Washington: A Life (79 page)

George Washington portrayed in the aftermath of his Yorktown victory. The Marquis de Lafayette stands between Washington and his beloved aide-de-camp Tench Tilghman, who grasps the articles of capitulation.

Fired by sparkling intelligence and unstoppable ambition, Alexander Hamilton flourished as a wartime aide to Washington and later as treasury secretary because the two men agreed on so many policy issues.

“Baron” von Steuben. Colorful, flamboyant, and profane, Steuben performed wonders as the drillmaster at Valley Forge, introducing a new professionalism and forging discipline in the Continental Army.

At first a trusted adviser to Washington and his peerless tutor on the Constitution, James Madison emerged unexpectedly as his most formidable adversary in Congress.

While Washington’s secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson teamed up with Madison, in a sometimes covert partnership, to contest the policies of the administration, inaugurating a major political party in the process.

An ardent admirer of Washington early in the Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine later turned into a scathing critic.

As the editor of an opposition paper, Philip Freneau heaped so many aspersions on Washington that the exasperated president denounced him as a “rascal.”

Elizabeth Willing Powel, a married woman of exceptional intelligence and literary flair, was Washington’s most intimate female friend and confidante during his presidency.

This image of Martha Washington captures both her sweetness and her sadness in later years.

Frances “Fanny” Bassett, a niece of Martha Washington’s, came to live at Mount Vernon in early adolescence and, with her winning personality, ended up as a much-loved surrogate daughter.

The Washington Family.
This classic portrait of George and Martha Washington includes the two Custis grandchildren they reared: George Washington Parke Custis, left, and Eleanor Parke Custis, right. The slave depicted at right may have been William Lee or Christopher Sheels.

This painting of an aging President Washington shows just how haggard and careworn he appeared during his contentious second term.

Part of Washington’s attachment to Hamilton sprang from his persistent concern for his personal papers, which he saw as guaranteeing his posthumous fame and preserving his record from distortion by posterity. The way Washington fussed over these documents confirms that he knew he was a historic personage and reflected his awareness that his personal saga was inextricably entwined with that of the new nation. As early as August 1776, while bracing for Howe’s assault on New York, he had shown solicitude for his papers, sending a box of them to Philadelphia for safekeeping. The following year he had a chest with strong hinges constructed to hold them. After Hamilton left his employ in April 1781, Washington asked Congress to hire secretaries to make copies of his wartime correspondence. “Unless a set of writers are employed for the sole purpose of recording them,” he explained, “it will not be in my power to accomplish this necessary work and equally impracticable perhaps to preserve from injury and loss such valuable papers.”
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Instead of the rough originals, Washington wanted clerks who wrote “a fair hand” to produce a magnificent set of bound papers.
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