"In the Hands of a Good Providence": Religion in the Life of George Washington

8: Outward Actions: Charity and Toleration

here is abundant evidence that both George and Martha Washington took concrete steps to care for those less fortunate than themselves by giving money and food to the poor. Such charities, which to a certain extent were probably expected from members of their social class, may also have been a way of expressing religious beliefs through action . During the Revolution, when he was away from home and his wife spent many months each year at his headquarters, George Washington instructed his farm manager: Let the Hospitality of the House, with respect to the poor, be kept up; Let no one go hungry away. If any of these kind of People should be in want of Corn, supply their necessities, provided it does not encourage them in idleness; and I have no objection to your giving my Money in Charity, to the Amount of forty or fifty Pounds a Year, when you think it well bestowed. What I mean, by having no objection, is, that it is my desire that it should be done. You are to consider that neither myself or Wife are now in the way to do these good Offices.1 This same manager once remarked that, “Mrs. Washington’s charitable disposition increases in the same proportion with her meat house.”2 An example of her “charitable disposition” can be seen in a letter she wrote at the beginning of the Revolution, when she directed that a Mrs. Boyly  outward actions Charity and Toleration outward actions 125 be given “corn or wheat as she may want it, while her husband is ill and unable to provide for her . . . let her have a barrel of corn and half a barrel of wheat as [she] sends for it and give her a fat hog.”3 Many years after their deaths, Mrs. Washington’s youngest granddaughter remembered: “He [George Washington] would have blush’d to find such trifles fame, (as giving fish to the poor). . . . Many were an[nually] fed & clothed from his and Grandmama’s hands, besides the charity almost daily bestowed on wayfaring persons. But it was their aim to conceal from the left hand, what the right performed, & accident only discover’d their good deeds.”4 One example of the way the Washingtons tried to keep these deeds confidential can be seen in a letter written by George Washington to the Reverend William White in 1793, when the president noted that he intended to make a donation for the poorest inhabitants of Philadelphia. Not being a part of the community, however, he was concerned, both about how to proceed with making such a gift and how to ensure that it got to the people who really needed it, and “therefore have taken the liberty of asking your advice.” He went on to confide: “I persuade myself justice will be done my motives for giving you this trouble. To obtain information, and to render the little I can afford without ostentation or mention of my name are the sole objects of these enquiries.”5 In addition to food and clothing, the Washingtons also gave money for charitable causes. As George Washington exhorted one of his young nephews: “Let your heart feel for the affliction, and distresses of every one, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse; remembering always, the estimation of the Widows mite.” He went on to caution, however, that “not every one who asketh . . . deserveth charity; all however are worthy of the enquiry, or the deserving may suffer.”6 Family financial records from before George Washington’s election to the presidency contain numerous references to contributions for “charity” but do not generally spell out the beneficiary of those gifts.7 That situation changed after the inauguration, when Washington’s secretaries kept the financial records and frequently took care to say something about who the recipients were and why they needed the money. They recorded, for example, that Martha Washington provided $8 to aid a number of poor families who were presumably hurt and made homeless by a fire in Philadelphia in May of 1791. The range of people assisted by the president and first lady is rather impressive: “a poor woman who brought a recommendation from Dr. Rogers,” a Presbyterian minister; “an old soldier, to help “In the Hands of a Good Providence” 126 defray the cost of his passage to England”; another “poor old Soldier”; “a poor woman by the name...