The oral history in regard to Washington’s communing in Morristown is as strong as oral history—the only known historical evidence available in this instance—can be. Boller’s simple dismissal of this entire record is inexcusable, since he himself appeals to the non-witnesses of Bishop White and Reverend Abercrombie as decisive. Yet all that their testimony proves is that they themselves did not see Washington commune when they were presiding in a service that he was attending, but not that he never communed or that he did not believe in Communion.
Boller’s appeal to doubt coupled with his wholesale denial of oral history means that he makes no effort to answer the massive, consistent and credible witnesses and their testimonies that assert Washington’s communing in Morristown and beyond. When a tradition preserved by oral history is able to be traced to the original source by highly credible testimonies, and when multiple witnesses were involved and available to contradict the oral history, but never controverted the claims of that tradition, and when there was no evident reason for such an unexpected event to occur in the first place, there is a strong presumption for the historical character of the tradition.27 Moreover, if there is a sound historical explanation consistent with Washington’s known beliefs as well as the facts of his non-communing in Philadelphia, but his communing in New York, Morristown, and elsewhere, then we have a substantial reason to accept the reliability of the tradition as being beyond reasonable, historical doubt.
Simply put, oral history is susceptible to embellishments and erroneous interpolations. Yet, it still can provide important historical data, particularly when it can be tested by many other sources, such as a large agreement of witnesses who lived during or close to that era. Before we provide the historical explanation that attempts to construct this data, we must complete our summary of other witnesses to Washington’s communing.
Yet another credible, written record of Washington’s communing exists. This is from Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of patriot, statesman, and General Phillip Schuyler. Elizabeth Schuyler is better known as Mrs. Alexander Hamilton.
MRS. ALEXANDER HAMILTON—WITNESS THAT WASHINGTON WAS A COMMUNICANT OF THE CHURCH
The evidence for Washington’s communion in this case emerges from the family of Alexander Hamilton. The occasion for the story to first be told was a family reunion held in New York in May of 1854. Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, Sr., was then ninety-seven years old. In spite of her age, she was remarkably well and her recollections were very clear. She had been able to travel to join the family all the way from Washington, D.C. She was even able to get in the coach on her own.
The story of this day was preserved by Reverend Alexander Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander Hamilton’s great-grandson. At the time of the 1854 reunion, although he was only seven years old, Mrs. Hamilton took Alexander, her young great-grandson, to visit the former house of the Alexander Hamilton family and to see St. Paul’s Church in New York City. The people on the trip were: Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, the young Alexander Hamilton, and Mrs. John Church Hamilton, who was Mrs. Alexander Hamilton’s daughter-in-law and the young Alexander Hamilton’s grandmother.
The Reverend Hamilton never forgot how Mrs. Alexander Hamilton related the exact details of the story of George Washington’s communion at St. Paul’s on the day of his presidential inauguration in 1789, when she would have been only thirty one years old. Her desire to tell the story had been prompted by the debate that had begun over whether or not George Washington was a communicant of the church. She told her great-grandson that she wanted him to know that she had been an eyewitness of Washington taking communion, so that he could inform future generations of the truth of Washington’s faith. The details of her account included:
• Mrs. Washington was not at the inaugural.
• Washington rode away from Mount Vernon with only two attendants.
• The Inauguration was at Federal Hall.
• The procession walked from Wall St. to Fulton instead of riding.
• The inaugural service was at St. Paul’s, instead of Trinity Church, because Trinity had been burned and had not yet been rebuilt.
• St. Paul’s was a chapel of Trinity Church.
• Bishop Provoost was Rector of Trinity Parish, although he was bishop of New York as well.
• She had taken Communion with Washington at the service
Her words to her young great-grandson were, “If anyone ever tells you that George Washington was not a communicant of the Church, you say that your great-grandmother told you to say that she ‘had knelt at this chancel rail at his side and received with him the Holy Communion.’”28 She also told her great-grandson of her being at Valley Forge with her father, General Phillip Schuyler. There she said she had heard George Washington praying fervently that all would be well for the soldiers. Mrs. Alexander Hamilton died five months later on November 8, 1854, at the age of ninety-seven.
Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton
Some seventy years later, around 1924, the Reverend Hamilton, rector and rector emeritus of Christ Church in Westport, Connecticut, from 1918 until his death on June 3, 1928, related this story to Miss Edith Beach, who was an officer of the Woman’s Auxiliary to the Board of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Since the annual meeting of the Woman’s Auxiliary was being held in the area, Miss Beech invited Reverend Hamilton to speak. She requested that he tell the story of the family reunion and how Mrs. Alexander Hamilton told him of communing with George Washington. Reverend Hamilton also related how the story had been confirmed to him by his maternal aunt as well. He also explained that his great-uncle Alexander, the son of the illustrious Alexander Hamilton, when visiting him at Mount Vernon, had also told him that Washington had invited many prominent men to attend church with him.
By 1925, Reverend Hamilton had prepared a written account of the events, which was published under the title “George Washington: Leader of Men and Communicant of the Church.” But the story did not stop here. The New York Herald Tribune printed the Reverend Alexander Hamilton’s testimony four years after his death on January 26, 1932. A member of the Church Missions Publishing Company related the story to the paper, as 1932 was “Washington Year” (the two-hundredth anniversary of Washington’s birth).
The news story in the Tribune was read by Linson H. De Voe of East Orange, New Jersey. De Voe wrote a letter to the “contributor” of the story on the same day it was printed. De Voe had had a childhood connection with the Hamiltons. Many years earlier, he overheard a conversation in which the Rector of Christ Episcopal church was commenting on George Washington’s alleged unorthodoxy. Another member of the Hamilton family, General Schuyler Hamilton—Mrs. Alexander Hamilton’s grandson and the father of Reverend Alexander Hamilton—proceeded to relate the same narrative that had just been printed in the Tribune. Thus, by De Voe’s experience, the story was shown to have been preserved and verified through a second line of testimony.
The historicity of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton’s testimony of George Washington communing is confirmed by two independently preserved testimonies: Mrs. Alexander Hamilton’s grandson and great-grandson.
This leaves us, then, with the final question. Is Mrs. Alexander Hamilton’s witness credible? She claimed to have visited Valley Forge with her father as a young adult of around twenty years old. This seems credible, since she met General Washington’s young supporting officer, Alexander Hamilton, during the war. Being married to one of Washington’s most trusted advisors, and having lived in New York, it would not be surprising that she would be at Washington’s inauguration when she was around thirty one years old.
Mrs. Alexander Hamilton is buried next to her husband. She died nearly fifty years after Alexander was killed in the infamous duel with Aaron Burr. Her testimony given to her family declares that she communed with President Washington on the day of his inauguration in New York.
Historical accuracy was consistent with her marked concern for the heritage of the Federalists, the political party originally led by Washington and championed by her husband. Historical accuracy was also consistent with her marked concern for the heritage of the Hamiltons, one of the true patriotic American military dynasties—whose history in the military had been duly recorded. Since her health was clearly excellent and she lived in Washington, she was in a position to know about the debate that had surfaced over Washington’s religious practices. There was proof that her long-term memory was excellent, given the accuracy of the other details that her family remembered hearing from her. Finally, what motive would she have to lie? Given her lifelong character as a woman of integrity, intentional deception seems impossible.29
ADDITIONAL TESTIMONIES TO WASHINGTON’S COMMUNING AND FAITH
When Washington died in 1799, the nation was filled with sermons and orations that honored his legacy. These messages both affirmed his status as a communicant and denied that he was a Deist. Mr. Sewell of New Hampshire wrote,
To crown all these moral virtues, he had the deepest sense of religion impressed on his heart—the true foundation-stone of all the moral virtues. He constantly attended the public worship of God on the Lord’s Day, was a communicant at His table, and by his devout and solemn deportment inspired every beholder with some portion of that awe and reverence for the Supreme Being, of which he felt so large a portion.30
David Ramsay, a historian from South Carolina wrote around the same time,
Washington was the friend of morality and religion; steadily attended on public worship; encouraged and strengthened the hands of the clergy. In all his public acts he made the most respectful mention of Providence, and, in a word, carried the spirit of piety with him, both in his private life and public administration. He was far from being one of those minute philosophers who think that death is an eternal sleep, or of those who, trusting to the sufficiency of human reason, discard the light of divine revelation.31
WHY DID WASHINGTON NOT COMMUNE DURING THE WAR?
But even with this testimony of Washington’s communing both before, during, and after the war, and also as president, we still must address why the charge of his non-communing exists.
Other suggestions have been offered as well. Perhaps it might be argued that since communion was infrequently celebrated in colonial America, it had not become a foundational spiritual discipline in Washington’s mind. The church only provided the Eucharist three or four times a year. “It was the custom in the colonial churches to administer communion only at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide [Pentecost Sunday], and it was not an uncommon practice for communicants to receive only once a year.”32 Perhaps Washington was simply following the practice that was common for Virginians, as Bishop William Meade described,
... in former days there was a most mistaken notion, too prevalent both in England and America, that it was not so necessary in the professors of religion to communicate [receive communion] at all times, but that in this respect persons might be regulated by their feelings, and perhaps by the circumstances in which they were placed. I have had occasion to see much of this in my researches into the habits of the members of the old church of Virginia. Into this error of opinion and practice General Washington may have fallen, especially at a time when he was peculiarly engaged with the cares of government and a multiplicity of engagements, and when his piety may have suffered some loss thereby.33
Perhaps caring for the needs of their young grandchildren also was a concern. Washington’s adopted granddaughter, Nelly Custis wrote, “On communion Sundays he left the church with me, after the blessing, and returned home, and we sent the carriage back for my grandmother.”34
Washington biographer Jared Sparks elaborates on this “Washington was too busy for Communion” explanation. He suggests the inability to conform his daily duties of leadership with the spiritual demands of communing was a likely reason for his non-participation. “It is probable that, after he took command of the army, finding his thoughts and attention necessarily engrossed by the business that devolved upon him, in which frequently little distinction could be observed between the Sabbath and other days, he may have believed it improper publicly to partake of an ordinance which, according to the ideas he entertained of it, imposed severe restrictions on outward conduct, and a sacred pledge to perform duties impracticable in his situation.”35
This notion may be supported by the sheer demands on Washington’s time. Washington’s diaries and letters show that Sunday after church was one of the few times he had in a profoundly busy military, political, and business life to handle his vast private correspondence and to address the massive responsibilities of running his huge Mount Vernon plantation. He wrote to James McHenry, September 14, 1799, “...the loss of time, and incidental expences, are not to be compared.”36 Similarly, he wrote to James Anderson on December 10, 1799, “...time, which is of more importance than is generally imagined.”37
Mary Thompson, a Washington scholar and research specialist at Mount Vernon, explains that Washington’s chief objection to participating in the Eucharist was in the very literal fact that Washington, the leader of the American Revolution, could no longer commune with the head of the Anglican Church. She observes:
George Washington, according to his family, took communion before the Revolutionary War. He did not take communion after the war. We have evidence from Washington’s financial papers that he supplied wine to Pohick Church for communion; we know that he gave money for the crimson hangings and things that would decorate the altar of the communion table. I don’t think this is a man who has a problem with communion, at least prior to the war. So, we have to ask ourselves, what would make his practice change? Why would he act differently after the war? And there are a number of reasons that he may have changed the way he was doing things.
What would such changes possibly be? We need to back up for a second and look at the word “Communion.” It means that you are in fellowship with others around the table. Washington realized that he could not be in fellowship with a king——the head of the Anglican Church, no less——that he viewed as a tyrant who was killing and stealing from his own people. And so, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, we know Washington did not continue in the Anglican Communion.
Thus, how could a man like General Washington, a man of principle who was leading the active resistance to the King, the head of the church, at the same time commune in that same church? Hypocrisy was not for George Washington.38 Here is what Mary Thompson adds on the subject:
Prior to the Revolution, Washington was made a vestryman at his church; he remained a vestryman until shortly after he returned home from the Revolution. Almost immediately after he gets home he writes to the church, the local church, and says [in effect], “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to give up being a vestryman.” He had to do that, because he had just led a revolution against the king—a revolt against the King of England, who was the head of the Anglican Church. And as a vestryman, he would’ve had to swear allegiance to the king and to be subject to the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Church. He couldn’t do that anymore. And I think that problem influenced his taking communion.39
In light of all of this, it is virtually a miracle that Washington ever returned to the Church of England (which became the Episcopal Church) after the war. He also continued his membership in his church after the state Church of Virginia was disestablished in 1786, and attendance was no longer a matter of law.
Nevertheless, none of these reasons really seem to warrant Washington’s choice not to participate in the Eucharist after the war was over, when he was in Philadelphia serving as the president under the spiritual care of Bishop William White and his assistant Reverend James Abercrombie. While it is a non-sequitur to infer, as Boller and those who argue for Washington’s Deism do, that Washington’s choice to not participate in Communion necessarily demonstrates a disbelief in Christ; nevertheless, his decision to not commune on many Sundays does not easily comport with his faith expressed in the phrase, “on my honor and the faith of a Christian.” Nor does it fit comfortably with his self-description as, “a mind who always walked on a straight line, and endeavoured as far as human frailties, and perhaps strong passions, would enable him, to discharge the relative duties to his Maker and fellow-men....”
Is there a better explanation? We believe there is. And so we will address this question in depth in the chapter entitled, “The Struggle for the Episcopal Church: Washington’s Non-Communication and Non-Communion in Philadelphia.”
WASHINGTON AND THE RECONCILIATION OF THE CUP OF BLESSING
As the Revolutionary War created the inevitable fault lines between the Tories or Loyalists on the one side and the Patriots on the other, the clergy were compelled to take a stand. Their decision was complicated by the fact that every Anglican curate had taken a vow of loyalty to the King. Communion in the Anglican context was not only with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but it was also with the head of the earthly English kingdom, King George III. In fact, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer’s service for the Communion included two prayers explicitly for King George—one just after the “Collect of the Day”40—and then later in the service, a prayer for the church militant included another prayer for the King.41 But this crisis of conscience for a patriot did not just appear at the communion service, as the daily “Morning Prayer Service” also included “A Prayer for the King’s Majesty.”42
After the British evacuation of Boston in 1775, worship services were held in the city. On January 1, 1776, Christ Church, an Anglican congregation, was made ready for worship at the request of Mrs. Washington, who had come to winter with the General. In the diary of Dorothy Dudley, under that date, we learn of the beginning of American changes to the Book of Common Prayer,
