Chapter One
FEBRUARY 15, 1787
MOUNT VERNON, VIRGINIA
DAWN
George Washington is mad at his mother.
The former Revolutionary War hero now turned citizen farmer sits at the small wooden desk in his study. He is nearly fifty-five years old and deeply involved with the formation of the new United States of America. Washington rose before 5:00 a.m. to sort out the paperwork for his eight-thousand-acre plantation, as per usual. He is meticulous in keeping financial records. Travelers on the road north to Philadelphia and New York City often stop to pay their respects—so many that Washington compares his home to a tavern. Best to conduct personal affairs before well-meaning individuals interrupt him on this cold winter day.
Some two months from now, George Washington will ride on horseback 150 miles to Philadelphia to participate in a “Constitutional Convention” with delegates from twelve American states. The main goal is to determine the most effective way to choose a national leader. There are other issues, such as how many representatives each state will have in Congress and how to count slaves for the purposes of taxation and representation.
Washington well knows that he is under consideration to lead the country. But at this point, he has no idea how that will happen. However, what currently matters most is his mother’s ire. She is torturing him. So, Washington dips his quill in the ink well and resumes writing. “In the last two years I made no crops,” he informs Mary Washington, nearly eighty years old, referring to his financial hardships. “In the first I was obliged to buy corn and this year have none to sell, and my wheat is so bad I cannot neither eat it myself nor sell it to others, and tobacco I make none. Those who owe me money cannot or will not pay it.”1
Despite his situation, George Washington will not refuse his mother’s pleas for money. He is stoic, never once speaking out against her behavior. “In consequence of your communication of your want of money,” he replies to Mary’s most recent financial demand, “I take the first safe conveyance to … send you 15 guineas, which believe me is all I have.”
This is not the first squabble between mother and son over cash. It has been forty-four years since Washington’s father, Augustine, died of a fever after riding horseback in a storm. His mother never remarried. In her solitude, Mary has been obsessed with money. She blames her son George because he, not Mary, inherited the bulk of his father’s property. He is now considered the head of the family. As a result, Washington’s mother believes she is poor and that it is George’s fault. He regularly offers her personal loans, which are never repaid. Mary frequently complains to neighbors and friends that she lives in “poverty”—even though she receives substantial amounts of money from her small plantation just outside of Fredericksburg.
All of this is a major annoyance to George and his wife, Martha, who are embarrassed by Mary Washington’s public complaints. She never writes a single word of praise or congratulations. After his Revolutionary War victory at Yorktown, George Washington left the battlefield and rode directly to his mother’s home. She was not there. He could not wait, as pressing military duties were upon him. Unhappy, Mary Washington quickly wrote a bitter letter scolding her son for his departure—and never once mentioning his triumph that effectively defeated the British once and for all.
Also in 1781, Mary again embarrasses her oldest son by appealing to the Virginia legislature, demanding a pension. George Washington quickly writes his friend Benjamin Harrison, Virginia legislator and father and grandfather to two future American presidents, suggesting that the request be denied. In the letter, Washington details the true state of his mother’s affairs, telling Harrison that “she has not a child that would not divide their last sixpence to relieve her from real distress.”2
The Virginia legislature turns down Mary Washington’s pension appeal. That increases her anger: “I never lived so poor in my life,” she writes to her son John just before his death. “I should be almost starved.”
* * *
On August 26, 1789, Mary Washington dies of breast cancer at the age of eighty. George Washington does not attend her funeral or pay for her headstone. He is otherwise occupied in New York City, having been elected president of the United States on February 4, 1789, by the Electoral College. Years later, President Andrew Jackson lays the cornerstone for a monument to the great George Washington’s mother, but the project stalls for six decades. Finally, in 1894, work is completed. President Grover Cleveland unveils the monument.
* * *
George Washington is not exactly thrilled to lead the new nation. The seat of power is the office and residence Congress has rented at 1 Cherry Street in Manhattan. The crowded three-story mansion is 240 miles northeast of Mount Vernon. Washington has a private working space, as well as a public room for greeting dignitaries. Appointed with new mahogany furniture, the building is home not only to George and Martha but also to seven members of their enslaved household staff, who dress in uniforms of red and white—the Washington family colors. There is no security detail. The new president believes it vital that Americans meet him in person, so the residence is open to the public during certain days and times each week.
In addition to official visits by members of Congress, the judiciary, and foreign diplomats, Washington puts aside Tuesday afternoons so that male visitors may pay their respects. Less formally, Martha hosts a “levee”—reception—every Friday afternoon for anyone who wishes to attend. Lemonade and ice cream are served in the summer.3
Martha Washington is not a New York City kind of gal. “Lady Washington,” as she is often addressed, much prefers the country lifestyle of Mount Vernon. In New York, she must dress formally every day and play a prominent role in the local community—both of which she despises. Martha Washington strongly opposed George’s return to public life following the Revolutionary War. But for the sake of her husband’s new job, she remains with him rather than return home.
Martha is now fifty-seven years old, plump, and of fair complexion. She stands five feet tall. Although Washington is cash poor, his wife’s inheritance from her first marriage brought hundreds of slaves and seventeen thousand acres of land into the marriage.
But today it is not Mount Vernon that is on George Washington’s mind. On April 30, 1789, one week after moving into the presidential residence, Washington steps out the front door of the gray stone mansion and into a horse-drawn coach. The streets are packed with well-wishers who call out his name. Washington waves but otherwise remains silent. He is calm but nervous as he is driven to Federal Hall on Wall Street, where the crowds are even larger. Locals and tourists alike have come to witness the first Inauguration Day.
General Washington is cheered as he steps from the carriage. The crowd parts as he walks up the steps and strides out onto the public balcony in full view of citizens, soldiers, and foreign diplomats. Vice President John Adams is among the dozen dignitaries standing behind him. At six feet two, Washington stands several inches taller than Robert Livingston, the chancellor of the state of New York, who will administer the oath of office.
Washington faces Livingston and places his right hand on a Bible. He wears a brown coat with breeches, a matching vest, and pants and white stockings. His long gray hair is pulled back off his face. Washington repeats the simple thirty-five-word oath of office outlined in the Constitution, in which he promises to perform his presidential duties and defend that document. Afterward, Washington raises the Bible to his lips, kissing the holy book. Livingston cries out to the crowd, “Long live George Washington, president of the United States.”
Thunderous cheers rock lower Manhattan, followed by a salvo of thirteen cannon blasts.
There will be fireworks later tonight. But for now, that’s supposed to be the end of the ceremony.
Yet Washington has other plans.
He wishes to give a speech.
So, he faces the crowd and begins to read his prepared words. He has faced years of difficult situations on the battlefield and never showed signs of fear. Yet Washington’s voice trembles and his hands shake as he speaks to the crowd. He stares at the paper, never lifting his eyes. Very often, the president stumbles over his words.
The speech is mostly pedestrian, expressing gratitude for the position. Washington, however, does depart from politics, speaking about the “Almighty Being.” He injects a deep religious belief into his remarks.
The reason the new president stumbles over the speech is that he has only one tooth of his own. The rest of his dentures are made up of animal teeth, the bicuspids of other humans, and ivory. This makes it very difficult for him to chew hard food, let alone give a public speech. He is voracious in his pursuit of knowledge and is a great horseman. Those who know him well marvel at his feats of physical strength, such as throwing a rock across the width of the Rappahannock River and climbing the 215-foot-tall limestone crag known as the Natural Bridge in Virginia.
Yet despite his reputation for virility, one of the general’s great frustrations is that he is sterile and unable to father children of his own. He makes do by serving as stepfather to Martha’s two children from a previous marriage—though his preference for corporal punishment as a form of discipline clashes with his wife’s more maternal approach to parenting.
* * *
George Washington gets right to work. His first task is defining what it means to be president. Problems quickly mount. America has a massive national debt from the Revolutionary War, no standing army, and a navy that has no ships.
Yet the greatest headache George Washington endures is the handpicked group of men he has chosen to advise him. This bickering “cabinet” of four politicians includes Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. Jefferson and Hamilton, in particular, loathe each other. At issue is whether the federal government should be a strong central power, as Hamilton believes, or if the states should wield the most strength, as in Jefferson’s point of view. This debate will continue for generations to come.
Copyright © 2024 by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
