His Excellency: George Washington (44 page)

LAST THINGS

A
T THE START
of his retirement he had joked with Elizabeth Powel that reading the libelous essays by Bache in the
Aurora
provided him with a preview of what would be said about him after he was gone. He promised Powel that he fully intended to outlast Bache and make it into the next century, a vow he would violate only under “dire necessity.” Bache obliged him by dying in the yellow fever epidemic of 1798. And as the end of the century approached in the fall of 1799, Washington’s excellent health continued to hold. Martha came down with a life-threatening fever in September, at the same time that Washington’s younger brother, Charles, passed away, events that prompted premonitions of his own mortality: “I was the first, and am now the last of my father’s children by the second marriage who remain. When I shall be called upon to follow them, is known only to the giver of life. When the summons comes I shall endeavor to obey it with good grace.” But he had been making fatalistic statements of this sort ever since he had cracked the half-century mark. There seemed no reason to doubt that his promise to Powel was a safe bet.
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There is some evidence that he was going back in his memory to the formative years of his life. He made another scan of his papers from the French and Indian War, once again noting that providence had seemed to preserve him for subsequent service, that by all rights he should have gone down with Braddock at the Monongahela. In November he broke out his old surveying instruments to locate the boundaries of a small parcel of land once belonging to the Fairfax estate at Belvoir, which he had decided to purchase, probably for sentimental reasons. Over a year earlier he had written to Sally Fairfax, the forbidden love of his youth, who was now an aging widow living out her time in England. A letter from Martha was included with his, a clear sign that Washington’s words of affection were not intended as an expression of regret about the romantic choices he had made. The letter to Sally ended with a description of the physical changes in the local landscape since she had last seen it, most dramatically the new city going up on the Potomac: “A Century hence,” he predicted, “if this Country keeps united (and it is surely its policy and interest to do so) will produce a City—though not as large as London—yet of a magnitude inferior to few others in Europe, on the Banks of the Potomac.” He did not mention that it was sure to be named after him.
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Meanwhile the old routines buoyed his days. The guests kept coming in small waves, most of them referring to their host as “The General” rather than “The President,” a few harking back to the old honorific “His Excellency.” Hamilton kept writing to ask for advice about the proper deployment of the never-to-be New army, letters which Washington answered in his old commander-in-chief mode, warning that deployments on the western frontier risked war with Spain, which was probably just what Hamilton wanted to provoke. A few Federalists, noting recent Republican gains in state elections, urged him to remain open to a draft if it seemed likely that Jefferson would oust Adams in the next election. He dismissed these urgings with a backhanded slap at the partisan atmosphere, then unburdened himself one final time on the dishonorable tactics of Jefferson’s supporters, who would surely, and now with greater plausibility, accuse him of being senile: “Let That party set up a broomstick,” he shouted, “and call it a true son of liberty, a Democrat, or give it any other epithet that will suit their purpose, and it will command their votes in toto!” At some level he recognized that political parties were transforming the shape of national politics, making character as he understood it irrelevant, even a liability. The new ground rules, soon to triumph in the new century, struck him as both alien and awful, a world in which he had no place.
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He made one intriguing gesture on the political front, a letter requesting Patrick Henry to reenter the political arena in Virginia in order to stem the Republican tide that was swelling around Jefferson’s prospective presidency. It was an odd request, since Henry shared Jefferson’s political principles, most especially his hatred of a fully empowered federal government that threatened Virginia’s domestic agenda. But Washington had fond memories of Henry’s political support during the darkest days of the war. He believed that Henry, unlike Jefferson, was a man of character who would not allow his Republican convictions to take precedence over the national interest. (He probably also knew that Henry and Jefferson utterly detested one another.) But it all came to nothing when Henry’s chronic illness proved fatal.
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Mount Vernon remained the bittersweet object of his affections and frustrations. He continued to search out ways to consolidate his holdings by leasing outlying farms. His updated plan, another meticulously crafted blueprint more detailed than any of his military campaigns during the war, called for reducing the size of his operation, releasing James Anderson, his dutiful but overmatched manager, then taking personal control over the surviving remnant of land and laborers. If he could not lease them locally, he was apparently considering moving his surplus slaves to his western lands in order to make more productive use of their labor on virgin soil. Though his will made a clear moral statement about slavery after he was gone, he continued to juggle moral and economic priorities with mutual regard for both considerations. Morality, in Washington’s mind, needed constantly to negotiate its way against the harsh realities of the world as it is, rather than as it ought to be.
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These same harsh realities came to claim him on December 12, 1799. Despite a storm that deposited a blanket of snow, sleet, and hail on the region, Washington maintained his regular routine, riding his rounds for five hours in the storm, then choosing not to change his wet clothes, because dinner was ready upon his return and he did not wish to inconvenience his guests with a delay. The following day he was hoarse, but insisted on going out in the still inclement weather to mark some trees for cutting. He presumed he had caught a cold, and felt the best treatment was to ignore it: “Let it go as it came,” as he explained. During the night, however, he awakened Martha to report severe shortness of breath and pain in his throat. Word went out at dawn to fetch Lear and Dr. James Craik, Washington’s personal physician and friend for over forty years. Craik immediately diagnosed Washington’s condition as serious, possibly terminal, and he dispatched riders to bring two local physicians to Mount Vernon to assist him in prescribing treatment.
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Washington enjoyed the best care that medical science of that time could provide. Unfortunately, everything the doctors did made matters worse. They bled him four times, extracting more than five pints of his blood. They blistered him around the neck. They administered several strong laxatives—all misguided attempts to purge his body of infection. If antibiotics had been available then, Washington would almost surely have survived to keep his promise to Mrs. Powel. As it was, the infection that had invaded his throat was untreatable and fatal.

Subsequent studies by modern medical experts have concluded that Washington most probably suffered from a virulent bacterial infection of the epiglottis, a plum-sized flexible cartilage at the entry of the larynx. Epiglottitis is an extremely painful and horrific way to die, especially for a man as compulsively committed to self-control as Washington. As it swells, the epiglottis closes off the windpipe, making breathing and swallowing extremely difficult, eventually impossible. The fully conscious patient has the sensation of being slowly strangled to death by involuntary muscles inside his own body. In Washington’s case the last hours must have been even more excruciating, since he was essentially being tortured to death by his doctors at the same time.
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Eventually Washington ordered his doctors to cease their barbarisms and let him go in peace. “Doctor, I die hard,” he muttered, “but I am not afraid to go.” Then he gave an intriguing final instruction to Lear: “I am just going. Have me decently buried, and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than two days after I am dead. . . . Do you understand me?” Washington believed that several apparently dead people, perhaps including Jesus, had really been buried alive, a fate he wished to avoid. His statement also calls attention to a missing presence at the deathbed scene: there were no ministers in the room, no prayers uttered, no Christian rituals offering the solace of everlasting life. The inevitable renderings of Washington’s death by nineteenth-century artists often added religious symbols to the scene, frequently depicting his body ascending into heaven surrounded by a chorus of angels. The historical evidence suggests that Washington did not think much about heaven or angels; the only place he knew his body was going was into the ground, and as for his soul, its ultimate location was unknowable. He died as a Roman stoic rather than a Christian saint.

The end came between ten and eleven o’clock on the evening of December 14. Besides the doctors, Lear, and Martha, the bedside entourage included three women slaves serving as nurses and Washington’s body servant, Christopher Sheels, who had replaced the crippled Billy Lee a few years earlier. (Christopher had recently tried to escape slavery with his new wife, but Washington chose not to punish him for making the effort and Christopher remained at his side until the end.) As that end approached, Washington noticed that Christopher, who had been standing for many hours, was visibly fatigued, so he invited him to sit down. His last words were, “’Tis well.” His last act, taking charge for the final time, was to feel his own pulse as he expired.
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He was buried in the family vault four days later. The culminating piece of evidence in the long debate about his height materialized at this time, when his corpse was measured in order to provide specifications for his lead-lined mahogany coffin. It showed that he was 6' 3 1⁄2" tall, though some scholars have questioned its accuracy. As far as his contemporaries were concerned, there was no question about his stature in American history. In the extravaganza of mourning that occurred in more than four hundred towns and hamlets throughout the land, he was described as the only indisputable hero of the age, the one and only “His Excellency.”

EULOGIES

M
OST OF THE EULOGIES
provided only platitudinous lamentations on his passing, often observing that his departure coincided with the end of the century, obviously a sign that the first chapter of American history was ending. Two of the eulogists, however, managed to sound more resonant notes that afford an opportunity to take his measure as a man in that last moment before the legendary renderings, already being composed, gathered around him like ivy on a statue to obscure his human features.

In the eulogy that has echoed through the ages, Henry Lee proclaimed that Washington was “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” This formulation offered an elegantly concise summation of the three historical achievements on which his reputation rested: leading the Continental army to victory against the odds and thereby winning American independence; securing the Revolution by overseeing the establishment of a new nation-state during its most fragile and formative phase of development; and embodying that elusive and still latent thing called “the American people,” thereby providing the illusion of coherence to what was in fact a messy collage of regional and state allegiances. There was a consensus at the time, since confirmed for all time, that no one else could have performed these elemental tasks as well, and perhaps that no one could have performed them at all.

In effect, there were two distinct creative moments in the American founding, the winning of independence and the invention of nationhood, and Washington was the central figure in both creations. No one else in the founding generation could match these revolutionary credentials, so no one else could plausibly challenge his place atop the American version of Mount Olympus. Whatever minor missteps he had made along the way, his judgment on all the major political and military questions had invariably proved prescient, as if he had known where history was headed; or, perhaps, as if the future had felt compelled to align itself with his choices. He was that rarest of men: a supremely realistic visionary, a prudent prophet whose final position on slavery served as the capstone to a career devoted to getting the big things right. His genius was his judgment.

But where did that come from? Clearly, it did not emanate from books or formal education, places where it is customary and often correct to look for the wellspring that filled the minds of such eminent colleagues as Adams, Jefferson, and Madison with their guiding ideas. Though it might seem sacrilegious to suggest, Washington’s powers of judgment derived in part from the fact that his mind was uncluttered with sophisticated intellectual preconceptions. As much a self-made man as Franklin, the self he made was less protean and more primal because his education was more elemental. From his youthful experience on the Virginia frontier as an adventurer and soldier he had internalized a visceral understanding of the arbitrary and capricious ways of the world. Without ever reading Thucydides, Hobbes, or Calvin, he had concluded that men and nations were driven by interests rather than ideals, and that surrendering control to another was invariably harmful, often fatal.

Armed with these basic convictions, he was capable of a remarkably unblinkered and unburdened response to the increasingly consequential decisions that history placed before him. He no more expected George III and his ministers to respond to conciliatory pleas from the American colonists than he expected Indians to surrender their tribal lands without a fight. He took it for granted that the slaves at Mount Vernon would not work unless closely supervised. He presumed that the Articles of Confederation would collapse in failure or be replaced by a more energetic and empowered federal government, for the same reasons that militia volunteers could never defeat the British army. It also was quite predictable that the purportedly self-enacting ideals of the French Revolution would lead to tragedy and tyranny. With the exception of his Potomac dream, a huge geographic miscalculation, he was incapable of illusion, fully attuned to the specter of evil in the world. All of which inoculated him against the grand illusion of the age, the presumption that there was a natural order in human affairs that would generate perfect harmony once, in Diderot’s phrase, the last king was strangled with the entrails of the last priest. For Washington, the American Revolution was not about destroying political power, as it was for Jefferson, but rather seizing it and using it wisely. Ultimately, his life was all about power: facing it, taming it, channeling it, projecting it. His remarkably reliable judgment derived from his elemental understanding of how power worked in the world.