The officers, moved, lifted their glasses and drank in silence. Tears welled up in Washington’s eyes, as if he suddenly relived eight emotional years of sacrifice with these battle-tested men and was pained at the thought of parting from them. “I cannot come to each of you,” he said tenderly, “but shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.”14 The moment was legendary, not for any feat of oratory, but for the simple heartfelt emotion palpable in Washington’s words.
The first officer to step forward was Henry Knox, a mere bookseller before Washington had drawn him from obscurity and boosted him to chief of artillery. Famous for his self-control and his reluctance to let people touch him, Washington not only shook hands with Knox but hugged and kissed him in silence while tears streamed down their faces. Then Steuben, the fake baron whom Washington had allowed to train troops at Valley Forge, stepped forward and was similarly embraced. All the officers were “suffused in tears” as they surged forward for a final farewell kiss from Washington. As Benjamin Tallmadge wrote, “Such a scene of sorrow and weeping I had never before witnessed . . . The simple thought . . . that we should see his face no more in this world seemed to me utterly insupportable.”15 The moment captured many of Washington’s finest qualities: his innate dignity and laconic eloquence, his frank affection behind the impassive front, his instinctive command of the theatrical gesture. He had a magisterial way of directing the major scenes in his life. One senses that, as he struggled with deep feelings, he feared that he would surrender control of his emotions if he said any more. No moment in his life showcased his gift of silence to better effect.
After all the junior officers had come forward to be clasped, Washington walked across the room, lifted his arm in a stately gesture of farewell, and left without looking back. The spell was hypnotic and the officers shuffled out “in mournful silence,” according to Tallmadge.16 When Washington arrived at the Whitehall wharf to board the ferry that would take him to New Jersey, a large crowd of citizens had gathered for an emotional goodbye. Washington raised his three-cornered hat, and his officers and the throng waved their hats in response. Then he stepped into the boat, and twenty-two oarsmen swung into motion, rowing him across the water until he vanished from sight.
Washington’s destination was the State House in Annapolis, Maryland, where an itinerant Congress had taken up residence after leaving Princeton (hoping that with its theaters, balls, and other amusements, Annapolis might entice absentee delegates to attend sessions). Once he resigned his commission as commander in chief, Washington planned to return to Mount Vernon, vowing to Martha that he would join her for Christmas dinner. Having slept in 280 houses during the war, he must have had a special craving for the banal comforts of home. It took him four days to reach Philadelphia, and even as he mused about returning to private life, the trip showed how profoundly his life had changed. He had surrendered all right to privacy. Wherever he went, he was draped with honors and became a captive of the invariable crowds. A stream of letters trailed him, entreating his aid in securing employment or other favors. All the while he had the burden of having to act like a model citizen and was allowed no normal moods or imperfections.
The extraordinary hero worship Washington inspired can be vividly seen in the correspondence of Gerard Vogels, a Dutch businessman in Philadelphia. Writing to his wife of the commander’s arrival in Philadelphia, Vogels made it sound as if the Messiah had stepped down from the heavens: “I saw the greatest man who has ever appeared on the surface of this earth. His Excellency arrived at 6 o’clock escorted by light cavalry . . . We all waved our hats three times over our heads. Then came the excellent Hero himself, riding an uncommonly beautiful horse . . . I don’t know if, in our delight at seeing the Hero, we were more surprised by his simple but grand air or by the kindness of the greatest and best of heroes.”17
Happily or not, Washington seemed resigned to being a form of public property. “His Excellency promises to walk daily through the town to give the grateful Americans the pleasure of seeing him,” Vogels informed his wife. “Then he says farewell to all honors and the world’s turmoil to live quietly in retirement on his estate.”18 At receptions Washington must have wondered whether he was the honored guest or a prisoner. All the turgid toasts in his praise drew forth from him equally stilted replies, as he took refuge in safe platitudes. Evidently there were limits to how much reverence the Hero could endure. He had always seemed uncomfortable with compliments. He left one concert as the chorus was about to sing a hymn in his honor, set to music by Handel. Vogels, who was in the audience, commented afterward, “Evidently His Excellency is above hearing his praise sung and retires before the just acclamations of his people.”19 He noted how Washington’s presence acted as an aphrodisiac on the panting ladies: “It was amusing to see how, in a place so crowded with the fair sex, everybody had eyes only for this Hero. Indeed, we only now and then stole a glance at our girls. His Excellency drew everyone’s attention.”20
Before Washington arrived, the Pennsylvania assembly had ordered construction of a triumphal wooden arch in the classical style; suspended in the center was an enormous transparency of Cincinnatus, returning to his plow, his brow crowned with laurels. In case anyone was dim-witted enough to miss the allusion, the legislature said the “countenance of Cincinnatus is [to be] a striking resemblance of General Washington.”21 The portrait commission went to Charles Willson Peale, and Washington more or less good-humoredly submitted to a session under his studio skylight. Washington left a whimsical image of his cooperation, telling one correspondent that “no dray moves more readily to the thill than I do to the painter’s chair”—that is, no workhorse was more readily harnessed to the shafts of a wagon than himself.22 Peale exchanged letters about Washington with Benjamin West, the great expatriate painter in London, who had risen to become court history painter to George III. One day the king asked West whether Washington would be head of the army or head of state when the war ended. When West replied that Washington’s sole ambition was to return to his estate, the thunderstruck king declared, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”23
Before Peale had finished the portrait, Washington decided to quit town; he left Philadelphia on December 15 with a diminished retinue. As he slowly shed the trappings of power, he retained only two aides, David Humphreys and Benjamin Walker, and a team of slaves. For a short stretch of the journey, one of his companions was John Dickinson, Pennsylvania’s chief executive, who anticipated a problem that was to harry Washington in his postwar incarnation. Washington had negotiated neither a pension nor an expense account to entertain the hordes poised to descend upon Mount Vernon. Dickinson had privately warned Congress that “the admiration and esteem of the world may make [Washington’s] life in a very considerable degree public, as numbers will be desirous of seeing the great and good man . . . His very services to his country may therefore subject him to improper expenses unless he permits her gratitude to interpose.”24 Congress failed to take action, and it would prove a serious omission in the coming years as the pilgrims to Mount Vernon imposed gigantic expenses.
On December 19 Washington approached the outskirts of Annapolis and was greeted by a delegation of dignitaries that included Horatio Gates. Both men must have been struck by the totality of Washington’s triumph and Gates’s demotion. Accompanied to George Mann’s Tavern, Washington arrived to thirteen blasts of cannon fire, a cliché of which Washington surely tired. The next day he submitted a letter to Thomas Mifflin, his former aide and disloyal critic during the Conway affair and now president of Congress, asking whether he should submit his resignation in writing or in a public ceremony. Washington wanted to do everything in his power to dramatize his humility before civilian power. Congress decided that, after being feted with a magnificent dinner on December 22, he would return his commission before that body at noon the next day.