Washington in Domestic Life. From Original Letters and Manuscripts

by Richard Rush

Towards the close of a winter's day in 1791, an officer in uniform was seen to dismount in front of the President's in Philadelphia, and, giving the bridle to his servant, knock at the door of his mansion. Learning from the porter that the President was at dinner, he said he was on public business and had dispatches for the President. A servant was sent into the dining-room to give the information to Mr. Lear, who left the table and went into the hall where the officer repeated what he had said. Mr. Lear replied that, as the President's Secretary, he would take charge of the dispatches and deliver them at the proper time. The officer made answer that he had just arrived from the western army, and his orders were to deliver them with all promptitude, and to the President in person; but that he would wait his directions. Mr. Lear returned, and in a whisper imparted to the President what had passed. General Washington rose from the table, and went to the officer. He was back in a short time, made a word of apology for his absence, but no allusion to the cause of it. He had company that day. Everything went on as usual. Dinner over, the gentlemen passed to the drawing-room of Mrs. Washington, which was open in the evening. The General spoke courteously to every lady in the room, as was his custom. His hours were early, and by ten o'clock all the company had gone. Mrs. Washington and Mr. Lear remained. Soon Mrs. Washington left the room.

The General now walked backward and forward slowly for some minutes without speaking. Then he sat down on a sofa by the fire, telling Mr. Lear to sit down. To this moment there had been no change in his manner since his interruption at table. Mr. Lear now perceived emotion. This rising in him, he broke out suddenly, "It's all over—St. Clair's defeated—routed;—the officers nearly all killed, the men by wholesale; the route complete—too shocking to think of—and a surprise into the bargain!"

He uttered all this with great vehemence. Then he paused, got up from the sofa and walked about the room several times, agitated but saying nothing. Near the door he stopped short and stood still a few seconds, when his wrath became terrible.

"Yes," he burst forth, "HERE on this very spot, I took leave of him; I wished him success and honor; you have your instructions, I said, from the Secretary of War, I had a strict eye to them, and will add but one word—BEWARE OF A SURPRISE. I repeat it, BEWARE OF A SURPRISE—you know how the Indians fight us. He went off with that as my last solemn warning thrown into his ears. And yet!! to suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hack'd, butchered, tomahawk'd, by a surprise—the very thing I guarded him against!! O God, O God, he's worse than a murderer! how can he answer it to his country;—the blood of the slain is upon him—the curse of widows and orphans—the curse of Heaven!"

This torrent came out in tones appalling. His very frame shook. It was awful, said Mr. Lear. More than once he threw his hands up as he hurled imprecations upon St. Clair. Mr. Lear remained speechless; awed into breathless silence.

The roused Chief sat down on the sofa once more. He seemed conscious of his passion, and uncomfortable. He was silent. His warmth beginning to subside, he at length said in an altered voice: "This must not go beyond this room." Another pause followed—a longer one—when he said in a tone quite low, "General St. Clair shall have justice; I looked hastily through the dispatches, saw the whole disaster but not all the particulars; I will receive him without displeasure; I will hear him without prejudice; he shall have full justice."

He was now, said Mr. Lear, perfectly calm. Half an hour had gone by. The storm was over; and no sign of it was afterwards seen in his conduct or heard in his conversation. The result is known. The whole case was investigated by Congress. St. Clair was exculpated and regained the confidence Washington had in him when appointing him to that command. He had put himself into the thickest of the fight and escaped unhurt, though so ill as to be carried on a litter, and unable to mount his horse without help.

A passage from one of Mr. Jefferson's letters which the historian Sparks records, may here be given, as its spirit covers the private as well as public life of Washington. Mr. Jefferson withdrew his services as Secretary of State from the administration of Washington towards the close of his first term in the Presidency. His retirement from that post took place when party spirit was violent and bitter in the extreme; never was it more so in the annals of our country; and it was known that he had differed from Washington on political questions of the greatest importance. Nevertheless, writing of him at a later period Mr. Jefferson says: "His integrity was most pure; his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man."

I return to his letters to Mr. Lear. In superintending his domestic affairs, these letters exhibit him as the head of a well-ordered family, himself the regulator of it all under maxims that best conduce to order because not too rigid. We see that he was truly hospitable; kind; devoted to his kindred whom he gathers around him, interesting himself in their education and welfare; cheering them with a welcome at Mount Vernon, and soothing them in sickness and sorrow. The kindred of Mrs. Washington alike share his solicitudes, paternal care, and constant kindness. All this is discernible from the facts that drop out in these letters. They point to a heart affectionately alive to the best social and family feelings. We see his attention to the comfort of his servants, slaves, and others. His government of them, upper and subordinate, appears to have been perfect by his union of discipline with liberality. He knew that his postilions, if they slept over the stable, would carry lights there whether he forbade it or not, for they would do it when he knew nothing about it and not tell on each other. He therefore allowed no sleeping there at all.

I could not avoid remarking, as characteristic throughout the whole of this correspondence, that there is never any complaining of his labors. Letter-writing alone would have been a heavy labor to him but for his system and industry. Promptitude in using his pen there must necessarily have been, or he could not have written so much. The history of the times will show that when he wrote these letters he was simultaneously writing others on public business, which, as the world knows, he never neglected in any jot or tittle no matter what else he might be doing. The domestic letters must therefore have been struck off with great facility. Let us call to mind also the more than two hundred volumes of folio manuscript of his public correspondence which Congress purchased, and then remember that the sum of all he wrote is as nothing to what he did in his long career of activity in his country's service, military and civil.