Description:

Washington George 1732 - 1799 George Washington contemporary colorful manuscript elegy

Thick cream paper measuring 6.375" x 7.625" inscribed on both sides. On front, epitaph to dead president comprised of three rhyming couplets framed within pen and ink tombstone. Title and poem feature both calligraphy and script. Left side of tombstone partly filled in with pink and blue colored pencil. Verso inscribed "Gustavus Adolphus King of Spain" in Gothic calligraphy. Expected wear to edges and some ink bleeding from verso.

The text in full, with untouched spelling errors, can be found below:

"Washington

Columbias Gardian

Sleeps in Dust

What mournful strains invade our ears

When those sad plaants those copious tears

This solemn silence woful pause

All all bespeak some deep felt cause

A deep felt cause a nation weeps

In dust Columbian Guardian sleeps"

George Washington (1732-1799) was a wealthy Virginia landowner and gentleman farmer who managed his family's tobacco plantations. He gained his first military experience during the French and Indian War, when he served as an officer in a Virginia colonial militia. He was elected to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and as such was a natural choice to serve as the first elected president of the newly formed country between 1789-1797.

The fledgling nation greatly revered Washington. He was referred to as "the father of his country" even during his lifetime, not only for his exceptional leadership abilities, but also because of his commitment to its core ideological values. One of the greatest legacies of Washington's presidency was his consensus-building during the contentious first years of centralized government. In this way, contemporaries viewed Washington as a firm but gentle parent pacifying warring children (the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans.) Washington demonstrated his lack of self-interest and abundance of paternal goodwill when he initially refused a presidential salary and rejected proposals that he serve a third term as president. Upon Washington's death, Henry Lee reflected that he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen".

Our poet emphasizes Washington's role as paternal protector by the title "Columbias Gardian" [sic]. America was called Columbia in the thirteen colonies as early as the 1730s. The name became increasingly relevant as the colonies, and then the republic, became more interested in Classical ideas. By the late eighteenth century, Columbia was often visually represented as a beautiful young maiden in Roman drapery. Here, Washington is represented as the deceased parent and Columbia a bereaved Republican daughter in distress. The poem's lugubrious language and its intense funeral imagery are representative of a time period famous for its cenotaphs and mourning artwork.

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