I shall make some extracts from such portions of this book as appear to have been most used, not only because they contain the finest lessons of piety, morality, and wisdom, but most especially because I think the germ of Washington’s character may be traced in the principles and practice they so eloquently inculcate. One of the chapters which appears to have been selected as an ordinary lesson, and marked for the purpose in the table of contents, is denominated “The Great Audit.”64
One of the passages that Paulding selected from Hale certainly was the practice of Washington throughout his life. Hale writes:
When I undertook any place of power or eminence, first, I looked to my call thereunto to be such as I might discern to be thy call, not my own ambition. Second, that the place was such as might be answered by suitable abilities in some measure to perform. Third, that my end in it might not be the satisfaction of any pride, ambition, or vanity in myself, but to serve Providence and my generation honestly and faithfully.65
The reformational understanding of the Gospel as taught by the Chief-Justice66 and read to the Washington family by Mary Washington is seen in this quote from Hale’s chapter, “Of the Knowledge of Christ Crucified:”
. . . It is easie to see what the Fruits and Effects of all this are. . . . Benefits that naturally arise from Christ Crucified, and are enjoyed in this life, are these: 1. Justification and Acceptation in the sight of God; he looks upon us as those that have satisfied his Justice when his Son suffered; and as those that performed his Will, when his Son performed it: So that as our Lord imputed our sins to our Redeemer, so he imputes his Righteousness unto us; and as he was well pleased with him, so he was well pleased in him, with as many as are received into this Covenant.67
Following the tradition of Augustine Washington’s first wife, Mary Washington continued to read great biblical truths to George and his brothers as taught by Sir Matthew Hale. This tradition of reading sermons to the family continued in George Washington’s family, even when he had become President of the United States.68
CONCLUSION
What a man will become is in part due to his education and the books he reads. George Washington was taught Christian concepts with the use of biblically-oriented books. These books remained in his library until he died, and there is no evidence that he threw these beliefs overboard as an older man, as some of his contemporaries did, in favor of skeptical beliefs. Further, as we will see in the Churchman chapter, Washington personally assimilated this childhood training and became a leader in the Anglican Church tradition. But more significantly, there is not one written testimony from Washington that he ever left or rejected his educational and family training. Thus, one aspect of the faith of our founding father can be clearly seen in his solidly Christian education.
Childhood doodles by Washington in his family’s book on how to use the Book of Common Prayer. He wrote his deceased father Augustine’s name and initials.
EIGHT
The Personality of George Washington
“I consider it ... pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man; ...I believe it to be a proof of false modesty ... to appear altogether insensible to the commendations of the virtuous.”
1
George Washington, 1786
We shall continue to let Washington speak for himself regarding his religion, but we will now address his generally non-disclosing personality in the context of the moral commitments of his character that we have just explored. As we seek to understand Washington, who in many ways was truly a private man, we will next seek to engage the personality of the man himself. His high regard for personal privacy joined with his deep reluctance to speak of himself, have been misinterpreted by many to imply he did not have a Christian faith. We are persuaded by Washington’s own self-revealing letters that to interpret his personality in this way, we will never encounter the real Washington, the human being beneath the aura of glory and the warm-hearted man hidden within a persona of quarried stone.
DESCRIPTIONS OF WASHINGTON BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES
When we consider the momentous character of Washington and the praise he was given by his contemporaries, we can see why it has been difficult to understand him as a humble human being. How can we distinguish between the way his followers saw him and the way he saw himself?
In his book, Washington on Washington, Paul M. Zall writes:
The difference may be inferred from passages that talk about himself in his own writings, both public and private. The public statements fit the Olympian image of Washington in the national memory. The private statements in his journals and letters sometimes reveal a different person—one who will overflow with romantic feelings or wallow in sentimentality or explode with spontaneous wit, even in the privacy of a diary.
A quintessentially private person, Washington had a natural reluctance to express his feelings at all, a reluctance that was rein forced when his words were published to public scorn. He would be known by deeds, not words, but his written words remain to mirror him, often obliquely.
The person and character of Washington did, of course, easily lend themselves to national deification. He was of the stuff of heroes. He even looked the way a hero should look—tall and handsome powerfully built and graceful. Jefferson said of him: “His person was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.”
His sheer presence impressed everyone. Abigail Adams thought he had more grace and dignity than King George III.2
Even one of George Washington’s slaves weighed in on the impact of his personality, as Washington biographer Saul Padover writes:
And his Negro servant, recalling the twenty-seven-year-old Washington’s marriage to Martha Custis, exclaimed that there was nobody, in that glitterin’ wedding assemblage, like the young Colonel: “So tall, so straight! And . . . with such an air! Ah, sir, he was like no one else! Many of the grandest gentlemen in their gold lace were at the wedding, but none looked like the man himself.”3
To some degree, Washington made it difficult for people to know his personality, much less his own private beliefs. Benson Lossing writes, “It was a peculiar trait of his character to avoid everything, either in speech or writing, that had a personal relation to himself.”4
More than thirty years after his death, Bishop William White wrote on Nov. 28, 1832, “I knew no man who so carefully guarded against the discoursing of himself, or of his acts, or of any thing that pertained to him; and it has occasionally occurred to me when in his company that, if a stranger to his person were present he would never have known from anything said by the President that he was conscious of having distinguished himself in the eye of the world. His ordinary behavior, although exceptionally courteous, was not such as to encourage obtrusion on what he had on his mind.”5
In confirmation of this observation, Washington himself wrote: “Having been thus unwarily, and I may be permitted to add, almost unavoidably betrayed into a kind of necessity to speak of myself, and not wishing to resume that subject, I choose to close it forever by observing, that as, on the one hand, I consider it an indubitable mark of mean-spiritedness and pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man; so on the other, I believe it to be a proof of false modesty or an unworthy affectation of humility to appear altogether insensible to the commendations of the virtuous and enlightened part of our species.”6
Thus, the historian has his work cut out for him to try and find the real George Washington. The man himself did not make it easy for us, nor was that his intention.
SHYNESS INTERPRETED AS ALOOFNESS
George Washington certainly carried himself with a reserved dignity. But his shyness was sometimes interpreted as aloofness. In a letter to French Ambassador, Eléonor Francois Élie, Washington apologized for the aloofness of the American people. On March 26, 1788, Washington wrote
I have even hoped, from the short time of your residence here, and the partial acquaintance you may have had with the characters of the persons, that a natural distance in behavior and reserve in address, may have [not] appeared as intentional coldness and neglect. I am sensible that the apology itself, though it should be well founded, would be but an indifferent one, yet it will be better than none: while it served to prove that it is our misfortune not to have the same chearfulness in appearance and facility in deportment, which some nations possess. And this I believe, in a certain degree, to be the real fact; and that such a reception is sometimes given by individuals as may affect a foreigner with very disagreeable Sensations, when not the least shadow of an affront is intended.7
George Washington was actually commenting in good measure on himself as well. Washington’s apparent coldness left people with various reactions. A Mennonite minister from the Netherlands named Francis Adrian Van der Kemp found Mount Vernon, as did many visitors, to be a place “where simplicity, order, unadorned grandeur, and dignity, had taken up their abode,” although he detected in his host “somewhat of a repulsive coldness under a courteous demeanour.”8 One visitor described Washington as “morose.”9 U. S. Senator William Maclay from Pennsylvania described the President as “pale, nay almost cadaverous.”10
Washington’s personal sense of decorum and the personal space of office and honor seems to have added to this impression of a cool, relational aloofness. Benson Lossing relates a telling anecdote:
It is related of the Honorable Gouverneur Morris who was remarkable for his freedom of deportment toward his friends, that on one occasion he offered a wager that he could treat General Washington with the same familiarity as he did others. This challenge was accepted, and the performance tried. Mr. Morris slapped Washington familiarly on the shoulder, and said, “How are you, this morning, general?” Washington made no reply, but turned his eyes upon Mr. Morris with a glance that fairly withered him. He afterward acknowledged, that nothing could induce him to attempt the same thing again.11
A spiritual variation on the theme of Washington’s coolness is seen in the writings of Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury. These two founding Methodist clergymen in America paid a visit to Washington seeking support for their anti-slavery petition.12 Asbury’s record of the May 26, 1785, visit simply said, “We waited on General Washington, who received us very politely, and gave us his opinion against slavery.”13 But Coke’s journal included a more substantial description of their visit,
The general’s seat is very elegant, built upon the great river Potomawk;...He received us very politely, and was very open to access. He is quite the plain country gentleman and he is a friend to mankind. After dinner we desired a private interview, and opened to him the grand business on which we came, presenting to him our petition for the emancipation of the negroes, and intreating his signature, if the eminence of his station did not render it inexpedient for him to sign any petition. He informed us that he was of our sentiments, and had signified his thought on the subject to most of the great men of the State: that he did not see it proper to sign the petition, but if the Assembly took it into consideration, would signify his sentiments to the Assembly by a letter. He asked us to spend the evening and lodge at his house, but our engagement at Annapolis the following day, would not admit of it. I was loth to leave him, for I greatly love and esteem him and if there was no pride in it, would say that we are kindred Spirits, formed in the same mould. O that God would give him the witness of his Spirit!”14
Washington’s impact on Coke was positive, yet even with Coke’s sense of a personal “kindred spirit” with Washington, he left praying for Washington’s reception of “the witness of the Spirit.” However, by the time of Washington’s presidency and later at his death, these founding bishops of the American branch of the Methodist Church viewed Washington as a Christian. Asbury’s words at Washington’s death were, “Matchless man! At all times he acknowledged the providence of God, and never was he ashamed of his Redeemer. We believe he died not fearing death.”15
