[Transcript]
Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.
Episode 1.8: Yorktown and Peace
When we left off last week, George Washington had just left Mount Vernon after a brief stay and was headed toward Yorktown, Virginia, where General Nathaneal Greene was preparing to face Lord Cornwallis in battle. We’re in September 1781, just to reorient everyone.
When George left Mount Vernon, Jack Custis rode with him. Jack had not enlisted in any militia or taken part in any battles. His primary concern during the war years had been fathering an heir, which he had now done. (Remember, in this time period, girls were not considered heirs. They could inherit money from their fathers, but they rarely inherited property, and any money or property they controlled would be turned over to their eventual husband. So only sons were considered heirs. Now that Jack and Nelly had a son, Jack apparently felt more comfortable going off to see the war and the camp up close. But George promised Martha he would keep her only remaining child far from battle.)
During the three days George spent at Mount Vernon, 18,000 American troops had filtered south into Virginia from New York, and French Admiral de Grasse commanded a fleet that was sailing into the Chesapeake Bay to lend support to the Americans in the coming battle with Lord Cornwallis.
The Americans and the French laid siege to Cornwallis’s army in Yorktown, bombarding the town with cannon fire for about a week, from October 9 until the 17th. On October 17, Lord Cornwallis sent an officer to Washington with a white flag to discuss the terms for a British surrender. Two days later, Articles of Capitulation were signed, and the surrender was official. It was the single greatest American victory of the entire war. More than 7000 British troops and German mercenaries were now prisoners of war. Although the war dragged on for another two years, Yorktown was essentially the final nail in the coffin for the British.
It wasn’t all celebration after Yorktown though. It’s hard to overstate just how cramped and dirty war encampments were. Even though people could be inoculated against smallpox, there were plenty of other diseases they could not be inoculated against. And Jack Custis caught one of them. It was called “camp fever,” but it was likely typhoid, which is a bacterial infection of Salmonella Typhi. It’s transmitted through contaminated food or water, and is fatal when untreated. Antibiotics didn’t exist in the 18th century, so typhoid killed a lot of people, including Jack Custis.
Fortunately, Martha and Nelly were able to be with him when he died. He had been moved from the camp outside Yorktown to his uncle’s home at Eltham. You’ll remember this is Burwell Bassett, the widower of Martha’s favorite sister Nancy. A note was dispatched to Martha at Mount Vernon, and she and Nelly traveled as quickly as possible to Eltham. They sat with him for several days as his condition worsened. Martha sent word to George, still outside Yorktown, to come at once. His diary for the day he received her letter stops mid-sentence. He jumped on a horse and rode all night, arriving at Eltham just in time to say goodbye to Jack.
Jack Custis, the last of Martha’s children, died on November 6, 1781, just a few weeks short of his 27th birthday. Because they were in southern Virginia, he was able to be buried at the old family burial ground at Queen’s Creek, where his father was buried, along with his brother Daniel and his sister Fanny. Of Martha’s four children, only Patsy was not buried at Queen’s Creek.
Helen Bryan was the only biographer to comment on the strange parallels between Martha’s first marriage and Nelly’s. Nelly was now a Custis widow with four young children and an estate to manage at the age of 23 after seven years of marriage. Martha had also become a Custis widow with young children and an estate to manage at the age of 25 after seven years of marriage.
A few days after Jack’s burial, Martha, Nelly, and George returned to Mount Vernon. George was needed in Philadelphia to meet with Congress, but family came first. After spending a week at Mount Vernon, George and Martha left together for Philadelphia. Despite the fact that the British still held New York and parts of the South, the mood in Philadelphia was jubilant. People were still celebrating the victory at Yorktown when George and Martha arrived on November 28.
The Washingtons spent four months in Philadelphia that winter, and they were busy. There were endless dinners, visits, and other social engagements. George was also occupied in meetings to discuss campaigns to come in 1782. Although people were talking about peace, until there was a treaty, they were still at war.
In late March 1782, George and Martha left Philadelphia and went to Newburgh, New York, which is where the Continental Army was encamped for the winter. Headquarters was a small one-story house that was so cramped that the parlor also had to be used as a guest bedroom on occasion.
Martha stayed in camp with George until mid-July. Informal peace negotiations were taking place in Paris between the British, Americans, and French, but nothing was settled. British ships had fought and defeated French Admiral de Grasse in the West Indies, but then, the British evacuated Savannah, Georgia in August 1782. No one really seemed to know whether the war was on or off. Parliament had voted against continuing the war, and a preliminary peace treaty was signed in November. In December, the British abandoned Charleston, South Carolina, but they still held New York.
George went into winter quarters fairly early in October 1782 because the weather was uncooperative. He had been hoping to be back at Mount Vernon permanently by the winter of 1782-83, but no such luck. So once again, he sent for Martha. Winter quarters were in the same small house in Newburgh, and Martha arrived in December 1782.
The winter of 1782-83 was full of departures. With peace imminent, George’s aides resigned and returned to their lives. The French troops also left and headed back to France. But George wasn’t willing to leave his post as Commander-in-Chief until peace was official.
There was less for Martha to do than in winters past. There was no need to sew shirts or socks for the men, so she mostly entertained and worked on personal sewing projects.
The officers and enlisted men had not yet disbanded. Most of them were still waiting for pay. In some cases, they were owed years of back pay. Neither Congress nor the states had really done much of anything to figure out how to pay these men for their service. The most obvious solution was to levy a tax, but taxes had been what got them into this war in the first place, so everyone was hesitant to do that.
In winters past, there had been quite a few mutinies and near-mutinies by enlisted men, but in the spring of 1783, there was a near-mutiny by the officers. A pamphlet was distributed calling for use of military force against Congress to make them pay what was owed. George set a meeting with the officers for March 15. At this meeting, he successfully quashed the budding mutiny by reminding them what he, personally, had given to the war. Two books quote him somewhat differently, but I prefer this one from Patricia Brady’s book: “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray, but almost blind, in the service of my country.”
The officers stood down. But unpaid troops marched in the streets of Philadelphia in the summer of 1783, causing Congress to flee to Princeton, New Jersey. George and Martha joined them there in August, after Martha recovered from a serious fever. The war was essentially over by this point. Preliminary articles of peace had been signed in January, and Britain had announced the end of hostilities in February. This news finally reached America in April 1783.
Martha went back to Mount Vernon in early October, anticipating that George would follow not far behind her. He was waiting only for the final peace treaty to arrive and for the British to evacuate New York.
Finally, in November 1783, word of the final peace treaty arrived in America. On November 25, the British finally evacuated New York, and on the same day, General George Washington and Governor George Clinton rode into the city at the head of a small, symbolic force. New York had been occupied by the British for seven years, and for every minute of those seven years, it had been George’s goal to reclaim it. We can only imagine how he must have felt when he finally achieved that goal.
We know that George was looking forward to retiring from public service and returning to Mount Vernon because he wrote about it in letters to many people. There were rumors, of course, that he wanted to be king or some sort of military dictator, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
Congress had convened in Annapolis, Maryland, so George traveled there in December to give his farewell address and submit his formal resignation. He also wanted to submit an account of his expenses during the war.
You may recall that he had declined a salary when Congress first put him in charge of the Continental Army, and asked only that his expenses be paid. He also submitted for reimbursement of all the traveling expenses Martha had incurred going back and forth between Mount Vernon and the winter camps for eight long years.
He had originally paid all those expenses from his own money, but he concluded that her travels to camp each year had been in service of the country and the army, and could have been avoided if Congress and the army had been in a less “embarrassed situation.” Because he couldn’t go home to Mount Vernon without risking the disintegration of the army, having Martha come to him was a justifiable public expense.
On the evening of December 22, a grand ball was held in Annapolis, and on December 23, in front of a packed house, General George Washington delivered his resignation via a farewell address to Congress. In his own words, “I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.” George Washington was once again a private citizen.
And as a private citizen, he was in a hurry to get back to Mount Vernon. He left immediately and arrived home on Christmas Eve 1783. It was a rather different home than the one he had left in 1775, and even different than when he had left it in 1781 to head to Yorktown.
For starters, little Nelly and baby Wash, who were now almost 5 and about 2 ½, were living full-time at Mount Vernon and had essentially been adopted by Martha and George after Jack’s death. The elder Nelly had been grieving Jack and still recovering from giving birth to Wash when George and Martha returned to Mount Vernon after Jack’s burial. It was not uncommon for children to be raised in households other than their parents’, and although George and Martha never legally adopted little Nelly and Wash, they were commonly referred to as their adopted children. They would reside with George and Martha for their entire childhoods.
Additionally, the elder Nelly had remarried in November 1783. She married David Stuart, a Scottish physician who practiced in Alexandria. Nelly and Jack’s elder daughters, Betsy and Patty, remained with their mother and step-father. They lived at Abingdon, where Nelly and Jack had lived, so they visited Mount Vernon often, and Martha and Nelly remained close.
Beyond the changes to the family, Mount Vernon itself had changed in the eight years George had been away. Stables and outbuildings were in disrepair. Fences had fallen down and needed to be replaced. Gutters leaked. Stones in the driveway were loose. Windows lacked glass and were covered with wood planks.
Most of the improvements George had planned before he went to war were unfinished. Despite sending his cousin and estate manager Lund Washington detailed instructions throughout the war for what he wanted done, eventually there was neither money nor workers to complete the work.
While George resettled himself into the daily affairs of the estate, Martha was thrilled to have children in the house again. And she was finally able to honor her promise to her deceased sister Nancy by bringing Nancy’s daughter Fanny to Mount Vernon to live and enjoy the society of Northern Virginia. Fanny was now 16, and it was time for her to find a husband.
As it turns out, she didn’t have to go far to find one. George’s nephew George Augustine Wasington was also staying at Mount Vernon. He had served as a soldier during the Revolution but his health was not good. He suffered chest pains, fatigue, and fever and was recuperating at Mount Vernon. He and Fanny took an instant liking to each other and were soon engaged.
In May 1784, George paid for George Augustine to go to the West Indies for treatment. It was apparently clear to everyone that George Augustine had tuberculosis (which was called consumption back then) but no one seemed to think that was an impediment to his courtship of Fanny. He returned to Mount Vernon in May 1785, and he and Fanny were married in October that year. George Augustine also became Mount Vernon’s plantation manager because George needed help getting it back into shape.
In addition to getting the house and estate back into good health, the Washingtons were inundated with visitors and guests. Strangers from around the country wanted to come meet the famous general who had won the war. Even visiting Europeans traveled to Mount Vernon to see the great hero of the Revolution.
In June 1784 Martha wrote to her sister-in-law that she hoped to be able to visit her, but at the moment it was impossible for “the general” to leave home. “[H]e has so much business of his own, and the public’s, together that I fear he will never find leisure to go see his friends.”
The Washingtons were also getting kind of old. In 1784 Martha turned 53 and George turned 52. Quoting here from Helen Bryan’s book Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, “The Washingtons’ joy at being home and resuming their lives at Mount Vernon was tempered by the effect on their health of eight years of constant strain, uncertainty, anxiety, difficult living conditions, and poor food. Both were physically exhausted. George was growing deaf, and he had very few teeth left ... .Martha, less physically robust than her husband, felt the cumulative effects of the years of strain, camp conditions, and the long trips to and from camp even more than George, but both were worn-out. In January 1784 she wrote a friend in New Jersey, Hannah Boudinot, that she very much hoped the Boudinots would pay them a visit at Mount Vernon because her ‘frequent long Journeys have not only left me without inclination to undertake another, but almost disqualified me from doing it, as I find the fatiegue [sic] is too much for me to bear.’”
In April 1785, Martha’s mother died, and nine days later, her last surviving brother, Bartholomew, also died. Of the nine Dandridge children, only Martha and her youngest sister Betsy remained.
At the end of 1785, a tutor for little Nelly and Wash joined the household. He was a New Hampshire native and Harvard graduate named Tobias Lear. They brought him on for a year-long trial as tutor, but he ended up becoming quite an integral part of the family.
In addition to trying to get Mount Vernon back into shape, George was also involved in some work related to the western frontier of Virginia. Late in 1784 he had made a trip to his lands west of the Appalachian mountains—a journey of 680 miles round trip. He found squatters on some of his lands, and had difficulty extracting rent from his tenants who were legally occupying other parcels of land. He became interested in developing a company to make the upper reaches of the Potomac River navigable. This would enable the quick transport of soldiers to the western border of America, and also make trade easier.
Because the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay ran through and bordered both Virginia and Maryland, it made sense for those two states to work together on this endeavor. George and James Madison were both involved in this from the beginning.
In 1786, their vision expanded, and the state of Virginia invited all 13 states to a convention in Annapolis to discuss trade and commercial matters. Only 5 states sent representatives, but the discussions must have been fairly useful, because those 5 states then issued a joint call for a convention of all states to be held in Philadelphia the following May.
There was another reason for the states to all send representatives to a convention. America was being governed by a document called the Articles of Confederation. The Articles had been debated at the Second Continental Congress and took effect on March 1, 1781, after all 13 former colonies/new states ratified them.
The Articles of Confederation had a lot of problems. They put Congress in charge of the country, but gave Congress no actual power. Congress could not levy taxes, it could only request money from the states. And the states usually ignored Congress’s requests. Congress could pass laws but had no way to enforce them. There was no judiciary, and the executive was a figurehead elected by the members of Congress. The so-called United States of America were not at all united.
It was obvious to many that a new governing document was required and that an overarching federal government that could supersede the individual states was necessary in order for the new country to survive.
James Madison of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York were the loudest voices calling for a Grand Convention, and they basically begged George to attend. George was reluctant to be drawn back into public life, but he agreed that a strong central government was necessary. He was named a delegate to the Grand Convention at a preliminary Virginia convention held in Richmond.
George left Mount Vernon (again) for Philadelphia (again) in May (again) 1787. It was starting to look like 1775 all over again.
George rode to Philadelphia without Martha. She was busy at home, taking care of the house and children. She was also tending to Fanny. She had given birth to a baby boy in April 1787, but he died shortly after birth. She was still recovering from that, and also had developed a cough, which wasn’t surprising, considering that her husband had tuberculosis!
On May 25, delegates to the Grand Convention unanimously elected George as president of the Convention. The original aim of the convention was to revise the Articles of Confederation, but the Federalists wanted to scrap the Articles completely and write a new Constitution. The anti-Federalists insisted that it was sufficient to revise the Articles. They fought over this until the end of July when the Federalists finally won.
The delegates then spent the next two months hammering out the details of the new Constitution, finally adopting it on September 17, 1787. George left Philadelphia the next day, eager to get back to his beloved Mount Vernon.
Each of the 13 states now needed to hold a ratifying convention. As soon as 9 states ratified the new Constitution, it would become the law of the land. The Constitution established the three-part government that stands today: an executive in the form of a president, a legislative branch with two parts, and a judicial branch.
The exact duties of the president were vague, but everyone assumed George would be the first president, and they all had complete faith in him. George made it clear that he didn’t actually want to be president, which only made everyone want him to be president even more.
From the moment the Constitution was adopted by the Convention, there was pushback against it. The anti-Federalists hadn’t given up on their crusade against a strong central government. They were also wary of a strong executive. George, along with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, engaged in a letter-writing campaign urging ratification of the new Constitution. They strongly implied—and sometimes came right out and said it—that George would be the first president and that no one needed to worry about him usurping control as a king or dictator.
One person who definitely did NOT want George to be the first president was his wife. After eight long years of war, Martha felt that they had already done their duty in service of their country. They were old and tired, and they deserved to rest and enjoy their home and family.
But she was resigned to the near-inevitability of George becoming president. After it happened, she wrote to her nephew that the presidency seemed preordained for George and that “I think it was much too late for him to go into public life again, but it was not to be avoided.” She wrote to someone else, “though the general’s feelings and my own were perfectly in unison with respect to our predilection for public life, yet I cannot blame him for having acted according to his duties in obeying the voice of his country.”
A sense of duty and honor was George’s overriding sentiment throughout his life, and it would be no different when it came to accepting the presidency.
Through the winter and spring of 1787-88, states slowly ratified the new Constitution. Delaware was first, in December 1787. Within a month, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Georgia ratified, followed closely by Connecticut and Massachusetts. Maryland ratified in April, then South Carolina in May, and finally, on June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify and the U.S. Constitution officially came into effect. Virginia ratified a few days later, followed by New York in July. The two holdouts were North Carolina, which didn’t ratify until November 1789 (a full 17 months after it came into effect) and Rhode Island, which waited until May 1790 to ratify.
After New Hampshire ratified and the Constitution took effect, the next order of business was to select the electors who would elect the first President of the United States. I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole here, but since this was the very first election of a U.S. President, I feel like I want to share some interesting information I learned while researching this episode.
Unlike today, when all registered voters vote for a presidential candidate, who has chosen a running mate to be the vice presidential candidate, the first presidential election was very different.
To start with, there was no such thing as a running mate. The man who got the second-most electoral votes became the Vice President. The man who got the most votes became the President. The Electoral College was part of the process from the beginning, but the overall process has changed here and there over the years.
Basically, each state got a certain number of electoral college votes, which was the sum of the number of its Senators (always two) and the number of its Representatives (which varied based on population). This is the same math that is used today.
But in this first election, some states had the legislature choose the electors, and some used a form of popular vote to choose the electors. There was a possible total of 91 electors for the first election, but in the end, only 69 electors actually voted. North Carolina and Rhode Island hadn’t ratified the Constitution yet, so their combined 10 electors didn’t get to vote at all. Two electors from Maryland and two from Virginia did not vote—I have no idea why. And New York couldn’t even get its act together enough to decide how to choose the electors, so their 8 electoral votes were wasted.
Each elector got to cast two votes—one for president and one for vice president. Of the 69 electors who gathered on January 7, 1789, all 69 voted for George Washington for president. For vice president, 34 electors voted for John Adams of Massachusetts, 10 for John Jay of New York, and the remaining votes were split among various other candidates. And with that, America had its first president and vice president.
Oh, and here’s a fun fact: one of the electors from Virginia was David Stuart, Nelly Custis’s second husband.
George received the news of his election on April 14, 1789. You may well wonder why it took that long for the news to reach him when the vote had been held on January 7. News was slow in that day, but it wasn’t THAT slow. The problem was the certification process. Congress had to certify the results, and it took until April 6 to get enough members of Congress gathered to officially certify. Once that finally happened, it took about a week for George to get the news.
The inauguration was scheduled for April 30 in New York City, which had been settled on as the temporary capital. George departed Mount Vernon on April 16 to get there in time. Martha did not join him. His diary for that date says, “About ten o’clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity.” Four days later, Martha wrote to her nephew, “I am truly sorry to tell that the General is gone to New York. When, or whether he will ever come home again God only knows.”
Next week, we’ll hear about the first presidential inauguration and dive into George’s first term as president. Spoiler alert: Martha does eventually join him in New York.
Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me. The music is by Matthew Dull. Be a pal, and recommend this podcast to one of your pals. It would mean the world to me!
