Being George Washington (31 page)

The president’s day had been filled with meetings, reports and letters read, and decisions made. But though daylight had long since departed, Washington’s day was not yet complete. There would be no genteel card games this evening, no dances or lingering dinners. Work—and, as always, duty—still summoned him to his desk.

He stared almost blankly at the lengthy manuscript before him. George Washington was sixty-four years old and bone-weary but neither fact would stop him from thoroughly examining every comma of this text. His fingers moved stiffly as he retrieved his spectacles and placed them over his tired eyes.

He had commissioned this document four years ago, requesting
Virginia congressman James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and a coauthor of the
Federalist
papers, to prepare it for him. Then he had put it aside. The time had not been right for it to be issued.

But now, the hour had arrived. In anticipation of its revealing, Washington had asked Alexander Hamilton to review this Farewell Address one more time. He was leaving the presidency, and this would be his valedictory.

George Washington now squinted and peered through his tortoise-shell eyeglasses to fine-tune the last draft. As he did, he couldn’t help but think back to the other times that he’d unsuccessfully tried to bid good-bye to public service. That a military leader would not grasp civil power as well was unprecedented. When George III learned of Washington’s departure from the military to Mount Vernon, the monarch exclaimed in profound admiration, “If he does that, he will be the
greatest man in the world
!”

For once, George III had it right.

Washington similarly abandoned power following the Constitutional Convention. Each time, he had prayed that his service to his nation was complete and that he might finally return permanently to a “most delectable” life at home. But each time, duty’s solemn trumpet sounded yet again.

Duty. It was among the virtues he held most dear. Duty and service and honor and courage—he stood for all those things. But the virtue that George Washington may have held most dear of all is one that seems to have lost its way over the years: civility.

May 16, 1747

Ferry Farm, Virginia

George Washington sat at his desk. A far different kind of document lay before him.

He needed no glasses. His fingers did not ache. His muscles were not stiff.

George Washington, sixteen years old, dipped his quill pen into ink and began to write, though he did not intend to compose a single original word.

Washington copied the words written in the slim book open in front of him, inscribing them in a wonderfully round, legible script that might have been appropriate for a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence or the Magna Carta. But this was nothing of the sort. The book he now copied from was simply titled
Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
.

The truest ideas are never new; they are eternal. And the 110 rules that young Washington so laboriously duplicated on that day were just that—eternal ideas. While they had originally been composed overseas nearly a century and a half earlier by French Jesuits looking to instruct the young gentlemen entrusted to their care, the truth was that these words were based on sentiments far older than that.

Some sneered that the maxims the young Washington reproduced so faithfully spoke merely of small matters. Some derided them as a mere grab bag of table manners (“
101. Rinse not your mouth in the presence of others
”). But, when taken together, these often ordinary watchwords fashioned an extraordinary mosaic that spoke of consideration toward others and of modesty regarding self. That a sixteen-year-old copied them with such precision was, in itself, quiet remarkable, but that the adult George Washington actually
lived
them with such faithfulness and precision was even more uncommon.

“Every action done in company,” the young Washington wrote, as he copied the very first rule, “ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.” That, in fact, was the basis of each guideline that followed—just as all of the Father’s Ten Commandments were founded upon the Son’s Two Great Commandments: “‘
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.’ This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

Loving thy neighbor as thyself means placing neighbor
above
self, and in the decades to follow, Washington would place his nation above himself so many times: in taking command of the Continental Army and subordinating military leadership to civilian control; in chairing the fractious Constitutional Convention and patiently allowing competing passions and interests to fuse themselves into a new nation; and in creating
this new position of the presidency, fashioning it through his every nuance and action, molding it into an office of republican service rather than of royalist autocracy.

Many times, especially while watching the often gut-churning process of democracy play out, he must have been sorely tempted to merely decree that his will would be followed. He might easily have gotten away with it. But, on each occasion, the words of the Declaration of Independence’s complaint against the Crown rang in his ears: “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.”

Each time, Washington’s sense of duty surmounted his ego. Each time, patience overcame his pride.

March 8, 1796

Executive Mansion

Philadelphia

Gilbert Stuart dabbed not ink but paint.

He was accustomed to gazing into men’s faces and into their very souls. He had to. It was his stock-in-trade. Tradesmen artists paint faces. Great artists paint souls, and Gilbert Stuart was indeed a very great artist.

He paused as George Washington sat awkwardly before him, rigidly, perfectly still—once again doing his duty. But the truth revealed by Washington’s features suddenly galvanized Stuart’s conception of the man. His subject’s eye sockets were immense. The nose and the space between his eyes were as broad as any that Stuart had ever witnessed.

Stuart had made a veritable science out of interpreting human faces and he viewed them as a scientist might peer intently through a microscope. And through the powerful lens of his considerable experience, Stuart concluded that George Washington’s features constituted irrefutable evidence of a man who embodied immense passion.

Yet, as Washington learned from an early age, it was those same passions that could be a man’s downfall.

And so he worked to control them. As a boy, he painfully copied over seven dozen Jesuit maxims on civility because he knew that he was in need of self-control. Those
Rules
were signposts to what he wanted to
become; a road map to ensuring that his passions were always a blessing and never a curse.

But following that map would not easy. Grand enthusiasms and antipathies remained at his core. So Washington made a choice—or rather he made a choice every single day of his life: he would tread the hard but straight path of duty and service, no matter the cost.

June 12, 1747

Dockside, Potomac River

Below Mount Vernon, Virginia

George Washington’s trunk was packed tight and already lay belowdecks.

His blue eyes shone with anticipation. The sea would now be his life. For years, his revered older half brother Lawrence had regaled him with tales of his own service in His Majesty’s Navy. From the romantic West Indies to the bloody storming of the Spaniards’ South American fortress at Cartagena—young George had heard all about his brother’s amazing exploits.

Lawrence had served under the bewigged Admiral Edward “Old Grog” Vernon—and had eventually named his Virginia estate, Mount Vernon, after him. But even beyond Lawrence’s stories, the open sea meant adventure and glamour to fifteen-year-old George Washington. Virginia, after all, was a humdrum world of isolated plantations. Even Williamsburg and Alexandria were little more than villages. But the ships—they held the promise of excitement and adventure! They were not mere assemblages of heavy wooden beams and thick canvas sails. Far from it! A life aboard a ship was a passport to the great ports of the world—to London and Amsterdam, to the exotic Caribbean, even to the Indian subcontinent and perhaps to the greater Orient itself. Life in colonial Virginia was a predictable treadmill of tobacco and white-tailed deer and slaves. But, as the adolescent Washington saw it, life at sea was life itself.

Washington received a royal midshipman’s warrant and prepared to board the ship for his first voyage. He stiffly embraced his strong-willed mother, the widowed Mary Ball Washington. The tall, jut-jawed woman feared her oldest son going off upon the ocean, perhaps facing enemy
cannon fire. She knew for certain that he would face prejudice as a colonial in a navy ruled by British-born and bred officers. She thought of her three other sons and of her daughter Betty—all younger than George. She thought of how much she needed George’s help at home—he had grown up fast since his father’s death three years earlier.

But George needed to get away. The authoritative Mary Washington was, in fact, one of the primary reasons why Lawrence had advised George to exchange the comforts of hearth and home for a hard midshipman’s berth. She was a tough woman to live with.

Yet, as tough as Mary Washington was, she still found it difficult to tell her oldest son that he could not realize his most cherished dream. And time was quickly running out.

Now they stood together on the dock below Mount Vernon’s rolling hillsides, his naval ship stocked and ready to leave.

“Good-bye, mother,” George said, embracing her.

She pulled away. “George, you must not go—I need to have you at home.”

He stood there, stunned, his mouth agape, his eyes open wide in shocked disbelief.

He was stunned and humiliated—his mother had done this at the very last possible minute, and in public!

But humiliation and anger soon turned to rage. His fists clenched, he turned and walked slowly up the shaky wooden gangplank. He grasped no guide ropes. At that moment he did not care whether he tumbled into the shoreline muck or not.

Mary Washington’s thick black eyebrows arched. “George! Where are you going?” she said sharply.

He paused and turned to face her, his face reddened in anger. Before he spoke, he lowered his voice. “To retrieve my trunk, mother,” he answered coolly. “It is already on board.”

Rule number 108 from
Rules of Civility
was weighing on his mind: “Honor and obey your natural parents although they be poor.”

Honor and obedience ruled that day, but perhaps some measure of Divine Providence did as well. After all, had George Washington gotten on that ship he may very well have gone to grand destinations like
London and Calcutta—but there’s a very good chance he would’ve never made it to far more humble locations, like Valley Forge and Yorktown.

April 29, 1796

Reviewing the Farewell Address

Executive Mansion

Philadelphia

George Washington took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. He could not believe that he was sitting behind this desk in Philadelphia, let alone working on an address to his fellow Americans explaining why he would not run for a third term as their president. A third term, he thought to himself. I did not even want the first two!

Seven years earlier, Washington, having completed his duties of presiding over the Constitutional Convention, had returned to Mount Vernon to peacefully live the rest of his days outside the public eye. It was all he’d ever wanted.

Mount Vernon—he had grown to love the place, to take quiet joy in cantering across its rolling fields and hillsides upon horseback, in surveying the white-masted schooners plying the Potomac’s waters below, of ensuring that harvests would be plentiful and guests would be graciously welcomed at his table. He’d mounted his horse and rode away from Mount Vernon so many times for his nation. To the west against the French. To Philadelphia and to the Continental Congress. To war for eight long years—and all with no salary. He had put his family, and himself, through more than should ever be asked of even the greatest patriot.

Then, when he thought he’d finally left it all behind, he’d been beckoned back to Philadelphia in 1787 to chair a new Constitutional Convention. He tried his best not to go. He made excuses that business was bad at Mount Vernon. He complained of his painful rheumatism. And he plaintively asked if he had not yet done enough for his nation. The answer, of course, was
yes
, he had done enough. But he knew the truth: doing enough was not sufficient—his country demanded more. And so he left Mount Vernon and rode north once again.

After a long, hot summer in Philadelphia he returned to Mount
Vernon to spend the rest of his days at home. But, less than two years later, his country had again called and asked him to serve—this time as its president. It was a painful choice.

As Washington once again bade adieu to Mount Vernon, private life, and domestic tranquility, he became tense and anxious. He had, of course, the best of intentions to render the service that his country required—but he had far less hope of answering its expectations.

And back at home, Martha was equally as troubled. “I am truly sorry to tell that the General is gone to New York …,” Martha would mournfully write to her nephew. “Whether he will ever come home again God only knows. I think it was much too late for him to go in to public life again, but it was not to be avoided….”

Given the precarious state of the country, some people had wanted George Washington to be ruler over this new United States—to be its monarch. But he consented only to serve, to be a president, a chief magistrate. Kings never freely abdicate their power, but Washington tried to step away in 1792—and was called back to serve again. His glorious burden was not yet ready to be lifted. But now, in 1796, he sensed, it finally was.