Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past (Sexuality Studies) (5 page)

Today, perhaps the most obvious sex "scandal" surrounding Washington
is that he never fathered any of his only wife's children. This was certainly
unusual in the eighteenth century. Consolidated families, stepchildren, the
raising of other people's children and extended family, and multiple marriages
due to the death of a spouse were all common in the eighteenth century. Not
siring any children, however, was decidedly rare.10 In some colonies, one of
the only grounds for divorce, in addition to adultery and abandonment, was
sexual incapacity at the time of marriage. Some women in New England, for
example, divorced their husbands for being impotent or sterile. Divorce was
more difficult to obtain in Virginia, but as an elite woman, Martha certainly
would have had options for separation if she so desired and could demonstrate that her husband was dysfunctional. She would almost certainly have
been aware of the negative cultural view of men with sexual inability. The
language of the household medical literature of the period deems infertile
husbands as lesser men."

In his lifetime, however, Washington played the role of consummate
general, head of household, and father to his wife's children and suffered
no scathing commentary about his manhood with regards to having no
children of his own.12 The issue was raised perhaps in closer circles, going
undocumented and now lost to us. The only surviving mention of the issue
comes from a letter written by Washington to his nephew Augustine. In the
letter, Washington reassures his nephew that he could develop lands that he
would eventually inherit from Washington, because Washington would not
be having any other heirs. "If Mrs. Washington should survive me," explains Washington, "there is a moral certainty of my dying without issue; & should
I be the longest liver, the matter in my opinion, is hardly less certain; for
while I retain the faculty of reasoning, I shall never marry a girl; & it is not
probable that I should have children by a woman of an age suitable to my
own, should I be disposed to enter into a second marriage."" As this chapter
shows, Washington's positioning himself as capable of having children has
been taken at face value by biographers concerned with developing an explanation for his having had no children. But we would do well to heed the
reminder of early American scholars, such as Karen Lystra, who notes that
understanding historical subjects "by reading their mail is neither as simple
nor as straightforward as it sounds."14

Having no son meant that he had no heir to inherit his political dynasty.
Even at the time, commentators remarked that this helped the Republican
transfer of power and authority. As historian Gordon Wood points out, "So
prevalent was the thinking that Washington resembled an elected monarch
that some even expressed relief that he had no heirs."15 Such relief may not
have been unwarranted. John Adams's oldest son, John Quincy Adams,
became president. Fortunately, Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, and Jefferson did not have sons of their own, or, according to some, the
Virginia dynasty may well have threatened the democracy in its infancy."

By having no children of his own, the version of Washington memorialized is free of paternal attachments. As people have long noted, this perception leaves him able to directly serve, without competition, as the father of
the nation, a view that would only strengthen through the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. One early-twentieth-century biographer envisions that
having no children also allows Washington to be "father" of the development of the capital city. He declares, "Denied the satisfaction of children of
his body, Washington put into the Federal City, child of his brain and heart,
his hopes and ambitions for the future of his country.""

Only recent biographers have become explicit about the issue of his
childlessness and evidently feel the need to explain the cause. But for generations, writers have been implicitly compensating for this chip in his otherwise flawless masculine facade by crafting a depiction of Washington that
demonstrates manliness in his personal life on par with his extraordinary
military and political achievements.

Domestic Ideal

Washington's absence of children positioned him dangerously close to unmanliness both in his own life and in national remembrances of the man, given the endurance of this measure of manhood. Being childless could raise
symbolic questions about one's favor with God; procreation is seen by some
as divinely ordered (go forth and multiply) and also as nature's approval of
one's lineage. But far from being a problem for Washington, being childless positioned him well. Indeed, to early commentators, it seemed almost
providential that he had no children of his own. The childless man would
either be out of favor with God or, in rare cases like Washington's, closer to
God-like himself. In her history of nineteenth-century schoolbooks, Ruth
Miller Elson describes the depiction of Washington in many books as near
Christ-like, being delivered from Heaven for the salvation of the nation."

This view of Washington as "father" of the nation dates to his own
time. In his funeral oration, Gouverneur Morris notes that Washington was,
indeed, both a faithful and loving husband and the father of the nation:

Bound by the sacred ties of wedded love, his high example strengthened the tone of public manners. Beloved, almost adored by the
amiable partner of his toils and dangers, who shared with him the
anxieties of public life, and sweetened the shade of retirement, no
fruit was granted to their union. No child to catch with pious tenderness the falling tear, and soothe the anguish of connubial affection.... AMERICANS! he had no child-BUT YOU-and HE WAS ALL
YOUR OWN.19

As mentioned in the introduction, in 1810, Mason Weems emphasized
the importance of discussing Washington's private life, calling it "real life."
Sex was a component of this aspect of life, as we can see in his reference to
Benedict Arnold and his experiences with "loose women."" In the hands of
biographers, Washington has served as a role model for American boys and
men. Historian Francois Furstenberg points out that the focus on Washington's private life had important early national implications as well as
an impact on how he was viewed: "Because Washington's fatherhood was
understood so literally-and because it served as such a powerful means of
uniting Americans-the eulogies dwelled on the details of his private life to
learn about the precise nature of his paternity." A host of early-nineteenthcentury publications dwelled on Washington's personal life and, as Furstenberg notes, such connections had resonance at the level of national identity.
Furstenberg concludes, "By focusing intensely on Washington's private life,
such texts made Washington's family a matter of great political significance."21 Indeed, his domestic self would serve to unite the nation much as
his public actions in the military and government had done.

Washington's earliest biographers craft the image of a man with extraordinary virtues, an image that would serve many authors in their pursuit of
extolling the morals and qualities that all Americans should seek to embody.
In nineteenth-century schoolbooks, Washington serves as a "paragon of virtue." Schoolbooks of this era specifically use his biography to teach the value
of "filial obedience, prudence, modesty, courtesy, [and] charitableness."22
Illustrating this function, one begins a chapter on his domestic life with these
words: "I am now to present Washington to the contemplation of my young
readers in a character not less worthy of their admiration, and in which they
may all imitate him if they please."23 Weems's and John Marshall's books
were the most widely circulated early biographies of Washington. The earliest of biographers also eroticize his image and establish that Washington was
physically appealing to women-far beyond what the average man could
boast. "Happy was the fairest lady of the land, who, at the crowded ball,
could get Colonel Washington for her partner," writes Weems.24 Library
records show a waiting list of people wanting to borrow Marshall's 1807 Life
of George Washington in the early nineteenth century." And though Weems
had his critics (even in 1810), his biographies were the best-selling of any in
the early decades of the nineteenth century.26

Although many Americans wanted even more of an emphasis on private
life in the nineteenth century, the broader cultural goals of the writers tend to
the nationalistic more than to the private. Marshall's Life of Washington was
criticized because it mentions Washington very little in the first volume and
focuses on American history rather than Washington's biography in the other
volumes. Marshall's account "cover[s] his entire early life in a page and a half."
Later accounts would spend more time on his development and youth.17

Washington's body was also scrutinized and displayed for evidence of
personal masculine integrity that could be yoked to national Republican
identity. The body of a Greek god Washington may not have had, but that
did not stop some nationalized imagery from insisting on this aspect of his
physique, albeit in symbolically depicted statuary. In 1832, to commemorate the centennial of his birth, the U.S.Congress commissioned a statue
of Washington that now sits in the Smithsonian Institution (Figure 1.4). It
depicts him as a toga-wearing, half-nude, classically muscled figure, returning his commission as general of the army. The statue naturally raised eyebrows at the time of its 1840 unveiling, and some considered it unbefitting
to so embody the former commander in chief.28

In 1837, Jared Sparks published an early biography of Washington. Professor Sparks, a respected popular historian of the American Revolution,
was for a time president of Harvard, and his Library of American Biography was the most respected and well-read biographical series at the time. Sparks
believed biography was a legitimate genre of historical writing and based his
works on documentary evidence.29 But early biographers, such as Sparks,
wrote with the purpose of "adulation, not disinterested scholarship." And as
we know, although he relied on documented sources, he did so by selectively
editing or destroying those documents that he believed would threaten his
biographical subjects' reputations.30

Figure 1.4. Washington as
a toga-wearing, half-nude,
classically muscled figure,
a rendering that some
nineteenth-century Americans
regarded as inappropriate.
(George Washington. Horatio
Greenough, 1840. Courtesy of
the Smithsonian Museum of
American History.)

By using documentation, Sparks was one of the first to set in motion a
long practice of reading love letters for evidence of early emotional attachments. In his biography of Washington, he mentions one Mary Philipse as
an early crush of Washington's, and he also discusses Washington's writing
about another young woman. Couching this as an early love, he explains that
Washington had in his youth "felt the influence of the tender passion." "At
the age of seventeen," he writes, Washington "was smitten by the graces of a
fair one, whom he called a `Lowland beauty,' and whose praises he recorded
in glowing strains, while wandering with his surveyor's compass among the
Allegany [sic] Mountains.""

Sparks writes little about these early romances and only marginally more
about Washington's marital relationship with Martha. After discussing the
transfer of wealth and assets and the assumption of guardianship for Martha's children, Sparks assesses the relationship and concludes, "This union was in
every respect felicitous."32 His relatively sparse comments on Washington's
early romances and marital life are undoubtedly the product of his research
method: Very few personal writings of Washington exist to shed light on love
and marriage in his life. But Sparks's reticence would not have been disagreeable to his readers, because early-nineteenth-century biography does not pay
close attention to the lives of wives, nor does it (yet) extensively highlight
romantic sentiments. Washington's earliest biographer, Marshall, describes
George and Martha in ideals befitting of the period: "Not long after his resignation, he was married to Mrs. Custis; a young lady to whom he had been for
some time attached; and who, to a large fortune and fine person, added those
amiable accomplishments which ensure domestic happiness, and fill, with
silent but unceasing felicity, the quiet scenes of private life."33

Sparks's depiction of Washington's private life is not unlike the mid-century version authored by Washington Irving, famed author of the "Legend
of Sleepy Hollow." He, too, has little to say about the relationship of Martha
and George. As it was sufficient to only discreetly establish domestic tranquility and a pattern of romantic love, Irving tersely writes of Washington's
early "love" for Philipse and the unnamed "Lowland Beauty." Although not
greatly elaborated, for Irving, such incidents reveal Washington to have an
"early sensibility to female charms" and demonstrate that "with all his gravity and reserve, he was quickly susceptible" to them.34