Experts shared insights into the public and private life of the nation’s first president.
In his public life, George Washington was a detail-oriented, purposeful leader with innovative business ideas and high hopes for the future of the nation.
In private, Washington was a devoted husband and father who routinely consulted his wife about business decisions and agonized over slavery during the last years of his life.
The GW community got a glimpse into both these sides of the university’s namesake during a discussion in GW’s Jack Morton Auditorium Feb. 23, featuring GW adjunct professor of history Kenneth Bowling; Dennis Pogue, M.A.’81, vice president for preservation at George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate; and Patricia Brady, author and historian.
“The Real George: Leadership and Character” was moderated by William Becker, chair of GW’s Department of History, and featured introductory remarks by GW President Steven Knapp and Barbara B. Lucas, vice regent for Maryland of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which owns and operates Mount Vernon Estate, Museum and Gardens.
Dr. Knapp said the event—part of a series that celebrated the university’s 100 years in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood—honors the “full richness and complexity” of Washington’s life, which he called both a source of inspiration and “an abiding reminder of one of the deepest paradoxes in American history; the intertwining of those dreams of freedom and equality that defined the nation from its inception and the institution of slavery.”
“As a university that bears his name, we’re cognizant of that paradox but we are also continuing to live out his legacy of service to the nation,” said Dr. Knapp.
Ms. Lucas detailed the improvements the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association has made to Mount Vernon, including a four-acre demonstration farm, reconstructed gardens, a dung depository and interactive exhibit spaces.
“If any president deserves this sort of recognition, it’s our first and greatest,” said Ms. Lucas. “We think that his example of character and leadership is as important today as it was at least 200 years ago, and I would argue maybe more. It’s inconceivable that we should allow him to disappear from our consciousness and our lives.”
In his remarks, Dr. Pogue spoke about Washington’s business activities at Mount Vernon.
Dr. Pogue said that while Washington was not formally educated, he gained a lot of practical business experience at a young age as a surveyor. As an officer and later commander of the Virginia Regiment, Washington played a central role in the French and Indian War. Eager to continue his military career at the end of the war, Washington unsuccessfully lobbied to get a commission in the British Army.
“We can all think how American history might have been different if he had been successful,” he said.
In 1754, Washington acquired the 2,000-acre Mount Vernon from his half-brother, and set about to be the “best darn tobacco planter that he could be in Virginia,” said Dr. Pogue, who has directed numerous archaeological excavations and managed several major restoration and preservation projects at the estate.
“[Washington] was young, he was ambitious and he wanted to be successful,” said Dr. Pogue.
The soil at Mount Vernon was not the best to grow tobacco, so by the late 1760s Washington began growing grain and wheat, which he ground in his own mills and exported. Other business activities included producing cloth, fishing and blacksmithing.
Agriculture was a hugely important part of Washington’s business life. When he returned from the Revolutionary War in 1780s, he implemented a number of innovative agriculture ideas for the time, including utilizing fertilizer and draft animals, and later using a new milling system and creating one of the largest whisky distilleries in the nation. By 1793, the plantation had five farms, which Washington meticulously ran.
“He was looking to develop a cohesive, efficient, integrated agricultural enterprise,” said Dr. Pogue, adding that Washington’s marriage to Martha Custis, “the richest widow in Virginia,” gave Washington the financial means with which to grow the plantation.
“He was interested in the United States becoming a granary to the world,” said Dr. Pogue. “He envisioned that the United States, to be successful, would need to be a food exporting country.”
“Washington realized that wealthy individuals—those who could afford to fail— needed to be the ones to experiment with these ideas and hopefully by doing that would arrive at successful innovations that other folks could then use,” he added.
More than 150 slaves worked on the plantation, with some owned by Washington and some owned by his wife. Upon his death, Washington freed the slaves he owned in his will, which Dr. Pogue described as a “public pronouncement” against slavery, as Washington felt he could not speak out against it as a public figure.
In her remarks, Dr. Brady focused on Washington’s relationship with his wife, which she called “one of the most interesting relationships in early American history.” Dr. Brady has published extensively on first ladies, free people of color, cemeteries and the arts in the South.
One of the “least patriarchal” men in early America, Dr. Brady said Washington often consulted his wife about his new business ideas and strived to have her near him during his military appointments. He also asked her to approve his will.
“Their relationship was always very equal. Martha did what she wanted a lot of the time,” said Dr. Brady. “He knew Martha had good sense and knew what she was doing, so he frequently left things up to her.”
In private, Dr. Brady said Washington was “a man who respected women, who actually liked the company of women.” Although he had never received a formal education, Washington believed in lifelong learning, and hired tutors for his stepchildren and step-grandchildren.
“We know he’s the father of the country, but knowing him as the father of his stepchildren and step-grandchildren, as well as hoards of nieces and nephews, tells us as much about him perhaps as some of his presidential policies,” she said.
Dr. Bowling described Washington as a “realistic visionary” who provided a number of “extraordinary” gifts to the nation, including civilian control of the military and the separation of church and state. Dr. Bowling is the co-editor of the First Federal Congress Project and creator of the popular course “George Washington and His World,” which is taught primarily at the Mount Vernon Estate.
A leader who routinely exhibited “growth in his thought process,” Dr. Bowling said Washington envisioned a multiracial society without slavery and “a grand national capital.”
First “enamored” with the idea of creating a national university during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Dr. Bowling said Washington recommended a national university in almost every annual address he gave to Congress and later in his will, which was published and circulated widely around the United States.
He even left an endowment for the university in his will and favored its location in Foggy Bottom.
“[Washington] wanted…a national university that would act to bring future leaders of the nation from all over the country together so that they would overcome the state and sectional prejudices that so crippled most other political leaders of his generation,” said Dr. Bowling.
Dr. Bowling called Washington the “most important abolitionist of his generation.”
Freeing slaves in his will was Washington’s “final opportunity to influence the people” that he had led, said Dr. Bowling. “They would pay a high price for not following [Washington’s] leadership in this issue,” he said.
“George Washington is often called a great man, but I prefer to call him an extraordinary man,” said Dr. Bowling, “in part because it contains the word ‘ordinary,’ and reminds us he was a human being.”