Volume Three of the Confederation Series of The Papers of George Washington spans the year between May 1785 and April 1786, described by Washington's biographer Douglas Southall Freeman as a year of -drought and distraction.- Washington spent most of these months at Mount Vernon, continuing to wrestle with the problems of restoring the plantation and his personal fortune after years of neglect while serving as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army -- efforts hampered by a long summer drought. During these months Washington was distracted by national affairs, particularly the impotence...

The ten-volume Colonial Series, covering the years 1748-1775, takes the young Washington through his command of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War and then focuses on his political and business activities as a Virginia planter during the fifteen years before the American Revolution.

Volume Four spans the critical period between April 1786 and January 1787. Washington spent all of this period at home at Mount Vernon, managing and improving his estate. Yet he remained a keen observer of the national scene, receiving a steady stream of reports on political developments from correspondents all over the new nation.

The extensive correspondence regarding Shays' Rebellion and widespread alarm over the state of the Union continues in this volume, and there are the usual letters numbering in the hundreds which deal with his more personal concerns: farm and family, slave and tenant, tradesman and artisan. But the main focus of this volume is the Federal Convention in the summer of 1787 and the fight for ratification of the Constitution beginning in the fall of 1787. About these and other matters of importance Washington wrote to and heard from such Americans as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James...

Beginning with the decision made early in 1787 to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer, Washington's papers in volume 6 of the series reveal him as once again a public figure no longer standing outside and above the fray as he had been seeking to do with some success since leaving the army at the end of 1783. In the first nine months of this year Washington continued to give meticulous attention to his personal affairs at Mount Vernon as he had done before, but his correspondence, particularly that with James Madison, makes it clear that his overriding concern...

During the first ten months of Washington's retirement, Washington was, as he said, busier than ever before, breaking in a new farm manager, repairing and refurbishing long-neglected buildings, hiring new overseers and a new gardener from Britain, and most difficult, and perhaps most important of all, getting a proper cook for Mrs. Washington.

In the early months of 1798, Washington's correspondence relates mostly to such private concerns as the management of his Mount Vernon estate, his tenants in Virginia, his lands in the West and in Pennsylvania, and the education of Washington Parke Custis and the marriage of Nelly Custis, but he continues to correspond with friends and strangers, the low and the mighty, throughout America and abroad. By late spring James Monroe's attacks and the furor over the XYZ affair are drawing Washington back into the political arena. The letters in the latter part of this volume are in large part...

In the fall of 1798, Washington was immersed in the business of creating a military force to deal with the threat of an all-out war with France. A clash over Alexander Hamilton's rank in the army led Washington to contemplate resignation of his own post as commander in chief of the army, and the resolution of this affair brought no opportunity for rest as Washington engaged in the tedious task of finding officers for the new military formations. Despite all of this he still found time in the months that followed to build houses on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., seek the funds to put his...

In the spring of 1799, the relaxation of tensions between France and the United States allowed Washington to redirect his attention to his personal affairs. He drew up a new will that summer and made arrangements for the breakup of the estate he had amassed in the course of his life; but he also kept his gaze on the future, drawing up extensive plans for farming at Mount Vernon in 1800, the management of which he planned to take on himself. Washington also supervised the compilation of a comprehensive list of his Mount Vernon slaves, while at the same time making plans for their eventual...

Volume 1 of the Presidential Series covers the months immediately before Washinton's election. Opening in September 1788, at the point when it was certain that the Constitution would be ratified, the documents trace the mounting public pressure upon Washington to agree to accept the presidency. His letters reveal poignantly his own misgivings about leaving Mount Vernon to return to public life. Well before he was offered the presidency he was deluged with applications for public offices. These letters are singularly revealing of economic and social disruption in the aftermath of the...