[Transcript]
Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.
Episode 1.10: Life in Philadelphia and a Second Term
We left off last week with George and Martha settled into life in Philadelphia with little Nelly and Wash.
Philadelphia was still the preeminent city of America. A French observer claimed, “It is certainly the most beautiful and best-built city in the nation, and also the wealthiest, though not the most ostentatious.” Abigail Adams described it as, “one continued scene of Parties upon parties, balls and entertainment equal to any European city.”
Nelly was settled in a new school, but Wash was so lackadaisical about education that he was not eligible to be enrolled in a school, so a private tutor was engaged to come to the house for his lessons. A dancing teacher came to the house three days a week, and they invited other children to be part of the lessons, because dancing lessons work better with a crowd.
In March 1791, George set off to tour the southern states. As a southerner himself, he had toured the northern states first so as not to show favoritism toward the south. Say what you will about George Washington, he always tried hard to be impartial.
Martha was ill most of the spring. She had always had complaints of stomach aches over the years, but as she got older, she seems to have been sick more often. In March 1791, Tobias and Polly Lear had a baby boy. Back at Mount Vernon, Fanny gave birth to a second baby boy in June. They named him Charles Augustine.
George Augustine’s tuberculosis was getting worse, and he was now coughing up blood. He took a trip to some warm springs in Virginia to try to improve his health. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t help, and by August he was so sick he could no longer sit on his horse, which meant he couldn’t effectively manage the estate.
Martha and George packed up the children and they all headed to Mount Vernon. One of George’s nephews was hired to be the new plantation manager, and the family spent much time visiting with Nelly, David, and their children. This was the only time of year that little Nelly and Wash got to see their mother.
The Washingtons were back in Philadelphia by October when Congress reconvened. The following February, a birthday ball was held in George’s honor. For some anti-Federalists, this was too similar to the annual celebrations of the King’s birthday that had taken place during the colonial years.
Rival political factions were coalescing into parties, and 1792 brought a lot of discord into George’s life, and therefore into Martha’s life. On one side were Alexander Hamilton, who was still trying to get the new nation’s financial house in order, and John Adams. They favored a strong central government, a strong executive, and a decidedly British-influenced way of setting up government.
On the other side were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who were still trying to undermine a strong central government and a strong executive. They were anti-British and pro-French. The French Revolution had started in 1789, and by 1792 France was veering closer to anarchy. But many Americans harbored favorable views of France thanks to its financial help during the American Revolution.
George’s views were more in line with Hamilton and Adams, rather than with his fellow Virginians Jefferson and Madison.
A battle between the factions played out in the newspapers. No one was criticizing George, per se, but by criticizing Hamilton, they were indirectly criticizing George. He was sick of it. He instituted formal cabinet meetings hoping that by forcing everyone to be in a room together they would be less venomous toward one another, but it didn’t help.
George was already looking forward to retiring at the end of his four-year term in April 1793, and he informed Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Henry Knox of his intentions in the spring of 1792. They all begged him to stay on for a second term. Hamilton and Jefferson couldn’t agree on literally anything else, but they agreed that George was still much needed by his country. Hamilton wrote to George, “on patriotic and prudential considerations, the clear path to be pursued by you will be again to obey the voice of your country…I pray God that you will determine to make a further sacrifice of your tranquility and happiness to the public good.”
George had a conversation with Thomas Jefferson in the fall of 1792 on the subject. Jefferson recorded (presumably in his diary) that George had said that if he was needed to “save the cause to which he had devoted his life principally, he would make the sacrifice of a longer continuance.” And George wrote to his aide David Humphreys, “Perhaps in no instance of my life have I been more sensible of the sacrifice than in the present. For at my age, the love of retirement grows every day more and more powerful.”
It’s interesting that the word “sacrifice” appears in all of these quotes. George and Martha were ready to serve their country yet again, but they were very aware of what they were giving up by doing it.
The electoral college met on December 5, 1792. There were now 132 electors, because Vermont and Kentucky were now states in the Union. George received another unanimous election to the presidency, and John Adams received 77 (a majority) of the votes for the vice presidency.
We’ll have a lot more to say about John and Abigail Adams next season, but this quote from a letter he wrote to his wife after the 1792 election is too good not to include now. “The Noise of Election is over….Four years more will be as long as I shall have a Taste for public Life or Journeys to Philadelphia. I am determined in the meantime to be no longer the Dupe, and run into Debt to Support a vain Post which has answered no other End than to make me unpopular.”
Early 1793 brought bad news after bad news. In January, Martha’s brother-in-law (and Fanny’s father) Burwell Bassett died after falling off a horse. And the French beheaded their King, Louis XVI, but the Americans wouldn’t hear about it until later in the spring because of the delay in trans-Atlantic news. The Queen, Marie Antoinette was beheaded later that same year. In February, George Augustine finally succumbed to tuberculosis and died. He and Fanny had moved with their children to her family home in Eltham hoping the milder southern Virginia weather would help. It obviously did not. And Fanny was also getting sicker from her own tuberculosis.
Martha would have liked to go to Eltham to comfort Fanny, but she couldn’t leave George and Philadelphia. Also, it was winter, so the journey probably would have been difficult. George wrote to Fanny, offering her and her three children the use of either Mount Vernon or a house he owned in Alexandria. She chose Alexandria thinking it would be easier to manage the children’s education in the city. Martha sent her much advice for setting up a household, and offered her any of the housewares at Mount Vernon that might be useful to her in Alexandria. Martha and George both did what they could to support Fanny from afar.
There was no big, fancy celebration of George’s birthday that February. Martha and George weren’t in the mood. They wanted to be preparing to move back to Mount Vernon, but instead they were embarking on another four years of public service.
On March 4, 1793, George Washington was inaugurated into office for his second term as president. This time, Martha was there, along with their four grandchildren, Betsy, Patty, Nelly, and Wash.
Almost immediately, things got complicated. France’s Revolution was turning into a full-blown European war. France was already at war with Austria and Prussia. In February, France had declared war on Britain and Holland; and in March, it had declared war on Spain and Portugal. America was caught in the middle between France and Britain.
Under the treaty signed by France and the United States at the end of the American Revolution, the U.S. was obligated to support its French ally. The U.S. also had war debts that were owed to France. But the question of whether the U.S. should honor those obligations turned on what was meant by “France.”
The treaty had been signed with, and the debts were owed to, the monarchy of France. Well, the monarchy was gone, and a French Republic had taken its place. All of the aristocrats who had personally helped America in its Revolution were now either imprisoned or being executed by the French Republic.
Thomas Jefferson was firmly on the side of supporting the French Republic, while Alexander Hamilton, you might guess, was firmly against it. George wanted to stay out of the whole mess. The United States had neither an army nor a navy to speak of. He felt that they should avoid European entanglements, and to that end he signed the Neutrality Proclamation on April 22, 1793.
Neutrality was unpopular with many Americans, but George held tight to his view that America should not get involved in wars that didn’t affect its own interests. Martha seems to have supported him in this. She never commented publicly on this sort of political matter, but made her feelings known privately at parties where politics was discussed.
The summer of 1793 was a deadly one in Philadelphia. A yellow fever outbreak started in July, and by August it was killing about 50 people every day. By the time it was over, between four and five thousand people had died, nearly 12% of the city’s population. Polly Lear fell sick with a fever in July and died on July 26. She may or may not have been one of the first victims of the epidemic.
People fled Philadelphia as fast as they could, if they had the means to. Congress and most of the cabinet had left, along with nearly half the total population of the city. George wanted Martha and the children to evacuate to Mount Vernon in early August, but she refused to go without him. George wrote in a letter, “Mrs. Washington was unwilling to leave me surrounded by the malignant fever wch. prevailed, I could not think of hazarding her and the Children any longer by my continuance in the City…[it] was becoming every day more and more fatal.” They all finally left on September 10 and headed to Mount Vernon.
They spent the fall in Virginia, tending to the estate and spending time with Fanny and her children. Because yellow fever is mosquito-borne, cold weather put an end to the epidemic. Martha, George, and the children returned to Philadelphia in November.
The city was much changed, with empty houses, failed businesses, and overcrowded graveyards. In January 1794, Martha wrote to Fanny, “They have suffered so much that it can not be got over soon by those that was in the city—almost every family has lost some of thair friends—and black seems to be the general dress of the city—the players are not allowed to come hear nor has there been any assembly.” I think we can all relate to these sentiments after going through the global Covid pandemic.
Congress and many other prominent residents of Philadelphia refused to return to the city. Back then, people didn’t know that yellow fever was carried by mosquitoes, so they didn’t know that the cold weather protected them. They had decamped to Germantown, just outside of Philadelphia, and in Germantown they remained. So George rented a house in Germantown and the family temporarily moved there. Everyone, Congress included, returned to Philadelphia in December, presumably after the city had gone several months without anyone dying of yellow fever.
On the political front, Thomas Jefferson had resigned as Secretary of State. His divisions with other cabinet members (and with George) over support for the French Republic had become too much for him. He was hard at work formalizing his political party. Instead of being called anti-Federalist, they would have their own name and identity. It was to be called the Republican Party, but don’t confuse that with the modern-day Republican Party. The parties and their names and beliefs will shift quite dramatically over the next two hundred years.
On the home front, Martha and George enjoyed a visit in February 1794 from their granddaughters Betsy and Patty. Wash had finally been accepted as a student at a boys’ academy in Germantown, and Nelly was learning practically everything she could: French, Italian, English, geography, mathematics, history, drawing, painting, singing, and music. Martha and George were determined to give her every opportunity and encourage her in all the things. George ordered a harpsichord from England to encourage her musical talents.
Although Philadelphia society was quiet that winter post-epidemic, Martha made use of the time by expanding her reading materials. She had always been a faithful reader of the Bible and the Anglican prayer book, but she started to enjoy works of history and novels. Philadelphia was the publishing capital of America, and there were many well stocked bookstores at Martha’s disposal. She also subscribed to a number of magazines, and read all the newspapers that George received.
The formal dinners and Drawing Room receptions continued in George’s second term, but now there was an additional daily ritual where Martha would receive visitors in more informal circumstances between 11 am and noon.
In the summer of 1794 George had yet another health scare when he had an incident while riding along the Potomac. He had taken a quick trip to Mount Vernon without Martha and the family. His horse had slipped on some rocks and he had wrenched his back in the process of trying to keep the horse from throwing him off. He was probably bed-ridden for several days, but he made no fuss about it, merely informing Martha about it in his regular letter to her. She was very worried about him and wrote to Fanny, “I have been so unhappy about the President that I did not know what to do with myself. Don’t let me be deceived….I beseech you to let me know how he is soon as you can and often.”
Fortunately he recovered and was soon back in Philadelphia. The family never did make it to Mount Vernon that summer. Instead they went only as far as Germantown. Everyone feared a repeat of the previous summer’s yellow fever outbreak, but fortunately that didn’t happen. Instead, a rebellion broke out in Western Pennsylvania. Known as the Whiskey Rebellion or the Whiskey Insurrection, it was an uprising of whiskey producers upset by taxes on whiskey. They refused to pay the tax and attacked the tax collectors.
George was not going to allow anyone to defy the federal government, so he called up several state militias in late September. He even put on his old uniform and was prepared to lead them into battle. Thankfully it didn’t come to that. The upstart rebels gave in without engaging in battle. Many arrests were made, and two leaders were sentenced to death, but George later pardoned them.
The situation created an uproar among the anti-Federalists/Republicans. Newspapers in early America were more like propaganda machines than impartial reporters of events. Different newspapers were run by members of different factions. The Republican press was engaged in an all-out attack on George. Papers accused him of keeping the “seclusion of a monk and the supercilious distance of a tyrant,” of “harboring dark schemes of ambition,” of “political degeneracy,” calling him “a swearer and blasphemer.”
George did not comment publicly on these attacks, but privately he and Martha were disgusted and irate about the exaggerations and fabrications. It was well known to both George and Martha that Thomas Jefferson had private involvement in the Republican press and encouraged the attacks. It led Martha to later call Jefferson, “one of the most detestable of mankind.”
Tobias Lear had left his position as George’s right-hand man at the end of 1793, and by the fall of 1794, he had proposed to the widowed Fanny, despite the fact that she had tuberculosis. Tobias was in business in Georgetown, part of the new capital city still being constructed, and Fanny was living in Alexandria, just a few miles away. They married in August 1795 and went to live at a home George owned not far from Georgetown. With them were Fanny’s three children from her marriage to George Augustine and Tobias’s son from his marriage to Polly.
As 1795 began, George and Martha were at the halfway point of the second term. As far as they were concerned, the end couldn’t come soon enough. They continued to be involved in family affairs as much as possible. Their second eldest granddaughter, Patty, was married in January 1795 to Thomas Peter, the son of a Georgetown merchant. Martha was unable to attend due to official responsibilities, but Nelly, who was now 14, was there with their eldest sister Betsy. Betsy then came to stay with the Washingtons in Philadelphia in the spring.
George’s birthday was celebrated as usual on February 22 with a grand ball. It was perhaps not the wisest choice to continue this quasi-royal extravagance at a time when the partisan Republican newspapers were accusing George of harboring monarchical tendencies, but it was held nonetheless.
According to an attendee of the ball, Martha was dressed in a fine silk gown but with no jewels or other ornaments, which contrasted sharply with the wives of foreign dignitaries who were “glittering from the floor to the summit of their headdress…such superabundance of ornament struck me as injudicious. We look too much at the gold and pearls to do justice to the lady [wearing them].”
Political matters were as tense in 1795 as they had been in 1794. Despite being neutral in the European war still raging, Britain refused to accept America’s neutrality and had been seizing ships of commerce while at sea. John Jay was dispatched to England to negotiate a treaty with the British. When its terms became known in spring 1795, many Americans were outraged, believing that it was too generous to the British.
The treaty was ratified by the Senate in June 1795, and as its benefits slowly became apparent, some of the outrage abated.
In July 1795 Martha and the children went to Mount Vernon for a long visit. Nelly was now 16, and her mother was worried that she was being spoiled by her fancy life in Philadelphia as the president’s adopted daughter. She proposed, and Martha accepted, that Nelly spend the winter at Hope Park with the Stuarts. The elder Nelly and David Stuart now had 12 children of their own (soon to be 13), so Nelly probably had her hands full helping with her half-siblings.
Shortly after her stay at Hope Park began, Nelly wrote to a friend, “I have gone through the greatest trial, I have ever experienced—parting with my beloved Grandmama. This is the first separation for any time since I was two years old. Since my father’s death she has been ever more than a Mother to me, and the President the most affectionate of Fathers. I love them more than anyone. You can guess then how severely I must feel this parting, even for a short time. I have been so long from My Mama that Grandmama thought it proper & necessary for me to spend this winter with her.” Nelly clearly had absorbed her grandparents’ sense of duty and honor during her years living with them.
Martha returned to Philadelphia with Wash in October. The family spent Christmas 1795 at home in Philadelphia and held a New Year’s Day reception.
In January 1796 Patty and her husband had their first child, Martha’s first great-grandchild, a girl named Martha Eliza Eleanor Peter. Nelly wrote, “Thus all the names of its nearest relations are taken in at once….I approve very much of this way of getting quit of all the family names.” It’s interesting that the name Parke does not appear. Patty, you’ll recall, was Jack’s daughter. Her formal name was Martha Parke Custis.
None of the biographers mention why the family custom of including Parke in everyone’s names ended. Maybe the Custis/Parke estate was arranged in such a way that none of Jack’s daughters would inherit anything that could be passed to their offspring and it was all going to Wash and his offspring. I don’t know, but I’m curious. After three generations of kids with the middle name Parke, it came to a sudden end.
In March 1796 Martha’s beloved niece Fanny died, either from tuberculosis or from a fever that she couldn’t fight off because of the tuberculosis—the sources contradict one another. She had been in decline for at least a week, and Tobias had been sending updates to Martha and George. Although they were prepared for her death, it still left them with heavy hearts. And here’s a weird fun fact for you: Tobias eventually remarried, and his third wife was also named Fanny, and she was also a niece of Martha’s!
On March 21, 1796 Betsy (now going by Eliza) married Thomas Law at Hope Park. Ever since her younger sister Patty had gotten married in 1795, she had been unhappy at home. She was even unhappy when she had stayed with the Washingtons in Philadelphia in the spring of 1795. She probably rushed into marriage, and she and her husband eventually divorced in 1811.
George and Martha did not attend the wedding but sent a note of congratulations. Nelly was alternating her time between the family home at Hope Park and Patty’s home in Georgetown, so she was able to attend her sister’s wedding.
As Martha was preparing to go to Mount Vernon in May 1796, something happened that paints her in a very bad light. I previously mentioned the Pennsylvania law that freed any domestic slave after six months’ residence in the state. Martha’s personal maid, Oney Judge, found out about this law from servants and slaves she had befriended. She gradually smuggled her belongings out of the Philadelphia house to keep them at friends’ houses before finally making her own escape from the house one night while the family was having dinner. She then boarded a ship and sailed to New Hampshire.
Martha was dumbfounded, offended, and furious. She couldn’t understand why Oney, who had a privileged position as Martha’s personal maid, and had only light work to do, would ever want to run away. Oney herself summed it up in a written record of a conversation she had after running away, “I wanted to be free…wanted to learn to read and write…”
What Martha and the other slaveholders never seemed to get through their heads is that life as a slave, even if they lived in a nice house and were given nice clothes to wear and didn’t have to do hard manual labor, was still nothing compared to life as a free person who could make their own choices about how to live their life. Better to be poor and free than to live in the lap of luxury as a slave.
George made some attempts to retrieve Oney, but they were ultimately unsuccessful, and Martha had to resign herself to life without her favorite maid.
The summer of 1796 was the last one of George’s second term, and he was so much looking forward to stepping down in March 1797 that he had already started working on his farewell address.
The farewell address was published on September 19, 1796. George wanted it to be very clear that he would not serve or accept a third term. A number of candidates technically ran to be the second president of the United States, but most of the campaigning was undertaken by the political parties on their behalf, rather than directly by the candidates. There seems to have been a lot of apprehension about being the man who followed George Washington as president.
By the election of 1796, Tennessee had become a state, and there were now 138 electors. Rather than casting one vote for the office of president and one vote for the office of vice president, each elector simply cast two votes. The man with the most votes became president and the runner-up became vice president. And that’s how we ended up, for the only time in history, with a president from one party and a vice president from the opposite party. John Adams, George’s vice president and an ardent Federalist, won 71 votes, and was the new president-elect. Thomas Jefferson, former Secretary of State and essentially the founder of the anti-Federalist Republican Party, received 68 votes and was to be the vice president. Two electors actually cast their votes for George, despite the fact that he wasn’t even running.
We can only imagine how relieved Martha must have been to know that they were definitely going back to Mount Vernon. A week before they left Philadelphia forever, she wrote to a friend, “The winter has been very sevear hear [sic]...but is now moderating and drawing to a close, with which the curtain will fall on our public life, and place us in a more tranquil theater.”
But they still had a few months of the presidency left, and the early months of 1797 were filled with the usual activities, both official and social. There also was a lot of packing to do. In addition to two jam-packed coaches that accompanied them back to Mount Vernon, 97 boxes, 14 trunks, 43 casks, 13 packages, 3 hampers, and a whole lot more were shipped by boat back to Virginia.
They celebrated George’s birthday for the last time in Philadelphia with a large gathering. It was his 65th birthday. Well-wishers were welcomed at the house from noon until three in the afternoon, and then 1200 people attended an evening ball at Rickett’s amphitheater. George danced, as he always did at balls. Martha’s dancing days were long behind her, but she must have been jubilant to be going home.
On March 4, 1797, George attended the inauguration of John Adams, then he and Martha said goodbye to their friends, and finally headed home to their beloved Mount Vernon with Nelly. It took them a week to make the journey because they were accosted by crowds all along the road home. Everyone wanted to see the President and wish him well in his retirement.
Next week, we’ll see what life was like post-presidency for George and Martha, finally home again to stay.
Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me. The music is by Matthew Dull.
