[Footnote 1: Irving, V, 277.]
Perhaps the best offhand description of Washington in these later days is that given by an English actor, Bernard, who happened to be driving near Mount Vernon when a carriage containing a man and a woman was upset. Bernard dismounted to give help, and presently another rider came up and joined in the work. "He was a tall, erect, well-made man, evidently advanced in years, but who appeared to have retained all the vigor and elasticity resulting from a life of temperance and exercise. His dress was a blue coat buttoned to the chin, and buckskin breeches."[1] They righted the chaise, harnessed the horse, and revived the young woman who, true to her time and place, had fainted. Then she and her companion drove off towards Alexandria. Washington invited Bernard to come home with him and rest during the heat of the day. The actor consented. From what the actor subsequently wrote about that chance meeting I take the following paragraphs, some of which strike to the quick:
[Footnote 1: Lodge, II, 277.]
In conversation his face had not much variety of expression. A look of thoughtfulness was given by the compression of the mouth and the indentations of the brow (suggesting an habitual conflict with, and mastery over, passion), which did not seem so much to disdain a sympathy with trivialities as to be incapable of denoting them. Nor had his voice, so far as I could discover in our quiet talk, much change or richness of intonation, but he always spoke with earnestness, and his eyes (glorious conductors of the light within) burned with a steady fire which no one could mistake for mere affability; they were one grand expression of the well-known line: "I am a man, and interested in all that concerns humanity." In one hour and a half's conversation he touched on every topic that I brought before him with an even current of good sense, if he embellished it with little wit or verbal elegance. He spoke like a man who had felt as much as he had reflected, more than he had spoken; like one who had looked upon society rather in the mass than in detail, and who regarded the happiness of America but as the first link in a series of universal victories; for his full faith in the power of those results of civil liberty which he saw all around him led him to foresee that it would erelong, prevail in other countries and that the social millennium of Europe would usher in the political. When I mentioned to him the difference I perceived between the inhabitants of New England and of the Southern States, he remarked: "I esteem those people greatly, they are the stamina of the Union and its greatest benefactors. They are continually spreading themselves too, to settle and enlighten less favored quarters. Dr. Franklin is a New Englander." When I remarked that his observations were flattering to my country, he replied, with great good humor, "Yes, yes, Mr. Bernard, but I consider your country the cradle of free principles, not their armchair. Liberty in England is a sort of idol; people are bred up in the belief and love of it, but see little of its doings. They walk about freely, but then it is between high walls; and the error of its government was in supposing that after a portion of their subjects had crossed the sea to live upon a common, they would permit their friends at home to build up those walls about them."[1]
[Footnote 1: Lodge, II, 338, 339.]
We find among the allusions of several strangers who travelled in Virginia in Washington's later days, who saw him or perhaps even stayed at Mount Vernon, some which are not complimentary. More than one story implies that he was a hard taskmaster, not only with the negroes, but with the whites. Some of the writers go out of their way to pick up unpleasant things. For instance, during his absence from home a mason plastered some of the rooms, and when Washington returned he found the work had been badly done, and remonstrated. The mason died. His widow married another mason, who advertised that he would pay all claims against his forerunner. Thereupon Washington put in a claim for fifteen shillings, which was paid. Washington's detractors used this as a strong proof of his harshness. But they do not inform us whether the man was unable to pay, or whether the claim was dishonest. Since the man paid voluntarily and did not question the lightness of the amount, may we not at least infer that he had no quarrel? And if he had not, who else had?
Insinuations concerning Washington's lack of sympathy for his slaves was a form which in later days most of the references to his care of them took. But here also there are evident facts to be taken into account. The Abolitionists very naturally were prejudiced against every slave-owner; they were also prejudiced in favor of every slave. Washington, on the contrary, harbored no prepossessions for or against the black man. He found the slaves idle, incompetent, lazy, although he would not have denied that the very fact of slavery caused and increased these evils. He treated the negroes justly, but without any sentimentality. He found them in the order in which he lived. They were the workmen of his plantation; he provided them with food, clothing, and a lodging; in return they were expected to give him their labor. It does not appear that the slaves on Washington's plantation endured any special hardship. A physician attended them at their master's expense when they were sick. That he obliged them to do their specified work, that he punished them in case of dishonesty, just as he would have done to white workmen, were facts which he never would have thought a rational person would have regarded as heinous. In his will he freed his slaves, not for the Abolitionist's reason, but because he regarded slavery as the most pernicious form of labor, debasing alike the slave and his master, uneconomic and most wasteful.
But in so general a matter as Washington's treatment of his slaves, we must be careful not to take a solitary case and argue from it as if it were habitual. By common report his slaves were so well treated that they regretted it if there was talk of transferring them to other planters. We have many instances cited which show his unusual kindness. When he found, for instance, that a mulatto woman, who had lived many years with one of the negroes, had been transferred to another part of his domain and that the negro pined for her, he arranged to have her brought back so that they might pass their old age together. The old negro was his servant, Billy Lee, who suffered an accident to his knee, which made him a cripple for the rest of his life. This he spent at Mount Vernon well cared for. Washington continued to the end the old custom of supplying a hogshead of rum for the negroes to drink at harvest time, always premising that they must partake of it sparingly.
Washington's religious beliefs and practices have also occasioned much controversy. If we accept his own statements at their plain value, we must regard him as a Church of England man. I do not discover that he was in any sense an ardent believer. He preferred to say "Providence" rather than "God," probably because it was less definite. He attended divine service on Sundays, whenever a church was near, but for a considerable period at one part of his life he did not attend communion. He thoroughly believed in the good which came from church-going in the army and he always arranged to have a service on Sundays during his campaigns. When at Mount Vernon, on days when he did not go out to the service, he spent several hours alone in meditation in his study. The religious precepts which he had been taught in childhood remained strong in him through life. He believed moral truths, and belief with him meant putting in practice what he professed. While he had imbibed much of the deistic spirit of the middle of the eighteenth century it would be inaccurate to infer that he was not fundamentally a Christian.
After Washington withdrew to Mount Vernon, early in the spring of 1797, his time was chiefly devoted to agriculture and the renewing of his life as a planter. He declined all public undertakings except that which President Adams begged him to assume—the supreme command of the army in case of the expected war with France. That new duty undoubtedly was good for him, for it proved to him that at least all his official relations with the Government had not ceased, and it also served to cheer the people of the country to know that in case of military trouble their old commander would lead them once more. Washington gave so much attention to this work, which could be in the earlier stages arranged at Mount Vernon, that he felt justified in accepting part of the salary which the President allotted to him. But the war did not come. As Washington prophesied, the French thought better of their truculence. The new genius who was ruling France had in mind something more grandiose than a war with the American Republic.