This is the second volume of a four-volume Retirement Series,
covering the interval between Washington's retirement from the
presidency on 4 March 1797 and his death on 13 December 1799.
Except for a trip to Philadelphia in 1798, Washington stuck close
to home, only occasionally going from Mount Vernon into Alexandria
or across the river to Georgetown and the new Federal City. The
management and improvement of his farms at Mount Vernon was his
major concern, and the pressing need for money forced him to give
particular attention to the disposition of his large landholdings
in the West. As Father of His Country he found himself not only
entertaining a constant stream of visitors but also responding to a
steady flow of letters from friends and strangers, foreign and
domestic. From the start, senators, congressmen. Adams's cabinet
members, and diplomats kept him informed of political developments.
Washington's absence from the public stage, never much more than a
fiction. came to an end in July 1798 when his growing alarm over
French policy and the bitter divisions in the body politic arising
out of it led him to accept command of the army, with the promise
to take the field in case of a French invasion. And in 1799
Washington for the first time became deeply involved in partisan
electoral politics.
In the early months of 1798, with which this volume begins.
Washington's correspondence relates mostly to such private concerns
as the management of his Mount Vernon estate, his tenants in
Virginia, his lands in the West and in Pennsylvania, and the
education of Washington Parke Custis and the marriage of Nelly
Custis, but he continues to correspond with friends and strangers,
the low and themighty, throughout America and abroad. By late
spring James Monroe's attacks and the furor over the XYZ affair are
drawing Washington back into the political arena. The letters in
the latter part of this volume are in large part written to and
from Washington as the commander in chief of an army being raised
to repulse a feared French invasion.
General
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