 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the National Archives online program book conversation with the author Philip Levy and his book the permanent resident excavations and explorations of George Washington's life. My name is Ryan Smith. I am a professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. I've published a number of studies on architectural history, also involving some of our founders such as Robert Morris, and I also had the great good fortune of working a long time ago back in grad school on an archaeological field school with our author today with Phil Levy. And I've learned a lot from him back then and I'm still learning things from him today. I'd like to give a brief introduction to Phil, and then we'll talk about the book and perhaps go through and see some images and we'd love to take some questions from the YouTube chat if there are those that show up. So the permanent resident is a work that has come out of an enormous body of scholarship already from Phil. He's one of our most creative and prolific historians working today. He's worked across an impressive variety of fields from historical archaeology, public history, memory studies, environmental history, combining those in ways that I think are unique across all of those different fields. Currently he's a professor of history at the University of South Florida where he's been since 2007. He earned a PhD at the College of William & Mary in 2001. He's got at least three previous books, most recently George Washington written upon the land, Nature, Memory, Myth and the Landscape, published in 2015. Before that was where the cherry tree grew, the story of Ferry Farm, George Washington's boyhood home, published in 2013. And that fellow travelers, Indians and Europeans, contesting the early American Trail published in 2007. And it's also worth noting that Phil has another book going to be published later this year on yard birds on urban chicken farming throughout the United States. Phil has also published articles widely, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Florida Historical Quarterly, the William & Mary Quarterly among others. He's worked with the National Park Service on a new interpretive framework for the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Westmoreland County. And since 2002, he has led a, or helped lead the Ferry Farm Archaeological Field School bringing hundreds of his students from the University of South Florida up to the Fredericksburg area to participate in that annual field school there. Maybe we should also observe that Phil is a state champion, old time fiddler as well. So an incredible range of experience and expertise there. And turning to our book under discussion today, The Permanent Resident. This is a book that could only be written by Phil Levy. It combines this deep, multi methodological approach with a really unique and engaging voice that his readers have come to appreciate and to love. I think it offers us a brand new model for biography for how to tell a life history and to connect that life history, not only to the landscape but to the history of the nation and even beyond. I think it manages to say something new in almost every chapter and as a whole about America's perhaps most studied, most prominent historical figure in George Washington. And so I want to thank the National Archives for hosting us here. First question for Phil and let him introduce himself if I've missed anything here. But Phil, is this a biography? Is this an archeological biography? What's described what this book is for us? Well, thanks Ryan. Thank you everybody for tuning in today and doing thanks to National Archives also who have been very helpful in my work over the years and in this book in particular. So if you get a chance to visit, there's a lot to see and some amazing stuff to play with. And thanks for that introduction. I always want to be that person. Who is that person? I hope I can be that person. So the last question, is it a biography? Biography is an interesting genre, right? In when I wrote the book I wrote in 2015, I wrote a chapter about Washington biographies and I read about, not their entirety, you know, not that self punishing but I read probably about 150 biographies. Mostly these 19th century biographies are just dreadful because what tends to happen with biography is particularly in earlier biographies. Biographers will just read three or four previous biographies and then just write their own. So if something happens with movies, if somebody makes a Columbus movie, Christopher Columbus, they just watch the three previous Columbus movies and then, you know, do their take. So biographies is a strange genre in that way. And Washington has this whole history of watching a biography and what happens in them. I had never thought of myself as a biographer, but I did find that when I wanted to write about these sites, step back I obviously worked a lot on the sites of Washington's childhood having excavated them, and then written about them in a couple different books and articles as you mentioned. So I've kind of started to get a sense of how I could approach this the kind of questions I could ask. And what the data would let me do, but what I also developed over time was a familiarity with a set of characters discussions and references, and I started to realize that everybody who works in this sort of milieu this Washington space. We all refer to certain people there certain characters certain iconic moments of people who are referred to by their first name and everybody who works in this world know exactly what you know exactly what you're talking about. So there's a vocabulary to develop and I started to conceptualize this book before I set out to write it is that what what didn't exist was a sort of study of these different sites that tried to bring them all together I thought maybe we could do this as an essay volume. But in the end I just said I kind of want to do this myself. And I had to have a framework. How am I going to do this like what am I going to write about sites randomly, writing about one or two sites and sort of expanding them. And you know this from your own work when you have something our work shares as a sense of sort of placed base, right that we're, there's an object at the center of this and that's where the gravity is and everything sort of, you know, some kind of site centric world, you know, is sort of connected in some way and that is the glue. So that works with one site kind of fabulously, what do you do with multiple sites and I started to realize that the way to approach this was to use the framework of Washington's like the biography the narrative of the biography as sort of conceptual spine. So let's move through the sites, as they sort of happen in the Washington biography. And then that way, maybe what we can do is use a ground up model and sort of see what we learn. Now, the catch of course will probably talk more about this is that fights are never restricted only to the era that might be at the center of the research agenda. So we may come in wanting to know about Washington as George you know something about his life. But we have to deal with the 1930s, and we have to deal with excavations, you know, from the turn of the century in some cases we have to deal with the Civil War. All these things become part of our sites, and they become our responsibility to, and all of those sort of connect in and become in some way, hard of the Washington story by simply sharing that space. So it's biographical and that way but very it's this. How do you turn place centric into biography that's that's what I was playing with. Yeah, I can't think of another work on any historical figure that takes that place based methodology and strings it together across a life history the way that you've done for Washington here I think it's worth mentioning the sites that you cover in these chapters, beginning with his birth there along Cope's Creek in Westmoreland County, moving to fairy farm the childhood home outside of Fredericksburg. Then there's a chapter on Barbados and Bush Hill and the bell plantation and some of the other sites there, returning to the continental United States with Fort necessity, and then moving back to Mount Vernon and looking at some of the slave quarters and his arrangements at Mount Vernon there. From there you move up to Philadelphia to describe his time as President of the United States with the President's House project, and then concluding the book in a phenomenal chapter on Washington's memorial landscape more broadly speaking of statues and plaques and other commemorative and so the reader gets to see, as you say, through this place based study and through those layers. Kind of his his birth through his youth his his early career, his later career and then kind of his afterlife, moving from from spot to spot. You talk about the importance of historical archaeology overall and your method and you've already talked about memory. Those things seem to come together for you in the concept of stratigraphy or layers in each of these sites and those earlier biographies. But in the introduction you also use a word for some of this Washington ology. Right. Can you say a little bit more about Washington ology what is Washington ology. It's more than just the historical archaeology it's more than just the architectural history it's more than just the artifacts that survived it's more than just the lore. Talk to me a little bit about that term and this concept that you built the book around. That was, that was an early title for the project so I had files that were called Washington ology and as writing this before we end up with this, I think far better title, better because it's a quote from Washington itself. But, yeah, um, so the dilemma that the term Washington ology solved for me the problem it solved was that I've got objects, I've got sites, I've got memories so some of these things are tangible. Some of them are global, some of them are place based. Some of them are part of the ground and therefore are demolished in the excavation, and some of them are conceptual. Yet they're all sort of tied together by being, you know, by being connected through this character and the set of stories. So I wanted a term that sort of encompass all of that, so that I didn't have to sort of restate that every time I wanted to invoke this thing So I kind of landed on this term there's a book called custer ology that sort of did this I thought you can do with custer you certainly can do it with Washington. But this was a way you know archaeologists will often refer not just to archaeology as the discipline, you know the practice of archaeology, but will refer to an excavation or the findings from the excavation as the archaeology will have to look at the archaeology So, sort of using it in that way, it was my catch all the sort of put these things together and say that they're all, they're all sort of linked they all sort of share an action, and they do in some cases share fairly direct connection like in my talk about later In the chapter on Barbados, one of the things I talked about and one of the things was really enjoyable about that chapter other than sort of doing the research in Barbados was was actually taking Barbados seriously Barbados is usually a quick little moment in the Washington biography a little, you know, some drenched colorful diversion before we get to the real stuff which was of course seven years war and Barbados is significant Barbados plays more of an interesting role, then then people tend to give it credit for, and I sort of explored that a little in this book that I'm working on now going to explore that more in the next book that I'm hopefully I've done next year, but the one of the things that I saw going there was at the Bush Hill site which is the home that Washington and his brother Lawrence rented when they spent the winter and spring in Barbados And we're watching that smallpox rather famously the house they rented the excavations there didn't turn up a lot from the period it's very hard to isolate one person's habitation in a site that had been occupied for very long period of time. But they did find some plate where that was typical of the 1750s and 1760s, and that plate where the pattern on it was called white salt play stoneware, and the pattern on it was the same pattern as we saw at very farm. So these two places and two completely different parts of the empire, but tied into the same sets of trade networks in very similar kinds of economies, end up with exactly the same plate on the table. And it's, you can't say that George use this particular plate, but it's a wonderful way to kind of get how empire would function how empire manifests itself in sort of at your, at your table. You're from Virginia. Here's what your world looks like here's what you eat off of. We're used to this because of the way consumerism functions in our world, but this is the 18th century is a lot more idiosyncratic and local. And so you go across the ocean, you spend the longest time away from the continent you've ever been you go to sea for a month you get seasick, you eat weird fish, you end up somewhere else where everything's different. And you sit down to have dinner, and you're seeing, at least theoretically, the same table settings you have at home that that is empire that sort of an important manifestation of it. How do you describe that object. I said, well, those are bits of Washingtonology. That's how that phrase, how that word. Yeah, I thought that was beautifully done. I thought that was an incredible chapter I know you've got some images. Maybe it's worth pulling up a couple of those images from Barbados. I thought that your example of using those ceramics as a way to show us how Washington would have envisioned empire encountered empire as you say after a month at sea and eating then on those same plates but chapter goes so far beyond that to you talk about the different types of spaces the different types of plantations of course this also helps us think about Washington's engagement with slavery. And also the whole smallpox episode. And so for me, one of my takeaways from the book is the importance of that Barbados instance in that whole Washingtonology field, and also the way you pivot around. Not only what does Barbados mean to Washington, but what does Washington mean to Barbados. And so that's, I'd love to hear you just elaborate on that a little bit more. Let's look at some pictures of the beautiful islands. Just, let's get that shared and I'll just open up this fully here. So, we should talk a little bit about the visit. So this is this is from the second tier of hills and Barbados looking southward. So if you go straight up south you'll eventually hit the trend that I guess in the South America. But Barbados, anybody's been there you know Barbados is, it's not it's in the West Indies but it's not a Caribbean island. It's not volcanic it's not made the same way the other islands are. So it's got a completely different kind of vegetation they're very different landscape, it's coral, and there are highways that are cut through, they cut through coral so you're going through the sort of white coral walls of highway cut. So this is looking south this is a view that Washington wrote about. Oh he sees the sea in the distance and the land sort of spread out and it's still agriculture it's a island population of about 350,000 people mostly clustered along the south end around Bridgetown the capital, which would be off to our right as we look at this. This is from the back end of the drax plantation so we're looking south I had driven up to the drax plantation, which is a 17th century building still occupied still used as a sugar plantation it's an amazing thing, still operating almost as one would have in the 17th century, and this is by a family in Britain, who are absentee landlords, it's, it's nothing in that respect has changed from from the 1680s, or 1660. The difference of course it's slightly bit the structure of the economy, it's not really the same. But this is a view that Washington would have seen. One of the things that Washington was struck by when he went to Barbados that matters immensely is he saw people, he was, he was wealthy and he was a wealthy family. The family the Washington's that his family were probably we could say they're in sort of the top 10% of wealth for Virginians. So they're not wealthy, super wealthy by the standards of the really big guys in the colony, but they're locally extremely wealthy, they're very wealthy. And most Virginians would have, you know, looked upward to what they had an aspire to. When Augustine Washington died. 743 hits somewhere in the range of about 10,000 acres and business interests also he divided a lot of that land up, but they're, they're well taken care of. But his father has around 10,000 acres his father passed away at this point but had about 10,000 acres and was wealthy but you know, not super wealthy. Unfortunately Lawrence wash up in a place where there are people who have 350 acres of land. They are staggeringly more wealthy than the Washington. And he writes this in his journal and he's sort of, you know, he's, he's, he's writing down the numbers of the acres that people have. He's clearly kind of blown away by this people have what are by Virginia standards, tiny land holdings are so much wealthier than Virginia. And Virginia is in his experience and it has to do with sugar. Sugar is just a more profitable commodity. Barbados historians have said for a long time is devoted to the development of this commodity so that's part of its trade relation to Virginia. Virginia can produce food supplies that you don't want to, you don't want to grow Barbados you don't waste your land with corn. If you can import it you import it you don't cattle herd here. You don't have a cow but you don't have a herd of cattle grazing. You turn this into sugar land and everybody does and that island was a patchwork of tiny holdings with dozens and does hundreds of planters, just making a ton of money off of this. So, he's a little astounded by this and wrote about it at length was sort of intrigued by it. He also saw the slave system operative didn't write a lot about it but he did note in sort of interesting aside, I was finding this kind of fascinating and it bears on the way Barbados remembers Washington I think in some ways. It seems pretty clear to me from what's happening in his diary of the trip that he and his brother arrived. They came through the connection to the Fairfax family, because genealogy stuff right it always gets a little confusing. But William Fairfax, who was Lawrence's father in law, had married a Massachusetts woman named Deborah Clark. Deborah Clark's brother, Gedney lived on Barbados and was like one of the wealthiest guys on the island. In fact, when his business went bust about a decade later, it had huge economic impact for the island. So he's a very big deal on the island. So along come these two Virginians young men, one married one not George about 19. From a place that has a very long standing trade relationship with Barbados so they see Virginia's right this is their, they're familiar with Virginia's one come these two guys they walk off the boat and into one of the most prominent homes on the island. And young George is not married. So it's really clear from from just the reading the periphery of his diary that the planters of the of the island are scrubbing up their daughters in Canada, you know, pushing them out in front of him hoping for, hoping for a beneficial trade relationship He is meeting a lot of women, having a lot of dinners with a lot of different women, and he's just not impressed by any of them. In fact, he's really quite disparaging, and he disparages them in interesting, racially tinted tones, because his concern. One of his concerns we the way he mentions is that they speak it with a dialect and an accent that sounds like the enslaved people. So what he's telling us in some roundabout way is that there is an emerging West Indian accent. There's a West Indian approach to English in his time and he's hearing it and he doesn't like it. He's not happy with what he hears, but that's what he mentions. And yet he describes himself as being ravished by the island. And that's his word, which I just find fascinating that. And that's a really specific word, you know, thanks to digital technologies we have, you know, we have the ability to kind of go through writing, metadata writing in a way that we were not able to, you know, even that And you can see some really interesting things. The word ravage, he uses, he uses twice in the context of our beta I believe, and then doesn't use again. He talks about it in that way and then drops the word from his vocabulary and the only time, at least what I've been able to tell by doing the metadata work on the correspondence, the only other time it appears in the correspondence is later during the revolution to refer to rate. Or there's an incident on Staten Island. There are a couple of times when he talks about British soldiers ravaging women. And there we know exactly what that means, but he describes himself as being ravaged by the island, ravaged by the island. And what does that mean? Clearly, it's some kind of enchantment something has, you know, I don't mean that in some mystical sense, but he clearly this place had an effect on it. It shook him in some ways and stayed with him. And it stayed with him enough that he brought at least two and I could be mistaken that there are more but at least two that I know of pieces of coral back from Barbados, which he kept with him the rest of his life there and those pieces exist in Mount Vernon they're in the museum at Mount Vernon. They're in the collection. So that's a big deal, you know, travel. We travel all the time right we're travelers, all of us we get in the car and we travel distances. Sometimes, if we're really unlucky just to go to work that are that are distances that would have staggered people in the 18th century who were all homebodies travels a big deal a transformative experience and for many people. And it leads to them doing their only literary event in their lives that you know that's a remarkable thing. And he kept a diary. He was writing a bit of a diary before but this place stuck with him and he sort of it resonated. And this is part of that view this is part of what would capture. Sorry, go ahead you're gonna have something. I'm just gonna say it's a really insightful creative chapter, as you say that goes from those tiny bits of coral that he returns from as well as his diary stuff and then the spaces the architectural spaces of the island. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about how the book engages with slavery overall, because of course it's not just Barbados. It's slavery figuring of course throughout Washington's life so are there other images or spaces do you see a common theme, or trajectory, your chapter on Mount Vernon you describe his, his changing approach to slavery his contradictory approach to slavery that I find really useful and comparing it to these earlier experiences in his life say at Barbados, or his childhood home. So let's look at some pictures from Barbados let's look at some buildings and sort of work from there because these are all places of enslavement. That gets lost in some ways in, you know, when we look at them but this is the Drax Hall this is that 17th century plantation that was that if you turn around you get something like that view. This is probably a 19th century building in Bridgetown but it's understood as people say it's 18th century but it's probably not. But this is an 18th century 18th century townhouse in Barbados. So, when Washington came to Barbados and he stayed with the clerks at first before they rented. As far as we know he probably stayed in Bridgetown we know that they dined in Bridgetown, and probably not in this building I think the genealogy of this building is known. This is what an 18th century building 8th century townhouse looks like. And so what you have immediately is a space that's completely different than the kind of space he would have understood. In some ways it's much like an 18th century home in Virginia you have sort of an entryway which you can see very large door windows that sort of open of family rooms above public rooms below and servants and slaves, living higher up. What you what you have here that affects the way slavery functions it's very different than what you have in Mount Vernon is you don't have, you don't have the insularity of the plantation. You don't have sort of an entire system all around you have a slavery system around you, but it's an urban one that has coming and going and mixing in a way that's very different this ties in, I think when we get to Philadelphia, because he's confronted in with moving his slave system into into an urban space that, in that case is not like Bridgetown is not accommodating to enslavement, and that becomes a real problem. But this was, this is again, not the building that he was in, as far as we know, but very much like the one he would have seen or would have visited. But out in the countryside. There's a plantation which you mentioned before called Bell. It just sits out there Barbados has the best collection of 18th century buildings in the West Indies they're just all over the place. And they're in differing states of repair some are in fabulous shape and are being used. The Barbados National Trust is housed in the 18th century building, beautiful building. Some of them are just have been repurposed again and again and serve some sort of industrial use. This is on a construction lot so there's behind you if you were standing there would be a sort of an open barrack with trucks inside of it so people coming and going nobody seems to mind that you're there. Take a look at this nobody nobody really cares I think turret show up every now and then, although I don't know how many people might associate this with Washington. The reason why you might is because at the time when Washington was there. The plantation was owned by getting Clark, and Washington records going out into the country and visiting. He doesn't say Bell but he visits visits the Clark Plantation. And there are other ones but this is a local knowledge and this is the one that Washington visited. And since the doors are open, you know, you go in. And you poke around and you try to look between floorboards and see if you can tell when beams were cut to see whether they're slown or tune, try to get a sense of the age of the building, but this is the 18th century core of the building. So it's entirely possible that Washington was in this is also entirely possible, but this is where he contracted smallpox. When he visited he knew that a member of the Clark family. He had smallpox and was sort of hiding out was kept separate from everybody when they had this dinner. So he's in a house that has smallpox but these houses are very small very compact and crowded, which also again returns to slavery that all of this stuff you have to have the family living here and all of the enslaved people also sort of moving in and out of this space. So these are wonderful examples of the differing landscapes that enslavement creates that you move through these places as a free person one way. And the slaves have a whole sort of alternate landscape, you know, as elephants written about sort of, you know, that they move through differently. And so when you see these small compressed places. You realize that all these different ones can sort of converge in this one domestic space that is domestic for some and labor for others. So, and he's just kind of moving in this world that he's familiar with it, obviously coming from a world of enslavement, but there's a compression in Barbados because the space itself is tiny. Everything is scaled down in Virginia just expand and you can look out and you see acres in Georgia's case. The fairy at very farm that takes its 19th century name from that sat at the bottom of the drop down at the river. There's a bell there. And when people would come to get the fairy over they bring the bell. And he wrote a letter one of his first letters that we have that has survived in 1749, where he's complaining to his brother about how bothered they are by the noise of the fairy bell and the people coming through. So they're not even that close. I mean they're close, but they're close by Virginia standards and that's the issue is that the aspiration is to sort of be, you know, kind of in your space to be you know, loser in the view you know your domain. I always think of the way surely plantation is I know you visited some point but anybody. If you get to visit surely. Here's a little example of this because you go up through those roads, and these kind of dirt roads that take you through trees and you rise up onto these open fields and you can see it off on the right, and it's like a town it's like you were arriving at a town, and it is indeed that this is this place of, of life and labor, but you see it in the distance and everything around it is open, there would have been more buildings in the 18th century, but the sense of openness, you don't get that about everything's compressed. And the compression in some ways is part of why he got smallpox, because everybody's also close together, then when he goes and visits these people he ends up contracting the virus. So, moved away from slavery there but that's you know he's moving through, moving through those spaces this is a just to tie it up this is the home that they stayed in massively changed from what they lived in it to the point where you know it's a gradually complicated like these buildings tend to be but this is building this building has been changed and changed and changed to the point where it doesn't resemble its original self at all if you. This is the front of it. The only part that's 18th century is that doorway in the middle and the windows on either side, although that wouldn't have been the doorway. The, the original building is that thing in the center that has the seller outlines you see that everything is blank white. The only part that isn't is that that's seller. That's the building that Lawrence and George rented. And in fact, it faced it faced the water. I guess this is hard to see but it's kind of facing off toward the water whereas now gets reoriented and faces away. So bill just massively changed, but the museum's done a beautiful job of restoring and interpreting it and this is the core of it. This is the home that they rented with the two rooms are sort of broken up by this table, kind of straddling them. But one movie on one side will be the other the front is to the right that would look out on Carlisle Bay and Bridgetown, and then there'd be law firms above. So we do know that when Washington was ill with smallpox this, this is where he stayed. And this is also when they did excavations here in 1999 2000. This was the site they found the ceramic that's similar to the stuff that very far. So, and again, they rented enslaved people when they were here, and there were quarters for the enslaved people sort of to our left, kind of behind this building. I think that's a really beautiful part of the book where you're able to take your own experience with excavations at Ferry Farm at the National Birthplace or others that you've actually been the one doing some of that excavation yourself and then being able to read and converse with the expertise of other archaeologists such as those that did the excavations there Barbados or at the President's house or at so many other sites and that's, it's just really seamless throughout the book. Do you have thoughts on working with the materials from other archaeologists. Not easy. Fortunately, all the work that I saw, you know, looking at really good work the 1930s work is good by its standard but um, no, you know, archaeology has many correct ways, there are many correct ways to do archaeology. They always align units maybe measured differently, you know, artifact collection systems vary over time. Fortunately, I say the work, the sites I was working with were all well excavated so I didn't have the problem of except the 1930s which is a long time ago. I think the hardest thing about it was not that so much as that all the straightforward conclusions have been taken right I mean the low hanging fruit, you know, is also been claimed. So by the people who are doing the work they're seeing they're seeing the stuff they are making, you know, this the central observations they're doing the identification. It's hard to come along later I'm not interested in disagreeing with them although I think some things like the challenge, not in any disruptive or harmful way but you know we might think of this differently think of that differently. I think Mount Vernon, for example, has been misnamed, but that goes back, you know, at least to the 1960s institutional name, but we'll try to slavery and talk about that but I think the hardest thing is, you know, if you're going to write a unique book if you're going to write your own book, I have to figure out what I want to say about these things and that was that was what made this a challenge in some ways this was an extremely challenging book, because I didn't want to just repeat other people's findings I didn't want to write a compendium of other people's work. I wanted to use what they had but then try to tie these things together and try to make them speak to one another, which I don't know that I did as much as I would have wanted to to get these things to talk to one another. I was going to say I think the concept of the book itself is really path breaking assembling a person's life or what we can learn about them and their engagement with the wider world through these various places. But then you do push yourself, and you do achieve some of those insights so that I as a reader really can't see any of those sites that you've worked us through in a way that I saw them before so I think the pay off there is just huge. I want to talk about Fort Fort necessity a little bit I thought that the way you dealt with his early military experience obviously we know about a bit of his humiliation there at the start of the French and Indian conflict and that colonial war with France and his surrender at Fort necessity but you bridge that surviving which was so great to see those oak posts or pales and then with the fabric the cloth that was so integral to Washington's view of himself at that time and that would stay with him going forward so how when you're thinking about his early military experiences does this material culture shape how did you make that connection between cloth and would So that's a great question that sort of it was very enjoyable took a long time to get that right and sort of hammer that out and we go back to Barbados so when the people who've written about Barbados largely Barbadian historians who have an understandable interest and sort of make in their case for where Barbados matters and some of that work is wonderful and some of it kind of overstates you know overstates the case and one of the things in the overstatement is to say the things he learned about in the Barbados that shaped who he was and I understand that impulse but it doesn't quite work so you get things like that some of the people that he had dinner with were Jacobins people that were Jacobite sorry who had rebelled against the crown and like maybe he learned about rebellion there so well Hugh Mercer lives across the river he sold very far to you Mercer and Mercer was a Jacobite so he's got you know you have to go to Barbados to meet those people they're in Virginia. You don't need you don't need that but you know one of the things that comes up again and again is that. This is I would argue the first time that Washington saw proper British red cuts, he would have seen the militia many times he may have seen soldiers he probably some military vessels not many of them, but some. He may well have seen some of these, but not like what he would have seen in Barbados, because Barbados is such a slave economy, overwhelmingly populated by enslaved people who need to be controlled in order for their people who are exploiting them to feel safe. So it's quite the opposite of the way the American Revolution plays out you know you want to put troops and homes in Boston, when people get really angry and feel their their rights violated. Nothing makes a white Barbadian planter happy than seeing troops and seeing troops everywhere and frigates in the water that they want to see that military display. And the home that they rented was right by one of these forts. So he saw, he saw military activity he saw forts in a way he'd never seen before. You can't say that he developed an interest from that he was reading about military stuff when some from the first records we have of this is him trading for trading with cousins for books about soldiers he's had a long interest in it, but it crystallizes And what I see happening is he then goes back to Virginia, and he gets sent off on his first military expeditions, first as an emissary and then leading men. And when he's leading the men when he sets that up he's writing back and forth with Governor didn't witty, who's sort of commanding this enterprise background Washington as Lieutenant he's not in command at first. But he's writing about how he how the men need to be outfitted and read and clothing matters immensely in this time in a way that it's hard for us to grasp. If you were just a regular poor guy the kind of guy who would sign up for a military expedition, which means you don't have a lot of land, you know you don't have a lot of prospects. And you'll take the bounty. It's like this is worth it's worth the risk. But one of the things you get for this is a suit of clothes. You are given what will probably be the nicest suit of clothing that you have. And, and that's why soldiers dressed like gentlemen in the 18th century that's like, it's recruitment inducement. They want to walk around looking good it's their, you know, their chance to look good. And it's a huge incentive and Washington writes about it being a huge incentive, but they have to be ready. And he really insists on this and he basically came back from his visit to the French forts. The year before, he comes back and he tells Dinwiddie that they have to be read this line fascinates me he said that because the French, the French, they'll look good and the Indians don't respect them. And there's no basis for this in reality. He doesn't have the experience at that point to be able to make that claim. And it's also just not true. It's not how this works. Because people their allies are understanding the French and so, you know, that's why he's there. Yeah, they're doing well they're not having trouble with it. So like this, they have to dress in red. I think something else is going on which is that he wants to you seen what British soldiers look like, and he wants to have. He wants to have his own man dressed in red, and he manages to do this and then clothing is a strange like motif throughout this expedition. The storehouses that have clothing in them, their issues of clothing and when they get to I won't go into too much I'll be able to read the book right but when when they get to Fort necessity. There are all sorts of issues of clothing that emerge. One of his officers when he's captured by his suitcase being taken from him and the suitcase breaks open, and his suit of flaming regimentals are shown. The presence of the suit of flaming regimentals that make the French soldiers that are stealing the suit back off. I mean which is a great statement in of itself these guys are so. So in the class system of the 18th century military, that all that matters is this guy as an officer, like, no matter what army he's in, it's still he's still an officer and they just back off, but it's the clothing that proves his identity you can't have that clothing without having the status, though the clothes play a huge role in this so when it comes to the actual fort. There's nothing that you could do to say the fort necessity is a success by any stretch of the imagination it's a military disaster and well acknowledged and nobody could really challenge that. But I think we've misread the fourth because the fort is often treated as an anomaly in amateur someone who doesn't know what he's doing, all of which is true right he is an amateur he doesn't really know what he's doing, thinks he does little cocky about it but but no he's he's out of his death and at some level he knows that. And this is all done hastily that as sort of a place to put to put material and equipment and ultimately to hide the wounded it's not meant to be a fortification that could withstand a bombardment, and they built earthworks outside and they set cannons outside of them. But one of the things we see in the excavation, this is a park service exhibition going back into the 50s, and earlier in fact, but the remains are still there. The, because the port was burned. A lot of the French burned it when they left after they captured it left. A lot of the wood survives in the ground. So we can see the wood. It's actually there the park service has some on display. You go see it, and they have more in their collection so you can actually there's a lot there. And they are split pieces of white oak, we can tell the tree. And that struck me is really interesting for a couple different reasons for one thing. This is a mixed forest. It's not there are other hardwoods there, but the pylons, the pails are made of white oak. So, and white oak is the kind of gold standard hardwood for 18th century He's writing about white oak all the time you want white oak scantlings for the repairs to Mount Vernon, the white oak is the best wood you can get. So something's happening where these guys are they perceive, you know, they're correct the French are coming to get them and they're trying to build a fortification, but they're being selective about the trees, and only some trees are going to work right that that's really interesting. That's very Virginia they are picking the trees that makes sense to them as Virginians, and then they split them, which I still can't figure out I don't think that's a labor saving move. People have said that's the same labor, but if you tie it out it actually doesn't say the crews that are doing this the soldiers are doing this or these are the ones that later going to build Braddock's road. These people know what they're doing they're they can cut down far as fast. They're tough as nails. But then they're good at doing things quickly but you still need time. So splitting is an interesting choice. He splits them and they put them outwards so they all so the white of this oak is all facing outward. And as sort of hinted I kind of see that in the way you can see a garment that this is a dress this is a this is a tire. It's a statement of of more more validity than this construction actually has. There's really no other reason to do it it doesn't save you anything it doesn't make it stronger. It doesn't make it faster, but it does make it white and projects it outward and it fits in with the way Virginians do things he's like deeply ingrained vernacular habits, the split wood is just so typical of that space and the way they operate so it's almost like they're just trying to create something familiar he's having them create something familiar, because safety blanket or something. I thought that was so revealing the, the, the white kind of circular enclosure that was projecting this image the same way that the the cloth, you know, the in the wool of the uniform was projecting an image. It works that the French are actually kind of think that the French are convinced that they're up against a much larger force than they are. Because the brashness that Washington shows and you know killing zoom on bill and you know, getting into the weeds on the military stuff but the brashness of the action leads the French to who this has to be a large force. No small force would do this this has to be a big force, and then they see this fort, and they're a little intimidated even though they outnumber them. I'm not going to give you a number but it's easily five to one. You know, they are a much larger force, but in a way I mean, if it's a fake I don't know that I'm not going to say that it's intentional fake it's like a masterful genius. It's not that I think he's doing what Virginians do he's building a Virginia enclosure, and it happens to have this effect. And you trace that through the rest of his military career some of those lessons he takes with them and in a productive way with the continental army. I wonder if I could shift gears and challenge you a little bit or ask you. We learn so much about Washington himself the way he presented himself. We learn a little bit less in this book about Martha, who of course is, you know, basically the second half of the book she's an intimate part of his life. What was your thinking your choice in approaching her as a feature of this landscape as a participant as an agent of some of these spaces and helping them to come about or helping to George to navigate those same spaces. She appears. She's at two of the sites that are right about so she's at Mount Vernon she's at the president. That's true I don't talk about her that much. And she's hard to talk about because she isn't some ways occluded by Washington right so there is some stuff but you know, even you know the floor phrases biography of the two of them is, you know, centers on George and their activity together so he she sort of there she she is most prominent in my work, going to slavery because of the, the bottle seal, the customs bottle seal that appears at the bottom of the slave quarter in Mount Vernon that puts a date on the building of that thing, in order for that building to be there or for that bottle to be there that had to be after the marriage, and since it's at the very bottom layers that suggests that that building is new to that period. This marriage sort of manifests itself in the presence of an object from another plant patient, brought over by marriage, and then ends up in in the quarter for the enslaved. So it sort of ends up in a tricky way. And when I'm talking about the president's house. I, what I was interested in was sort of the regimes of discipline how you deal with the regimes of discipline so again, she's not much in focus, because it's hard to tell the correspondence that Washington had with Tobias Lear, when he was building the sort of making recommendations to Morris's house this is fun because we get into your world really quickly with this you know we are characters converge right. The correspondence that they have back and forth and Lear sort of making his recommendations getting his recommendations from George. It's very hard to tell how much is coming from George and how much might be coming from Martha that's it's so it's hard to tell some of it is clearly his concern, and there are you know I can't swear to it but there are some of our correspondences between them where they haggle a little bit, at least with Mount Vernon, over the names of certain buildings, you know, I remember reading that the two of them sort of go back and forth about what they with with the name of the building is going to be meaning what its purpose again he has one vision she is another. She did not end up being super prominent in this work, because I think she's occluded somewhat by the kind of stuff I'm looking at the other things as a tie in is that, because I'm working sort of upward from material. It's very hard to take an object and tie it to an individual person. It's extremely difficult to do. That's why things that have initials on them are sort of fetishized and wonderful, but they're rare and far between at the President's House, for example, the Park Service will tell you directly that their excavation from the early 2000s didn't find anything that they can identify to Washington's adaptation. They do have the footers for expansions to the home that he ordered. But they mean, there's no plate service. There's no object that says GW there's nothing that they can say this was in the President's House at that moment. There are ceramics from that period. But that period is too big to be able to say it's there so they don't have anything like that. So the entire Washington family in that respect is sort of hidden by the nature of artifacts. And I think you make the point really well that George Washington himself. As opposed to Martha George is exceptionally focused on the form of things the shape of things he likes to draw things up he likes to talk about what color of the paint they're going to use for this or that he's asking his colleagues for design ideas on ice houses and on greenhouses and other things. And so just as a character himself George seems to be this this is foremost of the way he's operating, you know, as a historical figure during that time period. Yeah, he's a bit of a magpie isn't he sort of you know he goes somewhere and he sees somebody with a nice window is like I got to get one of the windows, you know, he sees a nice couple on top of there is like I get one of those. He sees things and he likes them and he starts drafting up plans for how to get them. That sort of drafting of plans to return the issue of slavery I think is an important thing, because that has a big impact on now Vernon I mentioned that slave quarter, which would seem to be there. The documents say that they're finishing it out in 1760. So it would seem to be new and it has archaeology in the form of that wine bottle seal that puts it right in that period marriage 58. So it's right around that time. And that building stood for 2530 years and then gets replaced, and it's replaced by two brick buildings, more or less on the same site one on the same site one a little further away. It basically double the size of the original quarter. But what's interesting about that to me is that the drafting he knew he was going to change that area he was writing about it in the 1770s to his plantation manager, because Kinsman Lund Washington, saying that he wanted to redo that area there was a wall he wanted to put in. He wanted to make changes we want to improve the way the garden function, which this building is right up against. And then they start doing it in the 1790s so a lot of it happens while he's away as president. But he's he's sort of drafting these plans, and he draws them up. I think I could bring them up for you he draws them up right after the Revolution, and being them up here. That's the president's house. So you drew them up. Yeah, they're there. Everybody. So you drew two plans of this. So at the center of this is a greenhouse this is what you would see this has been rebuilt at Mount Vernon. So you would go see the rebuilt version of this. The rebuilt version sits on top of the archaeology. So that is true to what was actually in the ground. In the 19th century was replaced again, but it has its own story, like a lot of these things. But these are the two drawings from the Mount Vernon collection, the collection library that George drew up for the greenhouse in the center and wings for the slave quarters on the left and right. But when he ended up going with was a version of plan to the bottom one divides divides into. Even this isn't quite right because one of the things that happens is that you'll notice that these buildings the wings are centered on the gables. The short ends of the rectangle of the of the center building, whereas they actually align that they align with the top end. So it's one solid line is a more, more solid wall. He was drafting this, after the Revolution, and around the time that he was having discussions with the market Lafayette, where, as we know, first of all, first of all, it's written about this really well that that Lafayette was an ardent opponent of slavery, and was appealing to Washington to join him in enterprises of freeing enslaved people. There was one going on a gala. It ends up kind of falling apart during the context of the French Revolution, but he, he set three people up in village settings and had them working as farmers, not as a slave people he was urging Washington to do the same thing was suggesting maybe some of your properties in West Virginia, you could do this with Western Virginia at the time. Maybe maybe you could do this with and Washington entertains the idea he doesn't follow through but he's but he's thinking about it. But he's hearing these discussions he's having these discussions. And we usually will say and nothing really comes to that, which, you know, on one level is true. But we weren't looking at, we're looking at the landscape and the archaeology and recognizing this revision of the housing for the enslaved happens amidst that discussion, and he ends up building a new version of this at the end of his life. So, something is happening that he goes from being goes from having them living in a wooden building to living in two brick buildings that break the building being more solid, more weathertight. If comfortable is the word we want to use that's a little tricky to say, but it's very difficult to my mind to separate the discussions he's having about slavery with this sort of revision of the slave of the slave housing. And this is the slave housing should add that is closest to Mount Vernon, their slave housing all over the five farms. But this is, this is the stuff he would see, most visibly on a daily basis these are the people who are working the immediate land around and and the various enterprises that are happening in Mount Vernon. So, in some ways, this revision of architecture this rethinking of of slave housing is in dialogue with these discussions he's having after the revolution. And these people are coming to him and writing to him, and you know sending him abolitionist pamphlets and you know, arguing against the slave trade, which is really the focus in that period it's less, less focus on the abolition of slavery as such and more a curtailing of the slave trade that that's sort of more the issue. So, it's a great example of how you've been using the material record that Washingtonology to show us something new about what Washington has to say about slavery, you know, rather than just looking through his letters rather than just looking at his will. Obviously, through his buying and selling but through what he does through these material statements as well. We've only got just a few minutes left but I don't want to leave the conversation without picking up on your last chapter your conclusion, which is the, I think worth the price of the book alone it deals with the modern memorial, in some case not so modern memorial controversies surrounding George Washington's likeness statues images plaques opens with the story of those plaques in Christ church there in Alexandria, one for Washington one for a lead that were put up in the 19th century. I'll just read a couple quotes you say, Washington's memorials have been knocked about and moved around in the past, sometimes by accident, sometimes to send some vague political message, but always with little enduring damage to the Republic. That kind of the way that you're able to say this in a way that's exciting that helps us contextualize all this stuff is just so fresh. But I want to ask you Phil you say ultimately the hand wringing over the imagined impending demise of all things Washington was disingenuous. It was more distraction than call to action. Can you propose what you mean, can you talk a little bit about what you mean by seeing some of this hand wringing or opposition as disingenuous to actually supporting Washington's legacy. And that ties specifically to that Lee plaque controversy which people know I might cover in the book but they were these twin plaques dating to around the time of these death and the way they did it was symmetrically they put one up to Lee in the church and then they put one up to to George at the same time. And it goes back to the naming of the University of Washington and Lee I mean this this sort of using Washington in some ways to shelter Lee as Lee is becoming problematic in the wake of the Civil War. And so, come the events of 2020 and you know the summer where Washington statues were damaged, and you know all the events surrounding that the church decided to not remove not destroy, but move the plaques. So they moved them from the front wall to the atrium area that you come into where there were already a commemorative plaques. So in other words they're just they're just removing moving to a different place as monument removals go. This is a pretty, pretty minor event. And the kind of thing that bucks for the national to roar over this. Nobody would have even noticed this was a decision by the vestry. It's perfectly sound. They're right in line with their own church doctrine on issues of race and the Confederacy, but they're just doing, you know, they're doing what they're doing in its line, not exactly having a destruction. And of course, the same church has an enormous bronze plaque to the pallbear secured Washington's casket right so there's an enormous commemoration Washington outside and Washington was there and you know there's this pew and so on. There's a whole lot of concern about it and people were sort of dragging it up and using it and getting quite histrionic making a lot of you know offering a lot of the facts. And that's fine I understand. I understand the feeling of something being under threat I mean I work in the world of preservation. I'm aware of the feeling of seeing things that you care about being jeopardized, you know, I get that. The reality is that this is a pretty bad example of that happening. However, this is why I say disingenuous. I felt almost as if right right so welcome to the world of being concerned about the maintenance preservation of old things. Thank you for expressing this concern. Now let's have a real conversation about what is in fact jeopardizing historic physical patrimony of the past for Americans, and it's things like underfunding the park service to the point where deferred maintenance jeopardizes historical structures. It's not having preservation funds to make sure that land is preserved for Civil War battle battlefields. Like that's really where the issue is. It's not this plaque that's the problem it's a much bigger issue of how we are in many buildings building over and damaging things that are irreplaceable. So if we're going to have a discussion about preservation, let's have that discussion but the place we have to go first is making sure that we are preserving the things that we have already, and that there is some security in that, not ringing our hands about whether a plaque got moved from the front of the church to the back of the church. And unless you're on board with this, then it just seems to me to be disingenuous like let's, let's fix this problem if you're identifying the problem. So teaching that point of yours after seeing what that material record at all those various localities some owned by the park service you know some owned by private organizations. It really brings that point home to you know without that material record we would know so much less about his legacy his life and so turning the conversation in that way I think it is a real contribution and one that I haven't heard very much of so I thought it was a really smart way to end the book with just one minute or two minutes left I can't resist showing off your cover. I adore the cover. Any final thoughts here about the book or the cover itself here Phil. So it was presses will routinely ask you if you have any suggestions for the cover, and then you know they go off and do their stuff because they're designers they know what they're doing. They asked me if I had any ideas and I just as a hobby just the thing of pastime. I have, I paint and I have a whole lot of paintings are several in this office. And one of my I've done several paintings of Washington and that was one of them. I sent them to rather more serious ones, and one sort of jokie one, and they love the jokie one, and, and now it's on the cover of the book. So, I mean I love it I'm very, very happy, you know, and I'm available to do other people's book covers as they come along so you know, perfectly happy to talk to you about your book project but they didn't use the painting of mine for the chicken book I was hoping we would do that but you know, what do you do. But so I have I have a painting of mine on a book cover. It's very fun to look at that book cover for me. It's very, it's very inviting. It stands out it's unique, just like all your work here Phil so thank you for seeing all the other books and thanks for sharing your time with us here today. Thank you and thanks to the National Archives and thank all people who stopped in to hear us talk. Very good. Thank you everybody.