It would be a great mistake to suppose, however, that the influence of the president was fairly appreciated during his term of office, or that he himself was uniformly respected. Washington seems never to have understood fully either the nature, the significance, or the inevitable necessity of party government in a republic. Instead, he attempted to balance party against party, selected representatives of opposing political views to serve in his first cabinet, and sought in that way to neutralize the effects of parties. The consequence was that the two leading members of the cabinet, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, exponents for the most part of diametrically opposite political doctrines, soon occupied the position, to use the words of one of them, of “two game-cocks in a pit.” The unconscious drift of Washington's mind was toward the Federalist party; his letters to La Fayette and to Patrick Henry, in December 1798 and January 1799, make that evident even without the record of his earlier career as president. It is inconceivable that, to a man with his type of mind and his extraordinary experience, the practical sagacity, farsightedness and aggressive courage of the Federalists should not have seemed to embody the best political wisdom, however little he may have been disposed to ally himself with any party group or subscribe to any comprehensive creed. Accordingly, when the Democratic-Republican party came to be formed, about 1793, it was not to be expected that its leaders would long submit with patience to the continual interposition of Washington's name and influence between themselves and their opponents; but they maintained a calm exterior. Some of their followers were less discreet. The president's proclamation of neutrality, in the war between England and France, excited them to anger; his support of Jay's treaty with Great Britain roused them to fury. His firmness in thwarting the activities of Edmond Charles Edouard Genet, minister from France, alienated the partisans of France; his suppression of the “Whisky Insurrection” aroused in some the fear of a military despotism. Forged letters, purporting to show his desire to abandon the revolutionary struggle, were published; he was accused of drawing more than his salary; his manners were ridiculed as “aping monarchy”; hints of the propriety of a guillotine for his benefit began to appear; he was spoken of as the “stepfather of his country.” The brutal attacks, exceeding in virulence anything that would be tolerated to-day, embittered his presidency, especially during his second term: in 1793 he is reported to have declared, in a cabinet meeting, that “he would rather be in his grave than in his present situation,” and that “he had never repented but once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and that was every moment since.” The most unpleasant portions of Jefferson's Anas are those in which, with an air of psychological dissection, he details the storms of passion into which the president was driven by the newspaper attacks upon him. There is no reason to believe, however, that these attacks represented the feeling of any save a small minority of the politicians; the people never wavered in their devotion to the president, and his election would have been unanimous in 1796, as in 1792 and 1789, had he been willing to serve.
He retired from the presidency in 1797,[1] and returned to Mount Vernon, his journey thither being marked by popular demonstrations of affection and esteem. At Mount Vernon, which had suffered from neglect during his absence, he resumed the plantation life which he loved, the society of his family, and the care of his slaves. He had resolved some time before never to obtain another slave, and “wished from his soul” that Virginia could be persuaded to abolish slavery; “it might prevent much future mischief”; but the unprecedented profitableness of the cotton industry, under the impetus of the recently invented cotton gin, had already begun to change public sentiment regarding slavery, and Washington was too old to attempt further innovations. Visitors continued to flock to him, and his correspondence, as always, took a wide range. In 1798 he was made commander-in-chief of the provisional army raised in anticipation of war with France, and was fretted almost beyond endurance by the quarrels of Federalist politicians over the distribution of commissions. In the midst of these military preparations he was struck down by sudden illness, which lasted but for a day, and died at Mount Vernon on the 14th of December 1799. His disorder was an oedernatous affection of the wind-pipe, contracted by exposure during a long ride in a snowstorm, and aggravated by neglect and by such contemporary remedies as bleeding, gargles of “molasses, vinegar and butter” and “vinegar and sage tea,” which “almost suffocated him,” and a blister of cantharides on the throat. He died as simply as he had lived; his last words were only business directions, affectionate remembrances to relatives, and repeated apologies to the physicians and attendants for the trouble he was giving them. Just before he died, says his secretary, Tobias Lear, he felt his own pulse; his countenance changed; the attending physician placed his hands over the eyes of the dying man, “and he expired without a struggle or a sigh.” The third of the series of resolutions introduced in the House of Representatives five days after his death, by John Marshall of Virginia, later chief-justice of the Supreme Court, states exactly, if somewhat rhetorically, the position of Washington in American history: “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”[2] His will contained a provision freeing his slaves, and a request that no oration be pronounced at his funeral. His remains rest in the family vault at Mount Vernon (q.v.), which since 1860 has been held by an association, practically as national property.
All contemporary accounts agree that Washington was of imposing presence. He measured just 6 ft. when prepared for burial; but his height in his prime, as given in his orders for clothes from London, was 3 in. more. La Fayette says that his hands were “the largest he ever saw on a man.” Custis says that his complexion was “fair, but considerably florid.” His weight was about 220 lb. Evidently it was his extraordinary dignify and poise, forbidding even the suggestion of familiarity, quite as much as his stature, that impressed those who knew him. The various and widely-differing portraits of him find exhaustive treatment in the seventh volume of Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America. Winsor thinks that “the favourite profile has been unquestionably Houdon's, with Gilbert Stuart's canvas for the full face, and probably John Trumbull's for the figure.” Stuart's face, however, with its calm and benign expression, has fixed the popular notion of Washington.
Washington was childless: the people of his time said he was the father only of his country. Collateral branches of the family have given the Lees, the Custises, and other families a claim to an infusion of the blood.
Bibliography.—A complete bibliography of books relating to Washington would be very voluminous. The best edition of his Writings is that of W. C. Ford (14 vols., New York, 1889-1893). Sparks's edition (12 vols., Boston, 1837) has in the main been superseded, though it contains some papers not included by Ford, and the Life, which comprises vol. i., still has value. J. D. Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents (vol. i., Washington, 1896) collects the presidential messages and proclamations, with a few omissions. A descriptive list of biographies and biographical sketches is given in W. S. Baker's Bibliotheca Washingtoniana (Philadelphia, 1889). The most important lives are those of John Marshall (Philadelphia, 1804-1807), David Ramsay (New York, 1807), Washington Irving (New York, 1855-1859), E. E. Hale (New York, 1888), H. C. Lodge (Boston, 1889; rev. ed., 1898), B. T. Thayer (New York, 1894) and Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1897). Valuable for their presentation of differing aspects of Washington's career are: W. S. Baker's Itinerary of Washington (Philadelphia, 1892), H. B. Carrington's Washington the Soldier (New York, 1899), G. W. P. Custis's Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington (New York, 1860), P. L. Ford's True George Washington (Philadelphia, 1896) and R. Rush's Washington in Domestic Life (Philadelphia, 1857). The larger comprehensive histories of the United States by Bancroft, Hildreth, Winsor, McMaster, Von Hoist, Schouler and Avery, the biographies in the “American Statesmen” series, and Hart's “American Nation” series, are indispensable. There is an interesting attempt to make a composite portrait of Washington in Science (December 11, 1885). (W. MacD.*)
