Late in December, Washington was invited to Annapolis by the Virginia assembly, to assist in arranging matters with the assembly of Maryland, respecting his scheme for uniting the Potomac and James rivers, with those of the West. He attended the conference, and chiefly through his exertions two companies were formed for the purpose, under the auspices of the respective governments, and he was appointed president of both. They were called respectively, the Potomac Company, and the James River Company. Thus it will be seen, that during the first year after the close of the Revolution, Washington set in motion that vast scheme of internal improvements, which has had a powerful and salutary influence upon the destinies of our country.
Again Washington's consistency was put to the test. Grateful for his past services, and conscious of the advantages to the Virginia commonwealth, of the great scheme of improvement which he had now set in motion, they, by unanimous vote, offered to present to him fifty shares in the Potomac Company, valued at ten thousand dollars, and one hundred shares in the James River Company, valued at twenty-five thousand dollars. Aware of his resolution not to receive any pecuniary gift from the public, the legislature, in the preamble to the resolution, said:—
“It is the desire of the representatives of this commonwealth to embrace every suitable occasion of testifying their sense of the unexampled merits of George Washington toward his country; and it is their wish in particular, that those great works for its improvement, which, both as springing from the liberty which he has been so instrumental in establishing, and as encouraged by his patronage, will be durable monuments of his glory, may be made monuments also of the gratitude of his country.”
This mark of his countrymen's appreciation, was, of course, gratifying to Washington, but again, true to his convictions and his vows, he declined to receive the donation for his own benefit; but, as a matter of expediency, he offered to accept the shares, provided the legislature would allow him to appropriate them to the use of some object of a public nature. The assembly cheerfully acceded to his proposition. As the encouragement of education was a subject in which he felt deeply interested, he made over the shares of the James River Company to an institution in Rockbridge county, called Liberty Hall Academy, and those of the Potomac Company he bequeathed in perpetuity for the endowment of a university in the District of Columbia, under the auspices of the general government. Liberty Hall afterward became the flourishing Washington College, but the national university has never been established.
Other examples of Washington's interest in educational institutions, are on record. He cheerfully accepted the chancellorship of William and Mary college at Williamsburg; during many years he gave two hundred and fifty dollars annually for the instruction of poor children in Alexandria; and by his will he left four thousand dollars, the net income of which was to be used for the same object. “Other examples,” says Sparks, after enumerating these and other benevolent acts of the great and good man, “might be cited; and from his cautious habit of concealing from the world his deeds of charity, it may be presumed many others are unknown, in which his heart and his hand were open to the relief of indigent merit.”
We have observed that Washington's dreams of repose at Mount Vernon were not realized. Visitors from the old and the new world constantly increased, and among them came that champion of liberty, Catharine Macaulay Graham, whose pen had done noble service in the cause of human rights. She came with her husband, and professed to have crossed the Atlantic for the sole purpose of testifying, in person, her respect and admiration for the character and deeds of Washington. “A visit from a lady so celebrated in the literary world,” he wrote to Knox, “can not but be very flattering to me.”
His correspondence increased so rapidly, that it soon began to be burdensome. To Richard Henry Lee he wrote in February, 1785, when transmitting to him a mass of papers which he had received from the pious Countess of Huntington, explaining her scheme for Christianizing the American Indians: “Many mistakingly think that I am retired to ease, and to that kind of tranquillity which would grow tiresome for want of employment; but at no period of my life, not in the eight years I served the public, have I been obliged to write so much myself, as I have done since my retirement. Was this confined to friendly communication, and to my own business, it would be equally pleasing and trifling; but I have a thousand references to old matters, with which I ought not to be troubled, but which, nevertheless, must receive some answer.”
1785
In a letter to General Knox he amplified this topic a little, saying: “It is not the letters from my friends which give me trouble, or add aught to my perplexity. It is reference to old matters with which I have nothing to do; applications which oftentimes can not be complied with; inquiries which would require the pen of a historian to satisfy; letters of compliment, as unmeaning, perhaps, as they are troublesome, but which must be attended to; and the common-place business, which employs my pen and my time, often disagreeably. Indeed, these, with company, deprive me of exercise, and unless I can obtain relief, must be productive of disagreeable consequences.”