Washington: A Life (26 page)

On February 15, 1761, Captain Stewart relayed word to Washington from Winchester that Stephen was “incessantly employed” in campaigning for one of the two seats from Frederick County. For two years Washington and Thomas Bryan Martin had held those seats, but Martin had now decided to retire, prompting Washington’s former aide and new partner, George Mercer, to run in his stead. Adam Stephen evidently denigrated Washington as the handpicked candidate of the wealthy landowners, for Stewart told Washington that “the leaders of all the patrician families remain firm in their resolution of continuing for you,” while Stephen issued demagogic appeals for “the attention of the plebeians, whose unstable minds are agitated by every breath of novelty, whims, and nonsense.”
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Washington was sufficiently alarmed by Stephen’s election bid that, uncharacteristically, he stooped to an unscrupulous stratagem to win. The episode shows that at twenty-nine he still hadn’t learned to curb his more assertive impulses. He urged the sheriff who oversaw the election, Captain Van Swearingen, to favor his candidacy with a blatantly unfair tactic. Because there was no secret ballot and people openly voiced their votes, it was hugely advantageous for candidates if the first voters favored them, stimulating a bandwagon effect. While disclaiming that he was doing this, Washington planted the idea in the sheriff ’s mind: “I hope and indeed make no doubt that you will contribute your aid towards shutting [Stephen] out of the public trust he is seeking.” Then Washington suggested that if pro- Washington and Mercer voters were “hurried in at the first of the poll, it might be an advantage. But as sheriff, I know you cannot appear in this, nor would I by any mean[s] have you do anything that can give so designing a man as Colo. Stevens the least trouble.”
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If Washington took an ethical shortcut here, he wanted to keep up appearances and pretend that he wasn’t.

Washington’s trick seemed to work like a charm: of the first fifteen people to announce their vote, fourteen were Washington partisans and twelve also voted for George Mercer. The favoritism was so palpable that Washington’s brothers Jack and Samuel were the first two people to vote, while his brother-in-law, Fielding Lewis, his friend Dr. Craik, and his brother Charles lagged not far behind. When the final count was tallied, Washington had 505 votes, Mercer 400, and Stephen 294. Washington, feigning aristocratic indifference to the outcome, told a visitor a few weeks later, “I deal little in politics.”
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In mid-May 1761, about the time of this election, Washington came down with a “violent cold” and intermittent fever that he couldn’t shake despite frequent doctor visits and doses of dried bark from the cinchona tree, called Jesuit’s or Peruvian bark, then used to treat malaria. The disease was so widespread in Virginia that colonists spoke darkly of the “intermittent months” of late summer and early fall when epidemics grew commonplace. In late July Washington despaired of getting any useful advice from Virginia doctors, telling an English friend, “I have found so little benefit from any advice yet received that I am more than half of the mind to take a trip to England for the recovery of that invaluable blessing—health.”
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In August Washington sought the therapeutic powers of the mineral waters at Berkeley Springs, where he had gone with his consumptive brother Lawrence. By this point Washington had likely assumed the classic look of a malaria victim: pale face with pinched features and dark circles beneath the eyes. At this uncouth spa, he found 250 men and women “full of all manner of diseases and complaints.”
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The long ride and sultry weather exhausted him and made his sleep fitful, but he responded well to the waters and hoped they would cure him. Nevertheless, back at Mount Vernon in late September, he again grew ill and complained that he hadn’t been able to transact business since April. To Richard Washington, he confessed that the malady had nearly been fatal. “Since my last [letter] of the 14th July, I have in appearance been very near my last gasp. The indisposition then spoken of increased upon me, and I fell into a very low and dangerous state. I once thought the grim king would certainly master my utmost efforts and that I must sink in spite of a noble struggle, but thank God I have now got the better of the disorder and shall soon be restored I hope to perfect health again.”
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In November the conscientious Washington dragged himself off to Williamsburg to attend the House of Burgesses, only to skip an important session because he was too weak. Although he overcame the malaria after a gruesome six or seven months, the parasites were never fully eradicated from his system and flared up again repeatedly in later years.

No sooner had Washington rebounded from his illness than he had to bury his half brother Augustine, who at forty-one perpetuated the mournful tradition of Washington men dying young. Augustine had never been as close to George as Lawrence had been, but he had always written warmly to his younger half brother. Although he had suffered terribly from gout for years and had traveled to England in a vain quest to regain his health, Augustine had reassured George two years earlier that “I am at this time in a better state of health than I have been for the last seven years” and that he hoped to visit Mount Vernon in warm weather “such as will suit my gouty joints.”
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The early deaths of his father and two older half brothers, none of whom reached fifty, could only have heightened Washington’s already considerable sense of mortality after he celebrated his thirtieth birthday.

In October 1762 Washington became a vestryman of Truro Parish, a post he held for twenty-two years. The twelve-man vestry oversaw the temporal affairs of the church at Pohick, which formed part of the Anglican, or “established,” Church. During the next decade Washington performed standard vestry duties, such as helping to pay the minister, balance the church budget, choose a site for a new church, scrutinize its construction, and select furnishings for the communion table. When the new church was completed, he bought two pews and contributed funds to buy gold leaf for religious inscriptions emblazoned across the altarpiece. Washington also served three terms as churchwarden, a post in which he helped to care for poor people and orphans. Because Mount Vernon sprawled into Fairfax Parish as well, Washington bought another pew at Christ Church in Alexandria and joined the vestry there too. Washington’s extensive church activities schooled him in self-government and provided him with plenty of administrative experience.

Many mysteries have surrounded George Washington’s religious beliefs. A pair of notable acquaintances raised questions about his faith. Thomas Jefferson once remarked cynically that Washington “has divines [ministers] constantly about him because he thinks it right to keep up appearances but is an unbeliever.”
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Jefferson contended that when Washington stepped down as president, a group of clergy-men presented him with a list of requests to bolster public faith in Christianity; they noted he had refrained from public endorsements of the tenets of Christianity and beseeched him to declare openly his beliefs. According to Jefferson, “the old fox was too cunning” for the preachers and replied to all their points except the one about his personal faith.
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(It should be said that Jefferson’s source, Dr. Ashbel Green, later insisted that Jefferson had garbled the story.) Bishop William White of Pennsylvania, Washington’s pastor during his presidency in Philadelphia, also stated, “I do not believe that any degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation.”
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From family recollections, it seems indisputable that Washington grew up in a household steeped in piety. Mary Ball Washington was extremely devout and did not hesitate to invoke the aid of Jesus. “She was in the habit of repairing every day to a secluded spot, formed by rocks and trees near to her dwelling, where, abstracted from the world and worldly things, she communed with her Creator in humiliation and prayer,” Washington’s adopted grandson wrote.
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A stalwart member of two congregations, Washington attended church throughout his life and devoted substantial time to church activities. His major rites of passage—baptism, marriage, burial—all took place within the fold of the church. What has mystified posterity and puzzled some of his contemporaries was that Washington’s church attendance was irregular; that he recited prayers standing instead of kneeling; that, unlike Martha, he never took communion; and that he almost never referred to Jesus Christ, preferring such vague locutions as “Providence,” “Destiny,” the “Author of our Being,” or simply “Heaven.” Outwardly at least, his Christianity seemed rational, shorn of mysteries and miracles, and nowhere did he directly affirm the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Numerous historians, viewing Washington as imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment, have portrayed him as a deist. Eighteenth-century deists thought of God as a “prime mover” who had created the universe, then left it to its own devices, much as a watchmaker wound up a clock and walked away. God had established immutable laws of nature that could be fathomed by human reason instead of revelation. Washington never conformed to such deism, however, for he resided in a universe saturated with religious meaning. Even if his God was impersonal, with scant interest in individual salvation, He seemed to evince a keen interest in North American politics. Indeed, in Washington’s view, He hovered over many battlefields in the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. His influence was especially manifest during stirring patriotic victories and hairbreadth escapes from the enemy. Convinced that his life had been spared for some larger purpose, Washington later expressed gratitude to Providence, “which has directed my steps and shielded me in the various changes and chances through which I have passed from my youth to the present moment.”
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Throughout his life he descried signs of heavenly approbation and seemed to know that he operated under the overarching guidance of a benign Providence.

Many of Washington’s eminent contemporaries, ranging from Marshall to Madison, regarded him as “a sincere believer in the Christian faith, and a truly devout man,” as Marshall attested.
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Some of Washington’s religious style probably reflected an Enlightenment discomfort with religious dogma, but it also reflected his low-key personal style. He was sober and temperate in all things, distrusted zealotry, and would never have talked of hellfire or damnation. He would have shunned anything, such as communion, that might flaunt his religiosity. He never wanted to make a spectacle of his faith or trade on it as a politician. Simply as a matter of personal style, he would have refrained from the emotional language associated with evangelical Christianity. This cooler, more austere religious manner was commonplace among well-heeled Anglicans in eighteenth-century Virginia.

Washington’s pastor at Pohick Church before the war confirmed that he “never knew so constant an attendant at church as Washington.”
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His early biographer Jared Sparks recorded this comment from Washington’s nephew George W. Lewis: “Mr. Lewis said he had accidentally witnessed [Washington’s] private devotions in his library both morning and evening; that on those occasions he had seen him in a kneeling position with a Bible open before him and that he believed such to have been his daily practice.”
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General Robert Porterfield recalled that when he delivered an urgent message to Washington during the Revolutionary War, he “found him on his knees, engaged in his morning’s devotions.” When he mentioned this to Washington’s aide Alexander Hamilton, the latter “replied that such was his constant habit.”
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Washington’s adopted granddaughter saw his self-effacing religiosity as consistent with a hatred of pretension: “He was not one of those who act or pray ‘That they may be seen of men.’”
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Numerous people left vignettes testifying to Washington’s simple faith. On the other hand, he lacked a speculative bent and was never one to ponder the fine points of theology.

One thing that hasn’t aroused dispute is the exemplary nature of Washington’s religious tolerance. He shuddered at the notion of exploiting religion for partisan purposes or showing favoritism for certain denominations. As president, when writing to Jewish, Baptist, Presbyterian, and other congregations—he officially saluted twenty-two major religious groups—he issued eloquent statements on religious tolerance. He was so devoid of spiritual bias that his tolerance even embraced atheism. When he needed to hire a carpenter and a bricklayer at Mount Vernon, he stated that “if they are good workmen,” they could be “Mahometans, Jews, or Christian of any sect, or they may be atheists.”
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He took pleasure in dropping by Sunday services of other denominations. In Bishop White’s words, “If there was no Episcopal Church in the town in which he happened to be, he would attend the services of any other denomination with equal cheerfulness.”
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Washington loathed religious fanaticism, and on that subject he sounded like a true student of the Enlightenment. “We have abundant reason to rejoice that, in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition,” President Washington wrote to one Baltimore church.
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“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.”
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A convinced supporter of the separation of church and state, Washington declared that “no man’s sentiments are more opposed to
any kind
of restraint upon religious principles than mine are.”
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However ecumenical in his approach to religion, Washington never doubted its signal importance in a republic, regarding it as the basis of morality and the foundation of any well-ordered polity. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” he declared in his farewell address.
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For Washington, morality was so central to Christianity’s message that “no man who is profligate in his morals or a bad member of the civil community can possibly be a true Christian.”
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