When George Washington was a boy, the story goes that he chopped down a family cherry tree and then confessed with the immortal words: ‘Father, I cannot tell a lie…’
If only all politicians were so honest. The tale is probably apocryphal and created by Washington’s early biographer, Mason Locke Weems. But, Washington, after whom the nation’s capital was named, was responsible for many real achievements.
This is clear when visiting Mount Vernon in Virginia, the home of America’s first president, overlooking the Potomac River, 16 miles south of the White House.
Before overseeing the writing of the Constitution and defeating the English (with the help of the French) and cementing US independence at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, Washington had moved to his family home in 1754.
His father had built the large mansion in colonial Virginia on 8,000 acres some 20 years earlier.
George inherited the estate, which produced whisky, raised cattle and grew tobacco on the plantation – largely worked by slaves – after the deaths of his father and elder brother.
Slave quarters are to the left of the lawn leading to the imposing façade of the house. Inside are rough wooden bunks and brick floors. By the last year of Washington’s life in 1799, more than 300 enslaved African-Americans lived on Mount Vernon’s plantation.
The main house has a veranda with sweeping views of thick woodland in Maryland across the swirling Potomac.
Tom Chesshyre visits Mount Vernon, pictured here, the home of America’s first president, George Washington
A four-poster bed inside Mount Vernon. The interior also features framed landscapes and portraits, a piano, and decorative stucco ceilings
Washington (above) moved to the family home in 1754
This woodland has been purchased by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which oversees the estate (now 500 acres), so visitors will always be able to enjoy the vista as Washington, his wife Martha and her children would have done. Their son and daughter were from Martha’s previous marriage (they did not have their own).
The house looks as if it’s made of stone, though it’s wooden and pasted with a masonry-like sand-mixture.
Inside is a prominent staircase and hall with rooms decorated in vivid greens and blues, featuring framed landscapes and portraits, a piano, and decorative stucco ceilings.
Significantly the hall holds a display box with a key to the Bastille in Paris, a symbol of the French Revolution in 1789 gifted to Washington by Marquis de Lafayette, a French military officer who joined the Continental Army and helped in the victory in Yorktown.
Washington died at 67 of a throat complication; he rests in a tomb to the right of the house, near a slaves’ graveyard.
‘Slave quarters (above) are to the left of the lawn leading to the imposing facade of the house,’ says Tom
In his study, there’s the desk where he wrote his will, in which he freed his slaves on the death of Martha.
Washington had been swayed by abolitionists, says a guide, adding that his decision only to serve two terms of four years’ each set an ‘important precedent’.
Washington did not want to be a ‘king’. What he would make of the ongoing fight for the White House is unclear – suffice it to say that the America he led in the 18th century is far removed from that of today.