- Hello everybody. Welcome. Here I am, Doug Bradburn,
president and CEO of George Washington's Mount Vernon in a special place today
to have our conversation. This is George Washington's
Presidential Library. Formal name is the Fred
W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington. This place opened at Mount
Vernon in the fall of 2013, September 27, 2013, to be exact, and it is George Washington's
own Presidential Library. Now it's unlike the other
presidential libraries that you might know out there
because it isn't managed by the National Archives system. It is completely part of Mount
Vernon Ladies' Association's operations of Mount Vernon. It's a center for
research created to study the legacy and the life
of George Washington in the Revolutionary Era. It's because of the great
investments in research that the Mount Vernon
Ladies' Association has made, really throughout their history, but certainly in this recent epoch, that allows us to do a lot
of these digital programs that we've been doing with you, all the expertise we have on hand. In fact, it was a place that
gathers scholars together that provides opportunities
for scholarship. We have research fellows
who normally in normal times would work out of this building. We have a great collection of rare books and manuscripts of George Washington. Which in some future conversation I'm gonna bring you
into the Holy of Holies in this temple of George Washington and visit with his very own books and some of his manuscripts, but that's just something
you'll have to look forward to. We also out of this library
do leadership programs, a lot of programs for corporate
groups, military groups, student groups, NGOs and others, where we help explore the lessons that you can learn from
George Washington's extraordinary leadership. Leadership is something you can study, and it is something you can benefit from, and particularly learning
from the lives of other people who've led in challenging times. I personally, throughout
this COVID crisis, have leaned a lot on the
legacy of George Washington, and it is a fascinating story as we've been exploring over
the last few weeks together. I look forward to taking your questions today about George Washington's
final years in retirement. We think of it as his retirement. It is his final act in
a life that was always on a public stage as he would
often compare it to a stage as a great metaphor for the world, that he was playing out his
own role in the public eye for most part of that extraordinary life. We know he had these kind of
two periods of retirement, the first after the
American Revolutionary War, in which he gave up his commission and came back to Mount Vernon. In fact, in this room
behind me, this is the great Karen Buchwald Wright
Reading Room at Mount Vernon. This is where you would
be if you were working in the library on your research project, sitting at one of these beautiful tables being watched by the founding fathers of the United States here. If you follow me around, I don't know if the camera lens is wide enough, but you basically have
Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington back there, and then John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison right here. Washington is depicted here as
he would have looked in 1785, which is in the period
after his first retirement, because the bust was made to look, it was started with the
bust by Jean Antoine Houdon, which was done by the artist himself here in Mount Vernon in 1785. This is a beautiful
rendering of what Washington would have looked like in that period, drawing on that bust by
StudioEIS in Brooklyn. Elliot Schwartz, an incredible artist, put that together for us. Then the idea was that all
the other founding fathers should look like they looked in 1785, and so they're all kind
of trapped in amber in this one moment where they're together at last in 1785, sort of in perpetuity. I always find it as a really
interesting teaching moment to talk about that year and these busts because it's before the Constitution, before the Constitutional Convention, but after independence was won, really at a time of great ambiguity, a time when they don't
know what the future holds for their experiment and independence. It does take the leadership of this group and many others to form that
more perfect union together. George Washington's first retirement was a bit of a bust right? He thought he would roll
down the stream of life until he reaches the shades
of his father's, you know, under his own vine and fig tree, which he famously wrote
about in that period. But of course, he's called back. They pull him back in. He's needed to be there as president of the Constitutional Convention, and then he has to serve
as the first president under that Constitution that they created. And of course, we've talked
about those two terms. First one, he's setting up the government, and you see really the beginnings of that split in his cabinet between Jefferson and Madison, I'm sorry, Jefferson and Hamilton over
their vision for the country. Then very quickly gets drawn
into the international politics of the French Revolution which
dominates his second term in which you have the
British and the French really being a polarizing idea of the different parts of
America in this worldwide crisis. Washington tries to
steer that middle course. Of course, one of the final acts of his presidency in his second
term is his farewell address that he gives to the nation,
as I mentioned briefly in my last conversation with you. The farewell address is really
all about unity and union. If somebody asks you what
was George Washington's farewell address really about? It's about union. It's an emphasis to the American people that they should recognize
the things that they share. They're not Easterners or Westerners. They're not Southerners or Northerners. Don't let anybody pretend that these are your most important interests
and your identities. Your true name of
American is what you are. In fact, it's a great statement. When it appears in print, usually in those 18th century newspapers, a message from George Washington
would say Philadelphia or Mount Vernon where he was, you know, it'd be a Dateline Philadelphia
message from the president. But this one just said the United States, and it reflects that idea
that the emphasis was on, that was the important place, that Washington was
speaking to posterity from. Union is crucial in that document, not only the sectional idea
that you're all one people, that your interests are shared, but that really only together will you survive as a community, as a nation, that that unity was essential. There were other threats to it. It wasn't just this idea
of regional identity. It was also the danger of partisanship. Extreme partisanship
would also tear you apart, and you would come to
see the other as aliens. If you get so inwrapped in your own ideas about what is the right
thing for the country so that you see fellow citizens as enemies of the country or as alien indifferent to the interests of the country, that could lead to a massive rift as well. So, there's a danger
to extreme partisanship that Washington warned against. And then of course, there's all the stuff in there about foreign influence. Beware of foreign influence. You should make commercial
treaties with all but not many political treaties. Be very wary of long-term political relationships with other countries. And remember that as much
as you might love France or England as their culture, they have their own interest and the United States
has its own interest, and they're not just gonna
be nice to you as a country because you love each other. Be wary about these
long-term relationships with which can come to skew your interest. But if you do have political treaties and relationships with other countries, you have to live up to them. The honor of the country is essential. So this message of the farewell address is really his last great
public statement to the people. But in fact, he does quite a bit more on his transition to retirement. In fact, on his last day in office, he's working on defending his reputation from letters that have been published by Benjamin Franklin Bache who is Benjamin Franklin's grandson who was a publisher and printer in Philadelphia of the Aurora, a really aggressive
newspaper which attacked the Washington administration
in its final years, accused Washington of being pro-British. They had gotten an early copy of the Jay Treaty and printed that, and it created all this chaos. Bache had printed these letters,
these forgeries of letters that George Washington
wrote, well didn't write, but they were claimed to have been written by him during the American Revolution. They depicted Washington
as a very tepid patriot. In fact, almost a
half-loyalist, so pro-British, 'cause that was the point
that Bache was wanting to make was that George Washington
has always been pro-British. I mean, even during
the war we think of him as fighting against the British for years, but even during the
war he was pro-British. So these were absolute forgeries. They were for forgeries
used during the war, and then they were reprinted
as if they were true. Washington in almost his last day in office and the presidency is attacking and giving proof of the forgeries, showing that they weren't correct. So Washington's involved in the politics to the very last minute himself, and it is hard for him to escape that, as we'll see, even in retirement. But one thing I do want to mention on the transition from
President of the United States, most powerful political
figure in the country, to private citizen, that
it was really remarkable when George Washington made it clear that he was going to be present at the inauguration of John Adams. You would see, you would witness something that nobody in America had
ever seen in their lifetime and hadn't really been seen
anywhere in a long time which is a sovereign
authority transitioning in a peaceful way to another person while both men are still alive. It wasn't the death of the king
that leads to the next king, but rather a living man
stepping away from power, and then that power being
peacefully transitioned to another one as a
representative of the people. This was a remarkable thing, and it's a legacy that
we get to benefit from. That peaceful transition has happened since George Washington stepped down in 1797 from the office of the presidency. He steps down. John Adams writes about it. He's very nervous about it. He writes that Washington is delighted that he's no longer the president and all these cares are
gonna fall on John Adams. Adams imagines a conversation
actually between them which is dramatized in the
miniseries on John Adams, if you've seen that,
where they actually have Washington saying the words
that Adams writes in his diary. He believes that the
look on Washington's face is expressing these words. So Adams, once again kind of changing the story a little bit. But it's interesting because that moment, it is very clearly written about by Adams of his own inauguration. Washington leaves Philadelphia
as quickly as he can traveling back to Mount Vernon, and that takes him about a week. It's a tedious week from George
Washington's point of view because riding in a
carriage in the 18th century on 18th-century roads is tedious, but also because he keeps being greeted by every, in every town he goes to there's a whole collection of
militia that come marching out and they want him to review the troops, and he's got to continue to play this role that he's trying to escape from
to get back to Mount Vernon, back to where he feels is his home, back to his real passions of agriculture. He knows that he's got lots of work to do. He arrives at Mount Vernon, and this will be in March of 1797, and he writes a letter
after being on the estate surveying what needs to be done. He realizes there's a lot of work that had been neglected
over the eight years he had had his mind mostly
focused on the presidency. Even though he had been
back to Mount Vernon, he never had the time to
escape his presidential duties while he was here in the
way that when he left them. He's seen a lot of
degradation of the estate. Some of the farms haven't
been managed that well, even though he gives weekly advice when he's in the presidency by letter. Many of the outbuildings
needed lots of repairs. The sheep flock, for
instance, was producing half the amount of wool that it was when he went to the presidency, so his husbandry had not been
cared for with a good eye. His animal stock had kind of gone to pot. He writes a letter to James
McHenry, his secretary, or former secretary of
war, in which he says, I am surrounded by the sounds of hammering and the odors of paints. He writes I have no more
buildings to build but one. Although all the rooms in Mount Vernon were being worked on, upgraded, but no more buildings to build but one which will house his military,
civil, and public papers which are voluminous
and maybe interesting, which is of course the most
humble brag in the world. Of course they're interesting, they are the history of the country that he has given birth to, those papers that he
cared so deeply about. We like to say here at Mont Vernon when we were raising the money privately to build this incredible building and all the programs
that we can do out of it that this is what Washington had in mind, a presidential house
for his for his papers. Maybe not quite on this scale, but nevertheless, he
wanted us to build this, and we got it done in 2013. I had a question about his retirement. Matt, it was about was he able to secure his retirement the way he wanted? I think that's how we'll kick it off here. - [Matt] Yeah, Doug, so
Kathy would like to know... - I caught Matt unawares there, but the question was essentially was George Washington able
to find in his retirement, his final retirement, the peace of mind and the leisure that he was looking for, or was he constantly
interrupted in different ways? And do his journals or papers help us understand this thing? So I just mentioned his papers, and he wanted to build
this house for his papers. Let's take a quick walk over to see how we know what we know about George Washington's
final years and all his years. Here we are in front of an
incredible wall of his papers which is on two sides. One of the writings of Washington which were done by the George Washington Bicentennial Commission and
published in the 1920s and 30s, but then the definitive
edition of his papers, his correspondence, the Papers
of George Washington Project which began in 1968, funded in part by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. It now comprises all these volumes you see from the black with the
little circles in them. At the very top there,
the colonial period, so his early life. Then you have the Revolutionary War, his retirement after the war, his presidential series in red here, and then his retirement series down here. But also all of his diaries as well have been professionally
transcribed and annotated. This is a project which is
one of the great hallmarks of scholarship that this
country has ever produced. Here's a presidential series
volume of George Washington's from June to September 1789, so the first year was presidency, and you can see, I mean,
that's June to September. That's a couple of
months in that one year. What this volume contains
is all of the letters that George Washington wrote
and all the letters he read during that period in addition
to different account books and other lists and that sort of thing, perfectly transcribed from the best copies that could be found
everywhere in the world but also annotated so that
when it lists a person or an event or a thing, you
can see in the footnotes what that's referring to. Like, who was Ralph Iser? Who was Abraham Locke? Who are these random people that George Washington is referencing? So transcribed, annotated,
professionally edited, published in letterpress volumes which is an extraordinary achievement. This is how all those great scholars are able to write all these books that we so admire out there, and I hope they'll recognize
that they're standing on the shoulders of a lot of hard labor, a project that's still ongoing. They won't complete the final editions of the Revolutionary War series until sometime in this
decade, I hope, 2020s. But they have finished
the retirement years, they have finished the presidency. I think the next volume is the final volume to come out soon. I think it's already done
but not quite out yet. Then the last series to do is
the Revolutionary War series. What was I, where was
I going with all this? How do we know about
what George Washington thought in his retirement? Well, we know from his own
papers, his own journals, and the sad fact is, no, he did not get that peace and calm in his retirement. He was still connected
very much to the maelstrom of party politics and
international affairs that the country was a part of. He couldn't escape his
reputation as the man, the father of the country. He had massive legions
of fans who would descend upon Mount Vernon and visit him, and he actually had less control over that than he did when he was president. Because as president, at least
he could keep people at bay begging off with his official duties, but as a retired citizen he had to go by the protocols of Virginia hospitality for people of his rank
which he'd been born into and had been a part of his whole life. So people would visit him here. He described the house as
a well resorted tavern. People still visited Mount Vernon. It was the spot in
between north and south, right on the main highway that people could stop south of Alexandria. Plus, he had all these friends and admirers in the neighborhood. So no. He really had a couple big
projects in his retirement years. One was his agricultural affairs. He was a great agricultural reformer. He was always looking at ways to improve the ability of the lands in Mount Vernon and other lands he owned,
improve their ability to sustain themselves and bring him cash. He of course depended upon the labor of over 300 enslaved people
who lived here at Mount Vernon, about half of them he
owned himself outright and the other half, maybe
a little more than half, were actually owned by
the Custis dower slaves. I do want to talk about
slavery in this hour together, particularly the will,
his attempts to emancipate the slaves at the end of his life and the challenges that
he faced regarding that. But also, there are
personal stories of slavery that Washington would have
been feeling very pertinently as he arrived back in Mount Vernon. For instance, on route to Mount Vernon, he learned that his
trusted and beloved cook, Hercules, who was a slave,
George Washington's slave, had escaped and run
away from Mount Vernon. Washington thought he was likely
going back to Philadelphia where Washington had
brought him to be a chef in the presidential mansion when he became president in Philadelphia. Hercules had learned that
Washington was being deceitful in circulating slaves
back from Philadelphia and Mount Vernon because
Pennsylvania at that point was under an emancipation law written, in fact, by Thomas Paine in 1782, in which if you brought a
slave person to Pennsylvania, they would gain their liberty if they stayed longer than six months. So Washington would cycle
through his own personal slaves and Martha's slaves from
Philadelphia to Mount Vernon so that they would never gain their Liberty while they're there. It shows the rigors that
Washington went to as a slave owner that this was property
that he believed was his and he wanted to make
sure that he secured it, particularly the dower
slaves who weren't his. I mean, he was the trustee of them, and he could be held liable if any of those slaves ran away under his care. That's an example, of course, the famous story of Ona
Judge who was a dower slave who was one of Martha
Washington's maids, essentially, who worked very closely with her who ran away from
Philadelphia and ended up escaping entirely, as
Hercules did, as well. Hercules was never found, never caught, and Washington did send
notice that if you find him in Philadelphia to send
him to Mount Vernon on the ship that's bringing a lot of the presidential furniture
and other baggage after him. It's a really poignant story because Hercules did have
a family at Mount Vernon. He had a daughter who was owned
as part of the dower slaves. She was family famously
asked by a group of Frenchmen who visited Mount Vernon, aren't you sad that your father has run
away and is no longer here? And she famously said, as recorded by these French visitors,
that she was happy because now he was free,
speaking, of course, to the tragic human hypocrisy involved in slavery or at Mount Vernon in the early republic
of the United States. The antecedent to that story, of course, is that, antecedent, precedent? No, it's the whole collection
of that story, though, was the Washington had talked about and tried to find ways to free the slaves here at Mount Vernon, and he'd been trying really in earnest and creative ways to do this probably as early as the mid-1780s. But really the great evidence for it comes in the early 1790s
when he tries to get English tenant farmers
to come to Mount Vernon to rent his outlying
farms and in the process of that sort of find a way to transition slave laborers into tenant
farmers or sharecroppers over a period of time. This is a plan that never goes anywhere. Washington could never find the people and was never able to put it into effect. It's not clear if he was continuing to try to do that after he returned to Mount Vernon after the presidency. Partly it's unclear because,
well, there's no evidence that he was immediately trying to do this. There's also some evidence
that he was trying to figure out ways to send some of the slave laborers to
his Western properties and whether or not he imagined that he'd emancipate
them there is not clear. It's also the fact that
George Washington dies after only two years after
his retirement, basically. He comes to Mount Vernon after retiring from the presidency in March of 1797, and he's dead by December of 1799. He lives the whole year of 1798
and the whole year of 1799, basically, and only half of the year of 1797 at Mount Vernon. Whatever plans he had down the road were not able to be put into train. But of course, that will,
the last will and testament of George Washington,
was a remarkable document in that it did free over 130 slaves who were owned by George Washington here at Mount Vernon
at the death of Martha. In the will it became legal that they would be free
when Martha passed, and it also included another 30 odd slaves who lived at a different
estate down on the York River, which we know very
little about to be frank, but those folks were also
free at the death of Martha. In reality, of course, Martha
freed them a little early under the promise of the will because there was a strong sense that with her death being the only thing between 130 people and freedom, that she was afraid that she might come to some early demise. Not entirely unheard of in an environment where you dependent upon
all these other people for your very food and your existence, but not a very generous thought either. At any rate, it was tragic because there was a separation then between the families that Washington freed and the dower slaves who were
owned by the Custis estate. Not owned by Martha, owned
by the estate of her heirs. They would eventually move to them. What we do know is that
in Washington's will he provided for the education
of those enslaved people under the age of 25
following the same rules as the orphan courts used in Virginia to find them apprenticeships
and find them trades, but also provided for money for those who were too old to work as free people in Virginia. We do know Washington's estate continued to pay out those benefits until the 1840s when the last of them died. On the other hand, Washington's plans for the education of the
youth, formerly enslaved youth, really were not able to be enforced. The state of Virginia changed its rules about free African Americans, free blacks, after Gabriel's rebellion in 1801, and so they started clamping down on these newly freed
populations of African Americans that are emerging in Virginia
out of Revolutionary Era because of emancipations
that had happened, like Washington's. They clamped down on their movement, on their ability to be educated. It's illegal to teach them
reading, writing, and arithmetic. It's illegal for them to
take up all kinds of trades. It's illegal for them
to be master of ships, for instance, on the Chesapeake. There's all kinds of rules
that are put into place, and that really is the moment where the Virginia planter aristocracy in the early 19th century
completely abandons, really, any promise of
the revolutionary optimism that slavery could be ended because of the rhetoric
of revolution and liberty. So Washington dies before that happens, and it does I think designate a particular period in Virginia's history where there was opportunities
created by revolution that really are closed up
in the early 19th century. We think about the crisis and the conflict of slavery and the revolution. I think of it as a period of opportunity that's shut down rather than a, you know, rather than a simple story of hypocrisy. Because you get this law passed in 1782, which is the first time that planters in Virginia are allowed to free slaves without a law from the assembly or the legislature of the colony itself. That law is take away in 1806 in Virginia. So from 1782 to 1806, you have this period which is described in
one Virginia newspaper as a personal emancipation of slaves, and what you get is a free black community that grows from
approximately 5,000 in 1782 to about 50,000 in the
old Chesapeake by 1810, the census of 1810, so
it grows quite rapidly. Then their freedom gets really shut down as the problem of revolution turns into a problem of citizenship, and as American citizenship
starts to become really designated for whites only in the beginning of the 19th century. That's bit of a side stretch, but it's a really important part of Washington's retirement years and how that institution
is sort of at play both here and at Mount Vernon and also nationally as well. Let's take another question, Matt, and I'll collect my thoughts on how to get into the political side of
Washington's retirement. - [Matt] Yeah Doug, Mary
has been on our website and came across James Anderson's bio and particularly how he was helping Washington innovate agriculture
here at Mount Vernon. Was he successful in that? Was Washington able to take
some fruits of that labor? - That's a great question
about James Anderson as an estate manager. Washington brings on James Anderson as an estate manager in 1796, '97. He's an immigrant from Scotland, and as an immigrant from Scotland he was also involved in
distilling Scotch whisky there Scots whiskey in Scotland. Here at Mount Vernon, he's
the general estate manager managing all the farms, and Washington corresponds with him. Washington has it set up in a
very clear hierarchical way. Each farm has its own manager, and then it has overseers
amongst the hands, and in many cases these are
actually enslaved people who operated as overseers in
Washington's arrangements, and then also the estate
manager themselves. James Anderson was the estate manager, and Anderson was key
in Washington's efforts to kind of make Mount Vernon
as productive as possible. One of the ideas that James Anderson brought to George Washington was the idea that he should be distilling
whiskey here at Mount Vernon. Washington was a little
bit skeptical of this. He was a careful businessman. But Anderson convinced him. He said, look, you've got the grain, you've got water you could
access, you could make whiskey, which is a product in great demand. Any kind of distilled spirits are in great demand in this age because water is still,
it's still not safe to drink all the time. People are putting spirits in a lot of their punches and other things. Washington has James
Anderson do a trial run where he produces a small batch to see if there's a market for it,
to see if it can be done, and it's a great success. This is why whiskey as
we would call it today, essentially, we might
call it white lightning. It's not moonshine
because it's not illegal, but it's un-aged rye whiskey which would be produced
here at Mount Vernon and then sold in Alexandria basically 15 days after its produced, so no aging process in place there. Washington with Anderson's guidance then decided to build a big scale. He built a large distillery,
certainly for the era. He put five stills in it. By the end of his life,
the last year of his life, that distillery produced
11,000 gallons of whiskey. I think it is the largest
documented distillery that we can find in the United States at the end of the 18th century. Think of that, George Washington was your largest distiller in the country, the father of America distilling, as well as the father of
the country by his death. Anderson was crucial in that. Anderson stays on for
only a couple of years after George Washington dies. In fact, we have a tremendous letter here, which one of our recent researchers really helped us understand, in which James Anderson
writes a letter to Martha basically saying that,
you know, first he said, I'm not gonna be here next year, but he lays out what the state of affairs are from Mount
Vernon in that moment, and he points out that the
mansion house farm is basically, the people in the mansion house farm are basically eating all of the profits of the other outlying farms. Essentially, all these visitors
are coming to Mount Vernon, and their slaves and their
servants who came with them, and all the fodder that
their horses needed, and all the produce that had to be basically produced given to them as food, they were devouring all of the profits of all the outlying agricultural areas, and Mount Vernon could not sustain its own hospitality essentially. So it's an interesting
letter because it gives us a really clear eye into one moment in time from Anderson's point of view of what the limits of what you
could do agriculturaly here at Mount Vernon under
its current organization. This is a world that Washington would have known well
in his retirement period as he's trying to get
every ounce of profit out of this very challenging
agricultural environment. - [Matt] Jeremy would like to know, how did Washington's
retirement goals change from when he retired serving
in the Revolutionary War to then serving as president? - A good question, how did Washington's retirement goals change? Well, on the one level they did. Washington wrote almost the same letter when he finally was ensconced back here at Mount Vernon in 1797
that he wrote in early 1784, which is that I am now under
my own vine and fig tree, and I will be here until my death. In that broader sense, he saw Mount Vernon as the place of his final
ease and final resting place. Of course, this changes very
dramatically in the 1780s because he immediately gets involved in this project, Potowmack
Navigation Company project to create this company that can improve the navigation of the
Potomac into the West. In his second retirement, his goal changed very rapidly as well because of the politics of the United States. When he left office, you'll
remember that they had, America had successfully
passed a new treaty, ratified a treaty with the
British called the Jay's Treaty, also a treaty with the Spanish, which secured the border of the southwest of the United States, and it gave Americans
rights on the Mississippi. Washington had successfully
subdued Native American tribes, either through diplomacy or war. But there was one outlying problem, and that was the
relations with the French. The French Directory,
which is what was running the revolutionary nation
of France at this time, was still very much at
war with Great Britain, and they took the treaty
that the Americans made with the British, the Jay Treaty, they took that as
essentially an act of war. Washington had foolishly
sent James Monroe, who was a Jeffersonian Republican, sent him as the official
ambassador to France to try to help work through this conflict between the French and the United States. Monroe was pro-French, and he
gave the French the wrong idea that well they really shouldn't spend their time dealing with
the American government. They should help support the
growth of an opposition party, and maybe then help get Thomas
Jefferson elected president, foreign interference in
a presidential election, get him elected rather than make some kind of deal with the Americans. Washington pulled Monroe
back, sent C. C. Pinckney, who was a Charleston Federalist, an old hero of the American Revolution, probably one of the most respected men in the United States next
to George Washington, someone we don't usually
know much about today, but C. C. Pinckney was
really a phenomenal founder. Anyway, Pinckney, who's a Federalist, is sent to clean up Monroe's mess, and the Directory won't
even really see Pinckney. He's basically kicked out of the country because the Directory is so anti-British and anti-Washington's administration. The Jay Treaty has soured any
relations they might have, and the French have made it clear that they're going to start basically allowing their French ships to seize American shipping
under the pretense that that shipping is helping supply war materials to the British. They're at war, so therefore the French can stop war materials. But it isn't just war
materials, of course. The French privateers
are basically seizing and attacking American merchant men sort of without any restraint at all. There's over 300 hundred ships
have been seized by 1797, into the end of the summer of 1797. What happens is George, you know, when John Adams immediately
becomes president, Washington is on his way, there's a phone ringing somewhere. Matt is going to answer it. If it's for me, I'll take it. Anyway, Washington is
going back to Mount Vernon. John Adams as president is calling an emergency session of Congress in May, gives a speech about
the foreign challenges, and in that he announces that we won't take any more of this from the French. We're not going to allow
our shipping and our seamen to be imprisoned, attacked
by this hostile nation. But at the same time, he held out the possibility of a new deal. He's gonna create a new group that's gonna go visit the French. C. C. Pinkney's gonna be sent back because this idea that you can't recognize our official ambassadors not gonna stand. Secondly, John Marshall is gonna go, famous John Marshall, will
go on to become, of course, secretary of state for John Adams and then ultimately the
first justice to the public, the first chief justice
of the Supreme Court where he'll sit for 30 years,
over the great Marshall Court. Then Adams, being a guy
who, like Washington, is trying to stand above party, and is fairly moderate when
it comes to the Federalists. He's not a Hamiltonian. He doesn't like Hamiltonian finance. He's not pro-war like a lot
of the Hamiltonians are. He said, well, I'm gonna send
a Republican in this mission that way maybe the French will behave. He sends Elbridge Gerry,
who famously name will later give us the thing gerrymandering when he's later governor of Massachusetts. But Elbridge Gerry is an old friend of John Adams from Massachusetts, an old revolutionary stalwart
but a Jeffersonian Republican. He sends him with these other Federalists as part of this trio that's
gonna negotiate with France. We all know the history, don't we? They get asked to pay to play. French Minister Talleyrand,
he was an old hand. How you got access to the court and access to power in the French was, if you were a lesser power,
is you've got to promise, you got to give something. You give some guaranteed loans. You're gonna promise access
to some trade markets even before you can get
access to start negotiating. This is an old pay to play
corrupt European diplomacy move completely normal for France which is just the way
they have done business. The American knaves, these
were noobs at diplomacy, they are completely
offended by this absolutely. This is an offense to national honor. It's an offense to their personal honor. They're never going to do this. They take the letters,
these famous letters, between the ministers X, Y, and Z, whose names are crossed off, and put Mr. X, Mr. Y, and Mr. Z, these letters are then
published in America showing that the French
had basically tried to get the Americans to pay to get access. Out of this comes the
great slogan millions for defense but not one cent for tribute. That is the great slogan that comes out of this crisis, the XYZ Affair. This happens in the winter of 1798. C. C. Pinckney and Marshall
come back with the documents, give them to Adams, he has them published. The American people explode
in nationalistic fervor and anger and uproar against the French. Elbridge Gerry stays back there in France, claiming that he can
somehow work out a deal, which is obviously the
wrong thing to do, as well. Again, it seems like
one party is pro-French, and then all the true Americans, the real Americans are
infuriated by the French and are ready to go to war. And it's in that
legislative session in 1798, Washington's been home at
Mount Vernon for a year, in that legislative session
the Federalists pushed through the Alien and Sedition Acts, a new naturalization policy which extends the period that an alien has
to live in the United States to become a citizen from five to 14 years, longer than it's ever
been in American history. A 14-year wait in the 18th century is basically a death sentence. I mean, that's a way to make sure nobody who emigrates becomes a citizen. 14 years, and then also
create the new army, creates the power to create an army. It passes the law that allows
Adams to create an army, and guess who they want to
be at the head of this army. Who is the most important
general in the United States? Well, I think you know. I think you know because
we're here at Mount Vernon and we're talking about George Washington. George Washington, who's been retired and is now brought back
in to the public affairs as the commanding general of this new army that's gonna be created
to fight the French. It's unbelievable. There's no declaration of war. There are a number of extreme Federalists who are pushing for a declaration
of war in that moment. The Adams faction, more
moderate, is gonna wait, and they're gonna make an army first rather than to aggressively declare war before they're ready. They also start building ships. They start building naval
vessels as well in this period and encouraging privateering. The Americans and the
French are now fighting what's called the Quasi-War, right. The Quasi-War is really a naval war between American privateers
and French privateers attacking each other's shipping. It's basically a state of war at sea, but still undeclared peace. This is an odd situation. Washington is made this,
lieutenant general now, commander-in-chief of the armies. Despite the fact that the
president is commander-in-chief, George Washington is given the
title of commander in chief. And then you start to
see the wrangling happen because Washington is
like, look, I will do this because I've always done what
my country has asked me to do, but I've got some stipulations. First, I don't have to leave Mount Vernon until there's actually an army in the field attacking the United States. So I don't have to go and live in Philadelphia and build some army. But he does recognize he'll
have to go there occasionally. Second, he gets to choose
his own lead officers. Now this is a challenge for Adams, who, as the president
of the United States, believes he should be able to choose all the general officers,
all the major generals, and he wants Henry Knox, New Englander, and of course a great general
in the American Revolution, the head of artillery,
former secretary of war, friend of Washington's. He wants Knox to be his number two, George Washington, then Henry Knox, then after that, there's some other folks. Washington wants Alexander Hamilton. You know him from the musical. He wants Hamilton to
be his right-hand man. He wants to get his right-hand man back. He's got to get his right-hand man back. He's gonna get Hamilton back. Hamilton, not only is he gonna be back, but he's gonna be General
Hamilton now, right. I mean, General Hamilton,
who's ever heard of that? He was a colonel at best
in the American Revolution. I think at the end of it he was a colonel. At any rate, Knox had been a general, so how could Washington
elevate Hamilton above Knox? I mean, this is appalling. Adams is furious. But Washington makes it clear
that he's not gonna serve if he doesn't get his way, and that rift is really, really
astonishing and outrageous. It really explodes the
authority of Adams as president. So here's Adams, as President
of the United States, has now been put in the position if they actually go to war with France, he's gonna lose all control
to Washington and Hamilton. Because once it's a wartime footing, the generals are gonna be running things, essentially, from his point of view. So he completely from that date, which is somewhere in the summer of 1798, these letters go back and forth between Washington and Adams. Washington does come to Philadelphia at the end of that year in 1798. Actually, there's a yellow fever challenge in Philadelphia in that
year, as there was in 1973. He's there meeting with
Pickering, the secretary of state, as well as Hamilton. They're designing uniforms. They're figuring out the different ranks. They're trying to figure out how many officers from each state, where they're actually gonna be stationed once they build this army. It really remains a paper
army for most of this problem. There's a really lovely scene, though, in that Adams' movie,
the miniseries movie, which I've mentioned a couple times, of John Adams and Hamilton
are in the same room, and Hamilton is talking about the uniforms that he's designing for this army. Then he talks about that we can use this army to liberate Latin America, essentially, in our empire. Hamilton has got these grand designs, so there's rumors of grand designs, filibustering and getting new territory in the midst of this war. Adams is just like appalling ambition, just like what is this guy talking about? That riff between Adams and Hamilton is going to be really important, because ultimately it's gonna lead to Adams losing his bid
for the presidency in 1800. That's a whole different story. But at any rate, so Washington has this whole nother career now as a general. So how does it end? Well basically, Adams sends
ministers back to France, and a lot of Federalists believe this is an absolute travesty. There'd been all kinds of sort
of secret diplomacy going on. There'd been letters of
friends of Washington had been sending him from France, saying that the French
really don't want war, we need to find a way
to make this calm down. The president is receiving, and George Washington is
sending all this to John Adams. He gets the stuff and
sends it on to Adams, so Adams is receiving from
a lot of different places that, well, the French
will accept a minister, if you send another one. That's a huge risk because
if Adams sends another mister and they can't get received,
it's an absolutely, it makes him look really weak. The Federalists are absolutely against Adams sending another Minister. But in fact, it's George
Washington that convinces Adams that the French really do want peace and sends a series of documents to Adams saying it's his opinion that the French really don't want war,
take it or leave it. And I think that itself
gave Adams the confidence. Washington also knew that
the people of Virginia were adamantly against war. In fact, they had been making resolutions in the state government of Virginia, which was highly Republican,
Jeffersonian Republican, that they were gonna seize
the arms of the state, if we had to go to war with France, that they wouldn't fight. I mean, Washington had a strong sense that Virginia wasn't gonna be on board if there was some sort
of declaration of war. Adams is able to send these peace envoys and secure peace ultimately, which is probably the only thing he accomplished as
President the United States, keeping the United States out of this war. I for one, and I've written a long essay on John Adams' presidency and why he's not a very good president. There's a lot of reasons for that. It's impressive that he isn't completely drawn in to war ultimately. But the fact is, three
quarters of the country didn't want war with France, the whole Jeffersonian Republican Party didn't want war with France, and half of the Federalists
didn't want war with France. So I don't know if it's
really a profile of courage to do what three quarters of the country wanted you to do in the first place. It never could have gotten that far, and he was certainly riding
that wave of popularity and banging the war drums in 1798. The Alien and Sedition Act, that would go down in American history as one of the worst pieces
of legislation ever written that violated the liberties of
citizens and aliens as well. So a legacy that has to be dealt with and a presidency that ended in failure. What else for Washington? Let's get back to our main man, George, who helps Adams get his head
around the need for peace, and then spends his last
year at Mount Vernon. - [Matt] Doug, we have a question, what did Washington enjoy doing most during his final years of retirement? - This is a good question, what did he enjoy doing most during his final years in
retirement, and it's very clear. By this age, Washington is
in his last year of life. He's 67 years old. He has stopped doing his fox hunting. He doesn't keep dogs anymore. He doesn't have the stamina. He's not up for it. He is never really fond of entertaining unless they're very close friends. He loves to be around
his granddaughter, Nelly, who plays this beautiful harpsichord, which I know some of you've
seen some of the concerts we've done recently on
a great replica of it. Please look online and
see those if you haven't. He loves spending time with family, but it's so rare that
he's just with family. There's always all these other hangers around hanging around. What he clearly loves to
do, though, is his routines. He's one of these guys who loves a routine like nobody's business. He'll get up in the morning before Martha, and he'll creep downstairs in the mansion in the private staircase there
which is completely private. Nobody has access to that other than his own enslaved valet and others. He'll go into his office, his study, he'll get dressed for the morning. He might do a little
bit of correspondence. He might have a little bit of breakfast of oat cakes, corn oat cakes, smothered in butter, smothered in honey. Then, he'll get on his horse, and it's a 20-mile circuit essentially to visit the not only mansion farm, but the four outlying
farms at Mount Vernon, all of his property. Here is where he feels most natural, as a farmer surveying
his lands on horseback. Which he loves horse flesh,
he's a great horseman, and he does that as
much as he can every day when he's here at Mount Vernon. That is his ritual. He is systematically improving his estate. He's taking care of all the challenges that they had had over the years. He's meticulous. He keeps incredible records. He has got to be the
greatest farmer of his age. He had huge ambitions
for it and grand plans. He can't always execute them because it's a challenge
working with enslaved labor. There's obviously a lack of motivation for people who are enslaved to work in the same way that if a free person is working for their own property. Washington recognizes that. That constant conflict and surveillance that he has to put into place is not, it's not a very effective way to have a complicated plantation
regime that he's got going. He's using the latest
literature from England which required crop rotation, which requires all sorts of skills, which requires constant
attendance and planning, and he can't always get it executed in the way that he
imagined it has to be done. In fact, there's a story that one of his formerly enslaved people told years after George Washington was dead, when they asked about George Washington, was he a good master, you know, the kind of questions people ask. And the enslaved man said that, he just told an anecdote of the General had asked him to build a corncrib, so a little shed to house
the newly picked corn, and asked him, you know. And George Washington rode
by and he saw the corncrib, and he said, you didn't use your plumb when you when you made the corncrib. It's crooked. And the slave said, well, there's no, you can't tell that it's crooked, nobody can really tell it's crooked, and guess what, it works,
it houses the corn. It's a temporary little building. Washington made him rebuild it again using his level and his plumb to make sure that it
was perfectly situated. Washington was kind of
anal about this stuff, and he really wanted it to be done the way he wanted it to be done. So a difficult man to work under, but also a man that
expected that same kind of rigor in his own in his own life and had been why he had survived and won out in so many
different situations. So he loved to be on horseback. He loved to be around his estates. But this was his serious profession. He wasn't like some gentleman farmer who was just hands-off. He would get down, he would talk to the enslaved people himself. He wasn't always working
through his overseers, and there's a lot of Virginia planters who didn't do that at all. In fact, there's some other famous ones that we think of as great farmers who really were more gardeners and who had little interaction
with the field hands who worked out in the broader fields. But Washington wasn't part of them. So how about another question, Matt? - [Matt] Doug, Cynthia would like to know as George Washington
grew older in retirement, and had more time to reflect on his life, what regrets did he have, if any? - Well, I mean, I think I talked
a little bit about slavery, and this he was quoted as saying, his one regret was the people that he depended upon in slavery and not being able to find
a way out of it personally. From a cynical point of
view in the 21st century, we might be like, oh, all you had to do was free your slaves. In reality, it was much
more complicated for him, and the way he understood
his responsibilities were not only were they enslaved themselves but to his own family to the
dower owners of those slaves and to the law and to Virginia society. So he probably overthought
it a little bit, and he couldn't find a
way out until that will. So that was certainly a big regret of his. It's hard to say other than that. I mean, Washington was not
what we would call entirely, he didn't allow us to see
his reflections very often. He doesn't write an autobiography. He had the motto that
the Exitus Acta Probat which is the result is
the test of the action. He's not the kind of guy
like Benjamin Franklin, who writes an autobiography that sort of whitewashes his life, tries to present it in a certain light. He's not like John Adams
who's gonna spend his time writing letter after letter complaining about the way he was treated, complaining about Mercy Otis Warren's history of the revolution and how it didn't give him enough credit, complaining to Benjamin Rush about how stupid George Washington actually was and how everybody's gonna think that some day in the future that Franklin struck the ground with his staff and
electricity shot out of it, and George Washington appeared and the two of them won
American independence. Washington's not a whiner like that, so he doesn't write those kinds of letters that allow us to see what regrets and frustrations he has
about his broader life. He says I've lived a life and you're gonna make of it what you will. He keeps his papers, and
his papers, thank God, allow us to understand the
founding of our country. This is one of the most important
collections of documents understanding the founding of
the United States that exists. And it's not just the
history of Washington, it's history of all the
enslaved people here as well. We couldn't tell their stories without Washington's papers being done. It's the history of Martha. It's the history of a social
history in this region of consumption patterns, of productivity, of labor and politics and ideas and transatlantic flows of
information and knowledge. It's an extraordinary resource. It's available for you for
free on Mount Vernon's website. You can go and explore George Washington's writings to your heart's content, and I urge you to go do it. Try to tell me what you
think his regrets were towards the end of his life. It's a great question to
ask because we all have 'em. And you know, some people let
them take over and some don't. But Washington was I think
a more practical-minded man and was always looking at the future despite recognizing the
value of these papers. Now I do wonder to what extent he culled the papers that he kept
here in Mount Vernon, or had time to call
them and take out things that he thought were embarrassing, or to what extent Martha
was able to do some of that after a death or even
his secretary Tobias Lear who had access to his
papers after his death. Because there's a period in his life where we don't know very much about. Here's a great example. This is volume number seven in
this extraordinary collection of the colonial series,
January 1761 until June 1767. Okay, by my math that's
basically six years So six years and you got, you know, you got what is it, you basically got 500 pages worth of printed
letters for six years. Whereas, George Washington's
retirement period, here's another period where he's not the President of the United States. Here you have January through
September 1789 to '88. Okay, so this is almost a
year as opposed to six years, and the retirement
volume on top is bigger. Now of course, he's a more important man and has international
correspondence and all that, but the reality is a planter in Virginia of his size in the 1760s, he's in the House of Representatives, I mean, he's not an unknown guy, he's involved in a lot of things, there's missing letters from the colonial period of
George Washington's life. It's a gap that I wish
that we could discover what was going on there. A lot of his letters and correspondence to his British merchants is missing. The great firm of Robert
Kerry and Company, I'd love to find the firm letters of Robert Kerry and Company. They had Virginia planter relationships going back into the 17th century. So there's things that are
missing in Washington's story that, as you know, more and more, those gaps even seem that
much more intriguing. But at any rate, Washington does, there is a lot that he's given us, and I think one of the great stories that we should certainly get to use to wrap up, Matt, is his death. Everybody dies, that is the story of life, and I think his death,
the story of his death is really popular because
we all experience it. I mean, it's something that,
you know, it's very human. It's one way to really get the real man, which is always a challenge here. Is there a question on that? Go ahead.
- Yeah, on that line. Julie would like to know, what kind of toll did
the war and presidency take on George Washington's health, and did that impact his retirement years? - What kind of toll did his
active life take on his health, and did it affect his retirement years? First off, he almost
died in his first year as the president of
anthrax, if you believe it. He had a terrible time of it
for a couple of months there, and looked like the whole experiment of democracy would go with him. Washington, you'll remember, came from short-lived males in his line. His father had died in his early 40s. His brother had died in his 30s. His father's father had
died young, as well. George Washington always
said I'm gonna die young, and he didn't even think he would live to be in his late 50s. He also said that living in cities was terribly bad for his health. I think that what he
didn't know about germs and the way that they circulate in cities is something that we know, of course, and Washington really felt that living in New York and
Philadelphia shortened his life. One of the reasons he gave
up power after two terms, is he felt he wasn't
gonna make it much longer. His mind was going, his vision was bad, his hearing was terrible,
and he was done, essentially. And that he always
attributed to the lack of having access to the exercise that he was used to as
the manager of a farm. So getting back outside on horseback, dealing with his daily life, rather than the city life was something he very much believed
was important to him. - [Matt] Doug, there's
time for more question. This one is from Emily. Do you have a favorite
story about Washington? - Emily asked do I have a
favorite story about Washington. Look people, I've been
talking to you straight with no notes about George Washington for how many hours together
since this shutdown occurred, and I've given you story after story, all of which are favorites of mine. I'm trying to come up with
one I haven't talked about. It's kind of remarkable. I have a lot of favorite stories I like to tell about George
Washington and his education. I was greatly honored to be the founding director of this library we're in here back in 2013, and I learned a lot then about the story of Washington's reading and how important it was to him. But one story that I think is really fun because it's about a
young George Washington. He's 16 years old. He's the same age as my son is right now. He's living here with me at Mount Vernon, an extraordinary young man himself. But George Washington really
takes it to another level. So one of the great things
about the young Washington, here is his first journal, one
of the first things produced by The Papers of George Washington once they started publishing
papers in the 1970s. And I love it because it is associate edited by Donald Jackson, the great editor of Papers for many years, but also the associate
editor was Dorothy Twohig, who was one of my mentors actually at the University of Virginia. I took a class with Dorothy
on documentary editing, actually working on the Culper spy letters when I was an undergrad
at UVA back in the 90s. Dorothy went on to become
the editor-in-chief of the Washington Papers. But it's really
extraordinary, this book here. The administrative board of
the Papers Project back then has the president of
University of Virginia, David Shannon, and it has
Mrs. Thomas Turner Cook, who was the regent to the Mount
Vernon Ladies' Association. Right there, that shows that
partnership that helped create this extraordinary
product for scholarship. But George Washington's
first diary in here is a trip that he makes as a 16 year old going out on a surveying mission. He goes with George William Fairfax, his dear friend who actually is about 10 years older than him. He is 16 years old, and he
goes on a trip really into what we think of now as
the Shenandoah Valley. But for George Washington
this is, let's see, so it's gotta be 1948, right. He's 16, he's born in 1732. 1748, he's going out
with a surveying party into the wilderness, essentially. Once they get out beyond
the pale of civilization, there's this lonely house in
the woods that they reach, and all the guys in this camp group, and these are woodsman, you know, men's men who are used to the frontier, and they're out there
with all their baggage, and they sleep under the
stars around a campfire. Washington 16-year-old
gentry class guy that he is, he goes into the house
and he lays down on a bed, starts taking off his clothes, lays down in this filthy bed which has a blanket on
it which he describes as being covered in lice
and fleas and ticks, all kinds of nastiness. He immediately throws it off,
puts his clothes back on, runs back outside and then sleeps outside. What's interesting about this story is he writes this in his journal, and he writes it in such a way that shows that he looked like an idiot to all these, he was out there with all these grown men, need to have this room
his first time out west, and he makes a rookie mistake. He goes in there and he gets undressed, gets under this filthy, lousy blanket, and then he runs back out
and he writes in his journal that he slept outside with the others, not being such a good was
woodsman as the other men, I made this mistake. But as you'll see going forward, I never made that mistake again. Which is remarkable, he
writes this in his journal about, you know, I made this mistake, and I never would do it
again as you would see. I mean, who does that? He's a 16 year old. I mean, it's an incredible self-awareness and a desire to do things the right way and to improve himself. You see that he's got
that at such an early age. And it's a small, small story to tell, but he becomes such a great man and so out of proportion, such
a trans-historical figure, he was such a block of marble. This boy, a 16 year old
boy, that tells a lot more about the made-up stories
about cherry trees about who this guy would become because he had that inner drive to perfect himself to be better, but also the self-awareness
to sort of keep track of it. It's like, dear diary,
I look like an idiot, but don't worry, I never did that again. I mean, who's this guy? Anyway, George Washington,
his journals are filled with all sorts of remarkable
insights into the man. I do want to mention one,
as well, before we sign off, most recent publication and partnership with the Papers of George Washington, the Washington Family Papers. George Washington's Barbados
diary, first time it appears, all that appears in that first volume is a facsimile of it that you can't read. It's terrible. It's set 1970s photography of
a blurry handwritten document that makes no sense
because it's a log book. But it is George Washington at age 19. The only thing that exists of his writing in that period in time
when he goes to Barbados and really discovers what an alien world looks like to the young Virginia. All right, so let me wrap it up here and say thank you all for your attention. Please spread the word about Mount Vernon and all the work we're doing here. Subscribe to our channels,
like these videos. And thank you so much for
being a part of who we are. We gotta hold fast in
this challenging time and work together to
try to find solutions. I know that a lot of us have experienced challenges in our lives, family members who are ill. I hope that these Mount Vernon excursions can help you get a little bit out of your own head occasionally and learn something you that didn't know and participate now as a community that we're building of
folks who come together with our shared enthusiasm
for the 18th century and the great legacy that
we all have inherited. So thank you very much
for being a part of it, and I look forward to seeing
you back here again soon.
