Good morning, it's Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. Yes, it's Friday the 13th, but here at RCP, we take our cue from Sen. Robert L. Owen, a happy warrior and turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th century, that is), populist Democrat who embraced the day – as he embraced most days.
Friday is also the day of the week when I reprise a quotation from American history, one intended to be uplifting or enlightening. Today's poignant words come from the first U.S. president and the first woman to serve as first lady (though that phrase wouldn't catch on for another five decades).
On this date in 1799, John Adams was the fledgling nation's second president, George Washington having given up power voluntarily – an act that stunned the world – 2½ years earlier. At his Mount Vernon estate, the man who would come to be called the father of our country was battling for his life. This was one fight George Washington would not win.
Death, that "great leveler" in the old proverb, had come for him. Washington would not live to see the new year. He would not even live to see another Sunday morning on his beloved estate.
He had contracted what he thought was a winter cold while inspecting his farm on horseback the day before. That night he'd read by the fire, as was his custom, while conversing with his loyal secretary, Tobias Lear, before retiring to his bedroom. But George Washington didn't have a cold. He had a throat infection, one we'd likely treat today with antibiotics and forget about weeks later.
Sometime in the middle of the night, probably around 2 a.m., Washington's fever spiked. He was having difficulty breathing. Martha Washington offered to fetch a servant, but her husband declined. He worried about Martha walking about in the cold winter night, as she herself had recently been ill.
At dawn, Martha summoned Lear, who arrived to find the general fighting for every breath. Dr. James Craik, George Washington's close friend from their days in the Army, was summoned from Alexandria. Everyone knew that danger was at Mount Vernon's door.
On December 12, 1799, George Washington had almost certainly contracted a bacterial infection of the epiglottis, the cartilage at the base of the larynx. The infection spread rapidly, and everything his doctor did while employing the best medical knowledge at the time made things worse – and the patient's suffering more painful. He was bled three or four times, the first at his own direction before Dr. Craik even arrived on the scene. Later he was given laxatives, "blistered" around his neck, and exposed to vinegar held to his nose.
Washington and his attendants were desperately trying to quell the infection, but this was 129 years before Alexander Fleming would discover penicillin. They stood helpless while their fully conscious patient was slowly strangling as his throat closed up.
A controlled, and controlling, presence to the end, Washington asked Martha to retrieve his will from his desk and place it in her closet. "I find I am going," he told Tobias Lear.
When his loyal aide objected, Lear later recalled, Washington described his coming passage as "the debt that all must pay [and] that he looked to the event with perfect resignation."
But perhaps not "perfect" resignation. Upstairs in the big house, Martha's granddaughter Nelly was in bed, having just delivered a baby, a child whom the family patriarch knew he would never hold in his lap. As he lay dying, Washington wistfully asked Lear when Martha's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, was expected to return from a trip to New Kent. Not for several days, he was told.
"Doctor, I die hard," Washington rasped to his dear friend James Craik. "But I am not afraid to go." His doctors raised him to a sitting position, whereby the fading man thanked his doctors and instructed them to cease their vain efforts to stave off the inevitable.
If George Washington did not fear death itself, he did have one fear: being buried alive. "Have me decently buried, and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than two days after I am dead," he told Lear. When his grieving aide didn't immediately answer, Washington said, "Do you understand me?"
In his biography of Washington, Joseph J. Ellis wrote: "Washington believed that several apparently dead people, perhaps including Jesus, had really been buried alive, a fate he wished to avoid."
Now, there's a novel idea of the Resurrection, one I won't explore this close to Christmas. In any event, George Washington died at Mount Vernon sometime before 11 p.m. on Dec. 14, 1799. His last words were, "Tis well." His final act, fitting for this man of action, was to feel his own fading pulse.
"Is he gone?" asked Martha. Lear, not trusting himself to speak, simply raised his hand in affirmation. "Tis well," his widow repeated. "All is over now. I shall soon follow him. I have no more trials to pass through."
And that is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on X @CarlCannon.
