It is February 21st. Welcome to Episode 52 of History in a Year. Today, the unimaginable happens: George Washington dies. Just as the United States is tearing itself apart over the Alien and Sedition Acts, the one man holding the country together takes his final breath. We step inside the bedroom at Mount Vernon in December 1799 to witness Washington’s terrifying final hours. We explore the gruesome 18th-century medical practices that likely accelerated his death, his stoic final commands, the crucial terms of his last will and testament, and the global shockwave that followed the loss of the ultimate American icon.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is February 21st. Welcome to Episode 52. For the last few days, we have been covering the toxic, paranoid political wars of the late 1790s.
LEAH:
The Quasi-War. The Alien and Sedition Acts. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. The country was a powder keg, and the Federalists and Republicans were holding the matches.
STEPHEN:
But today, we hit pause on the political warfare. Because in December of 1799, the political bickering suddenly didn’t matter anymore. A localized tragedy in Virginia forced the entire world to stop and hold its breath.
LEAH:
The Father of the Country was dying.
STEPHEN:
We need to set the scene. It is Thursday, December 12, 1799. George Washington is 67 years old. He has been retired from the presidency for nearly three years, living happily at his beloved Mount Vernon.
LEAH:
He was a farmer at heart, and he spent his days obsessively managing his estate. On this particular Thursday, he rode out on his horse at 10:00 AM to inspect his farms.
STEPHEN:
The weather was terrible. It started as snow, turned into hail, and then settled into a freezing, miserable, driving rain. Washington stayed out in it for five solid hours.
LEAH:
When he finally got back to the mansion, he was soaked to the bone. Snow was literally clinging to his hair. But Washington was a creature of habit and incredibly punctual. Dinner was on the table, and he didn’t want to keep his guests waiting.
STEPHEN:
So, instead of changing into dry clothes, he sat down and ate dinner in his freezing, wet riding gear.
LEAH:
The next morning, Friday the 13th, he woke up with a severe sore throat. The weather outside was still awful—three inches of snow had fallen overnight—so he stayed indoors most of the day, but his voice became increasingly hoarse.
STEPHEN:
His personal secretary, Tobias Lear, suggested he take some medicine for his throat, but Washington waved him off. He famously said, “Let it go as it came.” He had survived bullets, cannons, smallpox, and dysentery. He wasn’t going to let a little cold bother him.
LEAH:
But this wasn’t a cold. Modern doctors looking at the symptoms believe Washington was suffering from acute epiglottitis—a severe bacterial infection that causes the tissue at the back of the throat to swell massively, blocking the airway. It is terrifying, and without antibiotics, it is lethal.
STEPHEN:
Washington went to bed on Friday night, but he woke up around 2:00 AM on Saturday, December 14th. He could barely breathe. He was gasping for air.
LEAH:
He woke up Martha, but he wouldn’t let her get out of bed to call for help because he was worried she would catch a chill in the freezing room. He suffered in the dark until the sun came up.
STEPHEN:
At dawn, the household went into a panic. Tobias Lear sent messengers galloping through the snow to fetch Washington’s longtime friend and personal physician, Dr. James Craik, as well as two other local doctors.
LEAH:
And this is where the story gets incredibly grim. Because 18th-century medicine was, frankly, barbaric. They didn’t understand germs. They believed that illness was caused by an imbalance of the four “humors” in the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
STEPHEN:
To cure inflammation, they believed they had to get the “bad blood” out of the body. Before the doctors even arrived, Washington ordered one of his enslaved overseers, a man named George Rawlins, to bleed him.
LEAH:
Rawlins was terrified. You don’t just cut the former President of the United States! But Washington demanded it. Rawlins made an incision in Washington’s arm and drained half a pint of blood.
STEPHEN:
When Dr. Craik and the other doctors arrived, things got worse. They looked at his swollen throat and decided the treatment needed to be much more aggressive.
LEAH:
Over the next twelve hours, they bled Washington three more times. The final time, they drained a full quart of blood.
STEPHEN:
In total, they drained an estimated 80 ounces of blood from George Washington. That is roughly 40 percent of his entire blood volume. They literally bled him dry.
LEAH:
And that wasn’t all. They gave him an enema. They made him gargle a mixture of vinegar and sage tea, which nearly choked him to death because his throat was almost completely swollen shut.
STEPHEN:
They also applied a blister to his throat using cantharides, which is made from crushed blister beetles. The idea was to draw the “toxins” out through the skin. It just caused agonizing, burning pain.
LEAH:
Only one doctor, the youngest one—Dr. Elisha Dick—suggested something different. He realized the airway was closing and suggested performing a tracheotomy—cutting a hole directly into Washington’s windpipe so he could breathe.
STEPHEN:
But the older doctors overruled him. It was a radical procedure, and they didn’t want to risk killing the great George Washington with an unproven surgery.
LEAH:
Through all of this torture—the choking, the bleeding, the burning—Washington was incredibly stoic. He didn’t complain. He just endured it.
STEPHEN:
By late afternoon, Washington realized the end was coming. He knew his own body. He looked at Dr. Craik and said, “Doctor, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go.”
LEAH:
He asked Martha to go to his desk and bring him two versions of his will. He reviewed them, chose one, and told her to burn the other in the fireplace.
STEPHEN:
This will is one of the most important documents of his life. In it, he made a definitive, final statement about slavery. He ordered that all the enslaved people he personally owned—over 120 men, women, and children—were to be freed upon the death of his wife, Martha.
LEAH:
He was the only slave-owning Founding Father to free his enslaved workers in his will. He also set up a fund to care for the elderly and to educate the children. It was a powerful acknowledgement that the system of slavery contradicted the ideals of the Revolution he had fought for.
STEPHEN:
As night fell, Washington’s breathing grew even more labored. Tobias Lear sat on the bed, holding his hand. Martha sat at the foot of the bed, quietly watching her husband of forty years.
LEAH:
Around 10:00 PM, Washington whispered his final instructions to Tobias Lear. And this part is both fascinating and a little bit creepy.
STEPHEN:
Washington was terrified of being buried alive. It was a common phobia at the time, called taphophobia. Because medical science was so imprecise, people actually did occasionally get buried while in a coma.
LEAH:
So, Washington looked at Lear and gasped, “I am just going. Have me decently buried, and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead. Do you understand me?”
STEPHEN:
Lear, crying, said, “Yes.”
LEAH:
Washington replied, “‘Tis well.” Those were his last words.
STEPHEN:
Between 10:00 and 11:00 PM, George Washington lifted his own hand and placed two fingers on his wrist to feel his own pulse. As his pulse faded, his hand dropped from his wrist. He died peacefully, without a struggle.
LEAH:
When the news broke, it shattered the country.
STEPHEN:
It took days for the news to reach Philadelphia. Congress immediately adjourned in shock. The fighting between the Federalists and the Republicans completely stopped. The entire nation draped itself in black bunting.
LEAH:
On December 26th, Congress held a massive memorial service. Representative Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee—a cavalry officer who had served under Washington in the Revolution, and the future father of Robert E. Lee—delivered the eulogy.
STEPHEN:
He coined the phrase that would define Washington forever. He said Washington was: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
LEAH:
But the mourning wasn’t just in America. The reaction across the globe proved just how massive Washington’s legend had become.
STEPHEN:
In France, Napoleon Bonaparte—who had just taken power—ordered ten days of national mourning for the American general.
LEAH:
And even more incredibly, the British—the people Washington had spent eight years killing!—were so respectful of his character that the entire British channel fleet lowered its flags to half-mast when they heard the news.
STEPHEN:
For a brief, shining moment in the winter of 1799, the United States was united in grief. The partisan wars were put on hold to honor the indispensable man.
LEAH:
But that unity was an illusion. And it didn’t last.
STEPHEN:
Washington was the gravity that kept the American solar system from flying apart. Without him, there was nothing stopping Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson from ripping each other to pieces.
LEAH:
The calendar turned to the year 1800. The grieving period ended. And the most vicious, consequential political war in American history began.
STEPHEN:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 53. The Revolution of 1800. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson square off in a rematch for the presidency. We’ll see how Alexander Hamilton commits political suicide to destroy his own party, and how a bizarre tie in the Electoral College forces the United States to the absolute brink of a civil war.
LEAH:
I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.