LIVE in the Washington Library!

residential library now we spent some time here i think maybe a couple weeks ago talking a little bit about george washington uh and i showed you some of the books in the in the big reading room out there and now we've got a special opportunity to explore the rare books sweet rare books and manning street this is the john and adrian mars rare book manuscript suite that we're in and i'm starting our conversation in front of an iconic portrait of the great man himself george washington by rembrandt peale now you'll remember from our earlier conversations that the peel family were great painters of george washington his earliest portrait done in 1772 was by charles wilson peel who is the father of rembrandt peel and rember appeal knew george washington in life and sketched him in life but this painting was actually done in the 1850s it's the so-called porthole portrait of george washington and rembrandt peale himself was trying to make the perfect likeness of the man that's what he described it as and he studied the udon bust and he studied his father's paintings and he had his own sketches from life as well and he created this portal portrait he created a number of them you know about 20 or so portraits like this over the course of his life and also big large-scale portraits that a beautiful rem ram peel portrait of george washington at the battle of princeton which shows poor general mercer getting banned headed to death in the foreground and washington's kind of pointing off in the distance it's a great leadership portrait and now is hanging actually uh in the national gallery uh down in in dc it was at the cochran for many many years and if you go on and google up the uh rembrandt peel george washington at princeton portrait you'll see that and you can see that the head of george washington in that portrait is essentially the one you're going to get here in the porthole portrait of george washington now it's called the porthole portrait for obvious reasons uh the shape of the the the painted in frame that you'll see this is a painting that you often see in american iconography of paintings because one is hanging in the oval office in fact there during the obama administration it's also there during the trump administration each president in the white house hangs a washington portrait in the in the oval office and i don't know when the rembrandt peale um uh got in there if it was obama or if it was there before during the bush presidency that's a good trivia question for thursday night that i won't get correct but uh but this one uh is there now the portal portrait so you often see the president in front of the portal portrait but the thing that's great about the one we own here at mount vernon is that it has the original frame that was designed by peel for this portrait and it's rich with the symbolism of republican iconography small r republicanism which defines what american liberty and notions of republicanism are about so you can see the beautiful gilded wood frame here uh which frames this portrait so first off it's it's it's george washington looking his best i kind of call this the soap opera portrait of george washington you know it's the uh it's the beautiful man in this case uh a little bit romanticized by this is a 19th century portrait done in the 1850s this one uh the frame as you'll see the main bulk of the frame are these uh fashions right so the bundle of sticks wrap sticks which represents civil authority going back to the roman republic uh and so uh civil and sovereign power sticks very common iconography in in early republican and early federal design you'll see it in frames of course you'll see it in um in door surrounds in molding you'll see it in uh in all sorts of different uh you know chairs uh iconography of the early republic and then of course you also have the the oak leaves and acorns the oak leaves and acorns represent ancient virtue right virtue which is the the notion that uh public servants are at their best when they're serving the common good rather than their own private interests that's the virtuous man that's the really the ideal that george washington held up for himself and a lot of the early leadership of the of the founding era that was the ideal that they were striving to project now obviously there was plenty of corruption and finality and horrible behavior in the founding but in that sense it is a symbolic representation of what they expected their public servants to be about now this doesn't always remain the case i mean in the 19th century you know when democracy is really in its full uh flourish the idea that representatives are competitive fighting over the interest of their representatives uh or their districts you know that's more an acceptable ideal of what a good politician is supposed to do they're supposed to deliver for other constituents in washington's era it's that's that's verboten you're not there to represent your constituents you're you're there as the wisest man from that community to do the right thing for the common good it's a very different ideal about what representational government means and it's embedded into the iconography of this frame because george washington was the ultimate virtuous citizen the man who stood above it all always served the common good and always represented that idea of self-interest in self-disinterestedness uh virtuousness okay and then also of course it's crowned with the laurel wreath representing heroic uh glory in this case george washington is the great symbol of the american revolutionary war he's depicted here in his military uniform so even though it's painted in the 1850s they're depicting george washington as the military figure in this portal portrait pl has other portraits where washington is in civilian clothes and this one i think crowned with laurels of glory george washington it's an incredible portrait when you think of all the symbolism embedded into it and the work that peele did one final note on the peels they painted george washington a lot he was a very important part of their own business making enterprise you know portraits of george washington were popular they were able to produce them in fact gilbert stewart complained about the peels when he heard about this one of the sittings that uh charles wilson peel orchestrated to have not only charles wilson peeled their rembrandt pier appeal uh uh titian peel because charles wilson field named all his sons after great painters and they became painters um rembrandt peltician peele james peel uh we're all there and um and painting george washington sketching him from life and famously gilbert stewart said well if george washington is not careful he'll be peeled entirely it's a pun see that's funny that's good i'm getting no audience response from matt or anybody so hopefully you're laughing along at home with that okay so we're here to actually look at some of the great stuff we keep in these rooms this is the reading room that we're in and you'll get a sense of it as i walk around if you were here to do research in the in at mount vernon this is the rare books in manuscripts room so let me come around here where you would be looking at some of our incredible collections under the watchful eye of librarian if you're working here in this room now one of the great collections we have in mount vernon is the archives of the mount vernon ladies association themselves this is an archive which goes back to be really before the 1850s when the ladies association first organized uh to save mount vernon to save george washington's home and make it available for people and as you know as i i've talked to you earlier this is the 160th year that we've been under operation open for guests so it's really a remarkable story and it's incredible continuity an archive of women's leadership which goes back to the 1850s it's incredibly rare in that sense and it's an ongoing living archive that is to say we're generating new materials for all the time now we distinguish operationally here between our historic archives which are organized and kept in the library and our operational archives which are in a period of transitioning into historical archives over time and so that that is an exciting project and really this building as you'll remember was created in 2013 and so it was the presidential library for george washington and one of the first projects that we really started working on was getting the archives of the mont vernon ladies association in better organizational control digitizing a lot of it and that's an ongoing project that we're still working on and so i just wanted to bring out a representative example of some of the incredible things that you can find in that archive and in this case i decided i wanted to connect it with one of the the first ladies linda byrd johnson and her relationship with mount vernon and also speaks to the leadership of the mount vernon ladies association uh in historic preservation and conservation and right here i have laid out for us a couple things one is a picture of lady bird johnson at mount vernon from may of 1965 and one is a letter that she wrote to eunice holderness who was the vice regent from missouri and tennessee from march 19 uh 1965. now in the 60s the mount vernon ladies association had been working to preserve the view shed across the river and they've been had great letter writing campaigns all over the country to make sure that the view remained pristine and not covered with development which was obviously growing the suburbs are growing rapidly in the post-world war ii years and particularly the pressure on the outskirts of dc made it so that the view across the river from george washington's home was in great danger now here in this case lady bird johnson is writing to mrs holderness in which she thanks uh thanks the ladies association for their work and let me just quote a little bit about this our nation has been blessed with a rich scenic heritage and as our civilization grows it is up to all of us to have the wisdom to preserve nature's corners of beauty and channel our growth in ways that enhance and do not diminish our natural surroundings i think that's the whole notion of why smart growth the idea of conservation and preservation are actually quite interwoven uh that the the natural landscape is a powerful cultural um resource for all of us to share and so when we can as a community as a state as a nation when we can agree that there are certain aspects of our natural surroundings that need to be protected and preserved we need to be careful that we develop in that way and obviously president johnson had a major program of conserving the environment and was early in the environmental movement and the melbourne ladies association were seen as themselves uh real pioneers in this work in fact the view shed is preserved and was preserved early on as a combination of agreements and partnerships private and public between both local authorities state authorities national authorities and then private landowners themselves in fact the conservation easement is one way that they preserve that view in which a private landowner would agree not to destroy trees and not to destroy not to build beyond a certain level in order to preserve the viewshed in addition to a national park the piscataway national park which was created by the american people to help preserve the view in the early 1960s so this is a letter that's in our archives from the first lady to the ladies association expressing uh her support for their leadership the other thing lady bird johnson loved about mount vernon was the gardens and we've seen some of the glorious gardens this time of year in particular they're at another peak actually the peonies are blooming and smelling gorgeous right now and here's a picture of her visiting mount vernon in may of of of 1965 in which she delivers a bouquet of magnolia flowers to the ladies association she also appeared on a show with uh uh on abc news from 1966 uh in which she received actually a um a peabody emmy a uh george foster peabody emmy award for the program and that was her visit to a a a visit to washington with mrs lyndon b johnson on behalf of a more beautiful america so celebrating this notion of conservation and beauty in the gardens of mount vernon uh won an emmy award for the first lady here's a trivia piece for you how many other presidents or first ladies won emmy awards i'll let you mull on that while we we float over to see some of the other great things we have in the in the archives here any questions yet matt about the ladies association archives we'll get into the historical collection people would like to know uh how does one is it possible to tour the library yes so touring the library during our closure period obviously is impossible we are still the great state of mount vernon is closed and the library is closed and uh it's not at all clear when we'll be able to provide tours again of these incredible spaces uh we also uh and to do that you typically would just write an email to the library and we would try to work out a schedule that works for everybody it isn't part of the normal ticketing process of mount vernon and so we tend to do those tours more on an ad hoc basis there has been in the past some paid vip tours of the building we do have open houses of the library uh during the free day george washington's birthday and so who knows when we'll be able to tour again i think it's going to be a long time because obviously we want to do our part to keep the chances of community spread of the covus viral virus down and having folks in these enclosed spaces is not really the best way to do that so uh in normal times uh you also could do research here if you had a legitimate research agenda that was approved by our research staff here in the library you could come and work in some of our archives so if you were writing a project it could be just for a high school paper i mean as long as it's a legitimate research project that we feel is not just you wanting to have some fun and there's a reason for you to get access to the actual documents uh we can make those available but of course we're also digitizing a lot of our materials here and you can go online and explore some of the archives i know that matt will drop the link into this live feed but essentially you go on the washington library web page and look at our digital collections here at the washington library okay so let's move on to one of our earliest items that we have and really one of the most powerful i think uh somewhat symbolic uh more than uh research potential in it but what it is is the commission of lawrence washington in the british army a king's royal commission to lawrence um which he received on june 9th 1740 that's the commission of lawrence washington as a captain in the provincial forces uh serving under admiral edward vernon in the cartagena campaign 1740. so you all of course great um students of history know about the war of jenkins ear don't you war of jenkins here so jenkins was a lieutenant of a british naval vessel which had he had had his ear cut off by the spanish in the caribbean actually years before the war broke out um but the british uh there were some british interests in parliament who really wanted to go to the war with the spanish they actually thought uh taking over the spanish maine was a potential growth area for the british empire and humbling the spanish in that area uh and they hadn't been to war in a long time the walpole administration actually had kept the peace as it was important for british trade uh but at any rate uh poor jenkins ear gets waved around the bloody year in parliament and uh and creates a momentum for this war this war is interesting from the perspective of the colonial period in america because it's really the first time the colonies are asked um to participate in uh in expeditionary forces that the british are putting together there's one created that goes on to attack fort lewisburg in nova scotia uh in new england and then there's one created in the southern colonies of which lawrence gets a commission that goes to attack the spanish maine in this case under uh admiral edward vernon and of course lawrence himself who gains this commission uh becomes a royal officer goes as part of this expeditionary provincial troop of largely virginians but also some others as well and they never really see uh active duty a lot of them are stay on the ship and many of them get sick and die in fact from yellow fever from malaria from other diseases and the fiasco of uh the cartagena campaign is in fact a great defeat for the british but nevertheless uh this impact had a huge uh influence on on lawrence washington's own understanding of himself of the british empire and also therefore on uh his uh young stepbrother george washington who was corresponding with lawrence while this was happening and also lawrence of course had that royal commission that george washington would never get even though washington would sort of step into his footsteps in the military line here in the colony of virginia at the time and also it gives mount vernon its name uh this famous name that we associate with america an american identity going back to george washington was actually the name of a british admiral uh a british admiral who lost a battle and so mount vernon had been known as little hunting creek plantation before that uh and lawrence washington named it after edward vernon but this is an incredible commission because you have the king's seal here still on the document it's a beautiful document of great historic significance and you know some good questions want to know like uh how do you how do we acquire documents like this right so good question so how do we build our collection here at melbourne so the ladies association acquired mount vernon in 1858 uh they really took possession and made it open to the public by 1860 after doing some work on it but there was nothing here they didn't get anything with the house other than a few important items very important items the key to the bastille the udon bust of george washington some fire buckets that george washington had as well as a few other items and and so everything you're going to see in this library everything you see when you visit the museum or the mansion here at mount vernon was acquired since then it was acquired in a lot of different ways oftentimes by gift gift of people who had inherited it oftentimes by sale where it would be a private sale between the owner and the mount vernon ladies association uh and so the library collection really starts being developed around the turn of the century when the first books of george washington start to come back to mount vernon at the turn of the last century 2010th century um and so it the library here has existed uh you know and grown basically in the early 20th century mount vernon established a library in the 1920s which had some of george washington's books but then other books that were going to be helpful to staff to do research here and that um private home library sort of grew over time really from the 1920s until uh until uh the early early 21st century uh when the move to start creating this presidential library began in earnest around 2007 2008 uh and so what do we do to acquire things well so we have uh some monies and an endowment that we can draw on we we acquire manuscripts related to george washington's era as a first priority particularly george washington and martha washington letters also books that he owned or if not the actual book he owned then duplicate editions which i'll talk about in a moment uh when we get back into the library and then also um you know other things related to the period again we love it when people give us items uh gifting to a non-profit educational institution is a great legacy you can leave to posterity because these items if they're in private hands can oftentimes be damaged or lost uh uh you know with all the best of intentions and then also they're not available for scholars so we have a you know part of our development efforts here are to get folks connect with folks who have great collections of george washington papers and manuscripts and try to bring them home to mount vernon but we also are active with auctions we're active with dealers and rare books and manuscripts and we're always trying to grow the collections in that sustainable way as we go forward and i'll talk about some of the great acquisitions we've had as we go through the library a little bit well including ones right here so this is um this is indicative of one of the most important gifts that mount vernon has ever received and really we only finalized this gift in the last year that's from from richard h brown and richard is an extraordinary collector of maps and maps from the revolutionary and french and indeed war era so perfectly in the period of george washington's military career and it's an incredible collection of all the most important maps from that era including many of which are manuscript maps unknown maps uh you know maps that were there's only one copy of because it's in manuscript uh and and maps you can't see others of so for instance uh we have a number of maps that lafayette had had made before he came to north america still wrapped in the original linen maps that were used in the field uh during the american revolution some of the first uh drawings of uh the scene of battle uh in new york we have incredible views views of bunker hill a week before the battle of bunker hill um beautiful watercolor so explore the richard brown map collection on our webpage here at mount vernon and and know that this is really a body of maps that are as significant as any collection of revolutionary war maps that exist and also represents the bulk in that in that collection you'll almost have an example of a map that george washington owned he owned a massive collection of maps when he died most of those are now at yale university but in richard brown's collection you can see duplicate editions of pretty much every map that washington uh would have had in addition to maps that are one of a kind like a a manuscript map that the market marquis of chattaloo owned so we'll talk about a little bit which showed the approaches to um to manhattan during the revolutionary war so what do we have here today what we brought out for you here is a particularly beautiful hand-colored uh map of the plan of the attack of fort sullivan near charlestown south carolina by a squadron of his majesty ships on the 28th of june 1776 and it shows the disposition of the king's land forces the encampments and the entrenchments of the rebels from the drawings made on the spot this is engraved by william faden in london in 1776 so this is a great example of the news that londoners would have been getting about the scene of battle in north america during the american revolutionary war now you all may know so this was an effort by the british to take charleston which is the fourth largest city in north america at the time and probably the second wealthiest city powered by the uh rice trade which is a crucial trade to for the british at that time uh and in this map it really shows what's so great about these 18th century battle maps is they they show the scene of the action they tell a narrative of the story of the battle itself now this battle didn't last that long and it was sort of a you know an effort early on in the war so this is june 1776 this is about two weeks before the declaration of independence has been has been uh finalized in philadelphia uh so that hasn't happened yet it's you know the war that's being fought is still the kind of rebellious colonies uh versus the kings and the parliament's forces and people aren't yet clear exactly what the stakes are and in south carolina and the british for a long time believed the south of the americas was a hotbed of loyalism and that really all they needed to do was show up and that the loyalists would rally to the king's cause in reality it didn't work out quite that way and it wasn't until 1780 actually uh that the british raver captured charleston and that way they had to do it with a really aggressive lamb siege overland after they'd already captured savannah so in this case they kind of have this naive view that they can sort of just sail into the harbor but the harbor of south carolina is very complicated with lots of shoals lots of short you know a lot of very little area for people who aren't familiar with it for ships uh sea going vessels to be able to get close and the uh patriots in south carolina had built a fort named at the time fort sullivan it's on sullivan's island which is a great beach in charleston if you ever go down there sullivan's island fort and it was built with palmetto trees and and uh palmettos you know got a little palm trees palmettos are very uh soft wood uh and the british thought actually that one you know one barrage of this battery uh would destroy it that it looked like this motley you know collection of random trees and sand thrown up it didn't look like a very formidable battle battery itself so they fired into it and then they couldn't understand why even when they had exploding canisters exploding bombs that are intended to burn forts it wouldn't catch fire because it was sand basically and also the palmetto trees kind of absorbed the shock of the uh of the of the bombardment so in fact they would either bounce off or they would just embed into this soft fort and as the british came in closer three of their ships got stuck on on on small shoals and couldn't get off for a long time and also they had to kind of run around there was an effort to create a a land bridge of vessels that would allow 2 000 troops to attack on the land side and they were held off by provincial forces as well in their barrage of musket fire so it was a disastrous battle not a hundred people lost their lives on the british side only about 12 or so on the on the patriot side so not incredibly bloody by modern standards um but devastating the british lost one ship and it really put them off being able to to take charleston a huge boost for um for a patriot authority in charleston and in south carolina and in the south which very quickly degenerated into the back country in a really bitter civil war between the two factions of of loyalists and uh and it would be very difficult for the british ever to really contain and control there but it's a gorgeous map as matt has taken you through it they're really special to see uh you know the uh the scale of the battle in that small little fort on sullivan's island ultimately that fort becomes named for moultrie after uh general moultrie who was in command william moultrie goes on to become governor of south carolina he becomes the correspondent of george washington uh and of course uh well known the other thing about this battle is it shapes a lot of the early identity of the new republic of south carolina ultimately uh carolina's flag is basically an homage to this battle so that beautiful blue uh flag represents the blue of the patriots uniforms uh the palmetto tree is featured right on the flag and then the crescent moon which was a symbol worn on the hats of the south carolina regiment that fought in this battle so that flag is uh you know wouldn't exist without the successes of sullivan's island and so it's really remarkable to think about you know where our symbols of community come from and that becomes the representative flag of south carolina all right now we're going to go into a special place here now i kept the door open for ease of access but in fact this is a secret room this is the great manuscript room at mount vernon uh as matt gets himself situated he'll be able to come closer and you'll be able to get a sense of this so this manuscript room all around you see boxes uh you know proper library manuscript boxes inside of these are letters from george washington or to george washington from people over the world also letters from martha washington also letters and the collection of bushrod washington's papers he was a supreme court justice for over uh well he died in 1829 we know when he died and so he was a supreme court justice for over 30 years actually on the marshall court um you know so very important justice himself uh and owner of mount vernon after uh the passing of george washington and martha washington and so i brought out a selection really of some of the character of this contents focusing on george and martha washington here uh and i you know this is sort of uh a great highlights tour of what we have in the vault here in mount vernon special collection and i'm going to start with this piece right up front um i see i'm walking a little out of screen here but matt's going to pull it up for you uh this is a survey and plan done by george washington for james hamilton to november 1749. now you're doing the math in your head i can see at home 1749 done by george washington this survey that means that he is what he was born in 1732 so 1749 he's 17 years old here when he becomes the surveyor of culpepper county that's an official post he got his certificate at the college of william and mary to be a surveyor encouraged by his brother encouraged by his brother's father-in-law the fairfaxes colonel william fairfaxes encouraged by the fairfaxes uh generally and here he is a 17 year old man uh with this official government post as a surveyor he gets to earn money on this and this is called pepper county this is what is basically the western part of virginia at the time so he's surveying land that's going from wilderness land into these ordered pieces of property that are so crucial for the development of virginia surveying is one of the professions that a gentleman could do in virginia and still be considered a gentleman it's uh obviously there is labor involved in it but it's not considered to be a a a laboring profession or even a profession in trade surveying the land is is one of the most important valuable things in virginia and this is a crucial function of the governance of the province of virginia going back into the 17th century it's a beautiful survey you know surveys a lot of the surveys that exist today are only the word portion so the left side of your document there it's actually a description of the meats and bounds of a particular piece of property you know from this creek to this tree to this stone to that stone measuring so many uh rods and and distances uh it you know represents the uh the property in words and so many times these plats which accompany them don't don't exist anymore we're separated at some time so this is an incredible survivor of washington's early surveyorship something from when he's 17 years old and you also can see his signature here where washington scc says washington surveyor culpepper county is how he signs this and uh i think he incorporates the george kind of into the loop-de-loops that are in the big w there washington himself you know is obsessed with his signature i would submit to you this is a beautiful example um you know this was an official document so he would have taken his time to produce this it's sort of a little a work of art you know his uh cartouche on the map which matt'll show you a moment when he's done fuzzing around with stuff over there uh yeah see that little uh this little compass dial he puts in there this is all hand done by george washington uh here you have the 17 year old washington showing his his expertise showing off a little bit with the quality of his workmanship here clearly proud of it now that signature is going to change you know and as we look at some of these other documents you'll get to see what has become the more iconic george washington signature but you know he's a guy who would have sat down and wrote out his name until he found a signature that he really loved and we see a real change in george washington's signature from these early years into his mid-20s as he's serving in the french and indian war he starts to develop something more and more like what we know is his now the next item i want to uh represent here and i'll take some questions about some of these items but this is really one of the most important documents in our collection it's priceless absolutely priceless it was acquired by purchase in 1960 and it is one of three existing letters between george washington and martha washington now you know that martha washington likely destroyed their correspondence in the flames after he died or maybe before he died but in essence that correspondence doesn't exist we know they had one uh it was written about by other people uh and it doesn't exist anymore largely probably to protect the privacy of their relationship this letter uh was discovered in a writing desk which now exists in mount vernon in the bedroom in the bed chamber a women's writing desk and it was discovered behind a little drawer in the 1840s which makes it an incredible survivor so this desk was obviously important and ended up getting pushed into one of these drawers and under the drawer and was discovered there and you can see it suffered from kind of exposure over the years so you have a better copy your digital version there is actually easier to read than the one i have in front of me but it's an incredible letter he writes it in june of 1775 a little bit about a week or so after he becomes the commander-in-chief of the american army so this is the continental congress uh appointing george washington commander-in-chief of this new army they've just taken over outside of boston so let's go back a little into our history lesson here so remember the shots are around the world right april of 1775 in lexington in concord and so his general gage uh is escapes and retreats back into boston he's gets surrounded by about 20 000 militiamen from all over uh new england but mostly massachusetts who descend on boston and basically are encamped in this sort of ad hoc siege of the british outside boston that's the beginning of the fighting part of the protest against parliamentary taxes the protest against the intolerable acts so this is the beginning of the american revolutionary war congress the continental congress uh you know this happens while they're where they're coming together so washington actually learns about it when he arrives in philadelphia and that continental congress then is asked to take over this army um and the idea is that this is a cause of all of america it's not just a cause of the people of boston the continental congress agrees to do that and they take over this kind of army it's really the first act of the creation of an american government because the continental congress before this army is just kind of like a debating society that's sending out resolutions against parliament they're yeah they're communicating and maybe coordinating their protests but they're not a government in any real sense all of a sudden once you take over an army you become a government because now they're going to raise money to pay for that they got to regulate the army and with the appointment of george washington as the commander-in-chief of that army it's the creation of the united states of america as as a new entity a new power in the world now whether that power would survive or not of course and a lot to do with what would happen so washington writes this uh basically to martha saying you know that he's uh you know he's going he's on his way to boston he writes this letter he's surrounded by people in philadelphia he doesn't have a lot of time to write he says i'm here with other people i don't have time to write but i retain for you an ultimate affection which neither time or distance can change i mean you know that's pretty good stuff he couldn't just go out to a hallmark store you know find some some little letter he just whips that out i retain for you an ultimate affection which neither time nor distance can change really powerful he goes on to say you know he hopes to see her uh you know in the in the winter time and he goes on to say you know uh i he signs it sincerely yours entire george washington and it starts out my dearest doesn't say dear martha or dear patsy she often called her says my dearest nissans at yours entire george washington it's really a powerful letter the sentiment is in there it's rich it's real it's authentic uh and it's really irreplaceable and remarkable insight into their very difficult relationship to get your head into so i mean he's right up about to go off and become a rebel he's going to war and if he loses he'll be executed i mean this is what the british do uh to rebels in the 18th century what happens to scotland after the battle of cologne all the people that rose for bonnie prince charlie all the scots get executed or sent overseas washington's property everything he ever had is is at risk he's about to take up arms against his king this is a real really powerful letter uh for a lot of reasons and we're really lucky to have it here at mount vernon the questions doug there is a lot of questions about uh the quality of george washington's hand writing yes he's got beautiful handwriting and handwriting was an important way to show that you were actually a learned person uh if someone didn't know how to write they didn't know how to behave but it was a sign of literacy which not everybody had so in virginia in particular new england society was a very literate society uh and had been for a long time but we always distinguish in literacy between writing and reading uh when we think about you know writing is actually harder than reading right so writing is the next stage of literacy and then writing beautifully of course uh puts you into the ranks of the educated and george washington who had no formal education but yet always had to project that he was a gentleman a proper gentleman who knew how to do things correctly uh one way to show that is in your correspondence so he's very careful with his correspondence he develops over the course of his lifetime i think a beautiful writing ability from the quantity he's doing it uh you know he really he really develops into a great writer uh through all the correspondence he does in fact that's one of the things that thomas jefferson writes about washington in an interesting uh uh survey of his character that he does in the 18 teens in which he does mention uh washington didn't have a lot of conversation on other subjects that he had limited formal education but he was a beautiful letter writer he wasn't just talking about that the penmanship so the penmanship is important though and washington what he would do was he would he would uh he would write out a scratch piece of paper or or actually and he describes this when he so he when he receives a letter he would read it and keep notes so he would break up the letter into the parts that he has to respond to and then he would take those notes of responses and compose his own draft letter and then usually then he would compose another fair letter that he would actually send so in many cases he had a letter book where these draft letters exist a lot of the letters of the library congress are from his letter books as well as as because the final ones were sent out to other people and so in some cases we are collecting letters uh that that were sent to other people and and these are two examples in front of me i want to talk about next so i'll go ahead and get to that um so these are letters that were received by a man by the name of francois jean marquita whereas washington knew him the chevalier chateau major general chattaloo who was on the staff of rochambeau's army he is a man who is one of the great heroes of the american revolution completely forgotten today when people think about the french in the american revolution they think about lafayette and lafayette is incredible and important in many many ways lafayette of course didn't serve in the french army during the american revolution he served in the american army so he was a frenchman of course who came over to the american to fight in the american cause at the age of 19 and was a remarkable person and became a great friend of george washington's but washington considered him as an adoptive son in many cases as lafayette would often call himself i am your adopted son i am your i am your son you are my father you're my general i'm your aide to camp chateloo served with roshambo in roshambo's army the expeditionary army that comes over to try to move the american revolution forward uh chateloo is an extraordinary figure in his own right he was a philosopher he wrote books he he was of a noble family related to lafayette actually uh through their wives but chateloo was a man of much greater substance in french society than lafayette um he himself was raised in arms like washington uh he fought in the uh the seven years war the battle of minden uh he he was uh a colonel at the age of 19 like washington was and crucially when he gets to the american revolution he's only two years younger than george washington so they're peers he's a major general in the french army he's a great man in his own right so washington and he are equals i mean clearly washington is the commander-in-chief and so there's a difference in rank but in terms of their uh their circumstance at the head of uh their their worlds uh they are equal and chattaloo uh is an incredible figure he so he travels around with george washington quite a bit because he's on roshambo staff and he's also as a philosopher he's very interested in this american world he's really one of the first uh frenchmen uh that's going to try to describe america to a european audience and so he goes on to write his travels of chattaloo a collection of his journals from the revolutionary war period so he's here roughly from 1780 to 1782 and george washington has a tremendous correspondence with him a correspondence that is unique in its personal character now george washington is always holding us at arm's length right he is very private and he doesn't want people to really get out the inner george uh he's not like john adams who's just going to pour out all his emotions on the page you know which makes john adams so much fun to read and makes washington sometimes seem boring and so the correspondence with shaktalu is so important because it shows him really writing to his best friend writing to someone that he trusts writing to someone that you know he's not really going to be in command of uh writing to someone that he can share his your sentiments his feelings his humor uh his fears his hopes uh in a way that we don't really often think about washington so i brought out two letters here uh which are indicative we own six there's about 20 i think or so maybe 15 or so that exists between george washington and chattaloo and what's remarkable about these is that they uh were the ones that chattaloo actually read in france uh and they are ones that only recently were known to exist uh the papers of uh forestry john de chateau were thought destroyed but they actually are still held by the chateau family today in burgundy in france i actually had the great honor of being with the chateau family last september to look at the actual manuscripts now they've sold some of these at market and that's how we discovered them uh when they came up for auction at christie's and again this is how we we buy things when they come up and in this case they were so important and so why are they important i mentioned already why but let me when i say when i say chat to louis george washington's best friend you say what i've never heard of this guy well let me prove it to you with this letter right here um 14 december 1782 george washington du francois jean de beauvier marquis de chatelet now chattaloo for those french readers and speakers out there you might be saying what is this name chateloo this is how the family today pronounces their name chateloo even though it looks like chess deluxe uh there's an s there's an x at the end but chatelu i promise you is the way it should be pronounced okay so this is a great letter because uh chateau is going back to france after the american revolution is almost over at 1782 in december so we're still really a year before the final treaty arrives in north america but the major battles are over they've won yorktown chateau lewis at yorktown um and washington is saying goodbye to him at the dock and washington doesn't say anything when they depart and he writes this letter actually i'm going to look i'm going to flip it over here real quick when you can't you won't have this side to see but he basically says i felt too much to express anything the day i parted with you i felt too much to express anything the day i parted with you a sense of your public services to this country and gratitude for your private friendship quite overcame me at the moment of of uh of your of your leaving so that's an incredible sense of washington is he's proclaimed you know he can't speak he's so emotional when chateau is leaving but but i should be wanting to the feelings of my heart and should do violence to my inclination was i to suffer you to leave this country without the warmest assurances of affection for you your person and character so this is to make up for the fact they didn't say anything when they parted and he goes on to say for the impressions of esteem which opportunities and your benevolence of mind has since improved into this is wonderful a deep and lasting friendship so we have a deep and lasting friendship a friendship which neither time nor distance can ever eradicate that might sound familiar it's almost the same line he uses on martha in which he says we have a affection which either time resistance can change this is a friendship which neither time or distance can eradicate i mean when you've got a good line you use it again and again and washington uses this great line he goes back into the vault pulls out this great line whips it on chapter loop unbelievable and then he says this is the powerful line this is the hashtag line to put on the shirt and she says i can truly say that never in my life that i part with a man for whom my soul clave more sincerely than it did for you soulclave my soul claimed more sincerely than i did for you this is his soul mate chattaloo is washington's best friend his dear dear friend and he's emotional they're parting he knows the magnitude of what this man had done for his country he knows the personal friendship uh you know the intimacy that they've seen together they've seen the lines they've been in washington's marquee tech together uh they've dined together and chateau has a great description of their first meeting in the in his voyage of shout out to which you can find online as well so another letter of that washington writes to shout to liu i have here in front of me and you can see how beautiful the hand is in these how pristine these are how crisp they are this is written for mount vernon in february of 1784. so washington's only been home for about a month and a few days because he arrives back to mount vernon after giving up his his commission and returning his commission to congress in december of indianapolis in 1783 gets back to mount vernon christmas eve and they get snowed in basically hasn't done much and he's writing this letter in early february he says i am at last become a private citizen on the banks of the potomac where under my own vine and my own fig tree free from the bustle of a camp and from the intrigues of a court i shall view the busy world with a calm indifference and with that sincerity of mind which the soldier and pursuit of glory and the statesmen of a name have not leisure to enjoy incredible sentiment this is washington writing beautifully uh to chat to live in this case and he uses that age-old phrase a vine and fig tree phrase which you know you know the song from hamilton at the end of the fairwell address washington uses the vital victory phase almost 30 times or so in his correspondence and expressing to shadow that uh that great desire to spend the rest of his days away from politics and intrigue and of course we know that he'll be drove drew back into it but the letters of chat are worth exploring on our web page i mean in them you will see george washington make a joke uh probably one of the few jokes that you'll find in his correspondence after he finds out that chateau gets married he says a wife a wife my dear marquis i see you are caught at last and he says you know wife uh like the small pox of the plague is something you could only have once in your life uh which you know it's a funny lie you know it's the classic wife joke of the vodian kind and here's george washington again revealing that comfort and intimacy that he has with chateau-lou he also talks again about the danger war in europe he talks in some of these letters about his hope for universal trade between europe and the americas so that uh that everyone will make war no more and that commerce would make everyone see themselves as people who share the earth as as common uh common uh children of one parent and so washington gets a little bit uh philosophical in these letters of chattaloo and you should definitely take a look at them on our web page now finally i brought out what i think is one of the most important items we have in our collection and this is a list as it says on the top negroes belonging to george washington his own right and by marriage this is the list of all the enslaved people that lived in mount vernon that were owned by george washington and by the custis estate in 1799. so why is george washington creating this list obviously it's good plantation management to understand where your resources are but this is a unique document because washington is really trying to designate the difference between slaves that he owns that there are his property and slaves that are owned as a dower right of martha through the custis estate so i've talked about this many times in the past but when martha uh is widowed when she's 26 years old before she marries george washington she gets a dollar right to a portion of the slaves of of her former husband in this case uh the custis mr costas and that's and those slaves come with her to mount vernon now that you know that happens she comes to mount vernon in the 1750s right so 1759 40 years before washington is creating this document and what has happened since 1759 is that that population of enslaved people has grown they've intermarried with people that have been that were george washington's and by the law in virginia um the ownership goes by uh the mother so if the mother uh an enslaved woman was owned by martha those children would be owned by the custis family if the enslaved woman was george washington the children of that would be george washington's property uh by the by the laws of virginia and so this accounting of all these names in their in their uh and really their families is a way washington was trying to figure out uh this is really the process of creating his will where he's going to free the slaves that he owns outright he cannot free the ones that are owned by martha and are owned by the custis family and so this is an essential document in trying to figure out in his own right uh where his property stands so that he can uh so he can prepare his his last will and testament which he does we believe in the summer of 1799 which this is dated from july of 1799 it also is a remarkable document in that there's so little um detailed information about enslaved people in the 18th century and in this case this is in the hand of george washington it's attested to by him it shows ages it has names it has connections it's a remarkable document that gives some life to these people that are lost in many cases to history because they don't have the formal a documentation of of free people you don't have the county court records with their you don't have baptismal records from churches you don't have their appearances in county courts you don't have uh you don't have that sort of marriage documents you don't have the social history documents that help us connect the dots on who people were and how they live so it's a very important document for many many reasons uh and and it is one of the uh the the really priceless aspects of the collection here at mount vernon uh questions matt about some of the items i've talked about or our collection we had a question um from jay who would like to know you know talk a little bit about the building and how we're protecting these documents from disaster and whatnot yeah so we are in the uh the the suite here uh the rare books in manuscript suite which is kept at the appropriate temperature and appropriate humidity level uh with the pollutants being regularly taken out of the air through our filtering system so that the highest standards of conservation of these materials which we want to last forever and this inner core of the building is surrounded by a building which also of course has its atmosphere controlled but we have a door for instance on on this suite which can withstand a five-hour fire uh we have all the uh uh the latest greatest tech uh to to enhance the security here which i won't talk too much about but in essence to say that this is a secure uh place where where uh where these materials can be for a long long time and uh esther would like to know uh what kind of books are there uh you know and what kind of books did washington have yes great question about the book so that's the last third of our program which we're running out of time for you but i've gone on and on as usual um and the first book is actually right here indicative it's it's nice because you can see george washington's book play his original book plate of george washington it now books in the 18th century are valuable things you know they're expensive they're hard to get and so people who own books often put their book plate in to show their ownership of this item washington designed this book plate well at least he designed it in words when he wrote to a a printer in london in 1772 it has the washington family crest on it as well as the motto exodus act of probate it doesn't have the griffin it has the double piece on top of it which of course is important to george washington as a man of peace and he put the devil piece on the mansion house and it shows ownership now this book is a copy of don quixote cervantes don quixote and those of you may may not know george washington owned two copies of don quixote's uh or cevante's great don quixote one is in english this is tobias lear 1786 london version four volumes and the incredible thing about this book is that george washington purchased it september 17 1787. why does that date matter of course nobody ever asked me this on the trivia thursdays but september 17 1787 is the day that george washington signed the us constitution he also went out and bought a copy of don quixote that copy is right here in front of you it's right here we own it so why did he do this so in fact he has two editions of don quixote in uh in his library and i'll show you some of those in a minute but um uh but uh the reason he bought it i mean is essentially that we know why because a few months later in mount vernon he receives this beautiful madrid spanish language edition from 1780 sent to him by the spanish ambassador uh who says your excellency i remember when we were together at dr franklin's house in philadelphia you mentioned you didn't know the great cervantes so i enclosed for you the finest edition ever made of all the perfect materials all from spain i only wish it was in english so you could enjoy it and so it speaks a lot to washington that here he was at a dinner party with ben franklin uh he didn't know about uh cervantes that comes up in conversation washington is a self-educated man you find yourselves in these positions you can do you know we've all been at dinner parties where somebody start talking about a tv show or a person or a book uh and they're talking about it as if only an idiot wouldn't know about it and you could do one of two things you can sort of bluff your way through right and say oh yeah good book i read that or or you do what george washington does you cannot tell a lie he admits he doesn't know cervantes and and yet he also addresses that absence and he goes out and buys a copy of cervantes you can imagine ben franklin dr franklin saying well you know general uh there's a new edition by smallit down at such-and-such a bookshop in philadelphia and washington buys that on the day he's leaving town to go back to mount vernon and that's the book right there so it talks again a a small little story but a big way to understand george washington the reader a lifelong curious reader a lifelong learner and let's take a look at his special collection of books we have back here in the vault let me take you into the inner sanctum not to be like [Music] so here we are in the vault in mount vernon the holy holies the center of the library the center of washington's mind he put together his own education he's an autodyne act like ben franklin self-educated builds a library over a lifetime now when he died at mount vernon in the study there were about 900 volumes of 1300 titles in his library and these have been collected over a lifetime in this room there's about 700 odd volumes uh 102 103 or so of which from these encyclopedias down to here these are our books that were owned by george washington here in mount vernon that have come back to the vernon ladies association incredible collect these are books that he would have had in his hand he wrote in some of them he read these the rest of the books in this bowl are duplicate editions which means that the same edition of a book that we know he owned or not they're not the actual book that was here right so they're a duplicate which is a great way to represent his library and his education uh and so all the different subjects you know he he uh he has reading writing arithmetic when his father dies uh he gets some early books on religion from his mother uh he starts buying books on on geography and uh and history he's a surveyor you know he's building books that he needs to do his work when he becomes a military figure he starts acquiring books on on military on design on the latest military science uh he starts becoming involved as a planter and an agriculturalist he starts expanding his agriculturalists in fact he has a great collection of the latest greatest agricultural work from the late 18th century and he becomes a correspondent with you know um reformers agricultural reformers throughout the world in his lifetime is known as one of the great farmers of his age and it's always learning through doing experimentation and reading that he becomes a great a great farmer and that's what you see with him that he encourages reading as a way to learn uh not only doing but but reading and he encourages this in his officer corps and he eventually acquires a lot of bell letters so like the story about don quixote he's getting the latest fiction of the age he gets sent a lot of books as well some of which no doubt he never reads you know we all get sent things and we don't read some of those are no doubt in this collection as well so it's a it's a human library but it's a great library for its age i mean 18th century libraries in virginia tend to be small jefferson had one of the largest of them which became the core of the collection of the library of congress of course when he sold it after the war of 1812. um that library was about 6 000 volumes washington was about 900 when he died so substantial library um you know washington didn't have a lot in in notting english languages he only read in english he does have a few notable french items the uh the chateau's voyages are an original in french which was sent in by marquis de chatelet also i love the uh english language chapter of voyages which he also has here because i submit to you that book and i but someday we'll we'll pull it out for you to take a look at but i think his big thumb prints are in that book there's these giant thumb prints in that uh in the chat to the book looks like someone held it out open with two hands uh all throughout where you can see the discoloration of the pages where two big thumbs would be and i think i know who those thumbs were all right so here we are in this great vault this is an artistic rendering of his book played obviously in washington have a book this large we have a question about his book why are they what's the significance of the three stars so this this is the washington book play the three stars are part of the washington family crest uh the coat of arms that was given to the washington family uh they earned it after the battle of cressie actually in 100 years war so battle of creste uh a washington descendant had been involved in a dragoon fight uh and these are spurs they represent spurs of the dragoons and the bars or red represent rivers of blood and spurs so a very marshall attitude to that original crest as well the other thing notable about this is exodus actor probably which in latin uh could be translated a number of ways it could be translated as the ends justified the means but it also can be translated as the result is the test of the action and i think that washington really uh used and and and thought about action speaking louder than words in fact he often he wrote to his overseer james anderson at the end of his life in which he said i've always made it a habit to make um my deeds rather than my writings show um what uh what was important and and washington really presents itself that way to us that he lived a active life and it's our job really to understand he doesn't write an autobiography like ben franklin which is you know half made up he doesn't write a series of letters in his old age like john adams complaining about how the history books are treating him you know rewriting things justifying things washington says this is the life i've lived and it's your job to uh to understand it and that's really our job here at mount vernon at the washington library and so i think we're inspired in this center uh library by those words uh and and how can we get out and make meaningful the great life that he lived uh that we all have benefited from so much uh any any questions here matt as we as we wind down we do we have a few questions but uh we're running low on time too the question uh doug about the personal correspondence did washington read all the correspondence city have someone read these for him yeah so washington's personal correspondence there's kind of two areas most of washington's correspondence would have been read by him there's two periods one period in particular where you know he had a lot of help and that's during the american revolutionary war where a lot of the correspondence is dealing with the operations of the war and he had his age to camp like hamilton like lawrence like others um tallmadge i mean all these others who were there and aided him uh you know and often drafting uh responses in many cases he would have been composing these in many cases they would have been composed by the aid and he would have just signed them and approved them and so that's more of a you know that's more of an official uh correspondence in which you are working with a staff to maintain the flow of information and command uh you know he does a little bit of that with his private secretaries uh in the presidency as well in which they're helping manage the flow of information that he's sometimes taking things and sending him out to different department heads um you know so again there's professional correspondence versus personal in the personal case yes he's reading everything i mean the correspondence their legal documents i mean they're very important um you know the contracts that he's entered into uh are negotiated and and and seen within these documents so they it's very important for for men of business to keep their correspondence to keep it clear to keep it organized and washington was a meticulous type a figure and so the correspondence is really important and doug we have a question from adam he's very familiar with the acts of congress where washington puts his note notes in the margins do you see that in other books yeah is washington writing a lot of books you know typically not he does tend to correct typos in his book uh you know in fact there's a great uh one of ours which is a book on navigation it's about how to uh and how to do the declensions of the sun and he actually corrects the mathematical formulas in that book because they they transpose from the chart that you're supposed to use into the formula they do it incorrectly in the example in the book itself and washington changes it and shows it in the correct way so that's kind of remarkable when you think about it now but also that you know there's there's one famous uh pamphlet where washington does kind of annotate in a running argument against the arguments of the pamphlet that was the pamphlet written by james monroe uh about his time in france during the french revolution when he was representing the united and doing st in such a way that he had to come back and defend his behavior and it was an embarrassment to washington because washington had appointed monroe to this position but monroe was a republican not a federalist jeffersonian republican and so he behaved badly uh uh he wrote this defense of his work in washington writes in the margin attacking attacking monroe uh in the margins of that book it's owned by harvard's uh library and it is really one of the uh the coolest things ever because again washington doesn't do that kind of thing he kept notes he kept separate little books of notes for a lot of his agriculture books he would bring those out in the field with him and any i think he took notes from a lot of things a lot of these exist at the library of congress we have a few but he was an active reader probably time for one more question from cynthia she would like to know are there any books that you would like to see return to the collection here wow so what books would i like to see return to the collection here well i'd like to see them all return to the collection here at mount vernon um that won't happen many of them are safe and sound and important great places great libraries boston athenaeum has a great collection about 300 volumes of washington's original library including books on military science including his original copy of common sense which is an incredible difficult book to even find the duplicate edition of the first editions of common sense i think there's only something like five or six known uh in the world so they have washington's uh the story about how they ended up in the boston athena was really cool the british library at the time was expanding their americana section and were offered this collection of books of george washington's um to purchase and the people of boston were so outraged that that washington's library was going to go to britain that they raised the money to purchase these books they put them in the boston athenian and there they are today uh safe and sound so thank god for for the people of boston to save that legacy for us but in fact there are many george washington's books there's two at the national library of scotland there's books at the huntington library there's books in newberry i think i want the books that are in private hands to come back to mount vernon uh most particularly uh you know and there are some good ones out there uh so keep your eyes peeled we'll hopefully have some uh acquisitions over the next few years and and maybe sooner as we build up our collection here as the ultimate repository of the papers and legacy of george washington here at the washington library thank you so much for your time today i've really enjoyed it i mean i could go on and on as you know uh with the collections here maybe we'll do another one with a different selection of papers at some point that look at this from a different angle of view but i think reading into the correspondence of george washington is always a an enlightening experience so thank you for being with us here today i very much appreciate your ongoing support from mount vernon spread the word uh like these videos subscribe to our feeds share them with your friends and let's build an army of missionaries for the mission of the melbourne ladies association uh signing off doug bradburn from the washington library you

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Published: Wed May 20 2020