Democracy on Parade: Washington's Southern Tour

Congress adjourned in early March, allowing Washington a timely launch of his big trip south. However, the legislators gave him additional baggage for the journey when they passed the first-ever federal tax on a domestic product—a tax on distilled beverages. While the president was in agreement with the tax, he was interested to see how it would be received in the South.

Washington kept a daily diary during the Southern Tour. On March 21, he recorded, “Left Philadelphia about 11 o’clock to make a tour through the Southern States ... roads exceedingly deep, heavy & cut in places by the carriages which used them.” Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of War Henry Knox were among the well-wishers assembled as their boss and his retinue rolled out of Center City Philadelphia; they escorted the entourage out of town. Martha Washington had endured the rigors of life in several Revolutionary War camps, but the president felt it impractical and unnecessarily demanding for his wife to join him on this journey. Martha remained in Philadelphia, attended to by presidential secretary Tobias Lear.

The travelers made their way through parts of Delaware and Maryland before settling for a few days at George Town, Maryland, where Washington had important and productive meetings that advanced the effort to establish the nation’s capital there on the banks of the Potomac River.

After George Town, the president was no doubt pleased to arrive at Mount Vernon, where he spent a week catching up on correspondence and visiting his farms. Washington was able to visit his beloved estate only 12 times during his eight years as president—two of those visits came as he passed it on the outward and return legs of the Southern Tour.

Near Disaster

On April 7, Washington wrote that the horses were refreshed as the entourage left Mount Vernon for Dumfries and Fredericksburg. The horses had hardly broken a sweat, however, before calamity came down upon the entourage as it crossed Occoquan Creek. While traversing the creek via ferry, one of the coach horses—still in some fashion tethered to the coach—got spooked and went overboard. Then the three other horses took the plunge, but, miraculously, the coach didn’t go overboard, and all of the horses either swam or were guided to shore by Washington’s attendants or those on shore who took to the water in boats to aid in the rescue.

In Dumfries, Virginia’s oldest chartered town, Washington perhaps calmed his nerves when he took tea with a niece, Mildred Washington Lee. Other family members were also part of the Southern Tour. The president lodged with his sister, Betty Washington Lewis, in Fredericksburg and with a cousin, William Washington, at Sandy Hill Plantation, south of Charleston.

Washington was a keen observer, and he enjoyed learning about agriculture and commerce along the route. In eastern North Carolina, he was awed by the vast longleaf pine forests, where he learned about the tar, pitch, and turpentine industries—and took close note of the commerce on the rivers. After surviving stays at a couple of rustic rural inns, the president arrived in Wilmington on Easter Sunday, but apparently didn’t make it to church. But on other Sundays he did attend services, even going twice one Sunday in Charleston.

The travelers followed the South Carolina coast, even riding about 30 miles down present-day Myrtle Beach, then known as Long Bay. Washington learned about rice and indigo agriculture and saw vegetation in this subtropical region that perhaps he had seen only on his teenage trip to Barbados.

Arriving in Charleston on May 2, the president spent a week, meeting with a variety of people, attending social occasions from small to large, visiting an orphanage and Revolutionary War sites, and wandering the city on the back of Prescott. He even climbed the steeple of St. Michael’s Church where he enjoyed a bird’s eye view of the city.

One unexpected stroke to Washington’s ego came from the prominent ladies of the Palmetto City. Concerned that they wouldn’t have enough time with the president, they organized and paid a visit to Washington at the Church Street townhouse provided for his use by the city. Since most of his time with women while on the tour came at teas and dances, he was taken by surprise and gushed, “Was visited about 2 o’clock by a great number of the most respectable ladies of Charleston—the first honor of the kind I had ever experienced and it was as flattering as it was singular.”

In Georgia, Washington visited General Nathanael Greene’s widow at her Savannah plantation. From Savannah, the group struggled to travel uphill through sandy and loose soil to reach the Georgia capital, Augusta. There the president met with Governor Edward Telfair. During this trip, Washington met with the governor of each southern state.

When he turned north from Augusta on May 21, Washington had satisfied his desire to visit the thirteen states. There were fewer major cities on the road north, but the caravan was able to take in the communities of the Piedmont as it wound its way home, including the state capital, Columbia. After a visit to Camden, the president agreed to meet with Catawba Indian leaders in upstate South Carolina, near present-day Rock Hill. The Native Americans voiced concerns that white settlers were encroaching on lands reserved for their tribe during the colonial era.

On his return to North Carolina, Washington wrote that Charlotte was a “trifling place,” but he was pleased to be in a region of firm red soil and out of the sandy and loose soils to the south that made the going rough for his horses. After stops in Salisbury and the Moravian settlement of Salem, the entourage rolled north through lightly populated southside Virginia. Virginia Congressman Isaac Coles hosted the president for two nights at his Halifax County estate; the Coles family still has the bed in which the first president slept. As Washington’s horses took advantage of Coles’s green pastures, the president was pleased as he reflected on how southern leaders generally offered favorable sentiments toward the federal government and even the new distilled alcohol tax.

A Stop at the Federal City Site

When Washington arrived back at Mount Vernon on June 12, the Southern Tour was all but over. His interests and commitment to a scheduled second visit to George Town, Maryland, delayed his return to Philadelphia. But Washington’s second visit to the federal city site was productive and historic, as the community accepted the idea of the nation’s capital coming there. Landowners agreed to cooperate by selling the necessary parcels, and Washington, channeling his experience as a surveyor, even helped select the sites of the Capitol and the president’s home, the place we now call the White House.

Back to Philadelphia

The mucky roads of March had turned to dust by the time Washington arrived in Philadelphia on July 6. Church bells tolled and cannons roared to announce the cavalcade’s arrival. The Southern Tour was a remarkable physical feat in that it covered nearly 1,900 miles—and other than a couple of scary water crossings and minor delays due to lame horses—without incident. Washington was able to stick to his itinerary, and, blessedly, nothing of national urgency occurred in his absence. The long trip proved to be a successful calculated risk.

George Washington’s presence in the South and in all of the states during his first term as president did much to establish American unity. In writing about the Southern Tour in the 1920s, Archibald Henderson of North Carolina called Washington’s travels, “Democracy on Parade.” Today, the Southern Tour is commemorated via dozens of historical markers and occasional reenactments. In the Carolinas and Georgia, there is local lore galore about George Washington’s only visit south of Virginia.