Posts filed under “Novels”
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON,
By an Associate.
Concluding the narrative that began here.
A Brief Afterword, Written in the Year 2020.
The grave of Washington was measured many times in the nineteenth century, and the measurements vary by no more than an inch. In all cases, they document a ledger, inscribed with the simple epitaph
Some time after the First World War, however, visitors to Mount Vernon began to notice that the ledger did not seem to be quite as big as the guide books said it ought to be. By the 1950s, the shrinking had attracted the attention of a few researchers, but the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association was reluctant to allow any examination for fear of damaging the precious relics. The shrinking accelerated in the late twentieth century, however, and by the twenty-first it was so rapid that the Ladies’ Association finally decided to allow a scientific and archaeological investigation, in the hope of stabilizing the structure.
The investigators could not find anything to account for the shrinking. They could only report that the grave was covered by a ledger that appeared to be made of native stone with no unusual properties; that there was nothing to indicate that the stone had been replaced; and that the tomb, when opened, proved to contain the skeletal remains of a male approximately four feet nine inches in height.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON,
By an Associate.
Continuing the narrative that began here.
Susanna and I divided our time between our town-house in Alexandria and Mount Vernon, where Washington treated Crispus and Jane almost as if they were his own children, and Mrs. Washington was ever finding excuses to stuff them with pies. I never was certain where Washington thought our children had come from, nor was I sure that he understood the mechanism by which children are introduced into the world; but children never had a better friend than the General.
Susanna’s management of the slaves took the form of making them very comfortable and expecting little in the way of work from them; but even though Washington now had the only estate in Virginia where the slave quarters were more opulent than the main house, with a large library, a lecture hall, a ballroom, an orangery, and a number of other conveniences;—in spite of these things, I say, Susanna was not happy, nor did she believe the slaves were happy so long as they lacked that liberty for which no physical comfort could compensate.
One evening, about two years after he had left the presidency, Washington asked her (over the Madeira, as usual), “How are the slaves, Phillips? Are they happy?”
He had not phrased the question in that way before, but now that he had done so, Susanna did not withhold her opinion.
“I do not believe they are, General, and in their present condition I do not believe there is anything that could make them happy.”
“But why is that, Phillips?” Washington asked. “Have we neglected anything they need?”
“We have neglected nothing that could tend to their physical comfort, but I still believe that they can never be happy in a condition of servitude.”
“Well, I must say, it sounds like rank ingratitude to me, but I suppose if they don’t like working for me they can go somewhere else and do whatever appeals to them.”
Susanna looked confused. “No they can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re property!”
“Property!” Washington sputtered. “Of course not! They’re human beings. How can they be property?”
“But, good heavens, General, what did you think ‘slaves’ meant?”
“I thought it meant they came from eastern Europe.”
“It means they’re property! You own them. That’s what the law says. You can do anything with them, and they can do nothing about it. They have no rights, no liberties, no lives of their own. That is what it means to be slaves.”
Washington turned to me. “Gist, is this true?”
“Yes, Washington,” I replied.
“But this is monstrous! Why was I not told of this?”
“We presumed you knew,” said Susanna.
“But all men are created equal! How can some be the property of others? No, by heaven, I won’t be long in doing something about this! Virginia is a civilized country; we shall have no relics of barbarism here! Phillips, after the levee tomorrow, you will help me make alternate arrangements for Mount Vernon, and then, upon my word! we shall work until not a slave is left in Virginia!”
He stormed off, more angry than I had ever seen him.
Susanna gaped after him, and then closed her jaw and looked thoughtful for a moment.
“He really is an imbecile,” she said. “And right now I am very glad of it.”
We were staying at Mount Vernon that night, in preparation for the levee the next morning; and after Susanna and the children had gone to bed, Washington and I stayed up quite late talking—or, rather, Washington talked, and I listened. I think he was quite upset by his discovery of slavery, but there was more to his discontent than that.
“I feel the effects of age, Gist,” said he, “more than I have done in the past; there were things I thought I would accomplish in my youth, and now I see that I shall never accomplish them.”
“You have quite some time to work on them,” I said with a smile.
“It is not so much that I cannot do them,” Washington replied; “it is that the things I would have done are no longer worth doing. Once we were young, and the world was vast enough to hold our imaginations and our ambitions; now we are grown old, and how diminished everything is! The men we call great are as tiny puppets to the men of old days; our cities grow, and yet they no longer fill our hearts with a lively sense of boundless possibilities; our country extends its borders, and yet it is a little thing on a little earth, no longer the vast unknown clinging to the edge of the illimitable unknowable. This very house, Gist, was a grand palace when my brother built it; I have extended it, yet it has grown small and familiar. Ah, Gist, I now understand the tales of primordial giants: for in the youth of the world all accomplishments must have been magnificent; but men have multiplied, and their deeds have filled the earth. When we are young, we are filled with the passionate longing to conquer the unconquerable world. As we grow old, we find that we have conquered it, and there are no more worlds to conquer. This is the tragedy of every man’s life. The world is small, Gist! The world is small, and filled with little men, and I am so weary of looking down on it!”
The next morning was the monthly levee at Mount Vernon, where Washington made himself available to all and sundry. We had built stands near the river where Washington’s guests could sit and see Washington at eye level as he rode past on his steam-horse, stopping to speak to his visitors without stooping.
We managed to get Washington mounted on the horse without incident, and the mechanism seemed to be working flawlessly. It was a bitterly cold morning, and snow was in the air; but that had not prevented a few hundred visitors from coming out to pay their respects to the great man.
These occasions were always happy ones for the General, and he took his time riding down the stands, stopping every few feet to speak to someone in the crowd, to bless a child, to thank an old veteran. About two-thirds of the way down the row he stopped in front of a family with a young child, perhaps a year old, and greeted the smiling parents.
“His name is Washington,” the proud mother told him, holding up the indifferent and unimpressed little boy. “We named him for you.”
“A compliment I shall treasure to the end of my life,” Washington graciously replied. “And what is his family name?”
The mother answered, “Irving.”
“Irving!” Washington jumped back in his saddle, the natural consequence of which was that he fell off the horse and into the icy waters of the Potomac. He splashed about in a very undignified way, while women screamed and several of us ran to offer our assistance. But he pulled himself out of the water and insisted on remounting the horse; then he continued the levee until everyone who wanted to speak with him had a chance to do so. He would not go in and change his wet clothes until he had seen off his last visitor.
We were not surprised, therefore, that he spent the rest of the day in bed, and that he woke up the next morning with a sore throat that nearly deprived him of his voice. Washington himself was of the opinion that it was not a serious indisposition, but Mrs. Washington insisted on calling in a physician. I myself rode out to fetch the physician Mrs. Washington trusted most; and there are times when I wish I had fallen into a ditch and broken my neck before I reached his house in Alexandria.
Dr. Polk lived in a very fine house on Duke-street. When he heard that General Washington was ill, he could hardly disguise his satisfaction at the large fee that would doubtless be his no matter what the results of his ministrations. He was a little round man with a big round face, which somehow grew broader without actually erupting into a smile when he heard my news. He told me he would be ready directly; then he trotted upstairs, and a quarter-hour later trotted down with a large case under each arm. He had already summoned his driver, for a coach awaited him in front of the house—a coach and four, suggesting that his practice was a successful one. I allowed myself to be reassured by that observation.
When we arrived at Mount Vernon, I immediately brought Dr. Polk into Washington’s chamber on the ground floor, the only part of the house where the rooms were large enough to accommodate him as long as he did not stand fully upright. As we made the long march from the General’s feet to his head, Dr. Polk explained to me that he intended to stay for several days, as in such cases as these it was critical for the patient to be bled frequently until the crisis had passed.
“Bled?” I asked, and I am certain that my voice betrayed my alarm.
“When the humors have become unbalanced,” said Dr. Polk, “it is essential to restore the proper balance. An excess of the sanguine humor is the most common cause of such illnesses as these, and fortunately the most easily corrected.”
We had now reached the region of the head, where Mrs. Washington was sitting, and Dr. Polk explained to her and the General what he had just finished explaining to me. “All I need,” he said, “is a large tub or vat, or possibly a barrel, and we may begin at once.”
Mrs. Washington was not long in having a large wine-vat, cut in half, brought into the room, and Dr. Polk proceeded at once to the business of disposing of Washington’s excess sanguinary fluid. The vat had already made three trips out to be dumped in the garden by the time evening came; then Dr. Polk closed off the tap, with the promise of more bleeding on the morrow.
The next day, Washington was paler and weaker, which Dr. Polk took as a sign that more bleeding was needed. Prodigious quantities of blood went out into the garden, but in spite of all the bleeding, Washington only grew weaker. Susanna asked more than once whether the General might not need some of that blood, but Dr. Polk explained that it was common for the patient to weaken temporarily in treating cases of humoral imbalance, but recovery would follow provided an aggressive course of treatment was pursued to its conclusion.
Washington only grew weaker, however, and on the third day Dr. Polk tried blistering in addition to the bleeding. On the fourth day he added a bit of cautery to the regimen, but in spite of these treatments Washington did not improve.
The signs, in fact, were worrying. Washington dictated a new will, and began to speak, when he could speak, as one who expected to be taken from the world soon. Parson Weems had been summoned, and Susanna and I sat in the great chamber where the great man—he was now twenty feet and an inch tall—lay stretched out on the bed that had been constructed for him, with Mrs. Washington in constant attendance.
“Please take no more trouble about me,” Washington said, “and especially tell Dr. Polk that I shall not be requiring his services any longer. It may be hard to die, but I am not afraid to go. However—Martha, my dearest, and my dear friend Parson Weems, if you could leave me for just a few moments, I have something to say in private to Gist and Phillips.”
Mrs. Washington kissed his vast forehead, and she and the Parson walked silently out of the room, closing the door soundlessly behind them.
Susanna and I were now alone with the great man, whose breathing grew more and more labored, and his voice more hoarse; but it was clear that he had something to say that was worth any labor to him. We stood next to his head and listened attentively.
“Gist, Phillips, I have left some things unsaid to this day, because I believed that no good could come of saying them, or at least that the harm done would exceed the benefit. As a result, I have the impression that you especially, Phillips, take me for a fool.—No, do not contradict me; it may or may not be so; I say only that I have that impression, and it is because I have not said what I know about you, wherefore I suppose you must have imagined that I did not know it.”
Susanna laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, but did not venture to speak. Washington coughed a few times halfheartedly, as if he knew he was expected to cough but had really lost interest in coughing. Then he spoke again:
“I have known for many years that you and Gist share—share a love after the Grecian manner. No one who knows you both as well as I know you could possibly miss it. I do not condemn you. I am a broadminded man of the world, and I know that in classical times love between men was looked on with indulgence, and often indeed praised as superior to the love between men and women. But these are not classical times. I say not that you must end your love: I am not such a fool as to believe you would do so, even if I adjured you to it as my dying wish. I merely urge you to greater discretion. While I lived, no one would speak against you for fear of offending me. When I am gone, you will not have that protection. Already dark clouds of partisan strife are on the horizon. Jefferson— But I will not speak of politics, except to warn you both that in me you lose a friend who sincerely desired nothing but your good, and where you will find another such I know not. And now, my beloved friends, if I must leave you, farewell. I should like to see Martha again.”
We left the General with heavy hearts, and sent Mrs. Washington back in to him; and then all we could do was sit in the hall and wait.
“There was never a greater fool born on earth,” said Susanna, squeezing my hand. I turned to see her cheek wet with running tears.
It was about a quarter-hour later that Susanna and I both heard a strange and startling sound, something very like the braying of a mule. It was so close that it seemed to be right outside the window; but when we stood to investigate, we could see nothing there. We sat back down, neither of us daring to speak.
Shortly afterward, Mrs. Washington emerged to tell us, with remarkable composure, that General Washington was no more.
Susanna suddenly stood and rushed out of the hall into the great drawing-room. I spoke a few words of consolation to Mrs. Washington, and then turned to follow Susanna. I could already hear her shouting.
“You killed him!”
She had found Dr. Polk in the drawing-room with Parson Weems, and she had turned the full force of an uncharacteristic fury on the doctor.
“You tortured him like a Spanish inquisitor, and then you killed the only great man we had!”
Dr. Polk was already standing. “Madam, I am very sorry for your grief, but—”
“He could have survived anything except you! You killed him, you murdering bastard!”
Dr. Polk was of course sympathetic, but he would not let her accusations pass without defending himself. “The General had everything the Hippocratic art could provide him. Nothing was omitted that could have served to balance the humors and render—”
He had not expected the blow from Susanna’s fist, which connected with his skull so forcefully that the doctor fell flat on the floor, where he remained immobile while Susanna ran out of the room and up the stairs.
“Could you tend to him, please?” I asked Parson Weems. I followed Susanna upstairs to console her. But for the moment she was inconsolable, and all I could do was join her in weeping.
The news of Washington’s death plunged his country into deep mourning. Even across the sea, when the news reached Europe, the British and French both fired twenty guns in his honor, successfully killing twelve British and fourteen French sailors. The great man’s earthly remains were laid to rest on his own beloved estate, and the grave was covered with the largest ledger yet carved in America, on which was inscribed, in neat Roman capitals, the simple message,
By the provisions of his will, all of Washington’s slaves were emancipated with generous legacies. Some stayed to work as tour guides, for Mount Vernon quickly became a site of patriotic pilgrimage; but many went to work for Mr. Banneker. With Washington gone, it was no longer possible to maintain the fiction of the talented little Frenchman; so with Susanna’s help a story was concocted to the effect that the irascible little man had stomped off in high dudgeon, but Mr. Banneker had fortunately been able to reconstruct the plans of the city from memory. This supposed feat added markedly to his reputation, and thus to his business, and the firm prospered.
About two months after Washington’s death, Susanna, who was now forty-three years old, surprised me with the news that she was expecting another child. When, seven months later, our new son was born, Susanna insisted that only one name could possibly be appropriate; and so the infant was christened George Washington Gist. Thus, in a sense, the story of George Washington ends, not with a death, but with a birth.
Almost exactly a year after Washington’s death, I had dinner with Parson Weems. He had come to Alexandria to arrange for the printing of his new tract, “On the Detection of Papists by the Olfactory Sense,” and our coming together so close to the scene of our happiest days naturally conduced to an evening spent reminiscing about our departed friend. It was a pastime we were all the more willing to indulge in as being almost the only two men who had followed Washington in all his adventures, from the beginning of the French and Indian War to his last fatal accident. Susanna (who had never thought much of Parson Weems) had retired with little George, and a pleasant melancholy suffused the atmosphere of my front parlor as we talked late into the night; until Parson Weems made a statement that, though no fault of his own, unsettled me.
“In fact,” he said, “I intend to write a biography of our friend Washington.”
I own that this news hit me with unexpected force. I had nearly completed this memoir, and now Parson Weems was preparing a book on exactly the same subject! Still, I could hardly blame him for that.
“I suppose no one is better qualified to write it,” I said mildly. “You and I are perhaps the only two men in the world who have first-hand knowledge of Washington’s entire career, from the beginning to the very end. You, as a literary man, are obviously the best qualified to give the public the truth about our friend.”
“Oh, I don’t think the truth is what the public wants at all,” said Weems.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Great as the man was, the American people have made him greater,” he explained. “They have made him the embodiment of all the virtues they admire, and they attribute their success as a newborn among the nations entirely to his almost-divine agency. He is their Moses, their Solon, their Confucius. They have elevated him to the pantheon; they have placed him among the stars so that they may look up to him forevermore. And they are right to do so. They don’t need Washington the man; they need Washington the guiding principle. As long as they can look up to him and see everything that is best in themselves, they will be inspired to outdo one another in virtue, and these United States of America will grow and flourish and draw all men to themselves. No, the truth about Washington is the last thing the public needs. I shall give the young people of America, not the Washington that was, but the Washington that ought to have been.”
I thought his argument was a good one, and at the same time I felt a strong sense of relief. We might have chosen the same subject, but we were not writing the same book. Parson Weems has his Washington, and I have mine. He has given America and the world the man they imagined, the Washington they wish to remember. I have given you the Washington I knew; and I am not ashamed to say that, imperfect though he may have been, I loved the man as he was.
To be continued in the Afterword.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON.
By an Associate.
Continuing the narrative that began here.
But of course Hamilton was restrained by no considerations of inconspicuousness, and he took on the management of Washington’s campaign with his accustomed vigor. The result, as readers will recall, was that the people overwhelmingly returned electors for Washington, and his presidency continued for another four years. These years, however, were marked by more difficulties than Washington had expected to meet, and he was forced to confront, on occasion, the unaccustomed sensation of not being universally loved.
One of the most severe tests of his resolve was the Whiskey Rebellion, which enraged Hamilton to such a degree that I thought the man might succumb to apoplexy. A tax having been placed on ardent spirits, certain men in the western part of Pennsylvania, where rye whiskey was the staple food, refused to submit to the collection of it, and had even attacked some of the gentlemen charged with the collecting. Hamilton persuaded Washington to put him in command of a body of soldiers to be sent across the mountains to crush the rebellion, and the enthusiasm with which he planned his campaign was startling to see.
“Of course they must be crushed utterly,” Hamilton said as he explained his plan to Susanna and me. “My strategy will be to come upon them with overwhelming force, thus teaching them that the United States Tax Code is not to be trifled with. I shall besiege and take Pittsburgh, burn the city to ashes, slaughter all the male inhabitants, and distribute the females as prizes to the soldiers. Once we have made an example of the largest settlement in those parts, the terror thus inspired will doubtless induce the rebels to submit forthwith, after which they can be sold as slaves to the islands in the Caribbean. Thus we shall establish the principle that the rule of law prevails in these United States.”
Susanna said nothing, and I was mildly surprised when Hamilton left the room without a blackened eye. But the next day, when we were with Washington, Susanna made a suggestion that ultimately had the effect of changing the aspect of the expedition considerably.
“Do you not think, sir, that as commander in chief of the army, you have a duty to take charge of this expedition yourself?”
“A duty? I had not thought of it, but…”
“The United States need their greatest military mind at this time of crisis,” said Susanna. “It is time for President Washington to don the buff and blue and become General Washington once more.”
“My word, Phillips, you’re right! I must see my tailor.”
Hamilton was furious at this change of plans, but of course he could say nothing against it. Washington visited his tailor—he now measured just under seventeen feet tall—and as soon as his new uniform was ready, we set out (for he insisted on having Susanna and me with him) to cross the Alleghenies.
Civilization had made great progress since our expeditions against the French many years before. At the flourishing town of Bedford in Pennsylvania, we met up with Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a prominent judge and literary man of Pittsburgh, who had come to meet Washington along the way in the hope of working out some peaceful resolution to the crisis. This Judge Brackenridge was a man famous for his wit, whose very amusing books had reached me in Alexandria, and I was glad of the opportunity to make his personal acquaintance.
We put up for the evening in a newly built inn west of Bedford, whose ample interior was just large enough to accommodate Washington if he stooped when he stood. Susanna and I having been distracted in our chamber, we arrived late to dinner, and came in just in time to hear Brackenridge finishing one of his amusing stories.
“And I replied, ‘I know what you mean very well; you want to have a shot at me, but I have no inclination to hit you, and I am afraid you would hit me; I pray thee therefore have me excused.’ ”
I had heard only the end of the story, but it must have been very clever, as the rest of the company were laughing boisterously—all, that is, except for Washington, who sat impassive, looking indeed very dignified, but not even smiling. I saw that Brackenridge was watching Washington’s reaction, and I could see in Brackenridge’s countenance the determination to make the great man laugh; his pride was hurt, and he was going to try harder. I ought to have taken him aside on some pretext and explained to him the peculiar nature of Washington’s sense of humor, but these things, alas! are clear in hindsight alone.
“Which reminds me,” Brackenridge continued, “of the story of the Indian-treaty man and his king of the Kickapoos”; and thus began a very amusing anecdote which had the whole company helpless with laughter—all, of course, but Washington, whose expression of serene benevolence did not change in the least.
That failure spurred Brackenridge to even greater efforts, and tears were running down the cheeks of most of the guests by the time he had finished with his tale of a hard-fought election in the west country of Pennsylvania. But Washington was not moved, and Brackenridge would not accept failure, until at last he had worn himself out and us as well. Washington thanked him for his very informative discourse, and I think Brackenridge was near ready to bite his own tongue off in frustration.
The long table was cleared and then made up to serve as Washington’s bed; Susanna and I went upstairs to our own chamber, extinguished the light, and never once considered the dreadful danger that awaited us.
Some time after midnight I was awakened by a thunderous crash that shook the bed. It had been more than ten years since Yorktown, but my first thought was that a cannon had gone off quite nearby. Then I heard whooping and pounding, and I knew that the long fuse ignited by Brackenridge earlier had at last reached the keg. Washington was laughing, and the sheer number of Brackenridge’s anecdotes, jokes, and aphorisms had led to an explosion of titanic proportions.
Susanna was already out of bed and had managed to light a candle in what was left of the fire. Another loud crash, and the whole floor shook, and then more whoops and howls, and a series of rapid hammerings that caused the whole inn to quake.
“Can you do anything?” Susanna asked me as she pulled on a robe.
“You know as well as I do that nothing can stop him once the fit is upon him.”
Suddenly the house shook in a very alarming way. Washington was whooping and laughing, and now shouts from elsewhere in the inn had joined the appalling din.
“I wonder whether we ought—” Susanna began, but she was interrupted by an extended crashing and smashing sound, as if a whole china cupboard had fallen over.
“You go see whether you can stop him, or get him outside,” Susanna told me. “I’ll go get—”
There was another cataclysmic crash, and the ominous sound of creaking and splintering wood.
“Go!” Susanna shouted. “I’ll get the rest out!”
I dashed out into the hall, where I found the other guests, or at least a good many of them, up and in an advanced state of panic. Another crash rocked the house, and toppled several of the guests in the hall; and when we regained our footing, the floor was on a pronounced bias. Susanna was urging the rest down the stairs; I seized a candle from one of them and ran down ahead of the group. As I reached the bottom of the stairway, a huge beam fell in the front parlor, sending plaster dust billowing though the whole ground floor. The pounding and crashing and whooping continued as I dashed back to the end of the hall and into the great dining-room, which looked like Lisbon after the earthquake. The table had fallen to the floor, most of the chairs were piles of splinters, and a great cabinet filled with china and glassware lay in a field of shards of all colors. There were holes in the walls, and the outer wall looked dangerously skewed. And Washington was still howling, kicking, and pounding. “Ten dollars for your scalp!” he bellowed, and then fell over so that his head crashed through the wall into the front parlor, his feet meanwhile kicking holes in the planks of the floor.
“Washington!” I shouted. “Come out before the house comes down!”
“They tarred and feathered the turkey!” he howled, rolling over and taking a good bit of the wall with him. This was too much for the floor above, which began to sag with an appalling ripping and cracking sound.
“Washington! Washington, the ceiling is collapsing!”
But Washington was still in the grip of his fit. Years earlier I might have dragged him out, but he had long since passed the dimensions where that was possible.
Suddenly a beam came down, and another beside it, just missing both of us and lying diagonally with one end of each on the floor and the other above us supported by the outside wall. And I do verily believe those beams saved both our lives, for now the whole house was coming down around us. It was the closest I have ever come to Armageddon, and it seemed to go on for hours, though I suppose it must have been less than a minute. Only the fallen beams above us, and the fragment of floor they supported, kept us from being crushed. It was only a temporary reprieve, however; for now the pile of rubble that once was an inn had caught fire, and we were trapped. I tried shouting, but I could not make myself heard over the din of Washington’s laughter. Fortunately he was still pounding and kicking, and the rubble in his pedal regions was flying in all directions. But for some bruises and cuts, I was not injured, and I was able to add my efforts to clear a passage, which were augmented by the efforts of the escaped guests outside; and before the flames could reach us, we were safely out of the wreckage, with Susanna clinging to me and kissing my scratches, and Washington now reduced to helpless sniggering. We were without shelter, but the burning inn sufficed to keep us warm.
The next morning there was nothing left of the inn but two stone chimneys and some fragments of charred wood clinging to them. But Washington made sure to attach one of his brass plaques to the remains. It is still in place today, so that if, on the road west of Bedford, you stop to examine the picturesque ruin now slowly being reclaimed by the devouring woods, you may learn that once upon a time George Washington slept there.
The end of the Whiskey Rebellion was something of an anticlimax. Washington, who enjoyed the trappings of war but preferred wars in which no one was seriously hurt, summoned the leaders of the rebellion to a parley. They came prepared to defy him, but they did not come prepared for his size. The appearance of a seventeen-foot Washington at the parley routed all opposition. Washington pardoned everyone, heard their grievances, and promised to ask Congress to consider them; but meanwhile he desired them to give him no reason to come back with an even more overwhelming force. They assured him that they had no desire to see him there again, and thus the matter was ended.
It might have been a happier time for Washington if all the crises of his administration had been so easily resolved. Partisan strife, however, began to creep into our government, and some in Congress were looking for excuses to oppose President Washington. They found one in the secret treaty negotiated by the mysterious John J., who always refused to reveal his surname even to his most intimate acquaintances, and responded to every attempt at guessing the name with an enigmatic smile. This treaty granted certain concessions to the British, and congressmen were not uniformly happy with all its provisions, raising questions especially about the clause granting any British ship the right to make rude gestures at any American ship without reprisals in kind. The Congress demanded to see the notes and memoranda generated by the President and his associates on the subject of the treaty. Washington quite correctly replied that there were no notes or memoranda: when he thought something ought to be done, he did it.
But then, somehow, the fact of Mr. Shelton’s secret recordings came to light—I have always suspected that Hamilton had something to do with it, but I have no proof—and Congress began to demand the president’s secret “tapes.” These Washington steadfastly refused to turn over, saying that it was the privilege of the executive to keep his private deliberations secret. Eventually, however, he agreed to have the relevant tapes transcribed (for he would not lose his originals). This course of action quelled the complaints for a time until it was found that, in one of the transcriptions which most interested the men in Congress, there was a gap of eighteen and a half pages, and that Mr. Shelton could not account for how he had lost the corresponding section of “tape.”
Thus the latter part of Washington’s presidency was filled with wrangling and vituperation, neither of which came naturally to the great man. And that is why, though it surprised the country and the world, Washington’s decision not to seek a third term did not surprise me.
“Hamilton,” he told Susanna and me, “has drafted an address for me, in which I shall announce my decision and offer a few parting words of wisdom to the people of my country. It will be good to have done with this business.”
At the mention of Hamilton’s name, Susanna’s ears seemed to move forward. “I should very much like to see this address,” she said, and Washington was happy to oblige her. Having read a few lines, she told him, “If you would like, I could give this a thorough perusal and correct a few trifling errors which have crept into the text, doubtless owing to the haste of the composition.”
“Oh, yes, Phillips, that would be very kind of you,” Washington replied; and so we ended by taking Mr. Hamilton’s manuscript home with us, where Susanna sat down and began running long lines through whole paragraphs of text.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“I am making a few trifling corrections,” she replied. “For example, here, where it says, ‘You must destroy their name from under heaven; you must put every male to the sword; you must leave nothing that breathes alive’—I am correcting it so that it does not say that.”
“I suppose Hamilton’s text admits of some improvement,” I said.
“I have also removed some specific references to Mr. Jefferson in which his parentage is called into question.”
“Probably a prudent alteration.”
“And the section that compares Mr. Adams to the back end of certain domestic animals has been struck out as well.”
“I’m sure Washington will be grateful to you for your diligence.”
And so Washington’s farewell address appeared in a somewhat milder form than that in which Hamilton had prepared it, but it was generally well received all the same. When he delivered it in public, however, Washington added one paragraph of his own which did not generally appear in the published versions of the address, and so I reproduce it here:
“It is also essential that you resist to the utmost degree the baneful influence of certain members of the animal kingdom, who, though they may not be visible in the strict sense, are, you may be sure, working incessantly to undermine the system of government, and the individual liberties, which we have labored so assiduously to obtain, and which are the most precious inheritance of our children. In warning you against the machinations of malevolent invisible animals, I am certain I give you no new information; but it is my hope that my words may remain in your memory, perhaps to recur to your minds at a time when their influence will be most profitable.”
The night before he turned over the presidency to Mr. Adams, Washington had a supper with a few of his most intimate friends; and, after the rest had gone, he desired that Susanna and I remain a while longer. Having poured us each another glass of Madeira, he told us, “I shall, of course, be retiring to Mount Vernon; and it would please me very much if I could have the assistance of both of you in maintaining the estate, which I intend to run as a model of a plantation managed on rational principles. I plan to leave some of it forested for game, and I believe you, Gist, would be the very man to take care of that; and I thought I could put Phillips in charge of the slaves. I hope I am not asking too much of you, but the fact is that it would cheer me greatly to see two of my oldest friends often on the grounds, and—Gist, do you think Phillips needs a thump on the back? He seems to be choking on his Madeira.”
To be continued in Chapter XV.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON,
By an Associate.
Continuing the narrative that began here.
At Washington’s earnest request, Susanna and I came to New-York as well, along with the children. He also induced Parson Weems to join us; and the evening Weems arrived, we spent two or three hours after supper discussing the protocol for the new office of the presidency.
“I thought perhaps,” said Washington, “we ought to come up with a kind of manual of forms of address. When the President is spoken of, for example, in what way is he styled? I had thought it might be something like “His Gracious and Exalted Majesty the President of the United States, by the Grace of God Defender of the Rights of the American People, Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy and of the Militias of the Several States, Appointer to Offices, Filler of Vacancies, Informer of the Congress as Regards the State of the Union, Arbiter of Opinions, Granter of Pardons, Maker of—”
“Do you think that might be somewhat cumbersome?” Susanna asked.
“Well, of course, the full title would be used only the first time the President was mentioned; after that, the title ‘His Gracious and Exalted Majesty’ would suffice.”
“I was thinking perhaps ‘Mr. President’ would do,” said Susanna.
“Is that not somewhat…common?” asked Washington.
“Not at all. Quite the reverse. In all the states of Europe, you will find gracious and exalted majesties, defenders of the faith, high and mighty autocrats, and so on. A man may rule a strip of land the size of a pocket-handkerchief, but his majesty is still gracious and exalted. Gracious and exalted majesties are a shilling a cartload. What no other country has is a President, a ruler whose power depends not on the number of titles he piles on top of his name, but on the genuine love of his people, whereof his very position is the proof and sign. When one has said ‘President,’ one has spoken a name whose luster eclipses all lesser titles, to which any addition must be a diminution.”
“Do you really think so?” Washington asked, obviously impressed.
“So firmly do I believe it, that in the future, I will venture to say, other countries will have Presidents rather than kings, and the most powerful rulers in the world will affect the title we Americans have given to our executive.”
“My word, Phillips!” cried Washington. “I had not thought of the thing in those terms, but ‘Mr. President’ it shall be!”
Some time later, after Washington had retired and we were walking back home to our lodgings, Parson Weems said, “That was very clever, Susanna—puncturing his bubble by pretending to inflate it.”
“I had to do something,” she replied, “and he’s grown too big to be conveniently punched in the face.”
A few days later, Washington was showing me the presidential office he had set up in his New-York residence, which would also serve as a kind of audience chamber. The best cabinetmakers in the city had been commissioned to make an immense desk and chair in Washington’s own size. “Here,” said Washington, “in the back of the house, I may meet privately with such men as I have business with, and we shall not be overheard or disturbed.”
“But is it wise for the President to conduct business with no witnesses?” I asked. “I will not say that there are dishonest men in our government, but misunderstandings may arise, which, without a witness on record, may be difficult to settle.”
“Ah,” Washington said with a sly nod, “in fact I have considered that eventuality;—or Hamilton has, which comes to the same thing.” He pointed to his desk. “In this office I have installed a system that silently records every conversation.”
“Every conversation?” I repeated incredulously. “But how is that possible?”
“You will, of course, keep this a secret as long as I am President,” said Washington; and he led me over to his desk. Lifting the top of it entirely away, he pointed down. I stood on my toes and peered into the desk. There, inside the Washington-sized desk, was a man sitting at an ordinary desk with a quill, a big pot of ink, and a narrow roll of paper, which proceeded from under the right side of the desk, passed across the writing surface, and was wound on a big spool under the left side of the desk.
“Mr. Shelton here,” Washington explained (and the man immediately started scribbling), “is a remarkably quick man with a quill. With a continuous roll of narrow paper, or ‘tape,’ as Hamilton calls it, he has no need to lose time changing sheets, and his shorthand can keep up with the fastest talker. Every conversation that takes place in this office is recorded on one of these ‘tapes,’ and I can retrieve the exact words that were spoken any time I like.”
He set the top back down, and Mr. Shelton was completely hidden.
“But isn’t it dark under there?” I asked. “How does he see?”
“I have no idea,” Washington replied. He lifted the top of the desk again. “It seems light enough under there now.” He set the top back down. “And the important thing is that all my presidential conversations are recorded on ‘tape,’ so that the chance of my being embarrassed in any way is virtually eliminated.”
“And you don’t worry that someone might use the very existence of such a record to embarrass you?”
“Gist, I hope I can say with confidence that I never say anything in this room of which I have cause to be ashamed. Indeed I find it difficult to imagine that the states would ever elect a man to the presidency who would be embarrassed by anything that might be recorded by such a system. The electoral mechanism is designed to select honorable men, and I have faith that it will continue to do so.”
Meanwhile the business of creating a government occupied most of the meetings of Congress; and as Congress created the positions, the President was required to nominate men to fill them. Of course Washington could think of only one man to be the Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Hamilton was hardly able to contain his joy at being able to found his own currency.
“We shall base it on tens,” he explained, “which will at a stroke eliminate the difficulties of converting between pounds, shillings, dollars, and all the other coins that jangle in our purses; and we shall have a national currency, so that there will be no complicated formula, as there is now, to convert the coin of New Hampshire to that of North Carolina. As the people are familiar with the name, and as it carries no memories of our oppression by the British, we shall call our coin the dollar, and if—”
“And these dollars,” Washington interrupted—“of what size and weight will they be?”
“The weight, of course, will depend on the value we assign to the United States dollar; as for the size, we shall consult with the men we choose to run our mint, who will be able to tell us how such and so much a weight of silver is best distributed in a coin.”
“These are very important considerations from the point of view of a coin’s projectile properties,” said Washington. “The Spanish milled dollar travels well through the air, and possesses enough heft to carry it to its target without being too much buffeted by the wind. I should hate to see an American dollar without those properties; for men who throw dollars for sport are very particular about the dollars they throw, and might reject our United States dollar if its range and accuracy do not meet their expectations.”
“I am certain you could persuade our mint to take those considerations into account,” said Hamilton. “Now, as I said, multiples of ten will—”
“A milled edge also improves the grip, which for sporting purposes is one of the most important considerations.”
“Yes. The grip. Now, as I was saying, we shall make our dollar divisible into tens, which we might call ‘dimes,’ as being, of course, the tenth part of a dollar. A tenth part of a dime would then be a ‘cent,’ because it is the hundredth part of—”
“I thought you said it was the tenth part.”
“It is the tenth part of a dime, and therefore the hundredth part of a dollar.”
“Why can’t it make up its mind?”
“It is both at the same time!”
“My word! That’s clever.”
“And then the tenth part of a cent would be a mill, bec—”
“Because it is the millionth part of a dollar!”
“No,” Hamilton explained with strained patience, “only the thousandth part.”
“Then why is it called a mill?”
“Because it is—”
“Why not a thou?”
“Because the names come from Latin, or rather—”
“Oh, Latin,” said Washington knowingly. “Well, Latin is another matter altogether.”
Hamilton was about to say something more, but then appeared to realize that he had won as much of a victory as he was likely to win in this discussion, and resumed his earlier topic. “As I was saying, the division into tens will make calculations much easier for ordinary shopkeepers and merchants, who will find their duties lightened considerably.”
“For example,” said Washington, “if I buy a turkey quill at Stimson’s in Alexandria for one bit, which is an eighth of a dollar, then that comes to…now let me see…”
“Twelve and a half cents,” said Susanna.
“Twelve and a half? Well, that doesn’t sound very easy at all. How is that easier than saying ‘one bit,’ Hamilton?”
“It just is!” Hamilton sputtered. “Tens are easier!”
I looked at Susanna, but she had nothing more to say. With Hamilton’s explosion, she had accomplished her goal.
It is perhaps too early to speak with authority, but generations to come may remember the planting of our new capital city as the most lasting achievement of Washington’s first term as President. The location of it was much debated, and it was early decided that, if the city were located on the border between two states, with perhaps land taken from both of them, it would more clearly appear to belong to the whole Union, and not to any individual state. But which border was to be chosen? To many in Congress, especially the representatives from Maryland and Pennsylvania, the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania seemed the obvious choice, as being the traditional line between North and South. Washington, however, favored a site at the head of navigation of the Potomac, which, he said, would give the new city water access to the Chesapeake, that great arm of the greater sea, and thus easy transportation to such important destinations as would not be similarly accessible from other sites. That the site was easy to reach from Mount Vernon may also have figured in his calculations. At any rate, Washington’s site was chosen, because it was usually easier to give Washington what he wanted if he seemed to be set on getting it.
The business of surveying the new capital and beginning its construction gave Washington an excuse to get back to Mount Vernon, where he always felt more at home, and thus for us to get back to our house on Prince-street. Washington threw himself into the project with much enthusiasm, and he was delighted to report to us that he had found a little Frenchman named Pierre L’Enfant who was just the man to lay out his new city. He invited us to meet this man at Mount Vernon, where he would explain exactly where he had chosen to place the capital.
When we arrived at Mount Vernon, we expected to find a pale little Frenchman; but the man who was seated (on a very tall stool) at Washington’s immense table, with various maps and surveys spread out before him, was nearly as dark as Susanna.
“This is Mr. Banneker, Mr. L’Enfant’s assistant,” Washington told us. “Mr. Banneker, my good friends Mr. Gist and Colonel Phillips.”
Mr. Banneker looked puzzled for a moment; and then he appeared to recall that Washington had his quirks, and accepted the introduction as it came to him.
“And is Mr. L’Enfant here?” I asked after the usual greetings.
Mr. Banneker hesitated, but Washington answered for him: “Oh, Mr. L’Enfant is not visible in the strict sense.”
Mr. Banneker smiled helplessly, but we simply accepted the information as it came to us.
“Now, Mr. Banneker,” Washington continued, “what does Mr. L’Enfant think of the site?”
“Mr. L’Enfant thinks it’s mostly a swamp,” replied Mr. Banneker. “Mr. L’Enfant wonders why you don’t put the city somewhere on higher ground.”
“But this is the best possible site. Look—it’s a perfect square. Where else would you find that?”
“It is a perfect square,” said Banneker, “because you drew it that way on the map.”
“Well, yes. Of course I did. Why would I draw it in a shape that it is not?”
Banneker paused for a moment, wearing that expression common to all who entered thus into a debate with Washington and found themselves unaccountably bested. Then he continued: “The site also includes two cities already extant, namely Georgetown and Alexandria.”
“That should present no problem. They can be moved. So, since we have overcome all objections, it seems to me that Mr. L’Enfant can continue with his plans.”
It happened that Mr. Banneker was staying in Alexandria on Duke-street; so, although Washington had sent a coach to fetch him, we offered to take him home in ours, an offer he gladly accepted. In the coach Susanna did not let much time pass before saying, “Tell me about Mr. L’Enfant.”
Her smile left Banneker in no doubt that she understood most of the story already, so he was quite candid with us. “Mr. L’Enfant is a creation of my own. I realized, madam, that my color might obscure my abilities, and I thought if I described myself as the assistant to a well-known French engineer, I might be able to secure a better class of client. I did not expect President Washington to choose me for such an important commission, and I was certain that my deception would be discovered when he demanded to see Mr. L’Enfant personally. But when I insisted that Mr. L’Enfant could not be seen, President Washington took me more literally than I had expected. It seems there is some person by the name of Irving—”
“Not a person,” I told him. “A mule.”
“Ah,” said Banneker, and he seemed not to know what to say after that.
“I don’t believe the deception was necessary,” said Susanna. “The President believes I am a white man named Phillips. That the fact is otherwise should, in spite of my masculine garb, be apparent to you.”
“Abundantly,” said Banneker, with an expression that brought me a momentary pang of jealousy. “That said, will you betray me to him? I have no doubt I deserve it, but—”
“I do not think it would be possible to change Washington’s mind about you,” I said. “He has known my wife Susanna for thirteen years, and not even the arrival of our children could persuade him that she is anything other than Colonel Phillips.” I own I added these details partly in order to forestall any false impressions Banneker might have about Susanna. When a man possesses a single precious jewel, he may at times seem overcautious.
“So you will not betray me?”
“Vive L’Enfant, as far as I’m concerned.”
Banneker soon had a draft of his plan ready, and Susanna and I, along with Parson Weems, were privileged to be at Mount Vernon when he presented it to Washington.
“You see that the pattern of the streets is very rational,” Banneker explained. “They go north and south, or east and west; the former numbered, the latter named by letters of the alphabet.”
“Oh, yes, this is very fine,” said Washington. “I foresee a mighty city rising here—a city whose position at the head of navigation on the Potomac will give rise to undreamt-of prosperity; a city of globe-circling commerce, of gleaming towers and verdant parks; a center of learning and the arts—”
“A city called Washington?” asked Parson Weems.
“No, of course not. Don’t be absurd. It would be presumptuous of me in the extreme to establish a capital bearing my own name. I was thinking of ‘Columbia,’ after the great navigator who discovered the New World. How does that sound?”
“A fine name,” Susanna said with what sounded like relief.
“Now, this round thing here,” Washington continued—“what is that?”
“A natural basin, which we shall improve as a promenade for the residents. I was thinking it might look especially splendid in the spring if we planted the perimeter with cherry trees.”
“I think not,” said Washington, suddenly stiff.
“But the blossoms would make—”
“No cherries. I particularly desire you, for very good and sufficient reasons, not to plant cherry trees.”
“Of course if you insist—”
“I think we can do without the cherries.—Now, you have all these streets going straight up and down or back and forth.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And this is the President’s house here. And the Capitol, where the Congress meets, here. Now, what happens if the President needs to go to the Capitol to address Congress?”
“Then he can walk down past this street, and this, and then turn left and walk straight to the Capitol like this,” replied Banneker.
“Would it not,” asked Washington, picking up the quill and dipping it in the ink, “be more efficient to have a street connecting the two points directly?” He drew a straight line between the President’s house and the Capitol on the map.
Banneker looked horrified. “But it destroys the logical symmetry of it all. If you—”
“And then to get from here to here you could have a street going directly like this.” He drew a diagonal straight across Mr. Banneker’s neat horizontals and verticals. “And from here to here” (he drew another line), “and here to here, and here to here.”
“But I had a perfectly neat system of numbered and lettered streets!” And then, recollecting himself, Banneker added, “I mean, Mr. L’Enfant had.”
“I’m sure Mr. L’Enfant will see the wisdom of these improvements. We could name these more direct streets after states of the Union. This one could be Pennsylvania, this one New-York, this one Virginia, this one Wisconsin, this one Georgia, and so on.”
“There’s no state called ‘Wisconsin.’ ”
“We could make one to match the street. Plenty of room in the Northwest. I don’t see why some of my land can’t be set aside for states with whimsical names.”
Mr. Banneker sighed and said, “I’ll present the idea to Mr. L’Enfant.”
Later, as we were on our way home in our coach, Susanna asked me, “Will anyone be able to find his way in our capital city once Washington has done with altering the plans?”
“Probably not,” I replied. “But consider the advantages. If we ever go to war again, the enemy will never successfully invade our capital. Any invading force would find itself hopelessly lost and easily overcome.”
“I do love your good cheer,” said Susanna, “but please, just this once, will you admit to me that the man is an imbecile?”
To be continued in Chapter XIV.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON,
By an Associate.
Continuing the narrative that began here.
There were many men who thought they might be exactly the man required for this new position of President. Fortunately Washington had a weapon in his arsenal that could not be matched by any of his opponents. Mr. Hamilton had already concluded that his own prospects of advancement depended upon Washington’s being elected President, and he threw himself into the project with his customary enthusiasm.
“We need to make sure you’re appealing to all demographics,” Hamilton explained over Madeira on the back porch at Mount Vernon.
“What are demographics?” Washington naturally asked.
“That’s a term I’ve come up with on my own. It literally means ‘people-writing.’ ”
“You want me to write on people?”
“No, you misunderstand—”
“I usually just sign their autograph albums, and that makes them happy enough.”
“It’s not about writing on—”
“I’d think the quill would tickle them terribly.”
“Please try to—”
“There was one young woman in Annapolis who made a request I considered somewhat immodest, but even that was on fabric.”
“Look, there are—”
“And the ink feathered, so that to my mind the signature was spoiled, but on the other hand I should hope that not many people will see that much of her anyway.”
“It doesn’t mean writing on people,” Hamilton said. “It means writing about people.”
“Oh, I see,” said Washington. “Well, really, when I think about it, I do seem to write mostly about people, except for Irving of course. That is, when I do write. Well, I shall be very glad to have a new word for it.”
“Let me begin again,” said Hamilton. “There are many different kinds of people, and we want to make sure you appeal to all of them. The best way to do that is with targeted advertising, as I call it.”
“Do you—”
“And I’m not shooting anything!” Hamilton explained quickly. “Let me show you what I mean. What sort of people do you think go to cheap inns and taverns?”
“Well,” said Washington, “I should think they would be people with little money who like to drink.”
“There you are, then,” said Hamilton. ‘We put up a poster in every cheap tavern: “Share a Drink with Washington—A Man of the People, for the People, Protecting Your Interests from the Rich.’ And then what sort of people go to the races?”
“Mostly wealthy planters,” Washington replied.
“So we put up posters wherever the races meet: ‘Washington—The Prince of Planters, Protecting Your Interests from the Mob.’ You see how it works. You aim, so to speak, your advertisements at the people who are likely to see them in the place where we hang them. Thus your advertisements are targeted, as I call it.”
“But it seems to me that you have General Washington acting in two entirely contradictory ways,” said Susanna. “You have him protecting the poor against the rich, and the rich against the poor.”
“I prefer to say ‘complementary’ rather than ‘contrary,’ ” said Hamilton. “Like St. Paul, you become all things to all men.”
“Oh, well, if it’s in Scripture,” said Washington.
“We’re simply broadening your appeal by the Pauline method, as it were. Similarly, in the New England states, we shall have posters to tell the people that Washington is the protector of shipping and manufacturing interests against the rich plantation-owners, and in the South, of course, we shall be careful to say that Washington, the man of the South, will protect Southern interests against Northern plutocrats.”
“Plutocrats?” Weems asked.
“It’s another word I’ve come up with on my own,” Hamilton said proudly. “It means rich people with too much influence.”
“My word, Hamilton, you certainly are enriching our American language,” said Washington. “Why, if we keep adding words at this rate, no one will be able to understand us at all.”
“We explain what they mean as we introduce them,” Hamilton responded. “I have a list, you see, and I add to it every day.” He shuffled downward in his stack of papers until he found the one he was looking for. “Here it is.”
Washington took the paper, which looked tiny in his hand, and examined it closely. “Well, you certainly have been busy, Hamilton. You have some fine words here, if I’m any judge of words. Like ‘ee-lights,’ for example. What are ‘ee-lights’?”
“That’s ‘ay-leets,’ ” said Hamilton. “It’s a word I borrowed from the French.”
“Oh, well, I suppose if we pillage foreign languages, there’s no end to the number of words we can come up with. I thought you were just making them up out of your own head, like ‘sizzwappler.’ ”
“ ‘Sizzwappler’? What’s that?”
“It’s a word I just made up out of my own head,” Washington explained.
“But, you see, these words are formed on regular principles out of the materials already afforded us by the Saxon, French, Latin, or Greek.”
“It seems like a great deal of work to have to know four languages just to make up words in English. I think my method is much simpler. What does ‘ay-leets’ mean, anyway?”
“It means people who are better educated, with more wisdom and understanding, than the average man.”
“Oh, I see. So you want to tell the people that I am one of these ay-leets.”
“No! People hate the elites. They don’t want anyone to be wiser or to know more than they do. They want a leader who’s as stupid and ignorant as they are.”
“But then why would they want someone like me?” asked Washington.
A brief silence followed, and then Hamilton explained, “It’s simply a matter of image.” He pointed to the word “image” in his list. “We want to create an image of you as a man of the people.”
“You mean like a statue?”
“No!” Hamilton put some effort into getting his annoyance under control; it could perhaps be unwise to be too short with a man who was three times his height. “You have doubtless imagined, say, George the Third in your mind.”
“Oh, yes,” said Washington. “I picture him with long ears that stand up and out from his head, a long muzzle, four hooves, a long and brushy tail…”
“You mean like a mule?”
“Precisely. I believe he shares many characteristics with my archnemesis Irving.”
Hamilton looked blank for a moment, and then assimilated this new addition to the conversation and went on. “Well, that image in your mind stands in for King George. When you think of King George, that is what you think of. What we want to do is control the image the voters have of you in their minds. We want them to see the right image when they hear your name.”
“Oh!” cried Washington, “so they can see me when I’m not there! That’s extraordinary, Hamilton. It’s a remarkable idea. A real sizzwappler. Do you have a word for that, too—people seeing me when I’m far away?”
“It’s not really— Well, actually, I suppose it is seeing you when you’re far away, isn’t it? We could call it “teleoptics,’ or ‘proculovision.’ ”
“How about ‘television’?” asked Washington. “I like the sound of that.”
“No, you can’t combine Greek and Latin parts that way. But you see the principle, don’t you? When the ordinary tavern-goer thinks of you, we want him to think of someone like him—someone who hates the rich industrialists and planters and merchants and suchlike people and looks out for the interests of the ordinary man. When the planters think of you, we want them to see a rich planter who thinks the way they do and hates the common mob. That’s what I mean by ‘image.’ ”
“But the way you paint these images of me, I’m not sure I’d like me very much if I met me.”
“We don’t care what you think of you. We care what they think of you. We need to reach the people who will vote for the electors who will vote for Washington.”
“And you will do this by putting up images of me?”
Hamilton looked blank again for a moment, and then said, “If necessary.”
The only other candidate we really had to fear was John Adams, who was not nearly so well known as the General. But Hamilton was bent on leaving nothing to chance. Soon we began to see Washington-for-President broadsides and posters wherever we went. When Susanna and I took little Crispus and Jane for a walk down toward the docks, there were Washington’s posters:
WASHINGTON
for
LOWER
TARIFFS
and
MARITIME
IMPROVEMENTS
Later Susanna asked Hamilton what he meant by “maritime improvements,” and he replied, “It means whatever the shipping interests want it to mean.”
Not long afterward, a poster appeared across from St. Paul’s, very near our house:
DON’T LET THEM TAKE YOUR SLAVES
Vote for
WASHINGTON
Because when slavery is outlawed,
only outlaws will have slaves.
Susanna was especially enraged by this one because she already knew that Hamilton had sent to Boston to have posters put up with a very different message:
KEEP MASSACHUSETTS FREE
Vote for
WASHINGTON
Don’t let slaveholders
control the confederation.
“How is that even logical?” she had demanded of Hamilton when he told us of the Boston posters. “Washington is a slaveholder himself, and you are asking them to put him at the head of the Union.”
“The people will vote for the image,” Hamilton had replied. “The man is immaterial.”
Meanwhile Mr. Adams’ campaign was not idle. A few days after Washington’s first posters were put up, a small poster appeared on the wall of the Lyceum:
You Might Consider Voting
for
JOHN ADAMS
If It Is Not
Too Much Trouble.
We saw no other Adams posters, but the mere existence of this one raised Mr. Hamilton’s ire to a frightening degree. “We must crush this Adams,” he said when we were again gathered on the porch at Mount Vernon. “We must pound him into the earth until there is no life left in him.”
“Mr. Hamilton,” Washington said with obvious shock, “John Adams is a friend of mine, and no consideration could induce me to do him the least injury.”
“I meant it metaphorically, of course,” Hamilton said hastily. “Privately you and Mr. Adams may remain the best of friends. It is only in the political sense that we must beat him down and crush his bones to powder under our boots. That is what ‘politics’ means.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” said Washington. “What would we do to beat him down politically but not personally?”
“Well, for a start, we might place anonymous articles in the Gazette, which would soon be picked up by the papers from Boston to Savannah.”
“I see. And what would these articles say?”
“Anything unflattering about Adams that would damage his reputation. We could question his masculinity, for example.”
“Don’t be absurd, Hamilton. Adams is as much a man as any of us here. I know a man when I see one; I can tell the difference.”
Hamilton glanced helplessly at Susanna, but she gave him a look that would wither an oak tree.
“The content of the accusation is not important,” Hamilton bravely continued. “In fact it will be more effective if we do not phrase the thing as an accusation, but rather as a question. “Is John Adams a Horse Thief?” You see we say nothing dishonest; we merely ask a question. Or, better yet, a denial: “Adams Denies Arson Charges, Say Campaign Insiders.” We tell no untruth: in fact we specifically deny that Adams is an arsonist. Nothing could be more honest than that.”
“But what do you accomplish by telling the voters that Mr. Adams has done nothing wrong?” I asked.
“Ah, but we do not precisely tell them that he has done nothing wrong. We tell them that he has denied doing something wrong, and they will conclude from that that someone has accused him of doing it, and then they will wonder, Did he do it? And there will be a good number of them who think, in the words of the old adage, ‘Where there’s smoke—’ ”
“ ‘—permission ought to be asked of the ladies.’ Yes, I am familiar with the proverb,” Washington said. “But something about this makes me uneasy, Hamilton. Is it not possible to win the office of President simply by giving the public a candid assessment of my intelligence and abilities, and thus allowing the people to make an informed decision?”
Hamilton thought for a moment.
“No,” he replied at last.
Soon Hamilton’s anonymous articles began appearing in the Alexandria Gazette. As Hamilton had foretold, the articles were not long in being reprinted in Philadelphia, Charleston, Baltimore, New-York, Savannah, Hartford, and even as far west as Pittsburgh; or so I was told much later by a certain Mr. Brackenridge, who will appear later in these pages.
Not long after that, we began to hear the rumors in the usual gossip at the taverns and coffee-houses of Alexandria, and even in church: they say that Adams stole twenty horses from a defenseless old widow in Quincy; they say that Adams has one-quarter African blood in his veins; they say that Adams wears a long coat to hide his pointed tail; they say all those things that Hamilton’s articles specifically denied about Adams, which, as Hamilton had intended, introduced thoughts that had not previously been in the minds of the people. Adams and his friends wrote letters denying the rumors, but all their denials were merely favorable breezes under the wings of Rumor, and had the effect of spreading the stories farther and farther. In effect, Adams was doing Washington’s campaigning for him.
Meanwhile, Hamilton arranged for Washington to travel up and down the country to meet the people face to face—“shaking hands and kissing babies,” as Hamilton explained, although the latter part of the program was quickly abandoned when we discovered that the effect on babies of a fifteen-foot man bending down to kiss them was not uniformly positive. We traveled in a train of coaches and wagons, which Hamilton called a “cavalcade,” that included a large number of correspondents for the various papers up and down the country. After Washington began to complain of back pain, we added a large crew of diggers, who would go ahead of us and prepare a nine-foot-deep trench for Washington to walk up and down in, so that he could greet the people who came to see him without bending over. Everywhere we stayed, of course, Washington put up one of his brass plaques, which were greatly prized by the communities; most of them appeared now on churches and meeting halls, and not a few barns; which, but for the very most opulent planters’ houses in the South, were generally the only available buildings sufficiently large to accommodate Washington’s current dimensions. We had to send men ahead—“advance scouts,” Hamilton called them—to find such accommodations, and, after two regrettable incidents that were much talked about where they occurred, to make sure that the location chosen for Washington’s appearance before the crowd was not dangerously near a cherry orchard.
As more and more writers for the weeklies joined our cavalcade, their demands upon Washington’s time grew more and more inconvenient, until at last Hamilton set aside certain times when all of them could gather at once and ask the General whatever questions occurred to them. Because of the press of correspondents trying to push their way to the front, these occasions quickly became known among the literary gentlemen as “press conferences.” The usual procedure was that one correspondent at a time would be chosen to ask a question, to which Washington would give a reply, and then Hamilton, standing on a raised platform beside him, would explain what Washington meant by what he had said. It was not obvious to Washington that these explanations were truly representative of his own thoughts; but Hamilton gave him another lecture on the subject of “image,” and Washington agreed because agreeing made the lecture stop.
Hamilton’s master stroke was to arrange a face-to-face debate between Washington and Adams in Philadelphia. In this debate, certain correspondents from the Philadelphia papers were permitted to ask questions, which both candidates answered extemporaneously. Mr. Adams answered every question intelligently, and had all the information about tariffs, diplomacy, commerce, finance, Indian affairs, and turnpikes ready to hand. Washington had none of that, with the result that his brief answers and irrelevant aphorisms held the attention of the audience, and he was universally judged to be the winner of the debate.
At last the great day came; the people went to the polls in great numbers; they chose electors for Washington; and the General was ready to take his place as the first President of the United States.
But if the electoral process was obscure, it was clarity itself in comparison with the presidency. The Constitution specified a few duties of the President, which, taken together, might occupy a day of his time out of the month. What was the President supposed to be doing the rest of the time?
To be continued in Chapter XIII.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON,
By an Associate.
Continuing the narrative that began here.
Parson Weems had retired to Georgetown across the river to work on his tracts, of which he issued a steady stream: “On the Falsity of All Human Traditions, Saving Certain Exceptions Herein Enumerated”; “On the Poor Fashion Sense of the Romish Hierarchy”; “An Inquiry into the Scandalously Immoral Behavior of Certain Orders of Nuns, with Numerous Woodcuts”; “Whether the Pope Possesses a Hidden Tail, with a Commentary on the Seventeenth Chapter of Revelation”; and other similar titles, most of which sold very well, assuring their author a comfortable living. He had them printed at the Gazette office in Alexandria, and would generally stop for dinner with us after a day at the printer’s; I was always glad to see him, and Susanna was at least polite to him, though she was not as fond of him as I was.
Of course we were frequent guests at Mount Vernon. Washington was not a man to forget loyal friends, and I believe Susanna, Parson Weems, and I saw more of him than did all the great men of the age who stopped to pay tribute to the greatest of them all, and to seek his advice, an experience that usually left them more baffled than they had been before they arrived.
In short, I will say that my own life was very pleasant in the few years after our victory in the War of Independence; and so, I believe, was Washington’s. Our country, however, was suffering.
The difficulty, as all agreed, lay in the Articles of Confederation. That agreement, hastily put together when the states were in the throes of their war for independence, gave us a national government that existed only at the whim of the states; and we soon discovered that the states could be quite whimsical. The Congress depended on the contributions of the states for its budget, and there were no consequences for states that failed to make the agreed-on contributions. Moreover, the Empire of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation showed a distressing tendency to bully the other states, which the Articles of Confederation provided no means of counteracting. Clearly some revisions were necessary, and it must be soon, preferably before Connecticut declared war on Rhode Island.
Thus the Congress voted to call a convention in Philadelphia for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and naturally Virginia chose Washington as one of her delegates.
“I should like to have you and Phillips with me,” Washington said when he told me about the convention. “Your steadying influence, and his incisive mind, will be of great use to me in Philadelphia. We ought to have Parson Weems as well, if he can spare the time, for a bit of spiritual advice would not come amiss at this important juncture.”
“I’ll have to ask Su— Phillips, but for my part I should be glad to offer whatever assistance I can give.”
Susanna was reluctant to leave the children for so long, though we had a capable and intelligent nurse whom they loved, and who would be more than adequate to the task of caring for them. “But on the other hand, if Virginia has chosen Washington, the other states have probably chosen the usual lot of imbeciles; and if I can be there to speak for sanity— Very well; we’ll go, and the children will come with us.”
“Is that wise?” I asked.
“Crispus is already speaking in complete sentences,” said Susanna. “Perhaps he can draft some of the articles.”
So it was done. We made slow progress to Philadelphia with Jane and Crispus, but they enjoyed the new sights along the way, and certainly Susanna and I were happier for not worrying about what might be happening to them at home.
When we arrived in Philadelphia, we found the preparations for the convention already in progress, and already encountering their first difficulty. Washington had grown considerably since the successful conclusion of the war. He was now a little over thirteen feet tall, and while this height presented no architectural problem in the ample chamber chosen for the convention, it was clear that none of the furniture was at all adequate to Washington’s current dimensions.
Here was a problem the convention would have to solve before it could even begin to address the perceived weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation. It was imperative that at least one chair be made in Washington’s size. Yet no one wished to be the one who drew attention to Washington’s unusual height. We all preferred not to mention it, and I was never quite sure how much Washington himself was aware of his own size. Furthermore, the pride of some of the other delegates would hardly admit of one delegate’s having an obviously larger seat than the rest. The representatives from Rhode Island, where size has often been a sensitive question, threatened to withdraw from the union altogether and form an independent and potentially hostile Empire if any Virginian sat in a chair whose dimensions exceeded those of the chairs occupied by Rhode Island by so much as a single inch.
In the end it was decided by the Standing Committee on Seating that all furniture in the hall should be so made as to accommodate any delegate up to fourteen feet tall. Thus the problem was addressed without any specific reference to Washington himself, and the feelings of smaller delegates were spared. Most of the delegates required stepladders, or for some of the more infirm hoisting tackle, to make the ascent into their seats; but the important thing was that harmony was preserved, and the convention was not irreparably split over questions of protocol before any of the more important issues had been dealt with.
Susanna and I did not attend the sessions with Washington, so we heard about the actual debates second-hand; but we heard them in great detail, for Washington loved to talk about them. The first debate, of course, was over the presidency of the convention, and as far as Washington was concerned there could be only one reasonable choice. Fortunately, he was able to make the other delegates see reason, or see how difficult it would be if they did not see things his way. The first day he came back to the inn where we were staying (a house with comfortably high fifteen-foot ceilings, and a large back parlor where we accommodated Washington by laying four beds side by side) to announce that he had been chosen president of the convention. Furthermore, he was quite pleased to find that his old friend Alexander Hamilton had come to the convention as the delegate from New-York state. “The men of New-York sent only one delegate,” said Washington, “and in this I believe they have shown wisdom; for one Hamilton is worth half a dozen of the rest. I believe his ‘one-dollar-one-vote’ proposal has a very good chance of acceptance.”
“One-dollar-one-vote?” I repeated.
“Hamilton explained it to me. It seems very clever. Each man would have a voting power proportional to his wealth, so that the burden of government falls most heavily upon those who most naturally have an interest in the stability of the Union.”
“I’d like to talk to Hamilton about that personally,” said Susanna. I did not like the way the fingers of her right hand were closing into a fist.
“The thing that worries me,” Washington continued, “is that the delegates from the Empire of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation have gone home and refused to have anything further to do with the convention. I hope that troublesome state is not bent on causing us more difficulties. We need the cooperation of all the states, for a civil war between Rhode Island and the other states would be destructive and unpleasant. However, we can only trust in our own wisdom to erect a government that will, by its obvious utility, recommend itself even to the mobs in Newport and Providence.”
“Perhaps,” Susanna suggested, “we ought to trust in God instead.”
We did in fact see quite a bit of Mr. Hamilton as the days went on. He often dined with us, and he spoke of his plans for a government “of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy” with great enthusiasm. I kept one eye on Susanna’s right fist, for there was something about Mr. Hamilton that unsettled her.
Eventually, however, it became clear that Hamilton’s most audacious proposals would not gain the support of most of the states. Many of the delegates, indeed, were insisting that every man should have a vote.
“Why every man?” Susanna asked when Washington brought us this news.
“That is indeed the question Hamilton has been asking. He believes that at least a property requirement—”
“No, I mean, why should the franchise be limited to men?”
“What do you mean? Would you have horses and mules vote as well?”
“Why should women not vote for their elected representatives? In all matters with which this government is concerned, they are equally affected. It is their homes that will be taxed, their husbands and sons who will be sent to war; it is they who will suffer most from bad government and benefit most from good.”
“Yes, Phillips,” replied Washington, “but women have not the analytical capacity which you and I enjoy. Surely you, of all people, with your exceptionally keen mind, can appreciate that difference. Your suggestion of extending the franchise to horses and mules may, however, be worthy of consideration.”
Susanna was about to say something in reply, but clearly thought better of it, and merely sat with her head down and her fingers on her temples. Many of her conversations with Washington seemed to end the same way.
The apportionment of representation in Congress was another difficulty that much concerned Washington. Susanna suggested an elegant compromise in which there would be two houses of Congress, like the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the one apportioned by population, and the other with equal representation from each state. This was eagerly adopted when Washington brought it up the next day, but then the question of how to determine the population of a state came up. The states of the South wished to have their slaves included; the states of the North, naturally, did not wish to concede so much influence to the South.
“They are still debating it—the representation question,” Washington told us one evening.
“They seem to be unable to face the real question of slavery,” said Susanna.
“And they have spent days debating,” Washington continued, “with no result that I can see other than frayed tempers and a considerable diminution of the Madeira stock.”
“It is because no one is bold enough to ask the real question,” said Susanna. “Instead they will talk themselves in circles, never touching on the one thing no one dares mention, until they are so weary of talking that they will make some absurd compromise and decide that a slave counts as, oh, three-fifths of a person, and then call it a job well done and hope no one ever reads the text.”
“Three-fifths of a person,” Washington repeated quietly. And then he suddenly brightened. “My word, Phillips, what a mind you have! Yes, that’s the answer!”
Susanna began to protest: “But I was just—”
“Yes, yes, it solves the problem perfectly—an almost mathematical balance between the regions!”
“But it’s abs—”
“I must tell Hamilton at once!” He had risen and was already headed for the door, with that odd hunching walk he had developed in unconscious adaptation to the usual dimensions of interior doorways. “I don’t know what we’d do without you, Phillips! This is the best idea you’ve had since that Electoral College thing.” He ducked out the door.
“What? Wait—they adopted that too? But that was—”
The door closed.
“But that was a joke!” she almost wailed to the closed door. Then she turned to me. “Christopher, can we stop him?”
“I don’t think anything can stop the General once he has an idea stuck in his head.”
“But they’re making a hash of my country, and it’s all my fault!”
I stood and took her hand. “My dearest, the greatest minds of these United States are gathered here in Philadelphia. Every point in this new form of government is accepted only after mature deliberation.”
“Yes, but…” She laid her head on my shoulder. “But the greatest minds in these United States are all a bunch of imbeciles.”
Susanna was not well pleased when, the next day, Washington came back from the day’s session with the news that the “three-fifths” compromise had been accepted with minimal debate. She had to endure Washington’s congratulations over dinner, which she did with silent mortification; and Washington kept bringing up the subject for the rest of the evening, so that Susanna found it necessary to retire early on the excuse of a headache.
She was still awake when I joined her in bed, and she was still feeling gloomy. “I’ve made a mess of the Constitution,” she said as we lay in the dark (speaking quietly, so as not to wake the children), “and there’s nothing I can do to change it.”
“The Constitution need not be perfect,” I assured her. “It will still be better than the fraying fabric of Confederation.”
“But I’ve just increased the power of the slaveholders by an enormous amount. Slavery will simply wither away, you keep saying. Do you see it withering now?”
“With a strong federal government, the men of the North and East who oppose slavery will find partners in the South, and the institution will be ended peacefully, with minimal disruption. The alternative is disunion and bloodshed. You may have been responsible for saving the Union, Susanna, and averting a bloody civil war. In a few decades at most, slavery will be extinct, and—”
“And all the men and women and little helpless children who died as slaves will look down from heaven and say, ‘Thank you, Susanna Gist—thank you for letting us die without tasting freedom. Thank you for making sure—’ ”
She stopped. There was a loud whooping coming from downstairs, accompanied by rhythmic pounding. Washington was laughing.
“Someone must have told him a joke this afternoon,” I remarked.
The whooping continued, and then we very distinctly heard him shouting, “Three-fifths of a person!” Then more pounding, as of heels kicking on the floor.
Susanna turned over and pulled the coverlet over her head.
There were times, indeed, when it seemed to all of us that the convention must end in failure, and that no agreement could ever be reached among the states. Nature, however, proved our ally. The insupportable heat of a Philadelphia summer was now fully upon us. Curiously, the children seemed to grow more cheerful as the heat grew more oppressive; but Washington reported that the delegates were withering. More and more provisions were accepted in this new constitution simply because it was easier to say “yes” than to debate in the sweltering furnace where the convention was meeting. Washington told us that the delegates from Massachusetts had nearly got a constitutional prohibition of red chowder written into the document before Mr. Hamilton woke from his afternoon somnolence and vetoed it.
When at last the Constitution of the United States had been accepted by the convention, we returned home and awaited the verdict of the states. It took a year and a half, but at last the Constitution was ratified by the state conventions. Now there was much to be done. A whole national government had to be built from the very foundation. But in Washington’s mind there was really only one interesting question: who was to take on the exalted and onerous duties reserved in the Constitution for the President of the United States?
To be continued in Chapter XII.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON,
By an Associate.
Continuing the narrative that began here.
“To retake New-York,” I pointed out, “would be a great boost to American spirits.”
“But the army in Virginia,” Susanna said, “may do us more damage than the loss of New-York ever did, or even the loss of Philadelphia, which after all was only temporary. I think—begging your pardon, Chr— Mr. Gist—that we ought to strike boldly against Cornwallis; we may at least prevent him from cutting off the Carolinas and Georgia, and if we are bold enough, and fortunate enough, we might defeat Cornwallis altogether. Such a victory would, in effect, win the war, as without Cornwallis’ army the British could have no hope of success.”
“It sounds very well,” said Washington, “but how are we to be sure of victory against so great an army? Cornwallis has greater numbers on his side.”
“The French fleet, sir, will be essential,” replied Susanna. “Cornwallis, we hear, has taken a position on the peninsula. If the French can prevent his escape by water, and prevent his being reinforced or resupplied, then we need only block the land routes, and we have him.”
This seemed like good advice to Washington, and so Admiral de Grasse was summoned to a meeting with the General, at which La Fayette was also present, along with Susanna and me. We unrolled a large map of the peninsula between the York and James rivers, and the three great leaders studied it in intense silence for a while. At last Washington spoke.
“If we dispose our soldiers here, on the north and east, with Fayette’s French army on the south, then you, Admiral, should be able to cut off Cornwallis completely by water to the west.”
“Yes,” de Grasse agreed, “the plan, it is excellent. He shall not escape us, by blue.”
Susanna looked down at the map. “I believe, sirs, that you have mistaken the water for the land, and the land for the water. These wavy lines here, you see, indicate the water; the land is this area behind them, here.”
“Ah!” said Washington. “Thank you, Phillips. Well spotted. That is important information, and complicates the strategy considerably. We cannot expect the men to stand very long in water that is possibly up to their necks, or even over their heads. We shall need to make some adaptations; perhaps some sort of bridge or pier assembly, or better yet a series of floating wooden platforms with which we can surround the peninsula on three sides, and on which the men can stand dryshod for an indefinite period of time. It will require a good bit of wood, which will require a good bit of labor; although the labor will be hastened considerably if we can find any large stands of wild cherry. That will do for the army; but, unless I am very much mistaken, the disposition of the fleet will require at least as much thought and labor, if not more.”
“Very assuredly,” the Admiral agreed. “I believe that a construction of the rollers, made perhaps of the trunks of the trees, will be necessary for the placing of the ships in position, if indeed suitable trees find themselves nearby.”
“Well, there fortune favors us,” said Washington. “Tidewater Virginia has many stands of pine that grow straight and tall, with few branches until very near the top; such trees would, it seems to me, make admirable rollers for our purposes.”
Susanna was sitting with her head down, her eyes closed, and her fingers on her temples; but now she spoke again. “If I may be so bold, sirs, it might be better to reverse the positions of the army and the fleet.”
The General and the Admiral both looked at her blankly for a moment; then Washington spoke slowly and cautiously. “Do you mean, the army on the land, and the navy in the water?”
“Yes, sir,” Susanna said with care and patience. “Each force deployed in its native element, so to speak.”
“My word, Phillips! How much simpler that makes everything! You see, Admiral, why I insist on having Captain Phillips present whenever we discuss strategy. Captain Phillips? No, sir—Phillips, you are promoted to colonel as of this instant. We’ll skip lieutenant colonel—no point in lingering there, eh, Phillips? Well done.”
Later, as the meeting adjourned, I heard Admiral de Grasse ask Washington in a lowered voice, “That so brilliant young officer, the Colonel Phillips—is it that he perhaps appears pale to you?”
“I have often worried about that myself,” Washington replied, “but it seems to be his natural complexion. If he were not so valuable to me, I should insist that he take a few weeks’ rest; but, between us, Admiral, there are days when I do verily believe that our success in this war depends upon young Phillips.”
“It can be that you there have reason, General,” said the Admiral. “The army on the land and the navy in the water! Sacred blue! It is brilliant in its simplicity.”
As soon as it was practical, therefore, the French fleet set off for the Chesapeake; meanwhile the combined American and French armies marched southward. Everything went according to plan. Admiral de Grasse was in position with his fleet; the combined armies blocked the land route on the peninsula. Cornwallis was surrounded, and unless he fought his way up the peninsula, or unless a large British fleet defeated the French, he was helpless.
“And now what shall we do?” Washington asked at the council of war he had called.
“Nothing,” Susanna suggested.
“Nothing? But it seems to me that the ‘nothing’ strategy was ineffective at New-York, and I thought we had given it up.”
“There are times when nothing is effective, and times when it is not effective,” Susanna explained with all the patience in her power. “When something has to be done, then nothing will not do. But there are times when circumstances favor patience, and at such times waiting is preferable to action, which may risk an undesirable result. I believe this is one of those times. Provoking a battle risks defeat; keeping Cornwallis bottled up in the peninsula must deplete his resources and eventually induce him to surrender.”
“My word!” said Washington, “who would have thought that nothing would be so much more complicated than something?”
Hamilton spoke up. “It’s all very well to do nothing when nothing can be done, Su— uh, Colonel Phillips. But at any moment a British fleet may arrive in the bay, and then everything depends on the French ships, which may not be able to hold off a sufficiently powerful attack. Cornwallis knows this, and therefore Cornwallis will never surrender. It seems to me, therefore, that an immediate attack—”
“Excuse me, General,” said a young lieutenant who had appeared behind Washington.
“Just a moment, Hamilton,” said Washington, and he turned to the lieutenant. “What have you to report?”
“Lord Cornwallis is here, sir. He says he would like to surrender, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Tell him it’s really no trouble at all,” said Washington. “I’ll be with him directly, as soon as I’ve heard what Hamilton has to say.” The lieutenant went off to deliver Washington’s reply, and Washington turned back to face Hamilton. “Now, Hamilton,” Washington said, “please continue what you were saying, and forgive the interruption.”
“As I say,” Hamilton resumed, “I believe Cornwallis, in his present circumstances, will never surrender; and it behooves us, therefore—”
“But, Hamilton,” Parson Weems interrupted him, “Cornwallis is surrendering right now.”
“But that is a mere fact,” Hamilton replied. “My argument is founded upon reason.”
“Then, since the facts demand our attention now,” said Susanna, “let us attend to them, and we may reserve reason for our leisure.”
“Well said, Phillips,” Washington concurred. “For there is a wise old saying—” He produced the copybook, and we waited for him to find the page, which had become more and more difficult for him to do as his fingers increased in size. “Here it is: ‘Do not jog the desk on which another is writing.’ I find it useful to have a fund of these proverbs ready to hand, so to speak, for they distill the wisdom of our elders to its essence. Let us now receive Lord Cornwallis as gentlemen.”
The men had helpfully found Cornwallis a barrel to stand on, so that he and Washington could see eye to eye. He was waiting there, and Washington immediately engulfed Cornwallis’ hand in his own.
“General,” said Washington, “welcome to our camp.”
“General Washington, sir,” replied Cornwallis, “it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance at last.”
“Oh, I know what you mean. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for ages. One never really gets to know a man when one is only firing cannonballs at him. I hope you don’t take it too personally, by the way—the cannonballs, I mean, and the defeat and such.”
“Certainly not. I have long since learned to expect that I shall often suffer such reverses, which I attribute entirely to the machinations of Willoughby.”
“Willoughby?” asked Washington.
“My mortal enemy—the most fiendishly devious and diabolically wicked stoat ever born. Of course he is not—
“—not visible in the strict sense! Ah, Cornwallis, I know exactly what you mean!”
“Of course you do, sir! I know that a man of your talents must have the same experience. It is the very mark of a commander’s greatness that he is pursued throughout his career—”
“—by the forces of envy and malice—”
“—personified in a malevolent invisible animal!” they both finished together.
“Mine is a mule named Irving,” Washington said.
“General Washington, it is a positive honor to surrender to a soldier of your caliber. I hope we can settle on gentlemanly terms.”
“Oh, yes, of course. I think it will be sufficient if you give me your word not to have anything more to do with fighting against the United States, and then you can be on your way.”
“My word as a gentleman,” said Cornwallis, extending his hand.
“I accept your word,” said Washington, taking the offered hand.
“But—” Hamilton sputtered, but Susanna and I both gestured to him to keep quiet.
“But how,” he continued quietly to us, “I mean—what guarantee do we have that he’ll keep his word?”
“He’ll keep his word,” Susanna insisted.
“But how do you know that?” Hamilton demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“I know it because he’s just as much of an imbecile as Washington is,” she replied. “And I sometimes wish the world were filled with such imbeciles.”
As Susanna had expected, the victory over Cornwallis virtually ended the war. It was true that no treaty of peace had been signed, and Sir Henry Clinton in New-York refused to recognize the de-facto victory of the American side, continuing to occupy the city with such forces as he had; but the United States could get along very well without the city of New-York, and did so for the next two years. Nor did Clinton ever admit defeat: he is still there, in a small house on Wall-street, with two aged captains for company, and occasionally issues orders to occupy Hartford or Albany or whatnot, which his captains receive with deference and alacrity, without, however, setting foot out the front door.
The army now had nothing to do, and idle men began to consider more carefully the question of their payment. Once again the Congress attempted to pay them in paper money, which the men rejected as not worth so much as the same paper without any printing on it. So discontented were the men that they began to speak openly of marching to Annapolis (where the Congress was meeting at the time) to have Washington made king: for they imagined that, once granted royal power, Washington would not be long in finding the means to pay them in specie. This plot came to the ears of Washington himself, who mentioned it over the Madeira one evening after supper in the old brick church he had made his headquarters, it being the only nearby building where his ten-foot figure could be comfortably accommodated. We had made a special table for him, with a chair his own height and a set of benches with stepladders so that we could all sit at the same table with him.
“Of course we do have the Articles of Confederation,” Washington said, “but I believe those must be regarded as a temporary measure. If we are to have a single nation rather than a rabble of thirteen unrelated States, we must adopt a form of government conducive to unity. A monarchy would, obviously, serve that purpose, and a careful choice of monarch is vital to the viability of our union. It ought to be—”
“Yes, we have been over this ground before,” said Susanna, “and we know that it ends at the conclusion that our ideal monarch would look very much like you, General Washington. But of course one doesn’t put oneself forward as seeking the kingship.”
“One doesn’t?”
“Modesty and diffidence are considered greatly desirable qualities in monarchs. Indeed, a monarch’s impassivity is precisely what makes him look like a monarch. It is essential to show that you do not desire the position of king, and that you would accept it only with extreme reluctance.”
“Do you think so? Yes, I can see how that might be true.”
“If you would like, I could draft you a few remarks, which you might use when the occasion presents itself.”
“Oh, would you, Phillips? That would be very kind of you.”
Later, as Susanna sat at the desk in our chamber writing some remarks for Washington to deliver extemporaneously, I asked her, “What exactly are you up to?”
“Kiss my neck and don’t ask questions,” she replied.
It was not long before the expected occasion did present itself. A gathering of junior officers and enlisted men formed in front of Washington’s church headquarters, and when Washington appeared at the door, they presented him with a set of resolutions calling upon him to lead the army to Annapolis and declare himself king.
Fortunately, Washington had laboriously memorized Susanna’s response. “Gentlemen,” said he, “I am sensible of the honor you do me in making this request, but at the same time I find it impossible to acquiesce. Are you not aware that we have spent seven years fighting a war not only against George III, but against the very institution of monarchy? Why, every man I see before me is a king on a throne of gold; for in our republic, gentlemen, the power rests with the people themselves, and not with some class of arbitrarily distinguished men who have no more natural parts than you have, and perhaps a great deal less good sense. Would you have me elevate myself above you, when we have fought so long and so hard for the principle that all men are created equal? No, gentlemen, so reluctant am I to abandon our shared republican principles that I could never desire the position of king, and only the direst circumstances would induce me to accept such an honor.”
At the conclusion of this speech, the men gave a mighty cheer, which pleased Washington very much; but what did not please him nearly so much was that they took him at his word, and did not make him king.
“Well,” said Susanna, “we tried our best.”
“We did,” Washington agreed; “the principle was inarguably sound, and our lack of success can only be attributed to the malice of Irving, who would not wish to see me crowned king if he could prevent it. Irving will yet be the death of me, you may be certain of that. But though he may prevent my elevation to the throne, I hope he will not be able to prevent my enjoying the fruits of our hard-won victory. The time has come for me to retire from public life, and to give my full attention to the development of my estate at Mount Vernon.”
With this surprising announcement, Washington abandoned all hope of becoming King of the United States. Shortly afterward, a formal peace was concluded, and Washington traveled to Annapolis to resign his commission before the Congress. He was able to witness personally the evacuation of New-York by the British, with the exception of Clinton and the two captains aforesaid; and then he retired to Mount Vernon, fully intending to remain there for the rest of his life.
To be continued in Chapter XI.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON,
By an Associate.
Continuing the narrative that began here.
“The honor is mine, General Fayette. I have heard much of your accomplishments in France.”
“Have you truly?” asked General La Fayette.
“Well, no. But I thought it would be a thing to say. Did it not sound well? We have arranged for you to make your headquarters in a small house nearby; not a palace, but commodious in its way.”
“Your consideration is very appreciated,” said La Fayette. “But tell me—is it that you have heard a sound, which one might describe as ‘yapping’?”
“Yapping? No, I don’t believe so.”
“Ah! It is good. I have fear that Sophie might have followed me from the France. One must be careful, you know.”
“A lady friend?” asked Washington.
“No! Sophie, she is caniche, yes? Poodle. My mortal enemy, though one sees her not.”
“And she lives to deepen your sorrows, to blast your victories, and to hound you to an early grave?”
“Yes! By blue, Washington, how is it that you knew?”
“My word, Fayette! I knew you were a great general the moment I saw you. All great military commanders (as I learned, sir, from one of the greatest of them all) are pursued throughout their careers by the forces of envy and malice, personified in malevolent invisible animals. I myself have been relentlessly dogged by the mule Irving.” Washington stooped down and shook General La Fayette’s hand warmly, and from that moment the two were the best of friends.
And then there appeared another officer from the clot of French soldiers, and it seemed that were was something familiar about him. But it was Washington who recognized him first.
“Lieutenant de Trop!” he called out in delight.
“It’s Colonel de Trop now,” the officer replied with a smile. “And my heavens, you are the same Washington I met at Fort Le Boeuf! But I believe you have grown somewhat taller.”
“I may have done, Colonel, but I have not outgrown my gratitude to you. You remember Mr. Gist, of course.”
I shook the colonel’s hand and exchanged polite greetings with him. Much later, when Washington and La Fayette had gone off together, I asked the colonel, “Is your name really de Trop?”
“General Washington,” he replied, “is a hero to every true Frenchman, and my name, sir, is whatever he wants it to be. And who is this very charming officer?” he asked, turning to Susanna.
“My wife Susanna,” I replied. “Susanna, this is Colonel, uh, de Trop, who was very courteous to us when Washington and I visited Fort Le Boeuf years ago.”
“Very pleased to meet you, sir,” Susanna said, offering her hand.
Instead of shaking her hand, the colonel raised it to his lips and kissed it. “Upon my faith, Mr. Gist, I should never have believed it if one had told it to me, but you Americans have made an improvement in gallantry of which we French had not even dreamed. What man would not beg to join your army if he might serve under such delightful officers?”
“Susanna is…unique,” I said.
“General Washington believes I am a man named Phillips,” Susanna explained. “And, as you say, my name is whatever he wants it to be.”
“And why, if I may be forgiven for asking, did you come into the army in the first place?” the colonel asked.
“It seemed to me, sir, that the military life would afford me more opportunities for indulging in my favorite pastime.”
“What is that, dear lady?” the colonel asked with a smile.
“Killing Redcoats,” she replied with a sweet smile of her own.
Before the colonel could make any answer to that, a loud voice came from behind him, rapidly approaching: “Mine God! This is what they an army call? It is not possible!”
“Oh,” said the colonel. “Mr. Gist, and, uh, Captain Phillips, this is a friend of General La Fayette’s, Baron von Steuben. Baron von Steuben, Captain Phillips and Mr. Gist.”
Ignoring the introduction, the Baron continued, “No uniforms of which to speak of, tents will he und also nill he distributed, no military exercises I see anywhere—this is the most ragged und tagged mess which I ever have seen! Und look you—negresses for officers!”
Susanna’s right hand was involuntarily closing into a fist. I gave her a warning glance, which was like giving a gentle word of admonition to an earthquake.
Fortunately Colonel de Trop intervened, desperately working to keep the conversation pleasant. “Baron von Steuben is a Prussian, and a great believer in military discipline.”
“Until today!” the Baron barked. “Now, mine God! I know not. Believe I even that military discipline exists? But yes, if my way I have, your American army disciplined shall be!”
“Oh,” I said. “Well…thank you.”
“Good luck,” Susanna added quietly.
In the morning Washington, Susanna, and I rose early and walked over to La Fayette’s headquarters, where we found him busy nailing a brass plaque to the door, a plaque on which was engraved,
“Ah! Washington, my friend!” he said as he continued hammering. “You will forgive me for completing this task, but I wished to lose no time. Gratitude is like the concombre, yes?”
“I know precisely what you mean!” Washington exclaimed in delight. “Ah, Fayette, we shall get along famously.”
Meanwhile Baron von Steuben had gone around the camp and roused a large number of sergeants at dawn, and was now drilling them in an open field, shouting insults that they only half-comprehended.
“That will not end well for Steuben,” Susanna remarked.
I told her to give the man a chance.
“I am giving him a chance,” she replied. “I am giving him a chance to get a blackened eye from them instead of me.”
Later, as we were pulling Baron von Steuben out of the barrel of sauerkraut into which he had been thrust upside-down, Parson Weems suggested a small wager: which would kill the Baron first—the enlisted men or Susanna? I told him I did not believe in gambling, at which he reminded me that he wore the collar, not I. I in turn reminded him that Steuben would also have me to deal with if he offered any insult to Susanna, and therefore his wager did not take all the possibilities into account; but Weems replied, “No, Gist; for we both know, begging your pardon, that no insult to Susanna goes unavenged long enough for you to intervene.” To all this the Baron said nothing; but as soon as he was cleaned up, he was out drilling some enlisted men again, which I thought showed admirable patience.
Our supper that evening was delayed until Baron von Steuben had cleaned himself up after being pulled out of the latrine; but once we were all seated, we ate better than we had done in quite some time. The French had brought not only soldiers, but money as well, and it was remarkable how quickly supplies appeared for sale when it was known that there were golden louis to be had, as well as the Spanish milled dollars we had brought from Virginia. La Fayette, whose disposition was naturally generous, made sure the American soldiers ate as well as the French did. Cries of “Long live Fayette!” could be heard all over the camp. I was glad to see the men so happy, and I was also glad to share in the excellent claret which La Fayette had brought with him. Washington made sure, for his part, to bring out his finest Madeira. Soon a friendly dispute arose, with La Fayette contending for the superiority of French claret, and Washington taking the part of Madeira, while Steuben advanced the claims of the hock from the valley of the Moselle. After much discussion among the three of them, Washington proposed a toast to “Germany, France, and Madeira, which have labored so fruitfully to give us pleasure.” And then he continued:
“If it will not offend you, gentlemen, I should like to tell you a story, which was related to me by my late brother Lawrence; for it has no little bearing on the matter under discussion. Once, so it is said, there were three merchants: a seller of hock, a seller of claret, and a seller of Madeira; and as they traveled they happened to meet along the road. As their businesses were so similar, they naturally conceived friendly feelings one for another; and when evening came, they stopped together at the same inn.
“In this inn, they naturally fell to discussing the relative merits of their merchandise; and the innkeeper overhearing their conversation, that worthy gentleman approached them, saying, ‘Sirs, I have heard your dispute over which wine is the best, and I would have you know, gentlemen, that it is a question to which I alone possess the answer; for in that cask in the corner of the room, sirs, is the best wine in the world.’
“ ‘By all means,’ said the claret merchant, ‘let us try a sample of this wine; if it is truly the best in the world, we will not stick at the price.’
“ ‘I may not open the cask,’ the innkeeper replied, ‘for I have given my solemn word; nor have I ever tasted the wine myself.’
“ ‘But, good heavens, man, how can you say it is the best wine in the world,’ asked the merchant of Madeira, ‘if you have never even tasted it?’
“ ‘Ah,’ said the innkeeper, ‘it is because of the circumstances under which I received the cask; and when I have once narrated them to you, I am so certain that you will agree that this is the best wine in the world, that I will wager you your night’s accommodations on it. These circumstances, sirs, I will now relate.
“ ‘When I was some years younger, my father left me this inn, which to speak in very truth was not so much of an inheritance; for it was not as much frequented in those days, and many nights would pass when nary a traveler appeared. It was on one of those nights, when I had gone to bed already—for it was a night of intermittent but ferocious storms, and such a night as no wise traveler would choose for his journey,—it was on such a night, I say, that I was awakened by a pounding on the front door. Dressing hastily, I took a candle in my hand and descended the stairs, where the pounding still continued. As soon as I opened the door, a hooded figure dashed in past me and took a position in the parlor by the last dying embers of the fire. I closed the door and followed; but you may well imagine my surprise when the hood was thrown back to reveal the most beautiful face I have ever beheld in my life. It was a young woman, no more than one-and-twenty, with an ivory complexion brought into relief by cheeks flushed with carmine, and a cascade of loose hair as red as flame.
“ ‘ “Madam,” said I, “how may I be of assistance?”
“ ‘ “If you would be so good as to start the fire again, I should be most grateful,” she replied; “and then, sir, I have great need of a worthy man to whom I can entrust the priceless treasure that sits on the wagon outside.”
“ ‘ “If it be within my power to assist you,” I assured her, “you shall be assisted.”
“ ‘ “But I must first determine whether it is in your power,” said she. “When you have made the fire, I shall tell you my conditions.”
“ ‘It was the work of a moment to lay more logs and kindling on the fire and fan it into a roaring flame. As soon as the heat filled the room, the lady let her cloak fall; and if my eyes had been ravished before, you may be sure that I could barely speak now: for the lady was dressed, not for traveling, but for a grand ball, with innumerable jewels, the chief of which was a pendant that hung into her bosom and terminated in the most prodigious carbuncle I have ever seen, or ever heard tell of.
“ ‘ “And now, sir,” said she, “you have the right to know who I am, and why I must demand that you be worthy of my trust; for the favor I have to ask of you may seem a slight thing, but I had rather lose my life than entrust my treasure to anyone unworthy. When you know the facts of the case, sir, you will understand what I mean.
“ ‘ “My father, sir, was a gentleman who, if he was not worthy to be denominated rich, was at least comfortable in life, save that he had lost the one comfort for which he would have exchanged all the others; that is, his wife, my mother, who died when I was but an infant. He always showed the most tender regard for me, and (you will pardon a tear or two) he made sure that I lacked nothing which could tend to my happiness.
“ ‘ “Nevertheless, as his only daughter, I was perforce much alone, and as I grew into a young woman, I was much addicted to long walks in the country round about our house. On one of those perambulations I met a young man walking the other way; we talked; we parted with the intention of meeting again on the morrow; and that night, sir, I thought of nothing but Christian (for Christian was the name of this young man), and in the morning counted the hours till I should meet him again. I shall be brief: we met each day after that, and the more I saw of him, the more my heart yearned for him. Nor did he appear to be without feeling for me; a thousand times he seemed on the verge of speaking his heart, and a thousand times stopped himself, until at last I could forbear no longer, and spoke to him boldly:
“ ‘ “ ‘If you have somewhat to say to me, Christian,’ said I, ‘let not doubt stand in your way; for believe me, my disposition is such that I would hear whatever you would say most willingly.’
“ ‘ “At this he sighed piteously and replied, ‘Alas, dear Eleanor, would that I could speak what is in my heart; but if I were to do so, it would mean death to one who in no wise deserves to die.’
“ ‘ “ ‘What can you mean by that?’ I asked. ‘Have you a wife already? For if you have, I conjure you to return to her at once and—’
“ ‘ “ ‘I have no wife,’ he said, interrupting me, ‘but what I have is far more of an impediment: indeed, I should not scruple to call it a curse.’
“ ‘ “ ‘No curse,’ said I, ‘is without hope, so long as we trust in God and despair not.’
“ ‘ “ ‘My curse, however,’ said he, ‘is so nearly hopeless that despair is but reason; for it can be broken in only one way, and that a very unlikely one. Yet until the curse is broken, the very night I take a wife, an innocent man must die the most ignominious of deaths.’
“ ‘ “I own that my heart sank at these words, but I persisted in believing that no curse could be without its remedy. ‘How can this be?’ I asked. ‘Is there nothing within your power,—or—or mine,—which would lift this terrible curse from your head?’
“ ‘ “ ‘Whether it be within your power I shall leave you to judge,’ said he, ‘when you have heard my tale, which is one of the most marvelous, and yet one of the most tragic, ever told by mortal lips.
“ ‘ “ ‘I was the youngest son of a gentleman who, though he possessed many virtues, had a weakness for cards, so that he had squandered most of his fortune by the time I reached my majority. Having no other prospects, I determined to go to sea, and found a place aboard a ship owned by a prosperous wine-merchant. The duties were hard, but I was capable, and had fate not made other plans for me, I might still be a sailor today.
“ ‘ “ ‘On my very first voyage, however, a tempest arose from the west, and buffeted our poor ship so severely that we were constrained to toss our cargo over the rail. When it came to the last cask, however, the merchant was so reluctant to part with it that he and the captain began a struggle that might had terminated with the death of one of them, had Nature herself not intervened by giving the boat such a toss at that moment that the barrel flew overboard on its own. At this the merchant was so wildly distraught that he began tearing his hair and shouting at the sailors to leap after the cask; and, finding no one willing to do so, he rushed against me, and, before I knew what he was about, had thrust me overboard. I struggled in the water and called for help, but in vain; the ship and I were so rapidly parted that no one could even contemplate my rescue. The cask, however, was floating close at hand, and I was able to haul myself up on it and ride out the tempest in that manner.
“ ‘ “ ‘For two days I floated on that cask, which I dared not pierce for fear of sinking it. A merciful Providence, after the tempest, sent me occasional light rains, which, forming puddles on the top of the cask, gave me sufficient fresh water to drink. On the third day, I spotted an island, and to my inexpressible joy the wind and current carried me straight to the sandy shore, where I was deposited gently by the lapping waves.
“ ‘ “ ‘Having thanked the Almighty for delivering me from the grasp of the sea, I took a look at my surroundings. The beach was bordered by a forest of palms and tropical trees, which I hoped might yield some sort of fruit; and indeed so it proved. So delighted was I by my discovery that I must have spent half an hour picking the grape-like berries of a species of palm before I noticed that, in the distance, I could hear the sound of rushing water—not the sea, but a steady sound from the interior of the island. Following the sound, I made my way through the verdant forest, until I came upon a scene that took my breath away; for there was a cascade of water at least a hundred feet high, and beside it a ruined temple festooned with barbarous but skillful carvings. Having drunk my fill of the clear water, I turned my attention to the exotic beauty of the temple, which was somewhat overgrown with vines, but still intact enough that the artistic taste of the architect and sculptors was evident. Monkeys chattered at me from the roof, and birds called from the trees, but there was no evidence that any man had set foot here within recent memory.
“ ‘ “ ‘Enough of the roof was left that it seemed to me the temple would make an admirable shelter for the night. I entered, and found myself between two rows of columns, each column covered with intricate reliefs, and the whole interior drawing the eye to a statue of a woman or goddess at the other end. The woman was represented as seated, and even in that position the statue was at least fifteen feet high; it was of remarkable beauty; but what captivated me most was the way the eyes appeared to glow with a deep red light. As I approached more nearly, I perceived that the apparent glow was the glinting of two prodigious carbuncles which served the statue for eyes.
“ ‘ “ ‘I am not by nature a greedy man, but it seemed to me that two such jewels in a temple long abandoned were doing no one any good, and therefore might as well belong to me as to anyone else. I approached the statue, scattering a troop of monkeys, and began to climb it; and I was just stretching forth my hand to grasp the carbuncle in the left eye when a voice right beside me spoke:
“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ’Tis not for mortal hands to touch the eye of the goddess!”
“ ‘ “ ‘I looked, but saw only a monkey sitting on the shoulder of the statue. “Who spoke?” I asked, and you may be sure that I was quite astonished when the monkey replied,
“ ‘ “ ‘ “I spoke—I, the guardian of the temple.”
“ ‘ “ ‘ “But you are a monkey,” said I, lowering myself to sit on the knee of the statue. “How is it that you speak, and in my own tongue?”
“ ‘ “ ‘ “That,” replied the monkey, “is my curse, and my blessing, and I cannot explain more, unless I tell you my history.”
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Nothing would delight me more,” said I; “for until now I believed myself alone on this island.”
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Then I shall be happy to tell you,” said the monkey, sitting on the other knee of the statue. “I was not always a monkey. I was born a man like you, and in the course of time became the priest of this temple. I performed my duties, I believe, most assiduously; and the temple prospered under my care, until one day three men came to the island from far away, and stopped at my temple, evidently with the intention of persuading me to purchase something from them.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘I,’ said the first, ‘am a seller of hock, which is without a doubt the finest wine in the world.’
“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said the second, ‘but I contend that the claret of the blessed land of Bordeaux, which I have the honor to sell, surpasses all other wines whatsoever.’
“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘Neither of them,’ said the third, ‘can hold a candle to my Madeira.’ ” ’ ” ’
“And that, gentlemen, is the story my brother Lawrence told me,” Washington concluded.
There was silence in the room for half a minute, and then Parson Weems demanded, “What? Where is the rest of it? What of the priest who turned into a monkey?”
“And the curse of the man who must die an ignominious death?” added Susanna.
“And the beautiful red-haired lady?”
“With the prodigious carbuncle pendant?”
“And the ball gown on a stormy night?”
“And her love for the cursed young man?”
“And the innkeeper who must prove himself worthy?”
“And the cask of the best wine in the world?”
“Which he can know is the best without tasting it?”
“And the three men who wagered their night’s lodging?”
“That was the way the story always ended when Lawrence told it,” said Washington. “I remember specifically because that was always where his wife came in and said, ‘Lawrence! Are you filling little Georgie’s head with that nonsense again? You know what my Uncle Henry said about those stories. He said, “I met a man once who started to tell a story that went like this: ‘Once there—’ ” ’ ”
“No!” cried Susanna. Then, seeing that all eyes had turned to her, she added, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
The arrival of the French changed the balance of the war considerably. The British evacuated Philadelphia almost immediately, and French fleets gave the British navy no end of trouble on the seas. Furthermore, the discipline introduced by Baron von Steuben had a salutary effect on our army. By coordinating their efforts to drop the Baron down wells, tar and feather him, &c., the men learned to work together as a unit.
For three more years the fortunes of war favored first one side and then the other, but it was becoming more and more difficult for the British to hold any temporary gains they had made. Eventually, when the news came that Cornwallis had landed his army in Virginia, it seemed that the time had come for a decisive stroke.
To be continued in Chapter X. Or you can order the whole book now and spare yourself the wait.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON,
By an Associate.
Continuing the narrative that began here.
Meanwhile Howe was not inactive. New-York being securely occupied, Howe was able to land an enormous army just below Philadelphia. Washington attempted to oppose Howe in a straightforward manner, but while he was giving Howe an honest and straightforward battle, and not without some success, Lord Cornwallis marched deviously around to our right flank and surprised us, which Washington regarded as simple cheating. The result, which even to this day I blush to relate, was that we lost Philadelphia. The Congress managed to escape just before Howe’s army marched into the city, and removed to York, where some of the members indulged a simmering resentment against Washington. Our army settled in at Valley Forge, and there we spent a miserable winter, in which, however, some of the qualities of true greatness manifested themselves in the General.
One afternoon Washington was in an unusually cheerful state as he came back to his headquarters after his daily rounds in the camp. Susanna and I, along with Parson Weems, were put up in the house with Washington (a luxury that gave me occasional pangs of guilt when I thought of the soldiers in their icy tents), so we were sitting by the fire when Washington came in with Hamilton in tow and announced that the pay problem was solved.
“That’s very good news indeed,” I said. “How did we get the money?”
“Oh, we haven’t got it yet. But Hamilton has figured out a way to get the money from the Congress.”
“I thought,” said Susanna, “that the last time we asked for money, the Congress replied that, owing to Mr. Hamilton’s program of spending more and taxing less, all they could come up with was two shillings, four pence, and three brass buttons.”
“Yes,’ replied Washington, “but the beauty of Mr. Hamilton’s new plan is that the Congress need not actually have the money to give it to us.”
“You mean they’ll steal it from somebody else?” asked Susanna.
“Of course not. Explain it to them, Hamilton.”
“My thought,” Hamilton explained, “is that we can simply instruct the Congress to have the money we need printed.”
“Printed?” I think Weems, Susanna, and I all repeated the word together.
“Precisely. You see the beauty of it, don’t you? Instead of coins, the soldiers will simply receive small slips of paper with the words ‘One Dollar,’ ‘Five Dollars,’ ‘Ten Dollars,’ or what have you, printed on them, and will use them the same way they would use coins in the same denominations.”
“But why would they think a piece of paper was worth ten dollars?” Weems asked.
“Why do we think a piece of gold is worth ten dollars?” Hamilton returned.
“Well, because,” Weems began, “because it’s—well, because it’s gold.”
“Precisely,” said Hamilton. “We think gold is valuable because we agree to think gold is valuable. Why? We cannot eat gold; we cannot build shelter with it; we cannot burn it to keep ourselves warm. We can only exchange it for the things we really need, because we agree that a very small quantity of gold is worth a very large quantity of food. Its value depends entirely on our agreement: it is not in any way intrinsic. Now, my very simple plan is this: that, in the same way we have agreed to regard gold as valuable, so we shall now agree to regard money on paper as valuable. Once again, our simple agreement will suffice to create the value.”
“Isn’t it a remarkable thought?” asked Washington.
“Remarkable,” Susanna agreed, although her tone suggested that there was room for more than one kind of remark on the subject.
“I’m sending Hamilton to York to speak to the Congress about it,” said Washington. “Just imagine—in our new North American empire, no one need ever be poor again. We can provide all the money every citizen of these United States will ever need for any purpose whatsoever.—Come along, Hamilton: I’ll write a letter for you to take with you detailing the successes of our current campaign; for I trust, sir, that you understand the value of a good dispatch.”
With those words, Washington led Hamilton into the back room he used as his office.
“One of them is an imbecile and the other one is mad,” Parson Weems remarked.
“It seems to me,” said Susanna, “that there is no reason why they could not both be imbeciles.”
I must own that I had not expected much result from Hamilton’s expedition, but a few weeks later he was back with stacks of freshly printed money, which was distributed forthwith to the puzzled soldiers. I say “puzzled,” though in many cases “mutinous” might have been a more nearly accurate description.
Hamilton, however, was full of optimism; and Susanna and I went with him to demonstrate the utility of his new form of money by using it to buy some sorely needed potatoes from a nearby farm.
“Dollar a bushel,” the farmer replied when asked the price of his potatoes. I might have spent some time negotiating with the man, but Hamilton was eager to present his new creation, and therefore simply asked for ten bushels, and handed the man a ten-dollar note.
“What’s this?” the farmer asked.
“It’s ten dollars,” replied Hamilton.
“No it isn’t,” said the farmer. “It’s a piece of paper that says ‘Ten Dollars’ on it.”
“But it is in fact ten dollars,” Hamilton told him. “You see here where it says, ‘By act of Congress, this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.’ ”
“I don’t need a tender,” the farmer insisted. “I need ten dollars.”
“Precisely,” said Hamilton, undaunted. “I’m giving you this piece of paper with ‘Ten Dollars’ printed on it. And because we agree that it is worth ten dollars, it is in fact worth ten dollars.”
“Tell you what,” said the farmer. “You give me that piece of paper with ‘Ten Dollars’ written on it, and I’ll give you a piece of paper with ‘Ten Bushels of Potatoes’ written on it.”
“But a piece of paper won’t feed the men,” Hamilton objected.
“It will if they agree that it is in fact ten bushels of potatoes,” the farmer replied. “Won’t it?”
In the end we did not succeed in procuring our ten bushels of potatoes, and for the most part the men were similarly unsuccessful in exchanging their paper money for useful goods. Hamilton himself refused to be entirely discouraged, but the men were cold and hungry. To make matters worse, not only could we not persuade the Congress to do anything for us, but in fact we could not even find the Congress. Fearing a surprise attack, the men of the Congress had turned peripatetic. From York they moved to Lancaster, and then to Annapolis, and then to Baltimore, to Winchester, to Cumberland, to Pittsburgh, and briefly (owing to the gentlemen’s refusal to stop and ask directions) to Mexico City. We were left to our own devices, and it seemed as though we should eventually lose our army altogether without some means of procuring money in the form of coins rather than paper.
“Of course there is much to be hoped for from the French,” said Washington when we were discussing the situation one bitter morning in late winter. “I have every confidence in our diplomats. Dr. Franklin reports that the French women are particularly susceptible. I have no doubt that he has spent every evening explaining to the court ladies that it is to France’s advantage to have a strong American empire that is well disposed toward France and capable of defending their remaining North American interests.
“You mean St.-Pierre and Miquelon?” asked Parson Weems.
“Exactly. Surely the French will see the wisdom of balancing British power in the north with a great independent empire to the south.”
“The French may or may not come to our aid,” said Susanna, “but for the present we need money. We need to be candid and admit to ourselves that the paper-money project has been a failure.”
“The fault is not on our side,” Hamilton insisted. “We have maintained from the beginning that the money is in fact worth exactly the value printed on it. It is the ill-bred and uneducated bumpkins who inhabit these parts who are to blame: they refuse to see the logic of the notion, and to be absolutely frank I suspect them of Tory sympathies.”
“At the moment we must be practical,” I said. “For reasons we may or may not know, our suppliers refuse to accept our paper money, whereas we know they would accept money in specie. It is vital to our cause that we obtain money they will accept. Can anyone think of any possibilities?”
“I think we’ve run out of possibilities,” Weems remarked grimly.
“Gentlemen,” said Washington, “we certainly cannot allow ourselves to lose hope: for, as the old proverb has it,—” (he brought out the tattered copybook, and we waited patiently for him to find his page)—“ ‘Do not chew your nails in the sight of others.’ The wisdom of our fathers, gentlemen, when understood metaphorically, is an ever-present help in managing our affairs. For my own part, I am convinced that our current difficulties all spring from the evil machinations of Irving, and I refuse to give him the satisfaction of letting him see me despair.”
“Irving?” asked Hamilton.
“The wicked invisible mule who bedevils him throughout his life,” Weems explained.
Hamilton looked helpless: his question had been answered, but not in a way that satisfied him intellectually.
“I cannot believe,” said Susanna, “that there are no possibilities left to us.”
“In fact I can think of one possibility,” Washington said.
“What’s that?” asked Weems. “And don’t tell me it involves any more invisible livestock.”
“When I was a boy, I used to spend hours at Ferry Farm throwing Spanish milled dollars across the Rappahannock. It became, as you know, a lifelong habit, but I have never since had so much leisure to indulge in the sport. There were times when I went to the riverbank day after day to spend all afternoon throwing dollars. That was how I developed the accuracy for which, I may say without boasting, I am still noted.”
“And how will that help us right now?” I asked.
“Well, I never brought any of them back.”
We looked at him in stunned silence.
“There were always more, you see. We seem to have had a good many Spanish milled dollars. It was never necessary to retrieve them, because there were always more to throw.”
“Do you mean you think that, in all these years, no one has picked up the dollars you threw across the Rappahannock?” Susanna asked, trying not to sound too incredulous.
“The other side of the river is Washington land, too. Why would anyone be looking for dollars there?”
“So you mean,” I said, “that if we went down there right now, we’d find some of the money you threw?”
“It’s worth trying,” said Washington. “Gist, why don’t you head down there now? See what you can find, and then we’ll have something to pay the soldiers.”
It sounded very dubious to me. “Well, I’m, uh, not sure—”
“Take Phillips with you. You may need more than one man to carry the money back.”
“I’m, uh, not—”
“We’ll go right away, General,” Susanna declared.
Why was Susanna suddenly interested in this unlikely prospect? I had learned not to discount any idea of hers, but it did not seem reasonable to expect that Washington’s idly flung dollars should still be waiting for him after so many years.
“I think we should take Mr. Hamilton with us as well,” Susanna added. And now I was certain she had some notion in her mind, but what it was I could not guess. When Washington seemed to hesitate, she added, “He’s very good at finding money.”
“That is true. Very well then,” Washington agreed. “Take Hamilton with you, find the dollars, and you should have enough to pay the soldiers, with a little left over for Madeira. Best set off at once: for, as they say” (and here he produced his copybook, and we waited for him to find the appropriate citation): “ ‘If others talk at dinner, be attentive, but do not speak with your mouth full.’ ”
We had to go by land, as the British made the sea route unreliable. Susanna has always been an excellent rider. I at least can stay on the horse, and Hamilton was not entirely hopeless; our progress, therefore was fairly rapid.
At our first stop, Hamilton took the opportunity to ask the obvious questions about Susanna.
“She is my wife,” I explained in a tone that I hoped would answer all unexpressed questions.
But Hamilton persisted.
“Why, then, is she also a man called Phillips?”
Susanna replied, “We find it best not to contradict the general too often. It confuses him.”
“Is that why we’ve come looking for lost treasure?” Hamilton asked. “Are we making a useless journey of several days and unknown dangers because no one wants to contradict General Washington?”
“No,” Susanna replied, and I listened attentively myself to hear her explanation. “Your mission to the Congress showed that you have an aptitude for parting rich fools from their money. Virginia is stuffed with rich fools, and such a man as you ought to be able to extract enough from them for our purposes.”
“But what shall I tell them?”
“Just draw another picture of the Liberty Bell,” Susanna replied, “and tell them the same nonsense you told us.”
Hamilton was not convinced that the same nonsense would apply, and was worried that he might have to come up with different nonsense in order to persuade the Virginia planters to come up with the back pay of an entire army. Nevertheless, in broad outline, Susanna’s plan seemed a reasonable one.
We agreed, however, that it would be necessary at least to pay a quick visit to Ferry Farm, so as to be able to assure the General (for he himself was so naturally honest that we should have been ashamed to lie to him) that we had done our best to retrieve his long-lost dollars. Accordingly we found the old plantation, which had, by various curiosities of wills and inheritance laws, passed into the hands of Washington’s elderly Uncle Cedric, who answered the door and received our awkward greetings.
“Little Georgie,” he said when we had told him of our errand. “How many years have passed since I saw him! Is he out of short pants yet?”
“I can assure you that his pants are quite long,” I replied. “In fact he is general of the continental army.”
“Always loved to play soldiers, our little Georgie, especially when his father took away his hatchet. He needs money, you say? I might be able to find a few shillings in my coat pocket.”
“We thought we might borrow your boat, if you would be so kind,” Susanna said. “General Washington suggested there might be a few coins across the river.”
“Might be. Or pine cones. If you can use pine cones, I’m sure it’s the place to look.”
Susanna thanked him and headed toward the shore; I was beginning to follow her when Uncle Cedric took my arm and said in a confidential undertone, “That young man” (pointing to Susanna)—“does it strike you that there’s something odd about him?”
“Well,…” I began hesitantly.
“I think he looks pale,” said Uncle Cedric. “I hope he’s not ill.”
I assured him that I would look after the pale young man, and then Hamilton and I joined her at the boat. Before I could say anything, Susanna took the oars, which I suppose was her prerogative as the only military man among us, and with energetic strokes she took us across the Rappahannock in good time.
The other side of the river was a forest of tall pines, and our footsteps seemed preternaturally silent in the thick carpet of needles that made the ground a rich uniform sable color.
“Nothing but pine needles and a few cones,” Hamilton remarked, and his voice was jarringly loud in the silence of the winter forest.
I looked around, idly scraping my foot through the needles. “I’m afraid you’re right, But at least we can tell the General—”
“Look!” cried Susanna, pointing toward my feet.
I looked down. Where I had scraped the ground, something metallic was glinting through the needles. Quickly I stooped and started brushing away the needles with my hands. Under them was a layer on the ground made up entirely of Spanish milled dollars.
Susanna knelt down where she stood and swept away the needles, and there, too, she found a carpet of dollars.
I stood and took half a dozen strides and stooped again. And Susanna did the same, and Hamilton joined us; and for quite some time wherever we brushed away the needles, we found a uniform layer of dollars below. It took us at least half an hour to delineate the limits of the field of dollars, and most of it was done by Susanna and me, for a strange lassitude had overcome Hamilton. He lay on his back, his fingers slowly gripping and releasing the coins beneath him.
“Are you feeling ill, Mr. Hamilton?” Susanna finally asked him.
“I want to live here,” replied Hamilton. “No—I want to die here. Nothing will ever equal this. My life has reached its peak, and no experience will ever bring joy to me again. I have lived as much as I care to live, and it would be fitting now that I should be taken directly to the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the only greater joy I can ever hope to experience.”
“Mr. Hamilton,” said Susanna, “you are still a young man, and life has many joys waiting for you. You will find love, and—”
“I have found love, Captain, uh, Phillips! I am passionately in love with money, money in all its forms, beautiful gold, ravishing silver, charming copper, neatly printed slips of paper;—I desire money as other men desire their mistresses! And here is a forest made of money! If you were suddenly placed among the seventy-two willing virgins of the Mohammedan heaven, would you have any desire to leave that spot? Well, not you personally, captain—forgive me—the uniform, you see, makes me forget the lady—but I have found my seventy-two virgins! I have found the earthly paradise, and now it must be broken up and taken away. I must be cast out of Eden, and cherubim with a flaming sword must keep me from the tree of life. What reason have I to live any longer?”
“We are founding a new government,” said Susanna, “with all the problems of government to be solved—including the question of money.”
“Yes,” I added, “you will be present at the birth of a new pecuniary system. Is that not something to live for?”
He sat up with a start. “A new kind of money?”
“Yes, Mr. Hamilton,” said Susanna. “The coin of the United States of America.”
“Why, yes! That is true,” said Hamilton. “It will be only fitting that I should be present at the birth of an entirely new species of specie. How many true lovers of money are afforded that opportunity?”
“But first,” Susanna continued, “we must win the war, and to do that we must pay the army.”
This argument was enough to bring Hamilton out of his lethargy; and, with a last wistful look at the forest of dollars, he began helping us gather the coins into large piles. Then he and Susanna went back to find a large number of sacks, while I sat in the silent forest to guard the piles of coins from no one except a ragged-looking fish crow, which took enough of an interest in the shiny dollars to make it worth my while to chase the bird away.
It took many trips with the boat to bring the hoard across the river, and then we had to arrange for what amounted to a caravan to transport it all back to Pennsylvania; but of course we had all the funds we could possibly need to pay for the wagons, drivers, and escorts. We finally reached Valley Forge in the spring—only to find an enormous army marching in just as we arrived.
At first all of us presumed the worst; but then we spotted the fleur-de-lis flag and realized that the French had arrived at last, and in numbers we had not dared hope for.
Just as we reached Washington with the good news that we had found his trove of dollars, the French commander made his appearance.
“La Fayette, I am here, yes?” he announced. “Which one is the général Washington?”
To be continued in Chapter IX. Or you can order the whole book now and spare yourself the wait.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE GEORGE WASHINGTON,
By an Associate.
Continuing the narrative that began here.
“So what do you intend to do to prepare for Howe’s arrival?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” Washington responded confidently.
“Nothing?” Susanna and I both repeated at once.
“Precisely,” said Washington. “You taught me that, Phillips. It worked for Forbes at Pittsburgh; it worked for us at Boston; it will work again here. Nothing, I might go so far as to say, is the greatest contribution our present age has made to the art of military strategy. In the future, wars will be fought entirely by armies doing nothing, nothing on a titanic scale; and think what a savings in men and material we shall have when opposing armies both adopt a strategy of doing nothing whatsoever! Furthermore, as doing nothing has been demonstrated to be the strategy that procures victory, both sides in future wars will invariably be victorious. There will be none of the bitterness of defeat and concomitant desire for revenge; but all men will live in amity in a world that is constantly at war, providing pleasant employment for young men in the armies and navies, and leaving the other classes of society to enjoy all the benefits of the profoundest peace. From now on, nothing is the strategy I intend to adopt.”
Susanna was rubbing her temples as if suffering from a headache, but she apparently was resigned enough to hold her peace.
“Meanwhile,” Washington continued, “I’ve set up my headquarters in this very commodious house, although I must say the ceilings are a bit low and the bed a bit short. I’ve set aside a room for you and Phillips to share, just upstairs and to the right, across from my own chamber.”
“I’m sure I could find something in—”
“I won’t hear of it,” Washington said with finality. “After your journey you both must be in need of a good rest, and you’ll find no accommodations but soldiers’ tents elsewhere. I should like to have you with me and Parson Weems here, so please indulge me. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a time, I have to make my usual rounds.”
He left us alone in the house, and I immediately said to Susanna, “I can sleep in the parlor.”
“It seems as if every man I meet tries to take advantage of my sex and my color,” Susanna remarked. “Except for you. You have always behaved as a gentleman to me.”
“I’ve always tried to—”
“What is wrong with you?” she demanded with sudden vehemence.
“Susanna, I would never take advantage of a lady, in spite of all the pressing temptations I suffer every time you’re near me—temptations I struggle mightily to resist, because I would not insult the finest lady I have ever known.”
“And did you think you were the only one who was tempted?”
For a moment I stood mute and looked into her eyes. Then I asked carefully, “What do you mean, Susanna?”
“I mean, obviously, that I don’t want you to sleep in the parlor.”
“Then you really do feel…some attachment to me?”
“I have a weakness for perfect gentlemen.”
I was probably gaping like a fish in a boat, because she continued:
“Mr. Gist, I know where I stand. I know I can never be more than a mistress to you. But even though—”
“By God, you’re wrong!” I cried. “Susanna, I love you, and I know I can never deserve you, but if you’re fool enough to have me, will you be my wife?”
A long interval of dreadful silence followed, until at last Susanna said quietly, “You’re mad.”
“I do believe I am. Since the moment I saw you a divine madness has taken possession of my soul, a madness that—”
“Oh, shut up!” Susanna exclaimed, and she enforced her will by pressing her lips hard against mine. She held them there until I had lost all desire to express my thoughts in articulate speech.
At last she spoke again: “I will be your wife, Mr. Gist, when we can do it, but I don’t think I can wait that long.”
“There’s a clergyman in this very house,” I reminded her.
“You mean that jackass?”
“A jackass with the power to make us both what we long to be.” I took her hand and led her up the stairs, where we found Parson Weems sitting in his little room composing a tract.
“Weems,” I said breathlessly, “marry us now.”
Weems thought for a moment and then said, “Gist, may I have a brief word with you?”
“No,” I replied. “Not without Susanna, who is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh from this day forward.”
“You do realize that I really am a clergyman, Gist, don’t you? If I do this—”
“Weems, you fool! Do you think I’m plotting to seduce this lady with a sham marriage? By heaven, I should thrash you. But wedding now, and we’ll save the thrashing for later.”
“I’ll do the wedding if you’ll forgo the thrashing.”
“Done,” I said.
“Only do it quickly,” Susanna added, clinging to me.
“All right,” said Parson Weems. “Dearly beloved, et cetera, honorable estate and so on, skip to the good part. Do you, Susanna, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, whether he snores or not, till death do you part?”
“I do,” she replied.
“And do you, Christopher, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, under all the usual conditions et cetera?”
“I do,” I answered eagerly.
“Then I now sentence you to be man and wife, and may God have mercy on your souls.”
“We’re done?” asked Susanna.
“For the rest of your natural lives,” Weems replied.
Susanna yanked me out the door and into our own chamber, where what an hour before had been a dreadful temptation was now, by a few words spoken in front of the parson, mystically transformed into a sacred duty.
Our joy, though complete, was, however, short; for the next day Howe’s army appeared, and it soon became evident that Washington’s plan of doing absolutely nothing was not as effective as he had hoped. Howe had hemmed us in from both sides, and it was clear that, without something near a miracle, the army was lost.
But then the miracle came, and Susanna seized it. As evening came on, a thick fog settled in, and it was impossible to see more than a few paces in any direction.
“If only we had some way to slip across the river!” said Susanna. “We could be out of harm’s way if we had boats, or even rafts.”
“There are trees everywhere,” I said.
“But it would be impossible to reduce them to logs quickly enough to do any good,” Susanna responded.
“Are any of them cherry trees?” I asked.
“Oh!” said Parson Weems. “I see what you mean! There’s a fine large stand of black cherries right by the river.”
“Get us an axe,” I told him, “and we’ll go get Washington.”
“I don’t understand,” said Susanna. “How is it easier to make logs from cherry trees?”
“You don’t know Washington as well as we do, my love,” I replied. Then I turned to find the nearest officer, who happened to be an old captain. “We need the men together and ready to build rafts. Any rope they can find, any fabric that can be twisted into ropes—have them gather as much as they can and go down to the river by the cherry grove. We’ll provide the logs.”
We found Washington eventually. It was difficult in the fog, but we kept asking soldiers until we found the place where he had fallen off his horse. We led him to the river, where the fog, by some providential dispensation, was dissipating; and when we came to the cherry trees, Washington did not need to be told what to do. The mania took hold of him before we said anything, and Susanna watched with awe as the trees were reduced to logs in a few minutes at most, with a terrifying din that must surely have been discouraging to the enemy. As soon as it was safe to approach, the soldiers began assembling the logs into rafts; and as the rafts were assembled, they set out for the lights across the river, where the fog had now entirely cleared.
By the next morning, the entire army had slipped out of Howe’s grasp, and was safely lodged in New-York, where the local militia supplemented our forces, and for the present Howe did not dare pursue us.
New-York in those days was a much smaller town than it is today; indeed, I believe there was scarcely a building over forty storeys in the whole island. But even in those days it was a town that loved a spectacle, and the movements of troops across the river, and the prospect of imminent invasion by Howe’s army, did not prevent New-Yorkers from enjoying themselves.
Having disposed his troops as well as he could, Washington gave them a day’s leave, and he himself spent the evening with Weems, Susanna, and me indulging in his favorite entertainment. He had learned that there was a popular puppet-show all the way uptown on Fourth-street; and, asking directions, was told to walk down the stairs at the next corner. These proved to lead down to an underground chamber hollowed out of a tunnel, where two dozen or so people were standing, apparently waiting for something. In a few minutes we heard the clopping of horses’ hooves echoing in the tunnel, and a light was visible coming into the chamber. A team of eight horses entered, followed by a very long carriage; imitating the rest of the crowd, we entered the carriage, which was already stuffed with riders, so that we were forced to stand and cling to leathern straps hung from the ceiling, apparently for that purpose, as the carriage began to move and entered the dark tunnel once more.
Uncomfortable though the arrangements were, the carriage did convey us to Fourth-street, which, when we emerged from the subterranean conveyance, proved to be lined with theaters and expositions of every sort. We found the puppet-show, where we enjoyed the amusing adventures of a cast of oddly shaped befurred puppets with bulging white eyes—most of the audience laughing in delight, but Washington watching with his usual stony dignity and expressionless silence.
After the show, Parson Weems, Susanna, and I retreated to a popular tavern across the street for a bit of Madeira; but Washington’s eye was attracted by a poster advertising an exhibition in the rooms next to the tavern:
and
the incomparable sherwin
twin brothers who are
He told us he would meet us in the tavern, and went in to enjoy the exhibition. Some time later he joined us, and declared himself well pleased with what he had seen. “It really is remarkably interesting,” he said. “The men are twins, and yet you cannot imagine two men more different in every respect.”
“How did you know they were twins?” asked Parson Weems.
Washington looked surprised and shocked. “I took it upon their word as gentlemen.”
The rest of us decided not to pursue that line of inquiry. Instead, I turned the conversation to the question of what was to be done now that Howe occupied Long island and was doubtless plotting to move on New-York itself.
“Nothing,” Washington replied with confidence.
“Nothing?” Susanna repeated incredulously. “But surely what happened across the river must have persuaded you that it is necessary to do something!”
“What happened there, I am quite convinced, was entirely owing to the malevolent influence of Irving. It was not the strategy that was at fault, but merely the events.”
“But—” Susanna began, and then stopped and took a very big gulp of her Madeira.
“To my mind,” said Parson Weems, “our most pressing problem is one of money. The soldiers have not been paid for some time. If they are not paid soon, they will begin to desert.”
“They had better not,” Washington replied with some warmth. “I am not a cruel man, but I do believe in strong discipline, and if I have to send men to bed without supper, I will do it.”
“I must agree with the Parson,” I said. “Even the sternest discipline will not keep the men long if we cannot pay them what they are legitimately owed. We must find a way to persuade the Congress to deal with the question of paying the army.”
“And I’m sure the Congress will respond with alacrity once we have made our case,” said Washington. “Meanwhile, I have been thinking of erecting a fort at the northern end of the island.”
“A very good idea, General,” said Susanna, obviously pleased. “If we control the navigation up the Hudson, we deprive the enemy of the opportunity to drive a wedge between the East and the Middle.”
“True,” said Washington. “I had not thought of that. I was more interested in establishing the site of a new city on Manhattan Island—a city that, as it grows, will doubtless eclipse New-York to the south, and perhaps even absorb it; a city that will soon rival even Philadelphia as a center of our new American civilization; a city called Washington. A fort, of course, will be the seed from which such a city sprouts. And there is one more thing I’ve been thinking of, Phillips.”
“What is that, General?”
“You’re a lieutenant, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you mind terribly being a captain?”
She glanced at me, and then answered, “No, sir.”
“Good. Captain Phillips it is, then.”
Susanna smiled broadly. “Thank you, sir.”
“You are, after all, the architect of the nothing strategy, and you deserve recognition. Perhaps in the future nothing will be named for you.”
Susanna’s smile froze on her face as she repeated, “Thank you, sir.”
Washington found us lodgings in a rather large inn. Susanna and I had a room on the twenty-seventh floor, which required a bit of labor in climbing the stairs, but rewarded us with a fine view of the city. I told Susanna I was very proud to be married to the most beautiful captain in the continental army, and we spent a very pleasant night together. It would be the last pleasant night for some time.
In the morning, when we found Washington (rather late, since Susanna and I had slept but little), he was in earnest discussion with a small, energetic man who seemed to be explaining something to him, while writing or drawing something on a paper in front of him.
“Ah! Gist—Phillips—just the men I wanted to see,” Washington said when he saw us. “This is Mr. Alexander Hamilton, a young fellow who has the most amazing ideas about money. Mr. Hamilton, this is Mr. Gist, my trusted advisor; and the other young man is Captain Phillips, one of my most valuable officers.”
The small man named Hamilton looked perplexed. “Other young man?” he repeated.
“The one in the uniform, of course.”
Hamilton continued to look perplexed for a moment, and then appeared to decide that perplexity was not worth the effort. “Very pleased to meet you both, uh, gentlemen.”
“Mr. Hamilton was just explaining to me how to get all the money we need for the army,” Washington continued. “It turns out that the Congress can have all the money it wants by simply increasing military spending and lowering taxes.”
“Don’t you mean raising taxes?” Susanna asked.
“Ah! That’s the clever part,” Washington replied. “Explain it to them, Hamilton.”
Mr. Hamilton turned his paper over to its blank side and started drawing something while he spoke. “You see, military spending stimulates economic activity by creating demand for manufactured products. But higher taxes have the opposite effect by reducing the incentive to get rich. By lowering taxes, we create incentive to gain wealth, and the wealth is then spent on luxury items, creating more wealth for the producers thereof, and thus raising tax revenue overall.”
I looked at the paper in front of him. He had drawn a sort of crude outline of a bell.
“And is this drawing some sort of graphic representation of your theory?” I asked.
“No. That’s just a drawing of the Liberty Bell. Sorry—I always doodle like that when I’m explaining things. It’s a nervous habit.”
“It seems to me,” said Susanna, “that the incentive to get rich is that, once you’ve done it, you’re rich. Even if you take away fifty per cent, if I make a thousand pounds, I still get to keep five hundred, so I’m five hundred pounds better off.”
Hamilton gave her a condescending smile. “I don’t expect military… uh, men to understand economics.”
“I’m sending Hamilton down to Philadelphia to explain all this to the Congress,” said Washington. “All they have to do is lower taxes and spend more money on the army, and everything will be fine.”
“Do you really think the Congress will be that…” Susanna searched for an appropriate adjective, and at last came up with “…amenable?”
“Oh,” replied Washington, “the Congress is—heh—the Congress—heh heh heh—best minds of the—ha ha ha ha ha—of the—ha ha ha ha ha!”
The laughing fit was now fully upon him, and Washington was pounding his great fists on the table, nearly upsetting the inkpot, trying to speak but finding it impossible.
“It is the effect of a puppet-show he saw last night,” I explained to poor Hamilton, who was watching with an expression of barely suppressed terror.
Washington threw his head back and exclaimed, “The blue one lives in a garbage can!” Then he fell forward, banging his forehead repeatedly on the table, so that the ink spilled all over Mr. Hamilton’s bell.
It was some time before he recovered. But eventually Mr. Hamilton was sent off to Philadelphia to persuade the Congress, and I wished him very good luck with that.
Meanwhile, things did not go well in New-York, and Washington’s strategy of doing nothing did not bear the fruit he had hoped it would bear. Even as Hamilton set off for Philadelphia, Howe, reinforced by Hessian mercenaries, invaded New-York, and our brave soldiers ran all the way across New-Jersey before they stopped. Washington eventually regrouped what was left of his army west of the Delaware, but that was not very much, most of the soldiers having deserted along the way.
All was not lost, however: two or three days after we arrived on the west bank of the Delaware, Susanna, Parson Weems, and I were very much surprised to see that little Hamilton fellow walking toward us.
“Mr. Hamilton!” I greeted him. “What a surprise to see you here! How did your mission to the Congress go?”
“Perfectly, of course,” he said, with the air of one confident that all his projects must always proceed perfectly. “I explained my ‘Drip-Down Theory’ to the Congress, which sent me back with the entire back pay of the army in specie.”
“So at last the soldiers can be paid,” Parson Weems said. “I’m sure that will come as very good news to the ones who are left. Where is the money?”
“I left it with General Washington,” replied Hamilton. “He’s down by the river in that direction.”
Weems was the first to give voice to the sudden fear that had gripped me as well. “You mean you left the General with a bag of coins? Beside a river? Alone?”
“Was that unwise?” asked Hamilton.
We said nothing; we simply began running toward the river. Susanna followed, and Hamilton trailed behind us, saying,
“Surely you don’t mean to imply that the General can’t be trusted!”
But we merely kept running for the river, whither we arrived just in time to see Washington, surrounded by empty sacks, hurling one of of the dollars the Congress had provided across the Delaware.
“What is he doing?” Susanna asked in disbelief.
“He can’t help himself,” I said to her; then to Washington, “Washington! For heaven’s sake, stop!”
“I have to stop anyway,” he said cheerfully. “I ran out of dollars.”
“But, general,” cried Susanna, “that money was all we had to pay the soldiers!”
“Was it? I suppose it was. I didn’t think of that. I saw dollars, and I saw a river, and the rest just naturally followed. My word! It felt good. I haven’t done that in a very long time.”
“But why?” Susanna demanded.
“I don’t think I understand the question,” Washington replied.
“And how will you get the dollars back?” Parson Weems asked in a mildly disapproving tone.
“By the usual method, I suppose. We’ll cross the river and retrieve them.”
“But the other side of the river is crawling with Hessians,” Weems reminded him.
“Oh—is it? I suppose it is.”
Nevertheless, there was nothing else to be done. The men had to be paid, or we should have no more army. The money was on the other side of the river. We found a few boats nearby and decided to send a small patrol across to retrieve the money if it could be done. I recommended that some subordinate officer be found to lead the patrol, but Washington would not hear of it. I therefore placed myself in Washington’s boat, with Susanna (over my objections) beside me, and we set out across the icy Delaware, fully expecting (at least for my own part) to be shot before we even reached the opposite shore.
No shots were fired, however, and when we reached the other side it became apparent why that was so. Bodies of Hessian soldiers were strewn all over the ground. At first I wondered whether some local militia had come before us and massacred the men; but as we came closer it became clear that the Hessian soldiers were not dead, but unconscious, lying in a field of Spanish milled dollars. The hail of coins had been too much for them, and each dollar hurled by the mighty arm of Washington had found its target on a Hessian skull.
“Well,” said Washington, “this is very convenient. Disarm these men and take them prisoner, and we can collect our money and our prisoners and take them back with us.”
“Or,” said Susanna, “we can bring the rest of the army across and press forward and take Trenton.”
“Would that be good?” asked Washington.
“Very good,” I told him. “The Hessian troops lie here, our prisoners. Trenton is undefended, and Trenton is the capital of the province.”
“Oh! Well, in that case, by all means. Excellent thinking, Phillips.”
Thus, having crossed the Delaware, Washington was able, by a singular stroke of good fortune, to take Trenton. The cause of independence, which had seemed so nearly hopeless after the loss of New-York, was once again embraced by public opinion.
To be continued in Chapter VIII. Or you can order the whole book now and spare yourself the wait.