In 1788, without previous warning, he was elected chancellor of William and Mary College, a distinction by which he felt “honored and greatly affected;” but “not knowing particularly what duties, or whether any active services are immediately expected from the person holding the office of chancellor, I have been greatly embarrassed in deciding upon the public answer proper to be given…. My difficulties are briefly these. On the one hand, nothing in this world could be farther from my heart, than … a refusal of the appointment … provided its duties are not incompatible with the mode of life to which I have entirely addicted myself; and, on the other hand, I would not for any consideration disappoint the just expectations of the convocation by accepting an office, whose functions I previously knew … I should be absolutely unable to perform.”
Perhaps the most touching proof of his own self-depreciation was something he did when he had become conscious that his career would be written about. Still in his possession were the letter-books in which he had kept copies of his correspondence while in command of the Virginia regiment between 1754 and 1759, and late in life he went through these volumes, and, by interlining corrections, carefully built them into better literary form. How this was done is shown here by a single facsimile.
With the appointment to command the Continental Army, a secretary was secured, and in an absence of this assistant he complained to him that “my business increases very fast, and my distresses for want of you along with it. Mr. Harrison is the only gentleman of my family, that can afford me the least assistance in writing. He and Mr. Moylan,… have heretofore afforded me their aid; and … they have really had a great deal of trouble.”
Most of Washington’s correspondence during the Revolution was written by his aides. Pickering said,—
“As to the public letters bearing his signature, it is certain that he could not have maintained so extensive a correspondence with his own pen, even if he had possessed the ability and promptness of Hamilton. That he would, sometimes with propriety, observe upon, correct, and add to any draught submitted for his examination and signature, I have no doubt. And yet I doubt whether many, if any, of the letters … are his own draught…. I have even reason to believe that not only the composition, the clothing of the ideas, but the ideas themselves, originated generally with the writers; that Hamilton and Harrison, in particular, were scarcely in any degree his amanuenses. I remember, when at head-quarters one day, at Valley Forge, Colonel Harrison came down from the General’s chamber, with his brows knit, and thus accosted me, ‘I wish to the Lord the General would give me the heads or some idea, of what he would have me write.’”
CORRECTED LETTER OF WASHINGTON SHOWING LATER CHANGES
After the Revolution, a visitor at Mount Vernon said, “It’s astonishing the packet of letters that daily comes for him from all parts of the world, which employ him most of the morning to answer.” A secretary was employed, but not so much to do the actual writing as the copying and filing, and at this time Washington complained “that my numerous correspondencies are daily becoming irksome to me.” Yet there can be little question that he richly enjoyed writing when it was not for the public eye. “It is not the letters of my friends which give me trouble,” he wrote to one correspondent; to another he said, “I began with telling you that I should not write a lengthy letter but the result has been to contradict it;” and to a third, “when I look back to the length of this letter, I am so much astonished and frightened at it myself that I have not the courage to give it a careful reading for the purpose of correction. You must, therefore, receive it with all its imperfections, accompanied with this assurance, that, though there may be inaccuracies in the letter, there is not a single defect in the friendship.” Occasionally there was, as here, an apology: “I am persuaded you will excuse this scratch’d scrawl, when I assure you it is with difficulty I write at all,” he ended a letter in 1777, and in 1792 of another said, “You must receive it blotted and scratched as you find it for I have not time to copy it. It is now ten o’clock at night, after my usual hour for retiring to rest, and the mail will be closed early to-morrow morning.”
To his overseer, who neglected to reply to some of his questions, he told his method of writing, which is worth quoting: