Letter to the Editor: George Washington’s post-presidency life added to his immense legacy

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Perhaps because he passed within three years of leaving office, George Washington’s post-presidential activities are often ignored. However, it is clear that Washington’s final few years demonstrated his vision and added to his legacy.

Washington was ready to retire from presidential service at the end of his first term but answered the call to run again. By the end of his second term, he was frustrated with complaints about his domestic and foreign policies alike and exhausted by the infighting between his former Cabinet secretaries, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. He yearned to return to Mount Vernon as a civilian.

At first, Washington’s apparent retirement went well, as he mixed family time, businesses like his distillery and hobbies with aplomb. But circumstances soon brought him back into the fray: In 1798, he was appointed as commander in chief of the Army by his presidential successor, John Adams, as a reaction to threatening moves by France. This experience was not without headaches, but Washington’s sense of duty overrode his reservations.

Washington also continued his ongoing quests for relocation of the nation’s capital and for establishment of a national university. The former president was largely responsible for the move from Philadelphia to the area intersecting Maryland and Virginia and was pleased at progress. Alternately, he was disappointed that his advocacy for a national military university was ignored. As it turned out, the change of capital from Philadelphia occurred in 1801, while the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was approved by President Thomas Jefferson in 1802.

Before his death in December 1799, Washington contemplated freeing those enslaved at Mount Vernon. While he did not follow through on that during his lifetime, his last will and testament specified that his slaves would be freed upon his wife Martha’s death and that an education system for children of adult slaves be established. Instead, Martha freed her late husband’s slaves in 1801, a year before her passing. While not all Founding Fathers were slaveholders, Washington was the only one who was to take such decisive action toward emancipation.

In the decades after his death, Washington’s influence on the course of American government seemed to fade, even as his predictions of problems with foreign entanglements and factions materialized. The laying of the cornerstone for a monument to his memory in 1848 brought back memories of why he was considered as indispensable in all parts of his adult life, whether it be as commanding general during the American Revolution, as a Framer of the U.S. Constitution, as America’s first president or as a concerned citizen who briefly returned to government service.

Dr. Samuel B. Hoff

George Washington Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Delaware State University

Dover

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