American Sabbatical 67: 3/10/97

3/10

We are supposed to be sprinting SOUTH to where spring begins before we start following the side trails, but too many of Peggy’s heroes left footprints around here, and we get distracted. Trying to keep Peggy down to one historic visit a day is like trying to keep the dogs out of the neighbors’ compost.

The capitol’s black squirrels were skittering up and down the budding oaks as we repacked the Owl, and cut across the city to the Anacostia Bridge. On route we were diverted by the White House security barricades and got in a logjam by the Capitol steps.. automotive street theater. These marble photo-op backdrops are so ingrained in our consciousness that we can’t really see them, we go into recognition shock just as we do before GREAT ART in the flesh. It’s impossible to imagine them once standing stark and new on this wet meadow, a promise of power to be.

Douglass had a panoramic view of these promises from his hilltop in Anacostia, and we picked our way to his house through the disintegrating neighborhood on his side of the river. There are always a lot more pedestrians in black sections of town, clusters of men on the corners and in the parks, and driving through leaves a wake of mutual awareness. Fenced off, and rising out of the poverty, the Douglass House looks very grand, and Peggy was eager to take the tour, but they were booked solid with school groups. We hung around for a couple of hours, and Peggy tried to cajole the all-black guides into letting her tag along.. to no avail. And we got turned around trying to find our way out of Anacostia, and saw how the other half lives.

Minister to Haiti, abolitionist society lecturer, US Marshall, newspaper editor, author, women’s rights advocate, escaped slave, orator, national leader. Frederick Douglass was all of these. He counted among his friends Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Brown. He toured England and Ireland giving abolitionist speeches. He sheltered escaped slaves. He was in attendance at the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848. He shared his friend John Brown’s abolitionist passion, but declined to join the raid on Harper’s Ferry. He pleaded the cause of emancipation to Abraham Lincoln and helped enlist blacks in the Northern army during the Civil War. In the late 1880’s he denounced the government for abandoning ex-slaves and fought segregation. He was at a women’s rights rally the day he died.

In the 1870’s Frederick and Anna Douglass bought Cedar Hill, the beautiful white house that crowns a hill in Anacostia (SE Washington). From its wide front porch you have a panoramic view of the city - the Washington Memorial and the Capitol. It is a national historical park. Unusual among the historic houses I’ve seen, Cedar Hill has an estimated 90% of the original furnishings used by Frederick Douglass. GREAT.

We found the Douglass home in Anacostia and I eagerly climbed the hill. The house was locked up. A special singular staff development day (!#@!)). Only one tour and there are 37 children coming and no more allowed, but you could call at 2:45. Maybe a kid’s sick. I waited. I toured the small museum at the foot of the hill and saw a wonderful film on Douglass and his death mask and a full sized statue and Abraham Lincoln’s cane (given to him by Mary Lincoln after Lincoln’s assassination). At 2:45 the bus arrived with 39 children. No chance now. Maybe on our trip home.

3/10 .. cont.

Then we were southbound on Route 1 again, pointing for Mt. Vernon. That’s right, Mainers, ol’ George had to put up with the traffic on Rt.1, too. We couldn’t just cruise on by, of course. Washington is THE big enchilada. The indispensable man. We joined the parade into his driveway.

Mount Vernon is a very beautiful spot, and you can understand Washington’s longing to get back here, away from all the demands we made on him as THE FATHER. And still he gets no peace. He would entertain 400 visitors a year in his retirement, now a million of us make the pilgrimage down the Potomac each year, and trek through his parlors.

Somehow I expected it to be larger, forgetting that even plantation mansions in the 18th century were modest by comparison to a modern edifice complex. And the rooms are livable, not showcases of self-importance. And I had expected the man to be present somehow, the way a charge lingers in well-loved places, or on bloodied ground. But the millions of pilgrims have trampled out that vintage. Or so it felt to me. The trees he planted, the walled garden he dug, the house and buildings he designed, then have a coherence and an integrity which mirror the man, but in turning him into an icon we have evaporated his humanity. Is that what heroism ultimately leads to? Hollow museums where all we hear is the echo of our shuffling through.. and the gabble of docents?

Still, you can’t denigrate Washington, even by parading through his house slack-jawed and glassy-eyed. Some giants you can’t bury. There was an elderly woman sitting on his front veranda silently watching the light pinken over the Potomac. She was a local lady, who comes all the time, she said.. just to be there. I bet she knows where George is hiding.

The plantations of Virginia produced an incredible number of American leaders: Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Tyler, Harrison; military leaders Lighthorse Harry Lee, Robert E. Lee; assorted politicos named Byrd, Randolph, Mason etcetera etcetera. What was it about this culture which produced national leaders?

I took the audio tour. My brother started me on this in art museums and generally they are great sources of information. Turns out all the labeled tree giants were planted by George Washington himself(!) and the meandering paths and curving brick walls were intended to give a more naturalistic feel than rectilinear walks (so visible in other plantations and English great houses and their gardens). Plantings, he said, had to have a “regular irregularity.” The mansion house started as a simple four-room-around-central-hall-house, expanded again and again. The land side is pretty unadorned, with colonnaded walks sweeping out on either side to the 20 small outbuildings (known as “ dependencies”) that are well hidden behind hedges and shrubs. The river side has the great veranda with three-story columns and an incredible view down the hill to the Potomac. No modern structures were to be seen.

A plantation was home to literally hundreds of people - the family, guests, hired white workers (ex. overseer, schoolmaster, gardener, clerk), indentured servants (specialists like the saddler, boatmaker , “the French stucco man” who did the incredible walls and ceilings in the house), and slaves (specialists like the cook, house servants, fieldhands). Washington had 12 white workers, over 300 slaves. In the busy times after the presidency he once had 400 guests in a single year! Mount Vernon was a huge and complicated economic enterprise requiring a variety of skills.

Interior - 2

Here are some of the statistics. Washington eventually owned five farms in the neighborhood (expanding his holdings from 2100 to 8000 acres). He identified himself as a farmer and was a progressive one (his library held many botanical books and he experimented with crop rotation and fertilizers). He speculated on land in the west
(starting as a surveyor in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains) and schemes like the first inland canals. Mount Vernon had fields to grow the cash crops (wheat and tobacco), which were harvested and eventually loaded on ships at the landing. He experimented with different grains and grasses to support his 100 cow dairy herd (not profitable in the long run) and his many horses (he loved foxhunting) and the 800 sheep (wool for the Mt. Vernon clothmaking). The woods and small lumber mill provided wood for heat, building, and to fuel his distillery and the smokehouse. He ran a fish business, catching them in the river below the house from his several boats, then salting down (one order in his account books is for 562 barrels). One account says when the fish ran they fished round the clock and the slaves were even paid to fish Sundays (yes, slaves did get paid for some tasks and this was the way some saved to buy their freedom). He bred the first American mules at Mount Vernon. There were orchards for fruit and brandy, beekeeping in basketry hives (called "skips") since Washington favored honey on his hoecakes for breakfast. While the planter ran the farm, keeping account with the help of clerks and administering through a chain of plantation subordinates and agents in the cities who made regular reports, the wife oversaw the house (kitchens, laundry, textile making, soapmaking etcetera etcetera) through her own chain of subordinates. A plantation was a huge complex business conglomerate.

3/10.. concluded.

So how much do I have to give to get to sleep in Washington’s bedroom?
I'd have given a pretty penny to have dossed down at Mt. Vernon that night, but had to settle for an EconoLodge on Route 1, round the corner from George Mason’s digs.