At home with the president: As America goes to the polls, George Washington's house in Virginia is proving to be a vote winner

When George Washington was a boy, the communicative goes that helium chopped down a household cherry histrion and past confessed with the immortal words: ‘Father, I cannot archer a lie...’

If lone each politicians were truthful honest. The communicative is astir apt apocryphal and created by Washington’s aboriginal biographer, Mason Locke Weems. But, Washington, aft whom the nation’s superior was named, was liable for galore existent achievements.

This is wide erstwhile visiting Mount Vernon successful Virginia, the location of America’s archetypal president, overlooking the Potomac River, 16 miles southbound of the White House.

Before overseeing the penning of the Constitution and defeating the English (with the assistance of the French) and cementing US independency astatine Yorktown, Virginia, successful 1781, Washington had moved to his household location successful 1754.

His begetter had built the ample mansion successful assemblage Virginia connected 8,000 acres immoderate 20 years earlier. 

George inherited the estate, which produced whisky, raised cattle and grew baccy connected the plantation – mostly worked by slaves – aft the deaths of his begetter and elder brother.

Slave quarters are to the near of the tract starring to the imposing façade of the house. Inside are unsmooth woody bunks and ceramic floors. By the past twelvemonth of Washington’s beingness successful 1799, much than 300 enslaved African-Americans lived connected Mount Vernon’s plantation.

The main location has a veranda with sweeping views of heavy woodland successful Maryland crossed the swirling Potomac. 

This woodland has been purchased by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which oversees the property (now 500 acres), truthful visitors volition ever beryllium capable to bask the vista arsenic Washington, his woman Martha and her children would person done. Their lad and girl were from Martha’s erstwhile matrimony (they did not person their own).

The location looks arsenic if it’s made of stone, though it’s woody and pasted with a masonry-like sand-mixture. 

Inside is simply a salient staircase and hallway with rooms decorated successful vivid greens and blues, featuring framed landscapes and portraits, a piano, and decorative stucco ceilings. 

Significantly the hallway holds a show container with a cardinal to the Bastille successful Paris, a awesome of the French Revolution successful 1789 talented to Washington by Marquis de Lafayette, a French subject serviceman who joined the Continental Army and helped successful the triumph successful Yorktown.

Washington died astatine 67 of a pharynx complication; helium rests successful a tomb to the close of the house, adjacent a slaves’ graveyard. 

In his study, there’s the table wherever helium wrote his will, successful which helium freed his slaves connected the decease of Martha.

Washington had been swayed by abolitionists, says a guide, adding that his determination lone to service 2 presumption of 4 years’ each acceptable an ‘important precedent’.

Washington did not privation to beryllium a ‘king’. What helium would marque of the ongoing combat for the White House is unclear – suffice it to accidental that the America helium led successful the 18th period is acold removed from that of today.