Abstract
During his second term (1793–1797), President George Washington became an increasingly polarizing figure, accused by Jeffersonian-Republican critics of being the leader—or worse, the dupe—of a High Federalist plot to monarchize America. Licking his wounds at his Mount Vernon estate, the former president stood ready to take up his sword once again, as commander of American forces against a (highly unlikely) French invasion. Happily for his everlasting reputation, the war scare subsided and the dead Washington could be restored to his exalted status as “father of his country.”Costello’s study of Washington’s afterlife juxtaposes a fresh history of his tomb, its controversial site, and public access to it with a more conventional account of the evolving Washington image in the American mind. Costello concludes with a strong chapter about the ultimately successful effort of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (mvla) to save the tomb and the estate from the assaults of an adoring public—and, when the Civil War came, from the depredations of opposing armies. Although Mount Vernon remained under Union control throughout the war, mvla president Ann Pamela Cunningham of South Carolina successfully “advocated a policy of neutrality for both the estate and the organization” (204). Preservation of this tiny patch of neutral ground was an ironic tribute to the memory of a provincial Virginian who envisioned a new and rising nation of imperial dimensions.The conventional understanding is that Parson Mason Locke Weems’ perennially best-selling Life of Washington, first published in 1806, secured his subject’s preeminent position in the American pantheon. When Washington died, Jeffersonians recanted their partisan attacks; Jefferson himself extolled the virtues of “our first and greatest revolutionary character” as he called for an end to party strife in his Inaugural Address. Costello acknowledges Weems’ critical importance to the supposed “democratization” of the Washington image but develops an alternative narrative by focusing on the experiences of visitors to Mount Vernon, owners of the estate who regulated access, and enslaved workers there who sold relics and told (often apocryphal) stories about their former master (115).From early in Washington’s afterlife, clamorous citizens insisted, with editor–politician Alexander Contee Hanson, that the “Mount, rendered so dear by the burial of Washington…ought to be the property of the nation” (28). That claim was a constant, but the rise of history tourism, and the ability of canny capitalists to monetize the “civic pilgrimage” to Washington’s tomb, transformed the patriotic aspiration to a concrete threat to the family’s property interests—interests that the mvla and donors across the country would, finally, generously compensate. Costello is at his best in charting the rising tide of visitors facilitated by improved transport, which led to regular steamship crossing, and the resulting “production of memorabilia and images” that enabled “consumers to own a tangible piece of Washington’s legacy” (75). The grounds and gardens were pillaged by patriots, exercising a kind of eminent domain, in the name of the sovereign “people.” By the time the mvla stepped in, the need to protect and preserve Washington’s “tangible” legacy was acute. The failure of previous public and private initiatives instead suggested that the federal union itself—Washington’s most cherished, and increasingly intangible legacy—was on the verge of collapse.The Property of the Nation illuminates important issues in early American cultural history, particularly the ways in which Americans understood—and consumed—their own unfolding history. Costello is much less persuasive in aligning his stories about Mount Vernon with the supposed transformation of Washington from “a republican aristocrat” to “a democratic self-made man.” Washington, after all, remained the people’s “father,” a demi-god whom they adored and venerated and who would not be brought “down from the clouds to stand alongside ordinary Americans” (214). When the mvla created an appropriate shrine for the great man, Americans could worship him properly, suppressing the memory that they had betrayed and despoiled the union, his most precious legacy, on Civil War battlefields. The union that forgetful combatants eventually “restored” would perpetuate white supremacy, another, more enduring and more pernicious legacy of Washington’s founding generation.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call