George Washington

From Philosopedia

Washington, George [President] (22 February 1732 - 14 December 1799)

“There is no doubt that George Washington, a rather indifferent member of the Episcopal Church, and John Adams, second President of the United States and sympathetic to Unitarianism, were strongly influenced by Deism, both through their colleagues and as a result of the general intellectual atmosphere,” wrote Corliss Lamont.

Washington was a member of the Masonic Lodge, which is open to individuals of all religions and uses a ritual that utilizes deistic terminology. Masonic practice is to use a deistic term such as “Supreme Architect” instead of God or Allah, and although Masons are required to believe in a “greater power” than themselves, they are allowed to define that power as they see fit. Washington consistently abstained from any public mention of the Christian religion. In his valedictory letter to the governors of the States on resigning his commission, Robertson points out, he did speak of the “ ‘benign influence of the Christian religion’ - the common tone of the American deists of that day.”

Richard Brookhiser, in Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (1995), also mentions that the Anglican Church, the Bible, Freemasonry, the theater, and farming were important to Washington. But his familiarity with the Scriptures was limited to a few quotations which were clichés expressed by others around him, such as “every man under his vine and under his fig tree.” The Bible and Freemasonry may have been important to him, but Washington’s mind was not that of an intellectual so much as it was a mind of practicality. Like Cincinnatus, he was devoted to farming.

As pointed out by Michael S. Medved,

• One of the most seriously misleading of the Washington legends is the story of the pious general kneeling in prayer in the snow at Valley Forge. Not only is there no evidence to support this tale but also Washington was notorious in his parish church for refusing to kneel at any of the customary moments in the Episcopal service. As his minister declared disapprovingly after the President’s death, ‘Washington was a Deist.’ Although Martha was a devout churchwoman, George never shared her enthusiasm. On communion Sundays he always walked out before taking the Eucharist, leaving Martha to participate in the service alone.

In short, the first United States President was not interested in promised heavenly treasures in the hereafter. Even Jefferson had difficulty getting Washington to go on record concerning organized religion.

In a 20 October 1792 letter to Sir Edward Newenham, Washington wrote,

• Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiment in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy which has marked the present age would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination, so far that we should never again see their religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.

Of Washington, Joseph McCabe wrote: “Clerical writers are naturally unwilling to admit that he was a freethinker—a non-Christian theist—but, while the evidence of faith which they allege is of the flimsiest description there is ample and solid proof of his heresy. Jefferson says that Morris, who was intimate with Washington, ‘often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than he himself did.’ He quotes a chaplain to Congress who said that when the clergy presented an address to the President at his retirement, they pointed out that in his acknowledgment he had not said a word that identified him with Christianity, and in a further reply ‘the old fox’ evaded that point. In a sermon delivered at Albany and reported in the Daily Advertiser (Oct. 29, 1831), one of the chief ministers of the city said that ‘among all our Presidents from Washington downward not one was a professor of religion,’ which gives us the clerical tradition on the question. It is true that while he was President he attended the Episcopal church, but the rector, Dr. Abercrombie, told this preacher, Dr. Wilson (who says it in the same sermon), that Washington always left before the communion and when the rector pointed this out ceased to attend any service that was followed by communion. It is admitted that he did not send for or have a clergyman in his last hours; and the statement that he asked his family to leave the room and let him ‘spend his last hour with his Maker’ shows only that he believed in God, which nobody ever disputed. Some apologists give us the prayer he said when he was ‘alone with God,’ who must have let them into the secret. It cannot be disputed that he said in his will: ‘It is my express desire that my corpse may be interred in a private manner, without parade or funeral oration.’ Against all this the chief champion of the angels, Jared Sparks, who edited Washington’s writings nearly forty years after the death, urges such matters as that Washington wrote a hymn when he was a boy of thirteen; that (being a Deist) he often spoke of ‘the Author of the Universe;’ that a granddaughter, who was still a child when Washington died, said he prayed every day in private (which Washington’s adopted daughter questioned and was, in any case, consistent with deism); and that once or twice he spoke favorably of the Christian religion. The man is obviously a religious twister. He ignores decisive evidence in the very letters he edited—as when Washington speaks of ‘the professors of Christianity’ or Bishop White says that he never saw him kneel at prayer or heard him speak about religion—and most of the evidence given above. The evidence on both sides is given in Franklin Steiner’s The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents (Haldeman-Julius, 1936) and Remsburg’s Six Historic Americans.

For some patriots, Washington has himself become somewhat deified. But the man who personally surveyed the future boundaries of Washington, D.C., and who personally signed every passport issued during his presidency was once joked about by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The novelist, seeing a statue of the half-clad Washington which was erected in the Capitol Rotunda in the 1840s, remarked,

• Did anybody ever see Washington naked? It is inconceivable. He has no nakedness, but I imagine was born with his clothes on and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world.”

Upon becoming President, Washington had only one tooth in his mouth, a lower left bicuspid. He had many pairs of false teeth – made of everything from animal tusks or human teeth – but none made of wood. It was an age when many had dental problems that dentistry was then unable to help. Little wonder he spent an estimated 7% of his salary on booze, according to Cormac O’Brien’s Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents.

Although known as “the father of his country,” Washington sired no children and allegedly showed little interest in women. “As a young unmarried man,” states the Alyson Almanac,

• . . . he told friends that there was only one woman that he would ever consider marrying and that she was already married to his friend George William Fairfax. He did eventually marry Martha Dandridge Custis after being persuaded that it was unseemly for a public figure to remain unmarried. Nevertheless, his closest attachments were always to men, particular Alexander Hamilton. Throughout the Revolution, Hamilton served as Washington’s aide-de-camp, personal secretary, and closest companion. During Washington’s term of office, Treasury Secretary Hamilton was the guiding force of the administration and was the author of Washington’s Farewell Address. Due to the fact that Hamilton also had a history of intense friendships with men, there has been speculation—but no hard evidence—that the relationship went further than that.

Scandalmongers of his time, however, said Washington illegitimately fathered dozens of children and alleged, without documentation, that Alexander Hamilton was one such; some implied, on the contrary, that Hamilton was his secret love. Others said he did not smile because his wooden false teeth hurt—according to Ben Swanson, executive director of the National Museum of Dentistry, Washington had dentures that were made of ivory, sometimes even of human tooth enamel, but not wood. They were hinged together with gold springs and caused considerable pain. When he died of quinsy, or acute laryngitis, Washington owned 33,000 acres of land in Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, and the Northwest Territory. He had 640 sheep, 329 cows, horses, and mules. He also owned hundreds of slaves. His will stated,

• Upon the decease of my wife, it is my Will & desire that all Slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom. . . . And whereas among those who will receive freedom according to this devise, there may be some, who from old age or bodily infirmities, and others who on account of their infancy, that will be unable to support themselves; it is my Will and desire that all . . . shall be comfortably cloathed & fed by my heirs while they live. . . . And I do expressly forbid the Sale, or transportation out of the said Commonwealth of Virginia, of any Slave I may died possessed of, under any pretence whosoever. . . . And to my Mulatto man William (calling himself William Lee) I give immediate freedom; or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which have befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or any active employment) to remain in the situation he now is. . . . This I give him as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary war.

At the time of his death, he had been bled heavily for four times and given gargles of molasses, vinegar, and butter. On his throat was placed a preparation, a blister of cantharides, made from dried beetles.

On his deathbed, he uttered no words of a religious nature nor did he ask for a clergyman. “I die so hard,” he said, “but I am not afraid to go. I feel myself going. I thank you for your attention, but I pray you to take no more trouble about me. Let me go off quietly. I cannot last long.”

(Gouverneur Morris told Thomas Jefferson that Washington believed no more of Christianity than he himself did. Paul Boller’s George Washington and Religion discusses the topic, also.)

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