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Mount Vernon: George Washington's home always fascinates
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Re-enactors at slave cabin at Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon was always one of my favorite trips when I was a child; my mother believed only in educational vacations, and I far preferred it to Gettysburg, for instance, and even Niagara Falls. Gettysburg was too boy-friendly for me at age 12; Niagara Falls was just a bunch of water crashing down and possibly making me miss a trip to Freedomland with friends when I was 16. (Freedomland was the East Coast answer to Disneyland for a while. Built on a track of Bronx wasteland, the site is now home to miles of high-rise apartment buildings. Freedomland was, in a word, tacky. But at 16, any outing with one’s boyfriend and another couple was greatly to be desired, over gazing at water with mom, dad and junior.)
Mount Vernon was intriguing at any time, and over the years, I have paid it a visit now and again. Perhaps my favorite part, for a time, was the approach to Virginia from Maryland over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. The view up the Potomac is panoramic, but also very particular. One can imagine cabins deep in the visible woods, or carriages going along the water’s edge. While the myriad pleasure boats bobbing on the waters in spring and summer might mar the 18th century mental vision, still, one might be put in mind of vibrant river traffic, commerce-oriented, that plied the waters just after the swamp became the capitol, and Washington himself was in his waning days.
Mount Vernon has been restored to its 1799 condition…the way it was in the last year of the great man’s life. It has been continually restored, since I first saw it in the 1950s, and with private monies. Archaeology, based on a contemporary document, is ongoing.
Unlike Britain’s National Trust, the U.S. has no national group to identify and restore historic properties. Indeed, Mount Vernon’s preservation has a unique history of its own. Mount Vernon is owned and maintained “in trust for the people of the United States by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, a private, non-profit organization founded in 1853 by Ann Pamela Cunningham” according to the Mount Vernon website. The organization is the oldest historic preservation group in the U.S. and its directing Board of Regents is comprised entirely and solely of women who represent more than 30 states. Visited by more than 1 million visitors each year, its historic house, outbuildings, 800 acres of land and 50 of garden—plus gift shops and dining facilities—are operated by about 450 paid employees and more than 400 volunteers.
One of my favorite parts of the tour was the main house, of course, because I’m an inveterate fan of the goods of household life, from butter molds to porcelain epergnes. But I was equally intrigued by the slave cabins. First, of course, I found it difficult to believe there had been such a thing as slaves, growing up in the North. But secondly, the disparity between the conditions of homelife for slaves and masters was nowhere more visible. If my mother found it all historically instructive, I found it also spiritually instructive. I think, perhaps, all middle-class American children should be treated to a veiw of slave quarters to inform their souls. Having been treated to views of servants rooms in great English houses much older than Mount Vernon, comparing living conditions for American slaves with conditions for English servants leads to astonishment, and whimpers of “how could we!” Mainly through the efforts of William Wilberforce, England banned the transport of slaves by British subjects in 1807, ending England’s complicity in the racial divide that was extant during George Washington’s day, and has diminished only gradually through such milestones as the Civil War, Brown v. Board of Education, and the election of Barack Obama.
(To find out more about William Wilberforce and how he ended England’s complicity in the slave trade, consider watching the movie about his life, Amazing Grace. Wilberforce was mentored by the former slaver who had, in a moment of spiritual epiphany, penned the song “Amazing Grace” and amended his life. Movie trailer below:)
That George Washington died owning more than 300 slaves is more a testament to society at the time than the man. He rejected being crowned monarch; had he been born 200 years later, he probably would have rejected racial divisions, as well. His home, a marvel of his attention to his land, is still stunningly beautiful. The site, overlooking the Potomac, could not be lovelier. It is marvelous to think that a man could leave such beauty and comfort to serve a nation going through a traumatic birth; statesmen like Washington are rare, and a glimpse into their everyday lives rarer still.
Mount Vernon is a “cheap date” among substantial homes on view in the United States. Those such as Biltmore in Asheville, NC cost far more. Adult admission is only $15, with children under 14 at $7. A one-year pass is only $25. (Tickets to Biltmore, by contrast, lurk around $35. And that gets you only a view of how a captain of industry vacationed, not how a Founding Father lived.)
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