Washington [346]
While Washington rejoiced over his legislative victories, the state of Virginia threw him into a profound dilemma by deeding him a gift of fifty shares of Potomac River Company stock and one hundred shares of James River Company stock to recognize his services to the state. Having sacrificed a salary throughout the war, Washington was not about to accept payment now; nor did he want to seem vain or offend his fellow Virginians by brusquely dismissing their kind gesture. He admitted to Governor Harrison that “no circumstance has happened to me since I left the walks of public life, which has so much embarrassed me.” If he spurned the gift, he feared, people would think “an ostentatious display of disinterestedness or public virtue was the source of the refusal.” On the other hand, he wanted to remain free to articulate his views without arousing suspicions that “sinister motives had the smallest influence in the suggestion.”21 He valued his reputation for integrity, calling it “the principal thing which is laudable in my conduct.”22 Noting that such “gratuitous gifts are made in other countries,” Washington wanted to establish a new benchmark for the behavior of public figures in America and eliminate petty or venal motives.23
Perplexed, Washington sent a flurry of letters to confidants, asking how to handle the unwanted gift. Beleaguered by money problems at Mount Vernon, he nevertheless tried to project the cavalier image of an affluent planter who had far more money than he needed. Throughout his life he cherished the pose of noblesse oblige in public service, even if he could scarcely afford it. Referring to his lack of children, he told Henry Knox airily, “I have nobody to provide for and I have enough to support me through life in the plain and easy style in which I mean to spend the remainder of my days.”24 In fact, Washington had insufficient money to support himself, his wards, and his slaves, and his style of life was scarcely plain and easy. He came up with an enlightened solution: he would hold the gift shares in trust for public education, possibly for the creation of “two charity schools, one on each river for the education and support of the children of the poor and indigent,” especially those who had lost fathers in the war.25 The final disposition of the money was deferred for many years.
To iron out differences between Virginia and Maryland over Potomac navigation, Washington presided over an interstate conference at Mount Vernon in 1785. He was also elected president of the Potomac River Company, for which he tirelessly proselytized. In early August he climbed into a canoe and undertook the first of his periodic inspection tours of the Potomac, investigating submerged obstacles at Seneca Falls and Shenandoah Falls by personally shooting the rapids. He was also involved in hiring a European superintendent and dozens of indentured servants to build the canals and locks. Soon teams of slaves went to work, their heads shaved to make it more difficult for them to escape without detection. Washington’s ambition was huge: the lock canal constructed around Great Falls alone would rank as the biggest civil engineering project in eighteenth-century America. To carve open the interior, the Virginia legislature authorized the building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which would connect the Potomac and Ohio rivers, and the Kanawha Canal, linking the James with the Great Kanawha River in western Virginia. Both projects took decades to reach fruition.
A determined man, George Washington reveled in having overcome great skepticism to establish the Potomac River Company. When Robert Hunter visited Mount Vernon in November, he noticed that