The news of the death of George Washington at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799, was reported to have been -felt as an electric shock throughout the union.- Martha Washington gave permission for Congress to have her husband's body reinterred under a marble monument to be constructed in the new capital in Washington, D.C. Grieving Americans organized and participated in over four hundred funeral processions and memorial services during the sixty-nine-day mourning period that culminated on February 22, 1800, the National Day of Mourning.

Washington's death came in a highly contentious...