Washington: A Life

BEFORE TAKING ON THE BURDEN OF AMERICA, Washington had to deal with a piece of unfinished family business: the chronic discontent of his mother. Mary Washington, with her flinty independence, was still stewing with grievances. Right before John Augustine died in early January, she had written to him to complain of an absence of corn at her four-hundred-acre farm in the Little Falls quarter of the Rappaha

News that Mary was again denigrating him drifted back to George, who wrote to her in mid-February and enclosed another fifteen guineas. In this stilted letter, Washington revealed that his relations with her had grown so frosty that the two hadn’t even communicated after Jack’s death. Indignant at his mother’s accusation that he was being stingy, he poured out his grievances, explaining in brutal detail the miserable state of his finances:

I have now demands upon me for more than 500£, three hundred and forty odd which is due for the tax of 1786; and I know not where, or when, I shall receive one shilling with which to pay. In the last two years, I made no crops. In the first I was obliged to buy corn and this year have none to sell and my wheat is so bad that I ca

Washington went on to protest that, despite their business agreement, he had received not a pe

Anticipating her next request, Washington said that she was welcome to live at Mount Vernon, but he warned her that “in truth it may be compared to a well-resorted tavern, as scarcely any strangers who are going from north to south, or from south to north, do not spend a day or two at it. This would, were you to be an inhabitant of it, oblige you to do one of 3 things, 1st to be always dressing to appear in company, 2d to come into [it] in a dishabille or 3d to be, as it were, a prisoner in your own chamber.”31 This image of Mount Vernon as a crowded, noisy i

On March 7 Washington returned to Fredericksburg for what he imagined would be the “last act of personal duty”—that is, the last time he might see his aged mother.32 Then in late April, as he prepared to leave for Philadelphia, he was summoned to Fredericksburg by news that both Mary, who was apparently suffering from breast cancer, and his sister, Betty, were gravely ill. Even though his arm now rested in a sling from rheumatic pain, Washington made the urgent trip to Fredericksburg, telling Henry Knox that he was “hastening to obey this melancholy call, after having just bid an eternal farewell to a much loved brother.”33 In correspondence, Washington always sounded like the conscientious son, telling Robert Morris that he had been called to Fredericksburg for “the last adieu to an honored parent and an affectionate sister.”34

Although the trip proved a false alarm, Washington found his mother vastly changed, her illness having “reduced her to a skeleton, tho[ugh] she is somewhat amended.”35 Oddly, Washington had made no previous reference to her medical situation, which made her complaining far more comprehensible. Betty had improved as well and was now out of danger. One Fredericksburg resident was shocked by the transformation in Washington’s own appearance: “Gen[era]l Washington has been here to see his mother, who has been ill . . . The Gen[era]l is much altered in his person, one arm swung with rheumatism.”36 After a few days Washington returned to Mount Vernon, but the trip must have formed a sobering backdrop to his journey to the Constitutional Convention.

On May 9, 1787, shortly after sunrise, George Washington set off for Philadelphia. While his rheumatic misery had abated, he was beset by other complaints, including a violent headache and an upset stomach—perhaps the somatic expression of his dread about the convention. Until this time Martha Washington had been the loyal, submissive wife in dealing with her husband’s career. Now, as she saw George sentenced to life imprisonment in American politics, she began to rebel and decided to skip the Constitutional Convention. “Mrs. Washington is become too domestic, and too attentive to two little grandchildren to leave home,” Washington explained to Robert Morris, “and I can assure you, sir, that it was not until after a long struggle [that] I could obtain my own consent to appear again in a public theater.”37 This was a more independent Martha than the one who had rushed off to her husband’s winter camps despite her fears of travel and gunfire.

On Sunday, May 13, Washington arrived at Chester, Pe