Washington: A Life (91 page)

The first officer to step forward was Henry Knox, a mere bookseller before Washington had drawn him from obscurity and boosted him to chief of artillery. Famous for his self-control and his reluctance to let people touch him, Washington not only shook hands with Knox but hugged and kissed him in silence while tears streamed down their faces. Then Steuben, the fake baron whom Washington had allowed to train troops at Valley Forge, stepped forward and was similarly embraced. All the officers were “suffused in tears” as they surged forward for a final farewell kiss from Washington. As Benjamin Tallmadge wrote, “Such a scene of sorrow and weeping I had never before witnessed …
The simple thought
… that we should see his face no more in this world seemed to me utterly insupportable.”
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The moment captured many of Washington’s finest qualities: his innate dignity and laconic eloquence, his frank affection behind the impassive front, his instinctive command of the theatrical gesture. He had a magisterial way of directing the major scenes in his life. One senses that, as he struggled with deep feelings, he feared that he would surrender control of his emotions if he said any more. No moment in his life showcased his gift of silence to better effect.

After all the junior officers had come forward to be clasped, Washington walked across the room, lifted his arm in a stately gesture of farewell, and left without looking back. The spell was hypnotic and the officers shuffled out “in mournful silence,” according to Tallmadge.
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When Washington arrived at the Whitehall wharf to board the ferry that would take him to New Jersey, a large crowd of citizens had gathered for an emotional goodbye. Washington raised his three-cornered hat, and his officers and the throng waved their hats in response. Then he stepped into the boat, and twenty-two oarsmen swung into motion, rowing him across the water until he vanished from sight.

Washington’s destination was the State House in Annapolis, Maryland, where an itinerant Congress had taken up residence after leaving Princeton (hoping that with its theaters, balls, and other amusements, Annapolis might entice absentee delegates to attend sessions). Once he resigned his commission as commander in chief, Washington planned to return to Mount Vernon, vowing to Martha that he would join her for Christmas dinner. Having slept in 280 houses during the war, he must have had a special craving for the banal comforts of home. It took him four days to reach Philadelphia, and even as he mused about returning to private life, the trip showed how profoundly his life had changed. He had surrendered all right to privacy. Wherever he went, he was draped with honors and became a captive of the invariable crowds. A stream of letters trailed him, entreating his aid in securing employment or other favors. All the while he had the burden of having to act like a model citizen and was allowed no normal moods or imperfections.

The extraordinary hero worship Washington inspired can be vividly seen in the correspondence of Gerard Vogels, a Dutch businessman in Philadelphia. Writing to his wife of the commander’s arrival in Philadelphia, Vogels made it sound as if the Messiah had stepped down from the heavens: “I saw the greatest man who has ever appeared on the surface of this earth. His Excellency arrived at 6 o’clock escorted by light cavalry … We all waved our hats three times over our heads. Then came the excellent Hero himself, riding an uncommonly beautiful horse … I don’t know if, in our delight at seeing the Hero, we were more surprised by his simple but grand air or by the kindness of the greatest and best of heroes.”
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Happily or not, Washington seemed resigned to being a form of public property. “His Excellency promises to walk daily through the town to give the grateful Americans the pleasure of seeing him,” Vogels informed his wife. “Then he says farewell to all honors and the world’s turmoil to live quietly in retirement on his estate.”
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At receptions Washington must have wondered whether he was the honored guest or a prisoner. All the turgid toasts in his praise drew forth from him equally stilted replies, as he took refuge in safe platitudes. Evidently there were limits to how much reverence the Hero could endure. He had always seemed uncomfortable with compliments. He left one concert as the chorus was about to sing a hymn in his honor, set to music by Handel. Vogels, who was in the audience, commented afterward, “Evidently His Excellency is above hearing his praise sung and retires before the just acclamations of his people.”
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He noted how Washington’s presence acted as an aphrodisiac on the panting ladies: “It was amusing to see how, in a place so crowded with the fair sex, everybody had eyes only for this Hero. Indeed, we only now and then stole a glance at our girls. His Excellency drew everyone’s attention.”
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Before Washington arrived, the Pennsylvania assembly had ordered construction of a triumphal wooden arch in the classical style; suspended in the center was an enormous transparency of Cincinnatus, returning to his plow, his brow crowned with laurels. In case anyone was dim-witted enough to miss the allusion, the legislature said the “countenance of Cincinnatus is [to be] a striking resemblance of General Washington.”
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The portrait commission went to Charles Willson Peale, and Washington more or less good-humoredly submitted to a session under his studio skylight. Washington left a whimsical image of his cooperation, telling one correspondent that “no dray moves more readily to the thill than I do to the painter’s chair”—that is, no workhorse was more readily harnessed to the shafts of a wagon than himself.
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Peale exchanged letters about Washington with Benjamin West, the great expatriate painter in London, who had risen to become court history painter to George III. One day the king asked West whether Washington would be head of the army or head of state when the war ended. When West replied that Washington’s sole ambition was to return to his estate, the thunderstruck king declared, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
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Before Peale had finished the portrait, Washington decided to quit town; he left Philadelphia on December 15 with a diminished retinue. As he slowly shed the trappings of power, he retained only two aides, David Humphreys and Benjamin Walker, and a team of slaves. For a short stretch of the journey, one of his companions was John Dickinson, Pennsylvania’s chief executive, who anticipated a problem that was to harry Washington in his postwar incarnation. Washington had negotiated neither a pension nor an expense account to entertain the hordes poised to descend upon Mount Vernon. Dickinson had privately warned Congress that “the admiration and esteem of the world may make [Washington’s] life in a very considerable degree public, as numbers will be desirous of seeing the great and good man … His very services to his country may therefore subject him to improper expenses unless he permits her gratitude to interpose.”
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Congress failed to take action, and it would prove a serious omission in the coming years as the pilgrims to Mount Vernon imposed gigantic expenses.

On December 19 Washington approached the outskirts of Annapolis and was greeted by a delegation of dignitaries that included Horatio Gates. Both men must have been struck by the totality of Washington’s triumph and Gates’s demotion. Accompanied to George Mann’s Tavern, Washington arrived to thirteen blasts of cannon fire, a cliché of which Washington surely tired. The next day he submitted a letter to Thomas Mifflin, his former aide and disloyal critic during the Conway affair and now president of Congress, asking whether he should submit his resignation in writing or in a public ceremony. Washington wanted to do everything in his power to dramatize his humility before civilian power. Congress decided that, after being feted with a magnificent dinner on December 22, he would return his commission before that body at noon the next day.

Several hundred people attended the celebratory dinner, which exuded a mood of uproarious good spirits. “The number of cheerful voices, with the clangor of knives and forks, made a din of a very extraordinary nature and most delightful influence,” James Tilton wrote.
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After suffering through the obligatory thirteen toasts, Washington made a toast with a pertinent point: “Competent powers to Congress for general purposes.”
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The toast suggested that Washington’s mind still fretted over the inadequate Articles of Confederation and that his postwar retirement might be short-lived. The message, in many ways, foretold the rest of his political life. After the dinner Washington attended a brilliantly lit ball, dancing first with twenty-two-year-old Martha Rolle Maccubin, a prominent local belle. With women fawning all over him—the fashionable style dictated thirteen curls tumbling down the neck—Washington never left the dance floor and must have grown slightly giddy from the adulation. “The general danced every set, that the ladies might have the pleasure of dancing with him, or, as it has since been handsomely expressed,
get a touch of him,
” reported Tilton.
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The next morning Washington squeezed in a last personal letter to Baron von Steuben. Among other things, he reassured Steuben that the country would reward his inestimable service during the war. The quiet fervor of this letter says something about the enduring tie uniting the two men. “I wish to make use of this last moment of my public life to signify in the strongest terms my entire approbation of your conduct,” Washington wrote. “… This is the last letter I shall ever write while I continue in the service of my country. The hour of my resignation is fixed at twelve this day; after which I shall become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, where I shall be glad to embrace you and to testify [to] the great esteem and consideration” in which he held him.
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Washington’s resignation was a minutely prepared affair, designed to show a doubting world that this new republic would not degenerate into disorder. Shortly before noon he arrived at the State House, wearing his familiar uniform for the last time. He was greeted by Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress, who led him to a seat on the dais, where he was flanked by David Humphreys and Benjamin Walker. In the audience was a sparse contingent of legislators, only twenty representatives, who sat with their hats on. This was no sign of disrespect but an antimonarchical gesture: in European kingdoms, commoners always stood in the presence of royalty and doffed their hats. Then the doors opened, and the leading Maryland politicians and town gentry poured into the hall, with men crowding into seats downstairs and bright-eyed ladies packing the galleries. Everyone pressed into the hall to sneak a peek at this historic transaction.

As the audience sat in rapt silence, Thomas Mifflin rose. “Sir,” he intoned, “the United States in Congress assembled are prepared to receive your communications.”
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Following a precise script, Washington rose and bowed to the congressmen, who removed their hats out of respect and then returned them. As Washington spoke, he held the speech in his right hand, which began to shake so violently that he had to steady it with his left.

In a voice hoarse with emotion, he recalled his feelings of inadequacy when first appointed commander in chief and stated that he had been sustained only “by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the union, and the patronage of heaven.”
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He paid tribute to the men who had served with him and gently urged Congress to take care of them, reminding them of the troops sent home unpaid. It was at this point that he had to grasp the speech with two trembling hands. When he recommended “our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God,” said James McHenry, Washington’s voice “faltered and sank and the whole house felt his agitations.”
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After a pause he regained his composure and closed on a poetic note, hinting at his permanent withdrawal: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action; and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”
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Then, drawing the original parchment commission from his coat, he handed it to Thomas Mifflin along with a folded copy of his speech. The emotional impact was overpowering. “The General was so much affected himself that everybody felt for him,” commented a woman named Mary Ridout, who said that “many tears were shed.”
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In dignified fashion, Thomas Mifflin gave a prepared response that had been drafted by Thomas Jefferson, then a delegate from Virginia, who was also swept up in the Washington worship and fully understood the unprecedented nature of Washington’s surrender of power. As Jefferson later wrote to Washington, “The moderation and virtue of a single character … probably prevented this revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.”
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In the speech, Mifflin cited the peerless way Washington had “conducted the great military conflict with wisdom and fortitude, invariably regarding the rights of the civil powers.”
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After Mifflin’s speech, there came more formal bowing, and Washington prepared to leave. He shook hands and bade farewell individually to each member of Congress, thus ending his years of military service. Before the speech he had packed his bags and checked out of George Mann’s Tavern, so that his horse and attendants awaited him at the State House door, enabling him to make a quick escape. He mounted his horse and rode off in a hush. “It was a solemn and affecting spectacle, such a one as history does not present,” said McHenry. “The spectators all wept and there was hardly a member of Congress who did not drop tears.”
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A small delegation escorted Washington to the nearby South River ferry. Then he was finally alone on horseback with his two aides and servants, heading for Mount Vernon.