Harlow Giles Unger - The Unexpected George Washington

Harlow Giles Unger

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright 2006 by Harlow Giles Unger. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

Credits appear on page 291 and constitute an extension of this copyright page.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Unger, Harlow G., date.

The Unexpected Washington: His Private Life / Harlow Giles Unger.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13 978-0-471-74496-2 (cloth)

ISBN-10 0-471-74496-4 (cloth)

1. Washington, George, 17321799. 2. PresidentsUnited StatesBiography. 3. GeneralsUnited StatesBiography. 4. Washington, George, 17321799Family. I. Title.

E312.U29 2006

973.41092dc22

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my good friends Hana Umlauf Lane
and Edward W. Knappman

Also by Harlow Giles Unger

The French War against America: How a Trusted Ally Betrayed
Washington and the Founding Fathers

Lafayette

John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot

Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot

I am now enjoying domestic ease... under the shadow of my own Vine and Fig-tree, free from the busy scenes of public life... I am retiring within myself; and shall tread the paths of private life with heartfelt satisfaction. Envious of none, I am determined to be pleased with all.

George Washington, February 1, 1784

Overleaf:

Bust of George Washington by the French sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon from a life mask he took in 1785.

Maps

Illustrations

Philander D. Chase, senior editor and longtime editor in chief of The Papers of George Washington, was kind enough to encourage and guide me from the outset of my research for this book and went beyond the bounds of generosity by reviewing the finished manuscript. I shall always be grateful.

My deep thanks, too, to James C. Rees, executive director, and Richard B. Dressner, who was associate director, of George Washingtons Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens for their graciousness in placing the vast research materials of Mount Vernon at my disposal. I owe especial thanks to Mary V. Thompson, research specialist at Mount Vernon, for vetting my manuscript so carefully and suggesting many improvements. Dawn Bonner, the manager of Mount Vernon Librarys Photo Services, deserves special recognition for her effort and skill in culling the magnificent illustrations in this book from the thousands of photos in the librarys huge collection. And Kathleen Kleinsmith, book buyer at the Mount Vernon Book Shop, was most kind in helping me find valuable reference works.

The magnificent estate and gardens at George Washingtons Mount Vernon that inspired this book are a monument not only to the Father of Our Country but also to a group of great patriots who have restored and preserved Mount Vernon for more than a centurynamely, the regent and vice regents of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. They are heroines, and Iand all Americansowe them deep thanks.

A number of people devoted long, difficult hours to improve this book and prepare it for publicationnone more than John Simko, senior production editor at John Wiley & Sons; William D. Drennan, copy editor; and Alexa Selph, who prepared the index. My deepest thanks also to two friends whose names never appear on the covers or title pages of my books, but who are as responsible as I (more so at times) for their publication: my editor, Hana Umlauf Lane, at John Wiley & Sons, and my literary agent, Edward W. Knappman, at New England Publishing Associates. To honor all they have done and tried to do on my behalf, I have dedicated this book to them.

All extracts and other quoted material in this work appear with spellings and syntax of the original manuscriptsfor a good reason. In an era before standard dictionaries, men and womeneducated or notspelled phonetically, and, by reading letters of the Washingtons and their friends aloud, slowly pronouncing each letter, it is, at times, possible to hear their voices, their accents. At the time, English accents varied dramatically, from village to village, and the accents of Virginians were still evolving from a cacophony of English, Scottish, Irish, African, and West Indian sounds that would eventually blend into the soft, melodic tones still heard in some parts of the state.

A note about money: the currencies cited are, of course, eighteenth-century units, whose values fluctuated widely and wildly, depending on the abundance or scarcity of commodities and whether the currencies themselves were real or imaginary. Real money meant real coins minted from copper, silver, and gold, while imaginary money was money of account, which consisted of only figures jotted onto countinghouse ledger sheets to track complex barter arrangements. Rarely did a merchant in far-off Britain translate the real money he received dockside for Virginia tobacco into the same amount of imaginary money on the ledger sheet of the tobacco growers account. Making matters more confusing was the existence of various colonial currencies, including the Virginia pound, whose value fluctuated between 1.35 and 2.45 British pounds sterling in 1759, the year of George Washingtons marriage, and rose to 1.20 by 1775, before collapsing during the Revolutionary War. Attempts to convert eighteenth-century currency values into todays dollars are difficult at best. In chancing to inject (in parentheses) approximate modern equivalents in this book, Ive relied largely on Professor John J. McCuskers two works