Washington [1]
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2010 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Ron Chernow, 2010
All rights reserved
Illustration credits appear on pages 869-72.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chernow, Ron.
Washington : a life / Ron Chernow.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-44418-4
1. Washington, George, 1732-1799. 2. Presidents—United States—Biography. I. Title.
E312.C495 2010
973.4’1092—dc22
[B]
2010019154
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TO VALERIE, IN MEMORIAM
Simple truth is his best, his greatest eulogy.
—ABIGAILADAMS, speaking of George Washington after his death
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Since I quote extensively from George Washington’s vast correspondence, I have taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling and punctuation of the eighteenth-century prose. A biographer hesitates to forfeit the special period flavor that comes from preserving all the oddities of contemporary writing. But all too often, Washington’s muscular style can seem awkward and stilted to modern readers because of the way he distributed his commas, for instance, whereas the writing suddenly becomes smooth and flowing with more familiar punctuation. Occasionally I retain the quirks of the original spelling in order to highlight the eccentricity or lack of education of the personality in question. Throughout the text, the actual wording has been exactly reproduced.
PRELUDE
The Portrait Artist
IN MARCH 1793 Gilbert Stuart crossed the North Atlantic for the express purpose of painting President George Washington, the supreme prize of the age for any ambitious portrait artist. Though born in Rhode Island and reared in New-port, Stuart had escaped to the cosmopolitan charms of London during the war and spent eighteen years producing portraits of British and Irish grandees. Overly fond of liquor, prodigal in his spending habits, and with a giant brood of children to support, Stuart had landed in the Marshalsea Prison in Dublin, most likely for debt, just as Washington was being sworn in as first president of the United States in 1789.
For the impulsive, unreliable Stuart, who left a trail of incomplete paintings and irate clients in his wake, George Washington emerged as the savior who would rescue him from insistent creditors. “When I can net a sum sufficient to take me to America, I shall be off to my native soil,” he confided eagerly to a friend. “There I expect to make a fortune by Washington alone. I calculate upon making a plurality of his portraits . . . and if I should be fortunate, I will repay my English and Irish creditors.”1 In a self-portrait daubed years earlier, Stuart presented himself as a restless soul, with tousled reddish-brown hair, keen blue eyes, a strongly marked nose, and a pugnacious chin. This harried, disheveled man was scarcely the sort to appeal to the immaculately formal George Washington.
Once installed in New York, Stuart mapped out a path to Washington with the thoroughness of a military campaign. He stalked Washington’s trusted friend Chief Justice John Jay and rendered a brilliant portrait of him,