stb-1991-02
George Washington has long been one of our greatest heros.
MSA is truly grateful to the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association
of the Union and Mr. James C. Rees, Assoc. Director for
preparing this STB on the life of Washington. Mt. Vernon
was loved by Washington who spent all the time there he
could, and he is here presented as a lover of the soil. The Short
Talk will actually take two issues to present. February 1991
is Part 1. March 1991 will be Part 11.
Editor
George Washington:
A Truly Remarkable Man
To those of us who work at Mount Vernon, it is
commonly accepted that a Mason--whether he
represents the local lodge in Alexandria, Virginia,
or a faraway state such as Texas or California--is
well-informed about George Washington. I have
never met a Mason who was not able to offer at
least one new story or fact about "The Father of
Our Country."
As Washington's 259th birthday approaches, it is
indeed a privilege--and a formidable challenge--
to relate a side of George Washington that may not
receive as much attention as his military and
political achievements, but was much closer to his
heart. Throughout his life, whether on the battlefield or at the seat of government, Washington's
thoughts were never far from Mount Vernon, his
home on the banks of the Potomac River in
Virginia. For more than 130 years, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association has owned and preserved
Mount Vernon as a national shrine. The annual
visitation of about one million people makes Mount
Vernon the nation's most popular historic house,
and tells us that the memory of Washington lives
on in the hearts of the American people. Mount
Vernon is also one of our finest examples of the
blending of historic preservation and private initiative. For ne~er, in all the years since the Association was founded, has Mount Vernon received any
funding from state or federal governments. The
Mount Vernon Ladies' Association operates Mount
Vernon as a business enterprise, with nearly all of
its expenses covered by vistors' admission fees.
Vistors who travel from across the nation and the
world to see Mount Vernon are impressed with the
wide open spaces, beautiful gardens, and huge
lawns that open up to sensational vistas across
the Potomac River. They often comment how fortunate we are to possess 500 acres of such rich and
valuable land so close to the nation's capital. But
the Mount Vernon of 1990 is tiny in comparison to
the 8,000 acres George Washington originally owned
on the banks of the Potomac. Washington divided
this huge tract into five separate farms, and on
many mornings he rode from farm to farm to personally supervise the day's activities.
George Washington may be remembered most for
what he accomplished during his absences from
Mount Vernon, but it is probably fair to say that
his farming activities meant as much to him as the
honors he gained on the battlefield or at the seat
of government. Washington's distinguished
biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, has written that "whether patriot and statesman or patriot
and soldier, Washington never ceased to be a
planter. What others derived from books and
games, Washington took from the land. Agriculture
remained the only hobby of his life." And certainly,
no theme appears more often in Washington's own
writings than his love of farming, his love of his
Mount Vernon lands and everything that flourished in them.
Indeed, agriculture stands as the unifying theme
of Washington's life. He added sprigs of wheat to
the Washington family coat-of-arms and had an
array of farming tools--the scythe, the rake, the hoe
and the sickle--molded into the elegant stucco
ceiling of his large dining room.
One famous English agronomist said that George
Washington was a better farmer than he was a
general. Whatever the truth of this assessment, the
importance of Washington's agricultural career cannot be overemphasized. It is a key to the understanding of his character.
The remarkable energy and determination
displayed by Washington as a soldier and statesman
were first the qualities of Washington the farmer.
And nowhere is the man's almost superhuman
attention to detail more evident than in the
agricultural record he entered into his diary on a
rainy day in 1787, when he sat down to calculate
the number of individual grains in a bushel of
Timothy and came up with the figure of 13,410,000.
But Washington's farming career is also important
in its own right. Throughout his life, he was an
agricultural pioneer, constantly experimenting with
the most advanced techniques and working to
improve farming practices throughout the country.
In terms of the amount of land he kept under
cultivation, it is fair to say that George Washington
was the most innovative large-scale farmer in
America during the last quarter of the 18th century.
Washington was required to be creative, however,
because he faced a number of problems, the most
serious of which was the nature of the soil itself.
The land had always been poor, and years of
tobacco cultivation had further drained its limited
fertility. Moreover, by the time Washington acquired
Mount Vernon, the entire region of Virginia's northern neck had reached its peak and was entering
a period of decline. Washington attacked these problems with the same tenacious energy that
characterized his military career. In 1764, Colonel
Washington contracted with John Carlyle, the Alexandria merchant, to supply yearly harvests of
wheat. Three years later, wheat had eclipsed tobacco
as the main Mount Vernon crop. George
Washington had become a farmer, concentrating on
the production of grain and other foods, rather than
a planter who relied on a single cash crop. The
change was one of profound importance to Mount
Vernon and its master. In one stroke, he had ended
his dependence on the uncertain tobacco market
and spared his lands further damage from an utterly
ruinous crop. The shift to farming also allowed him
to introduce more sophisticated methods, such as
crop rotation and intensive plowing. He began to
engage in the agricultural experimentation that
would continue to absorb him for the rest of his
life. By the time he was called away to take command of the Revolutionary forces in 1775, his
methods were beginning to show results. During the
next eight years, however, General Washington was
able to visit Mount Vernon only twice, and then
only briefly, on his way to and from Yorktown in
1781 .
When he was finally able to return to Mount
Vernon in 1783, it was with a renewed determina-
tion to transform his neglected fields. The years following the Revolution saw Washington's greatest
period of agricultural activity. He began his
correspondence with the leading English
agronomists, men like Arthur Young and Sir John
Sinclair. From them he imported not only ideas but
also new crops, skilled workmen and sophisticated
equipment. Realizing that even the most advanced
techniques would be of little use unless he could
enrich the soil itself, he experimented tirelessly with
different fertilizers. He used animal manure on
crops to be plowed under, and even tried spreading
the fields with Potomac mud and the fish that the
river yielded so abundantly. In 1785 he asked an
English friend to find him an overseer, on who
could, in the peculiar alchemy of farming, "Midas-
like . . . convert everything he touches into manure,
as the first transmutation towards Gold. . . "
Washington continued to try new crops, hoping as
always to find something that would flourish in the
weak Mount Vernon soil. By the end of his life he
had raised, or at least experimented with, as many
as 60 different crops.
George Washington was also described by his contemporaries as one of the finest horsemen of his
day. Certainly, he must have ridden as though born
in the saddle. His legendary fox hunts sometimes
stretched from dawn to dusk. On his way to
Yorktown in September of 1781, he covered more
than 120 miles on horseback in two days, leaving
his exhausted staff, younger men all, to catch up
a day later. He had an eye for good horse flesh, and
besides the one hundred or so ordinary horses he
usually kept at Mount Vernon, he owned a number
of fine racehorses. He loved to race them and
sometimes gave his servants, both black and white,
the day off to watch the horses run. His cash
account books, however, show that he lost more
often than not. On one occasion, he disputed the
finish, complaining so vehemently that the stewards
reversed themselves and awarded him the purse.
Washington was a very serious competitor--and
perhaps a bit of a sore loser--even in sport. Yet it
should be noted that he later gave the prize money
to charity. Probably the finest horse he ever owned
was Magnolio, a full-blooded Arabian whose line
could be traced to North Africa by way of South
America and Connecticut. Magnolio must have lost
one race too many for, in 1788, Washington traded
him to his friend, "Lighthorse Harry" Lee for five
thousand acres of virgin Kentucky land. The land
was far beyond the mountains, and no doubt both
men believed they had the better of the bargain.
It is easy to imagine Washington on horseback,
because so many portraits depict the General with
his favorite mounts. But most Americans would be
surprised and bewildered to see a portrait of George
Washington proudly standing beside a good old-fashioned mule. However, this would be a very
appropriate subject for a portrait because, believe
it or not, it was none other than George Washington
who introduced the mule to America.
Washington, the avid student of all things
agricultural, knew that mules could do much more
than horses, lived longer, ate less, and were far har-
dier. Horses were fine for riding and racing, the
General thought, but what the American farmer
needed was "an excellent race of mules." The problem was obtaining proper breeding stock. The best
jackasses in the world resided in Spain. They were
beasts of remarkable strength and proportions,
which the monarchy had long guarded by pro-
hibiting their export. Nevertheless, by 1784, the
name Washington meant something even in the
courts of Europe and soon word of his quest
reached the King of Spain. Hoping to win the goodwill of the foremost citizen of the strange republican
nation across the Atlantic, Charles 111, King of
Spain, arranged for two fine Spanish Jacks to be
dispatched at once to George Washington.
Washington was overjoyed at the news, but had to
wait nearly a year for his first jack, which he named
"Royal Gift," to arrive in December of 1785. When
the spring breeding season approached, he was
prepared, indeed anxious, to oversee the genesis of
his "race of excellent mules." Royal Gift, however,
seemed anything but prepared for the work to which
he had been called. Although his master had
assembled a veritable harem, thirty mares of his
own and more from his neighbors, the stubborn
jack refused to perform.
Dismayed as Washington was by this development,
his humor did not desert him. The Spanish jack,
he wrote, "was perhaps too full of Royalty, to have
anything to do with a plebeian race." Still,
Washington was disappointed. He even began to
suspect that the wily Spaniards might have
"altered" the creature. His mares could wait no
longer if they were to be bred that year and the
office was assigned to the ready-and-waiting
Magnolio, who performed unflinchingly.
Fortunately, the following spring was different.
Royal Gift performed to his master's complete
satisfaction. Moreover, by this time, several more
jacks had arrived at Mount Vernon, the second of
the two promised by King Charles and two more
that Lafayette had obtained by circumventing the
Spanish export laws. Farmers from throughout the
mid-Atlantic states sent breeding stock to Mount
Vernon and, indeed, so intense was the demand for
the services of his Spanish jack that eventually
Washington sent Royal Gift on a thousand-mile tour
of the southern states.
Washington's prediction of the importance of
mules was amply confirmed in the years to come.
At Mount Vernon, the livestock inventory for 1785
lists 130 working horses and no mules. The census
for 1799, the year of the master's death, tallies 25
horses and 58 mules. Until supplanted by the
internal combustion engine, mules performed
invaluable services on countless American farms.
So today, as we celebrate the talents, accomplishments and leadership of George Washington, we
should be sure to include his lasting contributions
to agriculture. Indeed, it was this occupation to
which Washington devoted his energies until the day
he died.
PART II WILL FOLLOW
AS MARCH, 1991 STB
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