King George Washington I

One of the most enduring stories about the founding of the United States of America is that before George Washington accepted the position as President, he declined the position as King. But "enduring" doesn't necessarily mean true.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky listener, discretion is advised.
The first three fun facts that you learn about George
Washington are wrong. Before or even out of elementary school

(00:21):
in the United States of America, we learn plenty of
myths about our first president, George Washington. Take, for instance,
the famous anecdote about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree.
If you haven't heard it or haven't heard it in
a while, the basic story goes like this. At six
years old, George Washington gets a brand new hatchet, and,

(00:44):
excited to try it out, he sets about swinging it
at his father's prize cherry tree in their front yard.
When George's father gets home, furious about either the hatchet
marks in the tree or the fact that it had
been cut down altogether, Mr Washington asks his son if
he was the responsible party. Ever the paradigm of moral virtue,

(01:08):
even as a kindergartener, George Washington admits what he did
right away with the phrase, I cannot tell a lie
if you didn't already know that story, endearing as it is,
simply isn't true. It first appeared in a biography written
by Mason Locke Weemes, who published his book Trying to

(01:29):
Cash In immediately after Washington's death. Although the cherry Tree
anecdote didn't actually appear until the book's fifth edition, published
six years later, that story just detailed enough to be
memorable and vague enough to apply as a life lesson
for all children immediately caught on. In eighteen thirty six,

(01:51):
a Presbyterian minister and professor named William Holmes McGuffey included
it as a lesson on morality in a Chill Duran's
grammar school textbook, sort of a nineteenth century equivalent of
a Highlights magazine. Goofus and Gallant. Mcguffey's textbook stayed in
print for almost one hundred years. The year before the

(02:14):
textbook came out, circus ringleader and conman P. T. Barnum
purchased an elderly enslaved woman named Joyce Heath and put
her on display as a sideshow attraction, claiming that she
was the slave who had raised George Washington. Heath, who
would have been one hundred and sixty one years old
if Barnum's claim was actually true, told stories to wrapped

(02:38):
audiences about Washington, including the then already famous Cherry Tree anecdote.
It's easy to understand why the Cherry Tree story had
such longevity. It's an American Horatio Alger novel in anecdote form,
a modern tutor morality play, and it's a perfect celebration

(02:59):
of the law myth of America that we're a land
of meritocracy. If you're a good person, like the six
year old who was honest to his father, then you
can and will go on to achieve great things. America's
love mythologizing our founding fathers, turning them into superhero mascots

(03:20):
of our own national self celebration. The next myth about
George Washington is a little bit harder to trace. The
idea that George Washington had wooden teeth. He didn't. He
did suffer from issues with his teeth throughout his life,
and by the time he gave his first presidential address
he only had one of his original teeth left in

(03:42):
his mouth. But his dentures were never made of wood. Really,
that seems like an awful idea for dentures on any level.
What is porous and absorbent, It warps and cracks. I mean,
imagine the splinters. Throughout George Washington's life, he had multiple
sets of dentures made for materials like ivory, gold, lead,

(04:06):
and slave teeth, yes, probably slave teeth. In George Washington's ledger,
he noted that on May eighth, seventy four, he paid
six pounds and two shillings to quote Negroes for nine teeth.
While it's possible that he was buying them for a
family member, it's just as likely that they were meant

(04:28):
for his own mouth. As the Mount Vernon website itself notes,
selling teeth to dentists was a common way to make
money for poor people since at least the end of
the Middle Ages. But it is important to remember that
although Washington paid for these teeth, the enslaved people in
Virginia in the eighteenth century had no choice when it

(04:49):
came to participating in the transaction. So where did the
idea of wooden teeth come from? Most historian degree that
Washington's ivory dent years became stained and brownish over time,
which made them look wouldn't But why would that story
be so enduring? It doesn't have a simple moral narrative

(05:11):
like the cherry tree story unless you assume that Washington
carved the teeth himself, and then sure it does give
him a rugged, self sufficient man of the people type power.
But well, wooden teeth themselves are memorable. They're oddly specific
and a little gruesome in their imagery and weirdness, Especially

(05:34):
in conjunction with a historical figure that's so often portrayed
as so virtuous he may as well just be a
marble sculpture. Is interesting. It makes George Washington seem human
and lets us in the modern day shake our heads
in superiority at how antiquated, how positively medieval things were

(05:57):
two years ago. But it the third George Washington myth
that will be talking about in depth today, a myth
that has so infiltrated the popular culture that I admit
I didn't know it was false myself until I started
doing my research for this very podcast. You see, with
all the attention on the American executive branch during a

(06:20):
presidential election, I found myself thinking about the historical fun
fact that I've heard so many times, the folk grum
point in American history that could have changed the course
of our nation with a single decision. The notion that
they offered to make George Washington not the first president

(06:41):
of the United States, but the first king. Of course,
you know the rest of that story. George Washington, he
of the moral backbone to come clean after an act
of fruit tree vandalism, refused the crown, and he ushered
our young country in as a representative democracy. George Washington

(07:04):
could have been a king, they say, and he chose
not to be. It's a story that makes Washington and
by extension, America, look honorable and virtuous. It's the type
of story we want to believe about ourselves. But the
truth is always a little more complicated. I'm Danis Schwartz,

(07:26):
and this is noble blood. In seventeen eighty, while the
soldiers of the Continental Army fought against the British, the
delegates of the Second Continental Congress passed a statute promising

(07:49):
that the American soldiers would receive a pension after they retired,
half of their current pay for the rest of their lives.
It was a mighty promise from a government that could
barely find the funds to pay the soldiers. As it
was at this point in American history, the federal body

(08:11):
had almost no actual power beyond the symbolic, especially when
it came to money. Congress had no power to tax
the States to pay the army. The federal government relied
on requisitions from the states that the states would pay voluntarily,
and as you might imagine, these voluntary payments weren't nearly enough.

(08:35):
After the Battle of Yorktown in the war on land
between the colonists and the British was largely over. Peace
talks were beginning, and even though British ships still bobbed
visible in the Atlantic Ocean, cutting off trade, independence was imminent,
but the Continental Army remained vigilant monitoring. British occupied New

(08:59):
York City from their base in Newburg, sixty miles to
the north, but the soldiers were well aware that they
occupied a strange Noman's land. They were soldiers for a
country that didn't quite exist yet. Hand with the war ending,
they were about to be unemployed. In the meantime, Robert Morris,

(09:20):
the Superintendent of Finance, who would be called the financier
of the Revolution, had to stop army pay in seventeen
eighty two to cut costs. He made the assurance that
it would be only temporary that Congress would pay back
all of its soldiers their back wages and the pensions
they were promised. It was just under the Articles of

(09:42):
the Confederation they had no way to actually do that.
A group of Congressmen, including Alexander Hamilton's, recognized that discrepancy.
Without a strong central federal branch of the government with
actual power, this new country wouldn't be a country at all,
and so Hamilton's proposed an amendment to the Articles of

(10:04):
the Confederation, a workaround for the no federal taxes rule
that would allow Congress to levy and import tariff. It
was immediately shut down. Soldiers wrote to Congress demanding their
pay and their promised pensions, and Alexander Hamilton's would read
these letters allowed in chamber, trying to convince his fellow

(10:25):
congressmen that they needed to do something in order to
actually pay their army. But no amendments or agreements passed.
Soldiers who had gone months without pay were beginning to
feel forgotten. Officers covered their tattered, tearing uniforms with blankets.
Lower ranking soldiers didn't even have blankets to cover themselves

(10:49):
up with. They were all cold and hungry and frustrated
while waiting for the war to officially end. They also
waited to find out what sort of government they would
be serving on the other side, and the government that
they currently had under the articles of the Confederation didn't
seem to be working out for them. It was during

(11:11):
this period of tension that an officer named Colonel Lewis
Nicola wrote a letter to George Washington to say that
they were colleagues would be incredibly generous to Nicola work
acquaintances maybe. Niccola was born in Ireland, and before the
Revolutionary War he lived in Philadelphia with a subscription circulating library.

(11:34):
He went on to join the Continental Army to serve
as City Major Philadelphia, and it was actually he who
proposed that the Continental Congress form an Invalid Corps, a
group of men who wouldn't be fit for actual combat,
but could serve as guards or teachers for other soldiers.
The corps wasn't quite a success. Nicola, as its commander,

(11:57):
was plagued with challenges when it came to recruiting enough men,
and he struggled with order and discipline in the ranks
he commanded. And things were getting even harder for Nicola
as Congress continually refused to honor their promises of wages
and pensions. The wages they did get, Nicola believed where

(12:22):
in paper money whose value had been so depreciated that
was worth far less than promised. As the war drew
to a close, Nicola was, as one historian characterized him,
quote a man harassed and brooding over the universal gloom
and sense of injustice at the neglect which the army

(12:44):
was experiencing. He began his letter to George Washington explaining
those grievances. Soldiers, he wrote, have quote much reason to
fear that the future provision promised two officers by Congress
will be little tended to when our services are no
longer wanted, and that the recompense of all of our toils, hardships,

(13:06):
expense of private fortune during several of the best years
of our lives will be forgot and neglected by such
as reap the benefits of our labor without suffering any
of the hardships. It's at this point in the letter
that Nicola notes that he is not quote a violent
admirer of the republican form of government. The republics of Europe,

(13:31):
which Nicola names Venice, Genoa, and Holland, were short lived
in their periods of power when compared to monarchies. Let
us consider the principal monarchies of Europe. Nicola writes, they
have suffered great internal commotions, have worried each other, have
had periods of vigor and weakness, yet they still subsist
and shine with luster. But Nicola is also quick to

(13:54):
point out that he is not a fan of absolute monarchy.
The answer he's suggests isn't a government not dissimilar to
the one that existed in Britain at the time, a
constitutional monarchy. From there, Nicola proceeds to what he calls
his scheme. What if Congress made good on all of

(14:16):
their promises by giving soldiers tracts of land west of
the existing colonies, where each individual soldier could quote have
his due land with swamps, mountains, lakes, and rivers, and
all of the soldiers could put their land together, quote
into a distinct state under such mode of government as

(14:39):
those military who choose to remove to it may agree upon.
Congress could also put some of that pension in cash upfront,
so that the soldiers in the new state could buy
farm equipment. For his part, Nicola believes that that agreed
upon government should be a constitutional monarchy. I quote. This

(14:59):
war must have shown to all but to military men,
in particular the weakness of republics and the exertion of
the army that we've been able to make by being
under a proper head. Therefore a little doubt when the
benefits of a mixed government are pointed out and duly considered,
But such will be readily adopted. In this case, it will,

(15:20):
I believe, be uncontroverted that the same abilities which have
led us through difficulties apparently insurmountable by human power, to
victory and glory, those qualities that have merited and obtained
the universal esteem and veneration of an army, would be
most likely to conduct and direct us in these smoother

(15:42):
paths of peace. In other words, soldiers understand how nice
it is when it's clear who's in charge, and when
that person in charge is as good at leading as
you are, George dot dot dot, if you catch my
drift quote. Some people have so connected the ideas of

(16:03):
tyranny and monarchy as to find it very difficult to
separate them. It may therefore be a requisite to give
the head of such a constitution as I propose some
title apparently more moderate, but if all other things were
once adjusted, I believe strong argument might be produced for
admitting the title of king, which I conceive would be

(16:25):
attended with some material advantages. The letter is seven pages long,
filled with adorable justifications and ideas. This new state is
especially smart, Nicola writes, because won't Congress, and the existing
colonies want soldiers on their western flank protecting them from
Native Americans, and we can also protect them from Canada.

(16:48):
It's a win win. The letter has the self delighted
and slightly delusional energy of a friend who thinks he's
figured out how to beat the house in a Vegas
casino once and for all. It's somehow at the same
time both naive and also the results of way too
much thought and research. George Washington was wildly freaked out

(17:16):
by this delusional pitch from a guy who was a
polite work friend at best. Washington wrote his response the
very day you received the letter, and just to make
sure that he was on the record loud and clear,
Washington had his secretary write an exact copy of his
response to keep in his own files. I will read

(17:38):
the entire second paragraph of his response here, just because
I can't imagine a more brutal shutdown quote. I am
much at a loss to conceive what part of my
conduct could have given encouragement to an address which to
me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall

(17:58):
my country. If I am not deceived in the knowledge
of myself, you could not have found a person to
whom your schemes are more disagreeable. At the same time,
in justice to my own feeling, I must add that
no man possesses a more sincere wish to see ample
justice done to the army than I do. And as
far as my powers and influence in a constitutional way extent,

(18:22):
they shall be employed to the utmost of my abilities
to affect it, should there be any occasion. Let me
just conjure you, then, if you have any regard for
your country, concern for yourself, or posterity, or respect to me,
to banish these things from your mind, and never communicate
as from yourself or anyone else, a sentiment of the

(18:44):
like nature. With esteem, I am your most obedient servant.
George Washington and Nicola received the message. Upon getting such
an icy response from the man, he admired so much
George Washington himself for what he thought was his brilliant,
little intellectual idea. Nicola absolutely panicked. He wrote back not

(19:10):
just once, but three times in a single week, backtracking
and begging for George Washington's forgiveness, saying he must have
been misunderstood, but he realizes he was way out of line.
We don't have Washington's response to these frantic triple messages,
but we assume that Nicola was forgiven and his little

(19:31):
indiscretion forgotten, because the relationship between him and Washington returned
soon enough to the way it had been before the letter,
the eighteenth century equivalent of saying hi at the Christmas party. Washington,
for his part, never told another person about Nicola's letter,
lest the idea get any legs. This is the sole

(19:57):
source and origin of the rumor that George Washington was
offered the position of king. This is the closest that
anyone got. One guy, not even a congressman, just a
colonel writing a letter, floating a weather balloon for a
new idea for what the soldiers could do after the war.
Just a blue sky pitch from one guy who thinks

(20:19):
monarchies are more efficient than republics and wanted to run
his idea past the big guy. That's the historical basis
for the story that some faceless capital t they offered
George Washington a crown. I read so many direct excerpts
above from Nicola and from Washington because I want to
be fully transparent about how I get my information. To

(20:43):
this day, historians completely mischaracterized that exchange. In two thousand four,
a New York Times best settling biography of George Washington
called His Excellency, covered the letter from Lewis Nicola by
saying that the young officer wrote in his letter that
certain disaster would befall postwar America unless Washington declared himself king.

(21:06):
That's not what the letter says. The book also claims
that Nicola put into writing an idea that several officers
were whispering about. That's a wild stretch on multiple levels.
Lewis knew his idea was outlandish and was going to
be unpopular. He himself, in his letter calls it heterodox
and jokes that some would hear his idea and think

(21:26):
he should be burnt at the state. And again, Lewis
was proposing a new state not suggesting an overthrow of
the existing government. And again, to be clear, he doesn't
really offer Washington the crown explicitly, it's just implied that book.
His Excellency continued by saying that George Washington's stern response

(21:47):
to Nicola made its way to King George the Third
in England, who equipped that if George Washington actually did
turn down the crown, he would be the greatest man
in the world. The seed of the story is true,
but it was what George the Third actually said fifteen
years later when he heard that Washington was planning on
retiring after two terms as president. I'm not a professional historian,

(22:12):
and in the course of this podcast, I have absolutely
made a number of errors, usually years I accidentally read
wrong from my script and correct as soon as I can,
and more often errors of pronunciation. And I don't mean
to call out that biographer in some sort of gotcha.
I just think it's important to reflect on how appealing

(22:33):
mythologies can be so pervasive in our culture that they
just become wrote things we assume are true because we've
heard them repeated so many times that then we ourselves
repeat the narrative of George Washington turning down the crown
is such a fundamentally appealing one in the myth of

(22:54):
how America came to be. And if you only read
George Washington's reply, not the letter to which he was replying,
it's easy to fill in the gaps of the story
in your head and make it the story that you
want to hear. Washington actually would drastically influence the shape

(23:16):
of the American democracy before the end of the Revolutionary
War and prevent mutiny against Congress, but he didn't do
so with a response to a letter that no one
else actually read. He did it with a pair of
reading glasses. As things were growing more tense within the
Continental Army, a delegation of officers arrived in Philadelphia to

(23:40):
deliver a memo to Congress by hand. There would be
quote fatal effects, they wrote, if Congress didn't supply what
they had promised. The threat was almost too blatant to
be considered implicit nationalists, by which I mean the congressman
who supported a strong national govern ment like Morris and Hamilton's,

(24:02):
were able to convince the soldiers to hold type while
they fought to push their policies through in Congress. On
one hand, the threat of military coup was terrifying. On
the other hand, nationalists like Hamilton's We're well aware that
from a political standpoint, the discontented military was a pretty
good driving force for convincing his fellow congressman that they

(24:25):
needed to give the federal government some actual power. To
this day, historians argue whether the coup was a legitimate,
impending course of action, or whether the threat was exaggerated
for political benefit, but whether they were political ponds or not,
the officers at Newburgh were getting restless. Early on the

(24:54):
morning of March tene an unsigned letter circular related amongst
the officers at Newburgh, calling for a meeting at eleven
a m. The letter, later attributed to Major John Armstrong
into camp to Washington's rival, General Ratio Gates, said that
it was time for the army to take a bolder tone.

(25:19):
You have fought for a country. The letter said that
now tramples upon your rights, disdains your cries, and insults
your distresses. And now, the letter said, Congress has left
you to grow old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt. Would
they consent to quote wide through the vile miyer of

(25:42):
dependency and owe the miserable remnant of that life to
charity which has hithero been spent in honor. As Professor
Richard Cohen phrases, that if so, they would be pitied
ridiculed for suffering this last indignity. They had bled too much.
They still had their swords. There were two courses of action,

(26:07):
the anonymous letter posited if Congress didn't provide the money
they promised, either the army should disband and leave the
brand new nation defenseless, or once the war ended, they
should refuse to disband. After all, who was Congress to
deny them when they were the ones with weapons. Upon

(26:31):
hearing about the unofficial meeting, George Washington formally objected. He
scheduled an official meeting four days later, and implying that
he wouldn't attend himself, he asked for a full report
to be sent to him after it was over. Four
days later, on March fifteenth, Gates gabbled in the meeting,

(26:55):
which took place at Camp in a building known as
the Temple. But before Gates could begin with the speech
he had prepared, the door opened. To everyone's surprise, General
George Washington strode into the building and quietly asked John
Gates if he might be permitted to speak. Absolutely stunned,

(27:20):
Gates relinquished the floor to his superior. Washington looked at
the faces of his officers in the audience. The men,
usually so reverential, urging on worshipful when it came to Washington,
were visibly frustrated. Even Washington's presence didn't dispel the air

(27:40):
of discontent, of unhappiness, of impatience in the room. Still,
George Washington spoke calmly and gave what would come to
be known as the New Burgh Address. In it, he
denounced the veiled threats of mutiny against Congress. What can
this writer of this anonymous letter have in view by

(28:03):
recommending such measures? Can he be a friend to the army?
Can he be a friend to this country? Rather? Is
he not an insidious foe? Washington asked his officers to
give once more distinguished proof of their unexampled patriotism and
patient virtue, and place full confidence in the purity of

(28:26):
the intentions of Congress. At this point, Washington took out
a letter from a congressman that he wanted to read
to his men. He stared at the paper for a moment,
and then as the room fell quiet, he took out
a pair of reading glasses. None of the men had
ever seen Washington in reading glasses before. Gentleman George Washington said,

(28:52):
you will permit me to put on my spectacles where
I have not only grown gray but almost blind in
the service of my country. Officers in the crowd felt
tears come to their eyes. After Washington finished reading the letter,
he folded it neatly, placed it into his pocket, and

(29:13):
left the meeting hall. All of their anger, their talk
of mutiny, it dissolved like morning fog. Washington sent a
copy of the anonymous letter that had circulated to Congress,
who found it distressing. As you might imagine, Alexander Hamilton's
sprung into action, and he helped form a committee which

(29:34):
ultimately finalized an agreement that would provide soldiers five full
years of pay after they retired instead of the lifetime
half pay. The crisis was averted. Many challenges still threatened
the new nation, but for the time being, its own
army wasn't one of them. Washington's charisma and the loyalty

(29:56):
that he inspired in his troops was a formidable force,
the type of force that should he have wanted to
become king, maybe would have allowed him to do so,
But that's a hypothetical. What George Washington actually did when
faced with soldiers discontent at the end of the Revolutionary War,

(30:16):
how he secured the nation against military control in favor
of loyalty to Congress is more than interesting and dramatic
enough to hold our attention. But still the man who
would be King story endures. After all, We do all
love the allure and implied glamor of any story with

(30:37):
a connection, however tangential to a monarchy, Don't I know it?
That's the story of George Washington's offer to become king.
But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
about his extremely interesting family legacy and a quick personal note.

(31:02):
Noble Blood is on Patreon. If you want to support
me and the show, go to patreon dot com that
slash Noble Blood Tales, where you can subscribe to get
behind the scenes access to bibliographies, episode scripts, first access
to merch and eventually bonus podcast episodes. But support for
the Patreon is completely voluntary, just like states requisitions of

(31:26):
funds under the articles of the Confederation. Really the best
way to support the show is just to keep listening.
It will always be free to listen to and I
truly cannot thank you enough for listening and supporting the
show that way. If at this point you the listener,

(31:52):
are frustrated that I did an entire episode about someone
not becoming nobility, well I have a bit of good news.
It's going to take a discussion of a family tree,
so bear with me. George Washington's great grandfather was a
man named Augustine Warner Jr. Among his children, he had

(32:12):
two daughters, Mary and Mildred. Mildred was George Washington's grandmother.
Mary's descendants would have a slightly different path. Mary had
a daughter, also named Mary. She married named Mary Porteus,
would move with her husband from Virginia to Rippon in
North Yorkshire in England. Her son, Reverend Robert Cortius, had

(32:37):
a daughter who got married and became Mildred Hodgson. Mildred
Hodgson had a son, Robert Hodgson Jr. Who became the
Dean of Carlile. His daughter, Henrietta, married the daughter of
the director of the East India Trading Company. And now
that the family had married into money, that freed up
Henrietta's daughter to marry into nobility. Henrietta's daughter, Francis Doris Smith,

(33:04):
married Claude Bowes lyont Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorn. Their son,
the four Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorn, had a daughter
who married the Duke of York, who, upon the unexpected
resignation of his older brother, became King George the sixth.
That means that their daughter would eventually go on to

(33:27):
become Queen Elizabeth the Second, the current reigning monarch of
the United Kingdom. All of that is to say that
George Washington and Queen Elizabeth the Second our second cousins
seven times removed. I'm correct on that, I promise you.
I checked it up and drew up a very messy
family tree in my notebook just to make sure I

(33:49):
was right. It's interesting, I mean, sort of everyone is
related somehow if you can go back far enough. But
with influential and dynastically people, those records are kept and
are pretty easy to find if you know where to
look for them. So there you have it for the
noble blood purists. George Washington was never going to be king,

(34:13):
but he would be the very distant second cousin to
a Queen. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart
Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkey. The show
is written and hosted by Dani Schwartz and produced by
Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble

(34:36):
Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and
you can learn more about the show over at Noble
blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.