Part 37 (2/2)
”New York, July 15, 1776. To Mr. Lund Was.h.i.+ngton.--G. W.”
”New York, July 16, 1776. To Mr. Lund Was.h.i.+ngton.--G. W.”
”New York, July 22d, 1776. To Mr. Lund Was.h.i.+ngton--G. W.”
”June 24th, 1776. To Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton.--G. W.”
[115] Mrs. Susan R. Echard, daughter of Colonel Read, now (1860) living in Philadelphia, at the age of eighty-four years. The venerable Rembrandt Peale, of the same city, who, two years before, painted Was.h.i.+ngton's portrait from life, and now in his eighty-third year, was also present in the gallery on that occasion, and his recollection agrees with that of Mrs. Echard.
[116] Craik.
[117] Harrison.
[118] Custis.
[119] Lewis.
[120] It was in the form of a ”Letter to George Was.h.i.+ngton, President of the United States.” Dwight was a violent republican, and an uncompromising advocate for the immediate and total abolition of slavery in the United States. Because Was.h.i.+ngton was a slaveholder, he considered him extremely vulnerable on that point, and in his ”Letter”
he twice alludes to the fact.
”Had the French Revolution,” he said, ”commenced ten years later, or you retired to the shades of Mount Vernon four years ago, the friends of public virtue would still proudly boast of one great man free from the breath of public dispraise, and your fondly partial country, forbearing to inquire whether or not you were chargeable with mental aberrations, would vaunt in you this possession of the phoenix.” After making strictures on the events of the past four years, he said: ”Would to G.o.d!
you had retired to a private station four years ago, while your public conduct threw a veil of sanct.i.ty round you, which you have yourself rashly broken down. Your fame would have been safe, your country without reproach, and I should not have the mortifying task of pointing out the blind temerity with which you come forward to defend the religion of Christ, who exist in the violation of its most sacred obligations, of the dearest ties of humanity, and in defiance of the sovereign calls of morality and liberty--by dealing in HUMAN SLAVES.” Again, after a.s.serting that ”posterity will in vain search for the monuments of wisdom” in his administration, he says they will, on inquiry, find that had he obtained promotion, as he expected, for the services rendered after Braddock's defeat, his sword would have been drawn against his country; and that they would discover ”that the great champion of American freedom, the rival of Timoleon and Cincinnatus, twenty years after the establishment of the republic, was possessed of FIVE HUNDRED of the HUMAN SPECIES IN SLAVERY, enjoying the fruits of their labor without remuneration, or even the consolations of religious instruction--that he retained the barbarous usages of the feudal system, and kept men in livery--and that he still affected to be the friend of the Christian religion, of civil liberty, and moral equality--and to be, withal, a disinterested, virtuous, liberal, and una.s.suming man.”
CHAPTER x.x.xVII.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON LEAVES PHILADELPHIA FOR MOUNT VERNON--RECEIVES HONORS BY THE WAY--HIS ARRIVAL HOME--HIS ENJOYMENT OF PRIVATE LIFE--LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS--HIS OWN PICTURE OF HIS DAILY LIFE--ENTERTAINMENT OF STRANGERS BURDENSOME--INVITES HIS NEPHEW TO MOUNT VERNON--NELLY CUSTIS AND HER SUITORS--WAs.h.i.+NGTON'S LETTER TO HER--LAWRENCE LEWIS PREFERRED--WAs.h.i.+NGTON'S DREAM OF PERMANENT REPOSE DISTURBED BY A GATHERING STORM--EARLY a.s.sOCIATIONS RECALLED--AGAIN SUMMONED INTO PUBLIC LIFE.
Was.h.i.+ngton left Philadelphia for Mount Vernon on the ninth of March, a private citizen and a happy man. He was accompanied by Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton and her grand-daughter, Eleanor Parke Custis; and by George Was.h.i.+ngton Lafayette and his preceptor, M. Frestel, whose arrival and residence in the United States we have already noticed. George Was.h.i.+ngton Parke Custis, the brother of Eleanor, or ”Nelly,” as she was familiarly called, was then in college at Princeton, where he had been for several months. The letters which have been preserved by the Custis family, of the correspondence between Was.h.i.+ngton and that adopted son, during the college life of the latter, are very interesting, and exhibit the Father of his Country in a light in which he is not viewed by history in her delineation of him, namely, as the father of a talented but wayward boy.
Ever desirous of giving words of encouragement and the meed of praise to the deserving, Was.h.i.+ngton handed to young Bartholomew Dandridge, his private secretary, on the morning of his departure for Mount Vernon, the following letter:--
”Your conduct, during a six years' residence in my family, having been such as to meet my full approbation, and believing that a declaration to this effect would be satisfactory to yourself, and justice requiring it from me, I make it with pleasure, and in full confidence that those principles of honor, integrity, and benevolence, which I have reason to believe have hitherto guided your steps, will still continue to mark your conduct. I have only to add a wish, that you may lose no opportunity of making such advances in useful acquirements as may benefit yourself, your friends, and mankind; and I am led to antic.i.p.ate an accomplishment of this wish, when I consider the manner in which you have hitherto improved such occasions as offered themselves to you.
”The career of life on which you are now entering, will present new scenes and frequent opportunities for the improvement of a mind desirous of obtaining useful knowledge; but I am sure you will never forget that, without virtue and without integrity, the finest talents and the most brilliant accomplishments can never gain the respect, or conciliate the esteem, of the truly valuable part of mankind.”
On his journey to the Potomac, the retired president received every mark of respect, love, and veneration, from the people. ”Last evening,” said a Baltimore paper of the thirteenth of March, ”arrived in this city, on his way to Mount Vernon, the ill.u.s.trious object of veneration and grat.i.tude, GEORGE WAs.h.i.+NGTON. His excellency was accompanied by his lady and Miss Custis, and by the son of the unfortunate Lafayette and his preceptor. At a distance from the city he was met by a crowd of citizens, on horse and foot, who thronged the road to greet him, and by a detachment of Captain Hollingsworth's troop, who escorted him through as great a concourse of people as Baltimore ever witnessed. On alighting at the Fountain Inn, the general was saluted with reiterated and thundering huzzas from the spectators.”[121]
”The attentions we met with on our journey,” wrote Was.h.i.+ngton to Mr.
M'Henry, the secretary of war, ”were very flattering, and by some, whose minds are differently formed from mine, would have been highly relished; but I avoided, in every instance, when I had any previous knowledge of the intention, and could by earnest entreaties prevail, all parade and escorts.” He seldom succeeded, for intelligence of his approach went before him, and citizens and soldiers hastened to do homage to the great Patriot and Chief.
Was.h.i.+ngton arrived at Mount Vernon on the evening of the fourteenth of March. Never did the threshold of his mansion receive a happier man. The servants flocked around him like children come to greet a returning father, and there was joy in the household and all over the estate of Mount Vernon. The master fairly revelled in the luxury of private life and the repose of domestic enjoyment. Yet he did not sit down, an idle man and indifferent spectator of pa.s.sing events. ”Let me pray you to have the goodness,” he wrote to Mr. M'Henry, ”to communicate to me occasionally such matters as are interesting, and not contrary to the rules of your official duty to disclose. We get so many details in the gazettes, and of such different complexions, that it is impossible to know what credence to give to any of them.”
Now, escaped from the turmoils of politics, Was.h.i.+ngton resolved to cast the burden of speculations concerning them from his mind. During almost his entire administration, the politics of France had been a constant source of anxiety to him, and had given him more real vexation, directly and indirectly, than all other matters of his public life combined. ”The conduct of the French government,” he now wrote, ”is so much beyond calculation, and so unaccountable upon any principle of justice, or even of that sort of policy which is familiar to plain understandings, that I shall not now puzzle my brains in attempting to develop the motives of it.”
To Oliver Wolcott he wrote in May: ”For myself, having turned aside from the broad walks of political into the narrow paths of private life, I shall leave it with those whose duty it is to consider subjects of this sort [the calling of an extraordinary session of Congress], and, as every good citizen ought to do, conform to whatsoever the ruling powers shall decide. To make and sell a little flour annually, to repair houses (going fast to ruin), to build one for the security of my papers of a public nature, and to amuse myself in agricultural and rural pursuits, will const.i.tute employment for the few years I have to remain on this terrestrial globe. If, also, I could now and then meet the friends I esteem, it would fill the measure and add zest to my enjoyments; but if ever this happens, it must be under my own vine and fig-tree.”
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