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eorge and Martha Washington died within two and a half years of one another, he on the evening of December 14, 1799, after suffering a short, but virulent illness, and she on the afternoon of May 22, 1802, following a more than two-week-long ordeal. The main description of George Washington’s last hours comes from the pen of his longtime secretary and friend, Tobias Lear, who recorded not one mention of any conversations or acts relating to religion in his seemingly blow-by-blow account.1 The problem is that Lear’s account, while very full, may well not tell everything that went on that day. Other than a brief exchange, during which Washington sent his wife to his office to bring the two versions of his will stored there and then directed which one should be burned, Lear neglected to record any other conversation between these two people, who had been devoted to one another for forty years. Neither is there a recorded conversation of a personal nature between Washington and the senior doctor on his case, James Craik, who had been his close friend since the French and Indian War. In his discussion of the events of the evening before Washington’s death, when the symptoms of his fatal illness were just beginning to appear , Lear noted that at about nine o’clock, Mrs. Washington went upstairs to spend a little time with her youngest granddaughter, Nelly Custis Lewis, who was recovering from the birth of her first child.2 George Washington continued reading with and talking to Lear, before going up himself.  conclusions Washington’s and Others’ “In the Hands of a Good Providence” 170 Lear never mentioned that Washington, too, seems to have gone to Nelly’s room to see the baby, a fact attested to many years later by Frances Parke Lewis Butler, who wrote, “I was born at Mt. Vernon, on the 27th of Nov. 1799—seventeen days before Gen. Washington’s death, and the night before he died he gave me the last blessing he ever gave to any one.”3 Those who doubt George Washington’s Christianity often cite Lear’s account and the fact that it recorded no prayers being said, no deathbed confession of faith, and no minister being called to the bedside. They do not take into account that Lear’s record, as wonderful as it is, is very likely not complete.4 They also overlook the virulence of the infection that killed Washington in less than twenty-four hours, and what quite possibly no one in that room—except Washington—was ready to believe, until almost the very end, when it would be too late to get a minister there: that the illness was going to be fatal. Regarding the last point, they forget that Washington did not belong to a church that required the presence of a priest to give last rites at a deathbed. At this point, Washington was surrounded with people who, for the most part, had known him for years and would have been familiar with his beliefs. There was no need for a confession of faith, especially given the fact that Washington could barely talk. As far as prayers are concerned, Martha Washington’s grandson later indicated that his grandmother was in the room, praying silently, throughout her husband’s final illness.5 Granted, the young man was away from Mount Vernon at the time of the death, did not write his account until many years later, and had a tendency to romanticize. He also, however, had had plenty of time to talk to those who actually were in the room to learn what had happened. It is also possible that George Washington, who could barely speak throughout his last hours, might have been praying silently. He and Mrs. Washington may well have prayed and talked about end-of-life issues in the three or more hours between when he woke his wife to tell her that he was very ill and the time the maid came into the room to light the fire and was sent for help. There is simply no way to know what Lear might have left out. At least one historian, who has looked into the matter of George Washington ’s death and what it can tell us about his religious beliefs, has suggested that, rather than Christian, Washington’s final hours show a strong influence of Stoic philosophy. It has even been suggested that, in...

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