Washington and Lincoln: American Icons in a Modern and Post-Modern Age

The works of historian Seth C. Bruggeman and sociologist Barry Schwartz examine how Americans have commemorated and remembered two pivotal figures in the nation's history—George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In Here, George Washington Was Born, Seth Bruggeman takes a case-study approach and traces efforts by individuals, a private organization, and eventually the National Park Service to preserve the birthplace of the nation's first president. Barry Schwartz has a broader agenda in Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Age, one that builds upon his earlier scholarship in memory studies. His work not only seeks to trace the changing patterns of memory about Lincoln, but also uses them to interpret what these shifts indicate about the nature of American society.

Seth Bruggeman contributes to a growing body of literature that seeks to understand the place of George Washington in national memory. Even before memory studies came into vogue, scholars have noted the crucial role of Washington as a national symbol. In his classic study, Washington: Man and Monument (1958), Marcus Cunliffe describes the adulation Americans bestowed on the nation's first president as reflected in the Washington Monument in the District of Columbia.¹ Karal Ann Marling in George Washington Slept Here (1988), traced the varied efforts to commemorate Washington in art, literature, public monuments, historical reenactments, and the preservation of historic sites associated with him.² Although Americans in the antebellum era made few efforts to preserve historic sites, a number of homes associated with Washington's life and career as a general were preserved. One of the nation's first national women's organizations, the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, saved Mount Vernon after Congress balked at purchasing it. The state of New York purchased one of Washington's military quarters in Newburgh, New York.

The veritable cult of Washington played an important role in explaining why the site of his birthplace would be preserved and eventually turned into a National Historic Site, although ties between Washington and his birthplace, which eventually became known as Wakefield, are ephemeral. Born in 1732 at what was then known as Pope's Creek, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, Washington lived there only three years before his parents moved further west. The plantation remained in the hands of the Washington family—first owned by his half-brother Augustine Washington, Jr. and then by his nephew, William Augustine Washington. It would be William, inspired by Oliver Goldsmith's novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, who renamed the plantation Wakefield. In 1779, Washington's birthplace burned to the ground and William moved from the estate—although one branch of the Washington family owned it until the eve of the Civil War. During his lifetime, Washington expressed little interest or sentiment regarding Wakefield—his great love was Mount Vernon. No existing documents tell us anything about Washington's brief sojourn at Wakefield. Moreover, no surviving image—either painting or drawing—from Washington's lifetime offers any indication of what his birthplace actually looked like.

Although the site was largely abandoned, several generations of the Washington family took an early interest in venerating the spot. It would be Washington's adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, who took the first tangible step to turn Wakefield into a memorial site. In 1815 Custis arranged, at his own expense, the placement of a modest stone memorial at the site he identified as Washington's birthplace. Bruggeman stresses these efforts to venerate Washington's birthplace and to promote his memory. During Custis's lifetime, scores of Americans visited the mansion in Arlington, Virginia, to view old furniture from Mount Vernon and items from Washington's military service...