Photo of the Day: The Potomac River, As Viewed From Mount Vernon

I took this picture in November 2010, while visiting Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate in Alexandria, VA.

Ignore the apocryphal tale about Washington tossing a silver dollar across this waterway (more likely, it was the narrower Rappahannock River). It is an undeniable truth that in every other way that counted, the Potomac River remained central to his life. 

He located his business—his plantation—here. Believing the Potomac to be “the Nation’s River,” he helped formation a company that sought to link it to the Ohio River, binding the different sections of the young republic in a web of commerce.

And I have to believe, looking out from the back of his home, that Washington appreciated the sheer beauty of this landscape, and sought, every time he had the chance to grab greater power, to forsake it all for the chance to return here.

Photo of the Day: George Washington’s Mount Vernon

In the old days, Americans trooped to Mount Vernon to pay tribute to America’s first President. When I visited the estate of George Washington seven years ago and took the accompanying photo, I wanted to better understand him, and I came away doing so, discovering a figure all too human (not always the sharpest military strategist—and, of course, a slaveholder), but also capable of learning from his mistakes (not only eventually triumphing at Yorktown, but setting free his slaves in his will—a bold, unique act among the Founding Fathers).

Nowadays, I think a trip to Washington’s beloved home on the Potomac River might be even more important for Americans to visit, so that they can learn about a President who tried to rise above hyperpartisanship, who believed in steering clear of debt, who could never be accused of being influenced by a corrupt foreign power—and who, despite the sorry spectacle of republics until his time, continually renounced power. 

Americans have become accustomed to taking these qualities for granted. We should not. George Washington’s life inspires us to keep in mind that we, as a people, can be better, and that we as individuals, through the daily discipline Washington practiced, can make ourselves better.

Southern Travel Journal, Days 1 and 2: Alexandria VA

I write this not at the end of each day of my vacation, but after the conclusion of the trip. I was too busy experiencing everything—or organizing my photos from the trip, or simply falling asleep at the end of the day from exhaustion—to write in anything like real time. Still, I thought my faithful readers wouldn’t mind some sort of personal record of what I saw.

On my first vacation in two years, I found myself with less time than I wanted. I had had so little time to spend researching lodging and itineraries that I needed a day at the start simply to take care of this, along with other important logistics such as going to the bank and—crucially—having my car checked before the long ride from New Jersey to across the Mason-Dixon Line.

The first leg of my drive took me to Northern Virginia—specifically, Alexandria. Before setting out, I had planned to circle back to the region, on the return leg of the trip—this time, to Arlington, where I hoped to take public transportation into D.C.—but I had not figured on The Beltway.

No wonder Washington’s politicians are so fouled up: If they (and their staff members) ever use The Beltway to commute back and forth to Capitol Hill, they’re already in a foul mood before the day begins. And partisan thickets must seem nothing after D.C. denizens have made their way through the vehicular ganglia surrounding the nation’s capital.

I took off for D.C. a little later than I wanted on my first day, but I really lost time on the drive down. Two different sets of directions—seemingly okay on the surface, but actually contradictory—ended up losing me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour.

The next day wasn’t better—actually, it was even worse—leaving me unexpectedly open to a later suggestion that I cancel the Arlington-bound penultimate leg of my trip. (More on that in a later post.)

But there were four reasons to celebrate that first day and a half:

1) My stay at an Alexandria bed-and-breakfast called Yesteryear’s Treasures. The neighborhood was good—a five-minute walk to DC’s mass transit rail system, the Metro; and the B&B proprietor, Ms. Moina Radford, was the soul of graciousness and helpfulness.

2) Alexandria’s trolley system, which takes you for free back and forth on King Street, one of the city’s major commercial thoroughfares. I’m not saying everything was completely okay with this system of transportation, mind you (one of the two trolley drivers was not simply uncommunicative, but downright surly). But recorded messages provided some nice little bits of trivia along the way (e.g., the largest slave auction firm in America has now been converted, triumphantly, into the Northern Virginia chapter of the Urban League). Moreover, these little trips where you see a mass of humanity sometimes startle you. In the trolley in which I rode, for instance, I saw what appeared at first too be look-alikes for Liz Smith and Glenn Beck. (Though a second look convinced me that the latter individual couldn’t be the same person as the Fox News commentator: he looked tired but not bug-eyed--and, by definition, nobody can be Glenn Beck if his eyeballs don't look as if they'll fly toward Jupiter on the slightest pretext.)

3) The beautiful weather. If you’re going to travel a long way, it helps if your windshield isn’t filling up with rain or snow. That was one consolation about my longer-than-expected drive around the Beltway. Temperatures in Virginia were warmer than the last time I visited, in the Charlottesville area, four Novembers before, when I stepped out a couple of mornings to find snow on the ground. The higher temperatures this time (in the 60s) meant that the leaves were still on the trees, and still mostly turning color.

4) Old Town Alexandria. Ms. Ratliff noted proudly that Alexandria was older than D.C. (established in 1749, nearly a half century before our nation’s capital), and I could see vestiges of its Revolutionary and Federal past in the cobblestone streets and Georgian architecture of Old Alexandria. Even though it was twilight by the time I made it downtown, I could still sense the electricity of this community in the abundant coffeeshops (a must for government workers and those lobbyists who work to influence them!), restaurants (I ate at an especially nice seafood restaurant on King Street, not far from the waterfront) and art galleries (an especially unique example of the latter—closed, alas, by late afternoon, when I made it down to the waterfront-- was the Torpedo Factory Arts Center, a former WWI munitions plant saved from the wrecking ball in 1969).

Mount Vernon: The Autobiography Washington Never Wrote

But the reason why I visited Alexandria--George Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon--pleasantly surprised me with its changes. From a prior visit 10 to 15 years before, I recalled a shrine familiar to most Americans--but a place that didn’t take more than an hour to tour.

Before leaving on my trip, I’d caught glimpses of the “new Mount Vernon,” if you will, on C-Span—including a tour of the Conservation Lab that featured, for instance, Martha Washington’s ivory fan and needlepoint shell cushion.

Still, I didn’t realize the impact of all these changes until I saw for myself. Mount Vernon’s Official Guidebook advises devoting at least three hours to the house and grounds. But to do it true justice—or, to be exact, to do true justice to the one person more responsible than any other for bringing this republic into being—you really need to view Mount Vernon over the course of a whole day, much like Colonial Williamsburg.

That’s because there’s simply so much to experience here, including, besides the mansion:

· an orientation center;
· a museum-education center;
· shops and bookstore;
· Washington’s whiskey distillery and gristmill;
· colonial revival gardens;
· a four-acre farm site;
· the tomb of George and Martha; and
· a restaurant and food court (if you don't want to be worn out, you need sustenance!).

Visitors will inevitably focus on two aspects of the museum: a) Washington’s teeth (contrary to myth, the great man's choppers weren’t made of wood, but they did cause him all the discomfort you’ve heard about); and b) simulations of what Washington looked like at different points in his life (at age 19, for instance, he stood six feet two inches, weighed a lean 175 pounds, and possessed red hair—which, combined with equestrian skills that Thomas Jefferson claimed were unrivaled, made him the closest thing the colonial period had to a world-class athlete/matinee idol).

In a way, the growth of this vast historical complex merely mirrors the same evolution of the house and estate itself during Washington’s lifetime. In the 45 years in which he either leased the property (from the widow of half-brother Lawrence) or owned it outright, the estate grew from 2,126 acres to approximately 8,000. A founder of an empire on the North American continent, he was something of an empire builder in private life, owning approximately 50,000 acres of real estate at the time of his death in 1799.

The house—the autobiography that Washington never wrote, according to historian David McCullough—remains an impressive emblem of the status, balance and order that America’s first President valued. No matter how many times I’d seen pictures of its famous façade, I was still struck—and I think you will be, too, in the picture I took—of its classical symmetry, extending not just from the house proper but to the outbuildings radiating away from it.

Nobody bats an eye at the thought that fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson designed Monticello; after all, he was rivaled perhaps only by Benjamin Franklin as the true Renaissance Man of early America. But it's more of a surprise to learn that Washington himself designed his own beautiful home.

Washington, a guide told me, did so using so-called “pattern books” of the time that provided models. But, as detailed oriented as he was, the future general and president wanted to leave his imprint on the estate. He did so by choosing as his theme what he probably loved the most: agriculture.

I could go on and on about Mount Vernon—and, in future posts, I hope to do so—but I’ll just confine myself, for now, to the issue of slavery.

It’s been my experience, in visiting historic sites associated with more recent Presidents—notably, FDR’s Hyde Park and the JFK Library in Massachusetts—that a note of defensiveness enters into museum exhibits on controversial aspects of their lives and tenures in office. No such squeamishness enters into Mount Vernon’s explanation of slavery in the life of Washington.

Three hundred slaves worked on Mount Vernon at the time of Washington’s death. Exhibits at the museum make no bones about the fact that he was a demanding boss and that slaves possessed no rights whatsoever. A marker not far from the tomb of George and Martha memorialized these men, women and children.

At the same time, historians—including many African-American ones—have concluded that Washington had turned decisively against slavery by the end of his life, and that he was far better than nearly all other Founding Fathers from the South on this issue. He might have been demanding, but he also possessed a hard-headed sense of realism, making him realize that slaves, with no financial stake in their labor, possessed little motivation to work. But the adverse spiritual and emotional effects of slavery—including breaking up families—also bothered him.

Washington’s careful management of his estate meant that, unlike younger members of the Virginian Dynasty such as Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, he could arrange to free slaves without worrying about his debts. He provided in his will for the emancipation of slaves he owned (remaining slaves, because of the terms of Martha’s dowry, had to wait for her death three years later), and he arranged for a regular and permanent fund for the elderly and infirm among those freed under the terms of his will. He looked forward, he wrote to a friend, when Virginia’s assembly could gradually abolish slavery.

In how he managed his slaves for the early part of his life, Washington was a man of his time. By the end of his life, he had transcended his age. Not too many Southerners (or, for that matter, residents from many Northern states, some of whom still had elderly slaves at the dawn of the Civil War) could claim the same thing.

As I drove away from Mount Vernon on the George Washington Parkway, I could easily understand how the President could fall in love with his sprawling property along the Potomac—and why he couldn’t wait to come home. Two hundred and fifty years after he took Martha to live on the estate, it remains a notably beautiful spot--especially within the godforsaken automobile nightmare that is the D.C. area.

This Day in Preservation History (“Southern Matron” Saves Mount Vernon)

Dec. 2, 1853—Signed by “A Southern Matron,” a letter published in the December issue of the Charleston Mercury urged the women of the South to save Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, before it fell into ruin or commercial despoliation. The plea not only rescued one of America’s most historic sites, but initiated the first national preservation organization—and the first national women’s organization.

Undoubtedly recalling his mother Rose’s successful tea party fundraisers, John F. Kennedy observed, “There’s an old saying, ‘Never send a boy to do a man’s job, send a lady.” Seldom has that been truer than in the effort by the “Southern Matron”—in reality, a 37-year-old South Carolina woman named Ann Pamela Cunningham—to preserve the estate of America’s first President.

Cunningham succeeded where a host of the nation’s most powerful males either believed her effort couldn’t work or urged her toward a governing philosophy that would have radically diminished the home.

Thirteen years ago, amid the idiotic government showdown instigated by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, I discovered that historic sites in one city after another were closed because of the impasse. One hope remained for my salvaging a vacation somewhere: San Antonio and its shrine of Texas independence, the Alamo. I called the site to see if it was closed. “No, we’re not,” the voice at the other end of the line answered, “because we’re run by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, or DRT.”

As soon as I finished my best Texas-style “Wah-hoo!”, I rejoiced in the thought of a non-governmental organization running a cultural site I could actually visit. But the template for the DRT was created by Ms. Cunningham.

My favorite song on my favorite Joe Jackson CD, Body and Soul, is called “Go for It.” It concerns the need to maintain hope, no matter how long the odds. Offhand, it’s hard for me to think of anyone who’s faced longer odds than Ms. Cunningham.

It wasn’t just that she spearheaded her pioneering organization in a deeply patriarchal society in which women couldn’t vote, run for office, or possess the same untrammeled property rights as men. Worse than that, she faced severe physical limitations.

You remember the scene in Gone With the Wind when the apple of Rhett Butler’s eye, daughter Bonnie, goes riding on a horse far beyond her practically nonexistent ability, only to get thrown off and die?

Well, imagine if Bonnie had been a teenager like Ms. Cunningham instead of a little girl, and she was suddenly closed out of the usual avenues of advancement for Southern belles—confined to her bed because of a spinal injury sustained through the equestrian accident, enduring rounds of treatments and medications that left her increasingly isolated and depressed.

Only the story didn’t end there. Imagine now if Bonnie/Ms. Cunningham—forever deprived of the suitors that followed mom Scarlett around like plantation dogs all over Tara—suddenly felt a reason to live. Imagine if, instead of living for her own selfish pleasure, as Scarlett did, Bonnie led a cause that mobilized thousands—men and women, even black and white—in a great national grassroots movement.

What ignited Ms. Cunningham’s interest, transformed her life, and altered the cause of American national memory was a letter from her mother.

After traveling to Pennsylvania, where Ann was receiving medical treatment, Louisa Dalton Bird Cunningham wrote her daughter about the moonlit riverboat tour of the Potomac that she’d just taken: “I was painfully distressed at the ruin and desolation of the home of Washington, and the thought passed through my mind: Why was it the women of his country did not try to keep it in repair, if the men could not do it?”

What was so bad about Mount Vernon and how did it get that way?

Visible to the eye were peeling paint; piazza columns rotted so badly that they needed to be propped up by the masts of old ships; and a lawn overgrown with weeds. Inside wasn’t much better—the mansion now contained only a few reminders of its proud heritage—Houdon’s bust of the President, the key to the Bastille presented by the Marquis de Lafayette to his former Continental Army commander, and a terrestrial globe.

After Washington’s death in 1799, ownership changed hands within the family five times. By the time Louisa Cunningham mournfully observed the magnificent wreck, it had fallen into the hands of the President’s great-grandnephew, John Augustine Washington III, a planter whipsawed between an imploding, tobacco-based economy that had already devastated the fortunes of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, plus an ever-growing band of tourists who came to this still-privately-owned estate and tramp around the house and grounds--so much so that Augustine had even less money for maintenance.

To his credit, Augustine refused to take the easy way out and sell to hucksters who’d want to turn the site into an antebellum honky-tonk haven. He went first to the national government, then to the Commonwealth of Virginia, to sound them out about purchasing the site. However, both the federal and state levels were more interested in sniping at each other over slavery and succession than in honoring the man who helped create the Union in the first place.

Enter Ann Pamela Cunningham, who stands as a rebuke to anyone who’s ever believed that as only one person they have no influence. Everything that would seem on the surface to make her an impossible crusader ended up ensuring her success:

* No husbands or sons to help her: Cunningham’s inability to marry and become the mistress of a Southern plantation gave her time she could devote wholeheartedly to her endeavor.

* No knowledge whatsoever how others would proceed: This isolation meant that she was blessedly free of what passed for the conventional wisdom of the day—and, thus, could write the manual, so to speak, for the future historic preservation movement.

* Disregard for social norms: Cunningham signed the initial letter “A Southern Matron” because the social code of the time held that the only times that a female’s name should appear in a newspaper was upon her marriage or death. But after awhile, she simply stopped caring what people thought—as a semi-invalid, it was highly unlikely she’d see them anyway. So after awhile, she began signing her appeals, breaking a social taboo.

Amazingly, this woman’s shrewd managerial style was celebrated in an article in Investor’s Business Daily (“She Saved Washington’s Home,” by Kathryn McKay, Oct. 18, 2008—unfortunately, no article link). Here are the features of that style, along with the resulting accomplishments:

* Call on as much outside talent as possible— In forming the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, Cunningham appointed as vice regents at least one prominent woman from each state then in the Union, making sure the cause was beyond section.

* Empower creative people—Cunningham didn’t care about imposing her own ideas for raising money; she allowed the state vice regents to implement their own fundraising ideas. Thus, Alabama citizens held a strawberry festival; in Kansas, schoolchildren donated pennies; and in Virginia, dinner parties brought in cash.

* Hold celebrity fundraisers—Cunningham’s shrewdest catch might have been Edward Everett, who nowadays is known as the fellow upstaged at Gettysburg by Abraham Lincoln but who was known as the Demosthenes of his time. Cunningham buttonholed him after a lecture in Richmond on George Washington and convinced him of the rightness of her cause. For three years thereafter, Everett delivered his Washington lecture an estimated 129 times.

* Exert pressure through the right channels—In the spring of 1858, Cunningham was convinced she was in the best possible position to make an offer to purchase the property from Augustine Washington. The planter, not in the best of moods, threw cold water on the idea that a group of women could run the enterprise. After being shown the door, Ann collapsed in distress—then got busy, calling on Augustine Washington’s wife within 24 hours, urging her to use her influence on her husband. It worked like a dream. Twenty-four hours later, he agreed to the deal with the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.

* Challenge the conventional wisdom: Many people peppered Cunningham with questions about tearing down the outlying areas of the estate. Nobody wanted to see reminders of the central quarrel facing Americans at that time: slavery. But Cunningham insisted on preserving the property as is. Without her firmness on this point, all traces of the hundreds of men and women who toiled here in anonymity would have been erased, and our understanding of an essential component of the Southern economy—as well as of how George Washington came to regard it as economically flawed and morally wrong—would have been lost for good.

(Speaking of John Augustine Washington: Over the weekend, I learned from a C-Span special of a fascinating experiment he conducted to wean Mount Vernon from the boom-and-bust cycles associated with slavery and tobacco. In the 1840s, according to Scott Casper, author of Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine, Augustine decided on an alternative: four immigrants from Ireland—three male, one female. Within only a few weeks, however, the experiment collapsed.)

Mount Vernon’s most trying hours might have occurred during the Civil War, when soldiers north and south converged on the great estate, while also making sure they stayed neutral. The conflict prevented Cunningham from seeing the estate for six years, and overall time her medical condition meant she could give less and less time to the project. But she had made sure it was well-launched.

Without George Washington, no American nation would have been made. But it’s also a safe bet to say that without Ann Pamela Cunningham, no trace of the most important building in Washington’s life would remain.