(July 21 1970)
George Washington Gets a Belated Audit
By McCandlish Phillips
George Washington Gets a Belated Audit
By McCandlish Phillips
George Washington's expense account for the Revolutionary War, which was accepted by the Treasury and settled with hardly a glance in 1783, has at last come under exacting scrutiny. The self-assigned auditor of the general's account which came to a cool $449,000 in an eight-year span- is Marvin Kitman, author and critic.
Mr. Kitman's line-by-line analysis of the general's ledger, based on months of tracing the general's expense payments-lauds the account a masterwork of the genre, archetype of the modern American expense account, fully justifying a high view of Washington as the father of "the American way of life called expense account living."
Retreat to Pennsylvania
Mr. Kitman finds a few holes in the account.
There is, for instance, "no record of who paid the Hoboken tolls." He lifts
an ad-miring eyebrow at the spectacle of "George Washington charging the
country for fleeing the enemy" ($3,776 for expenses incurred while beating
a retreat from White Plains through the Jerseys and into Pennsylvania).
These, and several hundred other points, are made in a new book, "George Washington's Expense Ac-count," published yesterday by Simon & Schuster. Mr. Kitman, who identifies himself as "PFC (ret.)," is co-author of the book, with General Washington.
The heart of the 285-page volume is a 54-page section reproducing the entire expense account, from June, 1775, through June, 1783, in the general's own handwriting.
The document reveals that Washington at times struggled mightily over whether a certain expense was public or private, and he usually resolved the issue in favor of himself. In terms of today's soft money, the hard money of Washington's day makes his $449,261.51 expense account comparable to "millions" today, Mr. Kitman contends.
Washington, who turned down a salary of $500 a month for his military service, insisted that expenses were "all I desire."
Washington charged the Government 6 per cent interest for "the money he laid out from his private purse to cover his expenses the first two years of the war," Mr. Kitman writes. "He also threw in a surcharge for depreciation."
Mr. Kitman's interpretation keep crossing the line that divides verity from travesty. It seems likely to annoy historians and arouse the ill-humor of those who prefer the perfection theory of national origins.
It raises questions about the character or Washington and may generate heat on that score, though it is not a blunt-edged attack.
"There's a Washington cult to maintain him as a cold, marble, figure," Mr. Kitman said. "They've made a Superman out of him, while lie was probably just a great guy.”
A lot of the book's content is based on serious digging in various archives. A long list of obscure names entered in the general's ledger – Danl Isley, Ebenezer Austin, N. Sparhawk and others, are identified by Mr. Kitman in his report, which is meticulous when it is not being ridiculous.
This mixture makes the book hard to categorize. Mr. Kitman, who is not a certified public accountant, is an uncertified historian. He guesses the book might be called "an anti-textbook."
Earlier Histories
Richard Kluger, who edited the book before moving over on April I to become editor in chief at Atheneum, said. "You've heard of the nonfiction novel? Well, this is certainly no unhistorical history. It's the new, new history."
The old history began building in 1800, when the first of a string of laudatory biographies that read like nominations for sainthood began being issued about Washington. This continued for well over a century."
That Washington had an appetite for life and its comforts and pleasures had been adduced from his own voluminous writings, and Mr. Kitman adduces a good deal more from the expense accounts.
The bulk of Mr. Kitman's book is devoted to separate articles, ranging from a few lines to a few pages, on hundreds of individual expense items listed by Washington. He credits Washington with having employed 42 basic principles of expense account writing.
These include "the escalation principle" -each entry should be higher than the former - a practice "which Washington followed scrupulously during the 96 months he was on the expense account," Mr. Kitman observes.
Other principles to which Mr. Kitman says the general subscribed were: "Be specific on the smaller expenditures and vague on the larger ones. Describe in some depth the purchase of a ball of twine, but casually throw in the line, 'Dinner for one army.' " And the use "of the basic expense account word 'etc.,' or as Washington phrased it, "&c, &c, &c.
A Custom-Made Chariot
A Renaudet phaeton that Washington purchased for $1,430 as "a suitable chariot for riding to war," is the equivalent of "about twelve Cadillac broughams" now, he avers. Washington's elaborate specifications for the custom-made chariot are reproduced in the text.
Various charges for household expenses and repeated orders for Madeira wine appear in the expense account, leading Mr. Kitman to sigh, "All, the houfehold expenfes, the houfehold expenfes, the wine, the wine, the wine!"
"I picked up thif dumb habit of saying f's instead of s's," he explained. "When You read enough of thif ftuff. . . ."
Mr. Kitman is not alone in his recognition that Washington was not of an abstemious bent. Francis Rufus Bellamy, in "The Private Life of George Washington," wrote that the general liked having a half dozen extra people for dinner with card playing for moderately high stakes, riding to hounds, wine - bibing and "occasional hilarity over champagne." These, he said, were "his diversions, not his vices." Washington "bought chances on nearly every lottery that came along and occasionally made book for his neighbors on one," Bellamy reported.
Jacky, Washington's step-son, apparently acquired a taste for the good life, too. Washington sent him off to private school at Annapolis with a note describing him as "a boy of good genius," but the headmaster did not find it so. "I must confess to you," he wrote to Washington, "I never in my life knew a youth so exceedingly indolent, or so surprisingly voluptuous: One would suppose nature had intended him for some Asiatic Prince"
Martha's Expenses on Bill
In his classic biography of Washington, Douglas Southall Freeman touched on the expense account, noting that the general lived in war "on the scale he maintained at Mount Vernon," that "Martha's expenses in visiting him at headquarters from 1775 through 1782" were on the bill and that it was "accepted without question by the controller of the Treasury, James Milligan, whose generous settlement undoubtedly Conformed to the wishes of Congress."
In a letter dated Mount Vernon, April 20. 1775, Washington complained of losses he suffered in the service, including many valuable papers, a servant, &c, &c, &c. At death, Washington left an estate that lie estimated at $630,000, but that his executors put at a million.
Asked if he expected to turn a profit on "George Washington's Expense Account," Mr. Kitman said: "I'm as gloomy as Washington about the prospects of making money out of the Revolutionary War."