Washington [309]
In the interlude before the signing of the final peace treaty, Washington toted up his expenses from eight years in the army. The deal he had struck with Congress back in 1775 stipulated that he would forgo a salary but would be compensated for food, travel, entertaining, equipment, and other incidental expenses. Congress still owed him money, starting with the uniform he had purchased for his original journey to Cambridge back in 1775.At first he wavered about including Martha’s annual travel expenses to the American camp, then decided to list them, since he would otherwise have incurred the expense of round trips to Mount Vernon himself. In his final tally, Washington submitted a bill for 8,422 pounds for household expenses and another 1,982 pounds paid out of pocket for “secret intelligence.”36 Since Congress trusted Washington wholeheartedly, he received every penny he listed. He had kept scrupulous records of his spending, recorded in account books in his own handwriting, and was baffled when the total fell far short of his expectations. “Through hurry, I suppose, and the perplexity of business (for I know not how else to account for the deficiency),” he had “omitted to charge” many items.37
Another major project consuming Washington’s time was the preservation of his wartime papers. Early in the war he had had aides cart his personal annals from campsite to campsite, conserving them like sacred relics. Even before the war ended, he had received queries from historians who wished to examine this archive, and he hoped it would someday preserve his future fame. That June, to transport his papers safely to Mount Vernon, he ordered six strong trunks, covered with hide and “well clasped and with good locks,” each one bearing a brass or copper plate with his name and the year on it. In August Richard Varick delivered to Washington the twenty-eight volumes of correspondence that his team had transcribed over two years. “I am fully convinced,” Washington told Varick, “that neither the present age or posterity will consider the time and labor which have been employed in accomplishing it unprofitably spent.”38 Afraid of sending the bundled papers by sea, Washington took inordinate pains to organize a wagon train laden with this precious cargo, which he sent to Virginia accompanied by a full military escort. Those transported papers, he knew, would prove the final bulwark of his historical reputation.
In the summer of 1783, as he awaited news of the definitive peace treaty, Washington found himself trapped in a strange limbo. About two-thirds of his army had been sent home, enabling him to indulge thoughts of relaxation for the first time in eight years. Having always wanted to visit upstate New York, he now seized the chance. Traveling by horseback and canoe, he covered 750 miles in a little more than two weeks, showing he was still a hardy specimen. It was a measure of Washington’s self-assurance that he wanted to visit the Saratoga battlefield, the scene of Horatio Gates’s signal triumph. Reverting to prewar form, Washington even engaged in some land speculation along the Mohawk River. Back at camp, Washington and his officers had so much extra time on their hands that they took turns stepping on a scale and recording their weight. For all the austerity of war, they weren’t a terribly lean bunch: Washington weighed 209 pounds, Henry Knox a robust 280 pounds, and eight of eleven officers tipped