Washington [380]
On the eve of the Constitutional Convention, Washington had thrown up his hands in despair, confessing to Lund Washington that he could not balance his books: “My estate for the last 11 years have not been able to make both ends meet . . . I mention this for no other purpose than to show that, however willing, I am not able to pay debts unless I could sell land—which I have publicly advertised, without finding bidders.”61 As the convention proceeded, Washington, at his wit’s end, told George Augustine that he knew no more “than the man in the moon where I am to get money to pay my taxes”—a shocking admission for a man universally touted as the first president.62 The failure of his corn crop obligated him to buy eight hundred barrels of corn to feed his army of slaves. Preoccupied with money, Washington hoped the ratification of the Constitution would reverse the country’s real estate deflation and alleviate his plight. The day before the Constitution was signed, Washington notified his land agent in western Pennsylvania that he now expected higher prices for his property: “I cannot consent to take two dollars an acre for the land in Washington County. If the government of this country gets well toned and property perfectly secured, I have no doubt of obtaining the price I have fixed on the land, and that in a short time.”63 This turned out to be wishful thinking. Forced to eliminate debt by selling land, he put up for sale a staggering 32,373 acres in the Ohio Country.
As the ratifying conventions progressed, Washington felt a direct financial stake in their outcome, hoping the Constitution would restore American credit. He told one business colleague that the loss of his corn crop and his inability to recoup money from debtors had “caused more perplexity and given me more uneasiness than I ever experienced before from the want of money.”64 Trapped in this predicament, he looked for salvation to the government paper he owned. These promissory notes, used to finance the Revolution, had shed most of their value because of collapsing confidence in the Confederation Congress. Washington had kept these notes, he said, “without having an idea that they would depreciate as they were drawn for interest . . . The injustice of this measure is too obvious and too glaring to pass unobserved.”65 Washington understood firsthand the need for Alexander Hamilton’s fiscal program as treasury secretary.
In the spring of 1788 Washington’s contemporaries would have been shocked to know that his western taxes for 1785, 1786, and 1787 stood in arrears and that he had posted his lands there for sale to pay them off. Hardly wishing to be a scofflaw at this juncture, Washington tried to pay his taxes promptly with tobacco notes and IOUs that he had received early in the Revolution for supplying articles to the Fairfax County militia. When he learned that Greenbrier County, where the property was located, would not accept such forms of payment, he was enraged. The Father of His Country was being treated with barefaced contempt for financial stresses arising from his wartime sacrifice. “I have been called upon for taxes and threatened at the same time with a sale of the land after June, if the money is not paid before, by the sheriff of Greenbrier County,” he wrote. “As I have been suffering loss after loss for near[ly] ten years, while I was in the public service and have scarcely had time to breathe since . . . this procedure seems to me to be a little hasty.”66 In another sign of his eroding financial position, on three occasions he rebuffed the sheriff of Fairfax County when he came around to collect taxes due on Mount Vernon.
By June Washington had paid his outstanding taxes but still seemed cursed by biblical extremes of weather that descended on him with unnerving regularity. “The rains have been so frequent