George Washington's Bedroom at Mount Vernon
It was in this room that Washington expired, December 14, 1799. Two days previously he was exposed in the saddle, for several hours, to cold and snow, and contracted acute laryngitis for which he was ineffectually treated in the primitive manner of the period. A short time before ceasing to breathe, he said: "I die hard; but I am not afraid to go. I believed from my first attack that I should not survive it. My breath cannot last long." A little later he murmured: "I feel myself going. I thank you for your attentions; but I pray you to take no more trouble about me. Let me go off quietly. I cannot last long." After giving some instructions about his burial he became easier, felt his own pulse, and died without a struggle.
The friends of the administration supported the proposed system against every objection to it, because they believed it to be more productive, and less unpopular, than a direct tax. It is not impossible that what recommended the system to one party, might constitute a real objection to it with those who believed that the public interest required a change[21] in the public councils.
On the ninth of June, this active and stormy session was closed by an adjournment to the first Monday in the succeeding November.
Congress adjourns.
The public was not less agitated than the legislature had been, by those interesting questions which had occasioned some of the most animated and eloquent discussions that had ever taken place on the floor of the house of representatives. Mr. Madison's resolutions especially, continued to be the theme of general conversation; and, for a long time, divided parties throughout the United States. The struggle for public opinion was ardent; and each party supported its pretensions, not only with those arguments which each deemed conclusive, but also by those reciprocal criminations which, perhaps, each, in part, believed.
The opposition declared that the friends of the administration were an aristocratic and corrupt faction, who, from a desire to introduce monarchy, were hostile to France, and under the influence of Britain; that they sought every occasion to increase expense, to augment debt, to multiply the public burdens, to create armies and navies, and, by the instrumentality of all this machinery, to govern and enslave the people: that they were a paper nobility, whose extreme sensibility at every measure which threatened the funds, induced a tame submission to injuries and insults, which the interests and honour of the nation required them to resist.
The friends of the administration retorted, that the opposition was prepared to sacrifice the best interests of their country on the altar of the French revolution. That they were willing to go to war for French, not for American objects: that while they urged war they withheld the means of supporting it, in order the more effectually to humble and disgrace the government: that they were so blinded by their passion for France as to confound crimes with meritorious deeds, and to abolish the natural distinction between virtue and vice: that the principles which they propagated, and with which they sought to intoxicate the people, were, in practice, incompatible with the existence of government. That they were the apostles of anarchy, not of freedom; and were consequently not the friends of real and rational liberty.