...a gold shoulder knot, gold lace, twenty-four inches of "rich gold Embroidd Loops," a "Rich Crimson Ingr[ained] silk Sash," four dozen gilt coat buttons, a hat with gold lace, three and a half yards of scarlet cloth....
This determination to make himself stand out extended to making Mount Vernon, Washington's house on the Potomac, Architectural Digest worthy. The constant tinkering and overhauls make it seem like Washington was somewhat obsessed with the house which, at most had to fit him, Martha Washington, and Martha's two children from her previous marriage. The London contact - Colonial America's Amzaon.com - got orders for chairs, for dishes, furniture and so forth, with Washington indicating the items should be of the latest fashion.
While the book does not give the reader a good insight as to what Washington thought about besides homemaking (Gore Vidal once remarked that, unlike Thomas Jefferson, Washington's mind was untroubled by books), we do get an idea of what the first president thought of himself. When his London tradesman gently mentioned that Washington was carrying a bit of debt he got an epistlatory earfull from the Virginian gentleman:
"[Washington] was surprised someone 'so steady, & so constant as I have provd' would be reminded 'how necessary it was for him to be expeditious in his payments.'" Then, later, "it is but an irksome thing to a free mind to be any ways hampered in Debt."
One can see Washington standing up to his full height and raising his chin after having written this.
Even before the revolution there was always tension between the colonists and the British. While fighting with the British militia regiment leader against the French Washington chafed at being outranked by British soldiers. And later, when the British crown starting imposing taxes and overstepped its authority with the colonists, an aggrieved Washington said the colonists were compelled to assert themselves lest they became
...as tame & abject Slaves, as the Blacks we Rule over with such arbitrary Sway.
So fascinating, this social blindness! Remember, Washington represented the highest echelon of society in the colonies in general and Virginia in particular. He had extensive fields for tobacco, the enormous house on the banks of the Potomac, and as bright a future as one could imagine. But the tax, the nibbling away of his pride by the British, was enough for Washington to cry that such treatment would lead to his enslavement. Which would be intolerable.
Well, historians have been pondering this stupendous duality in the founding fathers for two hundred years. Did these altogether intelligent men truly not see that whatever the crown threw at them would be a rainbow of daffodils compared to what the slaves - their slaves- were enduring?
And Washington was by no means a monster. He kept his word to not sell slaves in a way that would break up families. Maybe it was merely his own pride, his sense of self, that made him do that but of course many other slave owners had no such hesitation.
As upsetting as it is, as cruelly ironic as it is, the fact remains that the men who fought off British oppression held on fiercely to the notion of slavery being acceptable.
All of which leaves us with the question, What is acceptable today - what is fashionable today - that will make people flinch and recoil two-hundred years from now?
George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America by Robert F. Dalzell and Lee Baldwin Dalzell
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