Travels with George Read online

  ALSO BY NATHANIEL PHILBRICK

  The Passionate Sailor

  Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People, 1602–1890

  Abram’s Eyes: The Native American Legacy of Nantucket Island

  Second Wind: A Sunfish Sailor’s Odyssey

  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

  Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery; The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842

  Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

  The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

  Why Read Moby-Dick?

  Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution

  Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution

  In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown

  George Washington at Trenton by N. C. Wyeth.

  VIKING

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  Copyright © 2021 by Nathaniel Philbrick

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  Map illustrations by Jeffrey L. Ward.

  Owing to limitations of space, illustration credits may be found on this page.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Philbrick, Nathaniel, author.

  Title: Travels with George: in search of Washington and his legacy / Nathaniel Philbrick.

  Description: New York: Viking, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020054623 (print) | LCCN 2020054624 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525562177 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525562184 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Washington, George, 1732–1799—Travel—United States. | Philbrick, Nathaniel—Travel—United States. | United States—History—18th century. | United States—Politics and government—1789–1797. | United States—Description and travel. | Historical reenactments—United States.

  Classification: LCC E312 .P55 2021 (print) | LCC E312 (ebook) | DDC 973.4/1092—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054623

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054624

  Cover design: David Litman

  Cover images: (front, top to bottom) George Washington Portrait (detail) by Constable-Hamilton, 1794. Smith Collection / Gado /Getty Images; rearview mirror, Manuel Breva Colmeiro / Getty Images; rural highway, Michael Prince / Getty Images

  Book design by Daniel Lagin, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  To Melissa (and Dora)

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE: THE CHARIOT

  Part I: Inauguration

  CHAPTER 1: LOOMINGS

  CHAPTER 2: MOUNT VERNON

  CHAPTER 3: “WREATHS AND CHAPLETS OF FLOWERS”

  CHAPTER 4: NEW YORK

  Part II: New England

  CHAPTER 5: DREAMING OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

  CHAPTER 6: “ONLY A MAN”

  CHAPTER 7: TURF WARS

  CHAPTER 8: “A CHILD OF GOD”

  CHAPTER 9: THE MIDDLE ROAD HOME

  Part III: Into the Storm

  CHAPTER 10: THE SPIES OF LONG ISLAND

  CHAPTER 11: NEWPORT

  CHAPTER 12: PROVIDENCE

  Part IV: South

  CHAPTER 13: TERRA INCOGNITA

  CHAPTER 14: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE PAST

  CHAPTER 15: “FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD”

  CHAPTER 16: “ELEVEN O’CLOCK SUNDAY MORNING”

  CHAPTER 17: “A CAT MAY LOOK ON A KING”

  CHAPTER 18: MUDDY FRESHETS

  CHAPTER 19: “THE DEVIL’S OWN ROADS”

  EPILOGUE: THE VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAIN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  INDEX

  The chariot at the John Brown House in Providence.

  PREFACE

  The Chariot

  I like to probe the darkness at the edges of our nation’s history. Instead of the triumphs, I’m most interested in the struggle. Whether it’s the twenty crew members of a whaleship that’s just been rammed by a whale or a group of religious refugees left on an unfamiliar coast by an old leaky ship called the Mayflower, I’m compelled to explore what happens to people in the worst of times, especially when it comes to issues of leadership.

  Given my predilection for mayhem and moral ambiguity, I had, until about ten years ago, little interest in George Washington. What could be more boring than a stuffed shirt known as the father of his country? Then I started to write a book about Boston in the American Revolution.

  The story was going just fine through the Battle of Bunker Hill; there was plenty of torment and suffering as the incredible pressures of a revolution descended on the citizens of Boston. But then, a few weeks after that epic confrontation on a hill in Charlestown, a new commander of the American forces showed up: George Washington. This was not the stern old man who stares at us from the one-dollar bill; this was a surprisingly young and aggressive leader with reddish-brown hair and a need to prove himself after a checkered career as a provincial officer in the Seven Years’ War. How was someone so impulsive and inexperienced going to evolve into the leader who won the Revolutionary War? I needed to find out what happened to Washington next, and two more books were the result.

  By the end of my American Revolution trilogy, I had come to realize that Washington did not win the war so much as endure an eight-year ordeal that would have destroyed just about anyone else. In the early years of the conflict, he’d been repeatedly second-guessed by the Continental Congress, even though that legislative body proved powerless to provide the food and supplies his army desperately needed. After the entry of France into the war, Washington spent three frustrating years pleading with his obstinate ally to provide the naval support that ultimately made possible the victory at Yorktown. And then, in the months before the evacuation of the British from New York City, Washington was forced to confront a group of his own officers who threatened to march on Philadelphia and demand their pay at gunpoint. By persuading his officers to remain at their encampment on the Hudson River, Washington prevented the military coup that would have destroyed the Republic at its birth. When he surrendered his general’s commission to Congress in 1783, Washington did not declare, “Mission accomplished.” He knew that an even greater challenge—establishing a lasting government that fulfilled the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence—lay ahead. Once again I needed to find out what happened to Washington next, never suspecting he would lead me into a world as fraught and contentious as our own.

  * * *

  —

  By the time I finished my third book about the Revolutionary War, I was de
sperate for a change. For more than thirty years my wife, Melissa, and I had lived on Nantucket, an island thirty miles off the coast of southern New England. It was on Nantucket, once the whaling capital of the world, that I, an English major in college, had first fallen in love with history. But now, ten books later, the island that had served as my conduit into America’s past was beginning to feel isolated and cut off from the giant land to the west.

  I had grown up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where (thanks to summer vacations at my grandparents’ house on Cape Cod) I’d developed an improbable love of sailing. Being effectively landlocked meant that I needed to travel just to find a place to sail. First there was the little lake about an hour outside Pittsburgh. By the time I turned eighteen, I was car-topping my Sunfish to races all over the country. I loved the sailing, but I also loved the driving—the interstates, the back roads, and especially the maps.

  Nantucket had been just what we needed to raise a family and move along in our careers, but it took just twenty minutes to get from one end of the island to the other. I was getting itchy and impatient within my circumscribed life on an island at the edge of the sea. Then, during a research trip to Providence, Rhode Island, I saw the small horse-drawn carriage (technically known as a chariot) once owned by John Brown.

  John Brown was one of the founders of Brown University and a notorious slave trader; he also revered George Washington. He named several of his ships for Washington and is thought to have based some of the details of his own magisterial home in Providence on Washington’s Mount Vernon. The house, now owned by the Rhode Island Historical Society, contains a mural depicting Washington’s inauguration in New York City. And in a wing in the back is the immaculately restored chariot in which Brown is supposed to have taken Washington for a ride when he visited Providence in August 1790. What, I wondered, was the newly inaugurated president doing in Rhode Island?

  * * *

  —

  When Washington became president in 1789, America was already a divided nation. There were no formal parties as of yet, but there were two distinct factions: those who embraced the Constitution (Federalists) and those who distrusted the strong central government the Constitution had created (Anti-Federalists). During the state conventions to ratify the Constitution, the battles had been ugly. At the ratifying convention in New York, it had been Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist, versus Governor George Clinton, an Anti-Federalist. Clinton viewed the United States as too large a country for a single, democratic government to be effective, insisting “that no general free government can suit.” At the convention in Virginia, Patrick Henry, the originator of the phrase “Give me liberty or give me death!,” echoed Clinton’s concerns, claiming that the new federal government would trample on white Virginians’ God-given property rights. “They’ll free your [slaves],” he warned—a prediction that would come true seventy-five years later when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

  It could be argued that the only reason the Constitution was ultimately ratified by the nine states required to trigger a national election was that no matter what a person believed about the merits of the new government, everyone could agree that only Washington should lead it. That said, two states—North Carolina and Rhode Island—had not yet ratified the Constitution by the time of Washington’s inauguration.

  In addition to the political divide separating the American people, there were long-standing regional differences. When the governor of Virginia said “my country,” he didn’t mean the United States, he meant Virginia. Washington needed to unify this loose amalgam of virtually independent states into a nation. So in the fall of 1789, less than six months after his inauguration, he set out from the country’s temporary capital of New York on a tour of New England.

  It would take him a month. Studiously avoiding Rhode Island, Washington visited Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. He carefully observed every facet of the countryside, noting agricultural and building techniques. He talked to farmers, mill owners, and political leaders. He experienced firsthand the miserable conditions of the country’s roads, and because he insisted on staying only in public taverns, he learned more than he would have liked about the often flea-infested roadside motels of his day.

  But the journey was much more than a fact-finding mission. From the first, Washington hoped to use the power of his immense popularity to foster a sense of unity and national pride that had not previously existed. So he resorted to a bit of political theater. Before entering a town, he’d step out of his carriage dressed in his general’s uniform, mount his gleaming white horse, and ride down the main thoroughfare to thunderous acclaim. And sure enough, by the time he returned to New York, a new sense of nationhood had begun to infuse the American people. As a newspaper in Salem, Massachusetts, reported, the appearance of the president had “unite[d] all hearts and all voices in his favor.”

  The following year, Rhode Island finally ratified the Constitution, and Washington visited Newport and Providence. By then North Carolina had also come into the fold, meaning that the longest, most challenging journey of them all still lay ahead: an almost two-thousand-mile, three-month circuit of the South over the poorest roads in the country and through communities that had already voiced objections to the policies of the new federal government; and for that Washington needed a strong, meticulously built carriage just like the one owned by John Brown.

  * * *

  —

  When I first saw John Brown’s chariot, I couldn’t believe how tiny it was: think the back seat of a VW Bug mounted on four skinny wheels. With a carriage like this, the fifty-seven-year-old Washington, whose health had begun to suffer almost as soon as he was sworn in as president, had saved both his country and himself by exchanging the confines of his presidential office for the boundless promise of the open road.

  On that day in 2017 when I saw John Brown’s chariot for the first time, I suddenly understood what I needed to do next. After two decades of writing about the country’s past, I needed to see for myself what the country had become. And the ideal tour guide was staring me in the face: President George Washington. But was he the ideal tour guide at this particular moment in our nation’s history—a time when so many once-celebrated leaders from our country’s past have been discredited?

  When Washington became president of the United States, he was still wrestling with the meaning of the American Revolution. He’d entered the conflict an unrepentant Virginia slaveholder. By the end of the war, he’d learned that his African American soldiers were as competent and brave as anyone else in his army. He’d also befriended the idealistic French nobleman Lafayette, who later claimed, “I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery.”

  Gradually, ever so gradually, a new Washington was emerging, one who realized that “nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.” But even if he had come to recognize the direction the country must take in the future, he remained a slaveholder himself for the rest of his life. A struggle was being waged inside Washington between his ideological aspirations and his financial and familial commitment to slavery at Mount Vernon. Yes, Washington freed his enslaved workers upon his death, but it had been a very long time in coming. And yet, given where Washington had begun in life—as a slaveholder through inheritance at the age of eleven, when his father died—his eventual decision to free his slaves was no empty gesture. President Washington was, I began to realize, exactly the kind of tortured soul to whom I’m drawn—a leader whose troubled relationship with slavery embodied the contradictions and denials of our own conflicted relationship with the country’s past.

  Love him or hate him, Washington is a historical figure with whom all Americans must reckon. To ignore Washington is to ignore the complicated beginnings of the United States. We cannot rema
ke our country’s past, but we can learn from it, and all of us still have a lot to learn from George Washington. Yes, I would follow him across thirteen states and see what I discovered along the way. Thus was born (with due deference to John Steinbeck) Travels with George.

  Part I

  Inauguration

  Dora surveys the Great Falls of the Potomac.

  CHAPTER 1

  Loomings

  It’s a maxim among travel writers that you’ve got to go solo—that a companion diverts you from the object at hand, that loneliness is essential to opening yourself to the experience of the road. In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck insisted that “two or more people disturb the ecologic complex of an area. I had to go alone.” Except, of course, he wasn’t alone; there was his French standard poodle, Charley. “A dog, particularly an exotic like Charley,” Steinbeck wrote, “is a bond between strangers. Many conversations . . . began with ‘What degree of a dog is that?’ ” Steinbeck also insisted that he must camp along the way, sleeping in Spartan quarters in the back of his pickup truck. “I had to be self-contained,” he wrote, “a kind of casual turtle carrying his house on his back.”

  But as has since been revealed, Steinbeck was hardly the stickler for solitude he pretended to be. Despite his claims, he routinely traveled with his wife, Elaine. Rather than campgrounds, they stayed at hotels, some of them so swanky that a jacket was required at dinner. Instead of being appalled by these revelations, I was relieved. Because I didn’t want to go it alone. After spending the majority of the last two decades holed up in my office, I had no interest in wandering the country aching with loneliness. I wanted my wife to come along with me. A former attorney, Melissa was about to retire from her second career as the executive director of a local nonprofit. For ten years she had been at the center of the debate about how an island with a storied past should face the future. And now she was going to walk away from it all. Part of me worried that without her busy professional life we’d have less to talk about. The other part of me was downright gleeful that for the first time in thirty-five years she would be free from the demands of a full-time job. It was time we took advantage of her newfound liberty and hit the road. And like John Steinbeck, we were going to bring our dog.