how to teach the founding,
how to teach slavery, how to teach objects, how
to teach primary sources. A lot of these resources are
online as I mentioned earlier. And then, of course, we opened the museum and education center, our two museums really in
2006 with movies and 4D movies where it snows on you when
you cross the Delaware with George Washington
even 100 degrees in August. And then on the heels of that, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association said "Well, what we need now is a good drink," so they started distilling
whiskey in 2007, 2008 when we reopened George
Washington's distillery. Did you know, and I bet you didn't, that he was the largest
distiller of whiskey anywhere in the country that we can find in 1799? Produced 11,000 gallons and
we produce whiskey right now from his reconstructed distillery which is based on the
exact archeology footprint of the original and then
on the heels of that, the Ladies' Association weren't done. We opened the first Presidential Library for George Washington in 2013. It was my great honor to
be the founding director of that library. I came down from Binghamton University where I was a professor of history to become the first
director of that library before I took on this role as CEO. And let me tell you, that library has really made us a
powerhouse of research as we've invested in scholarship, we've invested in making
sure our own archives are in great order and
we've invested in education and a lot of these digital
items you see out there are only possible because of the expertise that the library has
allowed us to marshal. So it's a great place
and an extensive place that has changed through the years, all driven by the leadership of an extraordinary group of women. - [Matt] Do you want more questions, Doug? - More questions. - [Matt] Scott asked, "Are
there plans in the future "to stream a tour of the mansion?" - Scott asks, "Are there
plans in the future "to stream a tour of the mansion?" On Monday, we're gonna start doing that and every Monday, we're
gonna have Mansion Mondays and we're gonna look at individual rooms and take our time. We have time, we have all the time that we can count right now, so we wanna make sure we
give justice to the work our curators have done
to tell great stories as if you are going through the mansion. Now in the meantime, if
you're really hankering, you gotta get something, make sure you go to the
MountVernon.org/digitalpage where you can find our virtual tour and you yourself can virtually go through. One of these days, we'll
have a headset you can wear and walk around the
mansion virtually as well but this is the next best thing to that and then we've all often
said it's the next best thing to actually coming to Mount Vernon. So enjoy all the resources
the virtual tour. Matt, I have to scratch my nose, so everybody look away for a second. (sniffs and clears throat) Don't worry, I'll wash
before I go anywhere. - [Matt] Beau wanted to know, "How much did it cost
to build the mansion?" - Beau asked a really difficult question and a great question
about how much it cost to build the mansion. We don't know, we don't
have numbers for that. It cost a lot in labor and time and cash. And Washington had to do it
over a long period of time. So his first changes were in the 1750s. Some of the changes he did in the 1750s was really to beautify it because he was about to marry a woman who was much wealthier than him who was used to living
with finer things than him. So he redoes the interior
of the central passage to make it look very nice. He also puts in this extraordinary balcony made out of mahogany, I mean, not balcony, a banister, railing for
the stairs, balcony. So a railing made out of a
beautiful piece of mahogany. That was expensive in and of itself and so he puts the amount of money he can put in it when he can
and you could clearly see, he's got plans for its future. Some people often have asked me, well, it's good thing that the British didn't burn Mount Vernon during the American Revolutionary War when in fact there was a
chance that they might have. There was a obviously, the
British controlled the waves in the 18th century and they controlled much of the sea power
for most of the story including ships right
out here on the Potomac and threatened to burn Mount Vernon. But in fact, at the time,
George Washington's nephew, Lund Washington or maybe
his cousin, his cousin, he was managing the estate, he made a deal with the British captain to give provision to the crew so that they wouldn't destroy the estate and George Washington was furious at this. He was furious at it because
it was a PR disaster, first of all. It's like here, people are suffering and here I am making a special side deal so that my house doesn't get burnt down and giving aid and comfort
to the enemy, even worse. But I think, he also was furious because he wanted to
build a mansion in brick. He wanted to build it in stone but he never had the money to
just raise it and start over, but if it was burnt down
during the American Revolution, I guarantee you, Congress
would have paid for him to build the house of his dreams and that would be the house
we'd be looking at today. So God knows how much it costs. That's a good question for
our future intrepid researcher right here into the Washington Library. - [Matt] So Doug, our Teacher
Institute wants to know "What is something you want all students "to know about Washington?" - But when you think about
why does Washington matter, I mean, I think, we're
living through a moment when it's as relevant
as ever to think about what we can do to serve our communities. George Washington was a man who thought about public service and stepped up in moments when other
people didn't wanna step up. He didn't wanna step up. He was a reluctant leader. He was brought, he had other ambitions than becoming the president of the United States, for instance. He wanted to be an agriculturalist, that's where his heart was
but the community needed him and he stepped up, but I think, a great lesson that we can
learn as the idea of virtue that Washington lived in. For Washington, virtue meant service in the cause of the community. Disinterested service, so selflessness in the cause of someone else. This is a moment where
that message is important and it's in our DNA. Our nation is based on sacrifices that people have made every generation so that other people could live and other people could live a better life. It's a fundamental part. The only way that democracy can work, it needs these kinds of sacrifices, it needs people willing
to serve the public. And, of course, we see it all today. We see it in all the people in uniform. We're seeing it with the
folks who are rushing in and taking care of people
in the hospitals right now. I mean, that sense of public virtue is a lesson I hope that will carry through to all school kids. And so that's a good one
to focus on right now. - [Matt] Laurel wants to know, "Has George Washington ever faced a crisis "as big as the pandemic is today?" - That's a good question. Has George Washington never
faced a crisis as big? George Washington never
faced a crisis like this. All crises have their different dynamics but he definitely faced
a crisis as big as this. I mean, the American Revolutionary War was a war that lasted for eight years in which they fought on against
tremendous odds all alone. The crisis of independence,
of winning the peace after American independence
was probably even harder. We've seen so many
Republics that have failed once they gained their independence, failed to maintain the rule of law, failed to establish lasting institutions, the effort to create the Constitution and then to give, breath
it life, give life to it as he did through his presidency. That was a tremendous crisis. The economy of the United
States was decimated after the American Revolution. There was no money circulating. There were no markets for
people to sell anything. And what they needed was confidence and they need an institution
building to make it happen and George Washington, again, stepped up with other leaders to
try to make that happen and ultimately, it always depended upon the resilience of the people. We are a democracy that
depends upon popular opinion and popular action. And so individual leaders
themselves are crucial, but always there's a
dynamic of a give-and-take, of the followers and the led, and the leaders listening to the followers and the followers acting, and that's the democratic model. It's been messy and
challenging and chaotic and it's a challenge to lead Americans. George Washington would say
that as much as anybody, Americans are notorious
independent-minded people who wanna do their own thing. When he was trying to run
the government as president, he's dealing with a population that had just fought a big revolution because they didn't wanna pay their taxes. I mean, this is a really
intractable problem to lead but what it requires is it
requires all of us essentially. It requires all of us to get
together and work together. So Washington lived
through harrowing times, certainly as harrowing
as we have right now and we will get through this as well. - [Matt] Adam wants to know, "Any thoughts about Washington's response "to the yellow fever in 1793?" - Good question, Adam. On the yellow fever in
1793 which swept through, well, Philadelphia and a
lot of other urban areas, yellow fever is a
mosquito-borne but at the time, they thought it came from the
ground or came from bad air. It wasn't really clear. I mean, in Washington's
era, they had no sense of diseases or germs or viruses. Even in the Spanish flu, the
notion of a virus didn't exist. They still were trying to
figure out if it was bad air or what it was that caused this. So the yellow fever epidemic
was scary and devastating. The population of Philadelphia at the time was about 30,000, 5,000 people died. Think about that death rate in the context of a human being struggling
with fear and uncertainty. Washington had to move the
Congress out of the Capitol, first to Germantown, and I think, they went even further afield after that or they recessed early and George Washington
came back to Mount Vernon. So the yellow fever
epidemic was a brutal thing. Now, interestingly, John
Adams would later write that the yellow fever epidemic in 1793 was the only thing that saved the country from having a political revolution because that was a moment
of high partisanship, when people were fighting
over the French Revolution, whether it was a good thing
and whether it's a bad thing, whether Americans should be
on the side of the French or on the side of all
the princes of Europe, whether there were people in the country that wanted to tear down the
new institutions of government and create a French-style republic and it was really dangerous. There were people marching in the streets. It was a time of high passion,
high political passion. The yellow fever epidemic came and everybody left and
the conversation changed. So it is interesting to see but we don't know what's
gonna happen next week, next year, and like Washington, we have to make decisions
based on the best that we know and the best we can at the time. - [Matt] Shawna wants to know, "Do we know any George Washington made, "wanted to make estate but
didn't get a chance to do?" Things he didn't get to do? - Oh, questions that George Washington didn't get a chance to
do here at Mount Vernon. Yeah, I mean this is a really
good and challenging question. One of the things he always wanted to do was to get his western lands profitable. He had Mount Vernon here, here in Virginia on the Potomac, but he had been acquiring land out what for him was the Far West in his time, all the way back to the
French and Indian War, he'd been acquiring land
because of his service there, the colony of Virginia
provided land bounties and he had purchased land as well because he thought that's
the future of the country. People are moving west. This land he had there
will appreciate in value as people move out there. He had a gristmill on the Potomac that was much further west from here, he had rental properties and
these never really played out for him the way he wanted. And in fact, in the last
two years of his life, he was making plans to start
try to figure out a way to make them more
profitable or to sell them. I think, the bigger issue though and one that's probably most controversial is what was he gonna do about slavery in his time if anything? Now, we know that George Washington is already saying in the 1780s. It's recorded that he's
having conversations in which he's saying that
he hopes that slavery will be ended by legislation, that he wants to try not to ever have to sell a man and a woman again. He's never gonna purchase
any more slaves again if he can help it and then he thinks the institution needs
to go but it needs to go through a legislative process. When he's in the 1790s,
when he's president, he's president of a country
that has a constitution that was based on a deal
between slave owners and non-slave owners
to assure that slavery wouldn't be an issue of
the federal government where it existed in his time. And so the issues that are
gonna come with slavery, that's going to ultimately
divide the union are actually about what
happens in the territories. Remember the the country
is really gonna split on what happens to slavery
on the later territories. That's not really an issue
in Washington's time yet because they don't have
laid their territories yet making those decisions. So the slavery question is one that he's dealing with
personally in the 1790s. He actually, he draws a beautiful map and survey of the Mount Vernon estates is the one that shows everything he had. He prepared this to send two Englishmen and English agriculturalists with a plan whereby he was hoping he could attract English
tenants that would come and take control of his outer properties and possibly figure out a way to free his enslaved people
gradually as tenant farmers or sharecroppers or
apprentices on that land. It's not dissimilar for
what the West Indies ultimately does in the 1830s
when they emancipate slaves in West Indies in sort of gradual process. Now, Washington didn't get any takers and he never was able to put
any of those plans in place. So whether he would've continued
trying to do that or not, we just don't know, he died. What we do know is he had a will in which he freed all the
slaves that he owned personally at the time of Martha's death, but that was guaranteed in the will, he also provided pensions for them and training for younger
formerly enslaved people. The great tragedy though, of course, is he couldn't figure out how to stop from separating families ultimately, because he didn't control all the slaves that lived in Mount Vernon. They were owned by the
estate of the Custis family. Martha Washington had a dower's right, meaning a lifetime
right to use their labor but once she passed away, the right went to the Custis heirs, and because of that and
because they had intermarried with people in George
Washington's ownership, there was a tragic separation of families even with the freeing of the 150 odd that George Washington freed, both here and an estate he
owned on the York River. So that's one of things, I think, he wanted to figure out that he never, he didn't live long enough to do. - [Matt] So Doug, Jack wants to know, "What do you think Washington would say "to his fellow citizens
in this current crisis?" - Jack wants to know
what Washington would say to his fellow citizens
in this current crisis. I think, he would say, "Our
cause is a noble cause, "it's the cause of all mankind." It's a quote that he said often times in talking about the cause of liberty. In this case, we really are in it together all over the world in fighting this thing and that's a thing that George
Washington would emphasize. He also would emphasize patience and fortitude and sacrifice. Patience in the idea that
we all have to be humble in the way that we walk forward in a time when you can't control events and you're doing the best you can. Patience with our leaders, patience with our friends, our colleagues as we work towards this. Perseverance and resilience,
always, always a message that he would emphasize in his time. And he'd rally the people to
it and he would never give up. And Washington would
do that by his example as much as with his words. The thing about Washington,
think about him as a leader. One of the things is he showed up. He showed up when he was called, and he was there when he was needed. He was always with his troops, through eight years of
the war, he was there. There's no other general
in the 18th century who went on an eight-year campaign that spent all their
time with their troops without taking a furlough,
without taking some time away, without wintering
somewhere more comfortable. That was what was typical
amongst European armies. Washington was there at Valley Forge, at Morristown, in Jockey
Hollow, on the Hudson River. He was with everybody throughout the thing and I think, that that
shows the perseverance and the character of the
man and that's in all of us, is our inheritance. He's the father of our country. Those are things we all can
draw in any challenging time. - [Matt] Kathy wants to know, "How did George Washington decompress "while President during
these trying times?" - Good question, how did
George Washington decompress during trying times? Well, he came to Mount
Vernon to decompress. He didn't have a Camp David at the time when he was president, and so he would take
essentially vacations. Now, he had work to do here as well but he was back amongst
his family and friends, he's back amongst his local community. He stopped the fox hunting which was one of his great pleasures and pastimes around about
the time he became president, partly had to do is with his own health, but also had to do with time. He always enjoyed the land,
he always enjoyed agriculture. His pleasure reading would
be the latest treaties on farming or the Farmers' Almanac or I mean, he really lived
and breathed living things. How to design better crop rotation so that they would be effective? This is really what got his, it would brought down his
temper and irritability. It was a chance for
himself to work through some of these problems. It's interesting because
he entertained a lot and it's clear he didn't
like to entertain. He's not the guy who would have
been the life of the party. I mean, partly 'cause
everybody wants a piece of him for some reason and
they want him to perform and they want to know anecdotes, "General, will you favor
us with an anecdote "of the wartime period." He's not gonna make a joke,
he's not gonna do that. And so in fact what we do see here, a lot of sour complaints about Washington at the dinner table or sitting in a room when everybody's having a
glass of wine after dinner. The general always seems a
little aloof, standoffish, quiet. He only talked about
things like agriculture and not about battles or
politics or stuff like that. So I think we get a real
sense of the man's personality through these kinds of descriptions, but you gotta also remember,
in Washington's defense, he was, I think, naturally taciturn and quiet and didn't like
to show off in public partly 'cause he was insecure
about his own education but also because he
was humble and he liked to listen to people and observe people, but also towards the end of
his life, he's got these teeth. He got no teeth in his mouth and it's painful for
him to have to show that and reveal that kind of frailty. And so I think, he feels
better off just staying silent. There's also that great old adage, "It's better to stay silent
and be thought a fool "than to open your mouth and
to prove everyone right." And so clearly that's
not a problem I have. I've been talking nonstop but Washington was a much more humble man than I am so. - [Matt] Doug, Joe wants to know, "I know things are still very fluid "but when do you think Mount
Vernon will open again?" - That's a good question from Joe. Things are very fluid, when
might Mount Vernon open again? It's a really good question and we're not prepared to
pick a date at this time. We certainly can't predict the future any better than anybody else. And so we are gonna stay responsive. It changed day by day last week. I mean, if you would ask
me Tuesday last week, "Do you think you're gonna need to close?" I would have said, "No, probably not. "We might see a fall-off and visitation "and we'll practice
some social distancing. "We'll maybe cancel some events." But by Wednesday, it was clear
we're gonna need to close and by Friday, it was clear that we needed to keep all staff away, let alone close. And so it's a moving target and we're gonna keep our eye on it and listen to what the CDC recommends, listen to what Fairfax County
health officials recommend and be a good player and a good part of the community in this. Any questions there, Matt? Or is it time to to say farewell? - [Matt] It's time to wrap up, Doug. - Well, I've got a few other
things to get back to you as you might imagine. I really appreciate you
spending time with me. You can always ask any other questions, just shoot 'em in to the
link that you'll find with this video and and spread the word. Mount Vernon's live every day, well, every weekday, Monday
through Friday at noon with a new conversation and luckily, for you a new face to look at too. So thank you so much and I'll
see you soon in Mount Vernon.
