Washington: A Life

To iron out differences between Virginia and Maryland over Potomac navigation, Washington presided over an interstate conference at Mount Vernon in 1785. He was also elected president of the Potomac River Company, for which he tirelessly proselytized. In early August he climbed into a canoe and undertook the first of his periodic inspection tours of the Potomac, investigating submerged obstacles at Seneca Falls and Shenandoah Falls by personally shooting the rapids. He was also involved in hiring a European superintendent and dozens of indentured servants to build the canals and locks. Soon teams of slaves went to work, their heads shaved to make it more difficult for them to escape without detection. Washington’s ambition was huge: the lock canal constructed around Great Falls alone would rank as the biggest civil engineering project in eighteenth-century America. To carve open the interior, the Virginia legislature authorized the building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which would co

A determined man, George Washington reveled in having overcome great skepticism to establish the Potomac River Company. When Robert Hunter visited Mount Vernon in November, he noticed that his host engaged in uncharacteristic gloating: “The general sent the bottle about pretty freely after di

The plan to extend navigation of the Potomac influenced American history in ways that far transcended the narrow matter of commercial navigation. It created a set of practical problems that could be solved only by cooperation between Virginia and Maryland, setting a pattern for a seminal interstate conference at A

FOR ALL THE HOPEFULNESS of his postwar life, Washington retained wistful recollections about his prewar existence, especially his relationship with George William and Sally Fairfax. Wartime duties had precluded him from acting as care-taker of Belvoir, and he was alarmed to hear rumors as early as 1778 that the estate was “verging fast to destruction.”28 Before the war the Fairfaxes had returned to England to follow a suit in Chancery, which involved a sizable estate left to George William by a relative; the case degenerated into a ghastly, never-ending Dickensian do

During the last year of the war, Belvoir had been severely damaged by fire, but for more than a year Washington could neither find the time nor muster the nerve to visit it. Then in late January 1785 he made a midwinter visit and grew awash in nostalgia. On February 27 he sent a heartfelt letter to George William in which he described the ravages visited upon their beloved Belvoir:

I took a ride there the other day to visit the ruins—and ruins indeed they are. The dwelling house and the two brick buildings in front underwent the ravages of the fire; the walls of which are very much injured. The other houses are sinking under the depredation of time and inattention and I believe are now scarcely worth repairing. In a word, the whole are, or very soon will be, a heap of ruin. When I viewed them—when I considered that the happiest moments of my life had been spent there—when I could not trace a room in the house (now all rubbish) that did not bring to my mind the recollection of pleasing scenes, I was obliged to fly from them and came home with painful sensations and sorrowing for the contrast.30

Whenever he gazed longingly toward Belvoir, he admitted, he wished that George William and Sally Fairfax would return to America and rebuild their residence while staying at Mount Vernon. He added that Martha joined him in this fervent wish.

This letter is remarkable in two ways. Washington states that the happiest moments of his life were spent not with his wife but with George William and Sally Fairfax, although one suspects he really had Sally in mind. Does the letter suggest that George William knew of the romantic liaison between his wife and Washington? Or does it tell us that their relationship was more an affectionate friendship than an adulterous affair, enabling Washington to refer to it with complete safety? Perhaps it confirms that Washington’s fondness for Sally Fairfax had been a youthful dalliance that everyone now recognized as such. We will never know the full truth of this tantalizing but finally murky story. The letter is also notable in showing us how incurably sentimental Washington was beneath the surface—he could experience an eruption of memories so overpowering that he had to flee the scene.

In reply, George William Fairfax talked of the picturesque valley of dairy farms in which he and Sally lived and asserted they were too old to contemplate a return to America. Sally had pored over Washington’s letter with great care, and his description of the ride to Belvoir had provoked an equally strong response in her. “Your pathetic description of the ruin of Belvoir House produced many tears and sighs from the former mistress of it,” wrote George William—doubtless what Washington yearned to hear.31 Sally volunteered to send Washington seeds for trees and shrubs for Mount Vernon, and he reacted with typical gallantry, reassuring George William that “while my attentions are bestowed on the nurture of [the seeds], it would, if anything was necessary to do it, remind me of the happy moments I have spent in conversations on this and other subjects with that lady at Belvoir.”32 So Washington again openly alluded to his special relationship with Sally Fairfax without fearing repercussions. After years of precarious health, George William Fairfax died on April 3, 1787. By that point the Constitutional Convention was looming, and Washington, sidetracked by political business, declined to act as American executor of his friend’s estate.

The themes of love and marriage were often on Washington’s mind after the war. Before it ended, Lund Washington had sounded him out on the prospective marriage of Jacky Custis’s widow, Eleanor Calvert Custis, to Dr. David Stuart. Washington customarily refrained from giving advice in such situations because if he supported it, he might push a couple into an unwanted marriage, but if he opposed it, the young couple would blithely ignore him anyway. Nevertheless he went on to say that if Eleanor asked him, he would counsel her thus: “I wish you would make a prudent choice, to do which many considerations are necessary: such as the family and co