George Washington was a terrible writer. At least, that's what he thought. He constantly complained about his "defective education" and lack of a college degree. He felt insecure around the Harvard-educated John Adams or the naturally fluid Thomas Jefferson. But here’s the thing: he wrote anyway. A lot. He wrote so much that the modern collection of his papers spans over 90 volumes.
Most people think the writings of George Washington are just stiff, formal proclamations from a guy on a dollar bill. That’s wrong. If you actually dig into his letters, you find a man who was obsessed with the price of blankets, deeply worried about his dogs, and sometimes genuinely funny. He wasn’t a philosopher like Jefferson. He was a doer. His prose is muscular, practical, and occasionally very salty.
The man behind the mythic pen
Washington didn't write for fame. He wrote because he was a micromanager. Whether he was at Mount Vernon or in a freezing tent at Valley Forge, he needed to know the details. You can see this in his "Orders of Service." He wasn't just giving grand speeches about liberty; he was writing about how to prevent soldiers from stealing chickens. It’s gritty stuff.
It’s also surprisingly personal. Take his letters to Martha. Well, you can't take most of them because she burned them after he died to protect their privacy. Only a few survived. In one, written right after he was appointed Commander-in-Chief in 1775, he tells her he’s nervous. He says he’s "uneasy" and didn't want the job. That’s a human side of the writings of George Washington we rarely get in textbooks. He wasn't a statue; he was a guy who was scared of failing.
The massive scale of the archive
The University of Virginia has been working on The Papers of George Washington project since 1968. Think about that. Decades of work just to categorize his mail. We are talking about roughly 135,000 documents. This includes:
- Personal diaries starting from when he was a 16-year-old surveyor.
- Military orders that literally shaped the Continental Army from a ragtag militia into a professional force.
- Financial ledgers—Washington was a stickler for accounting, even if he sometimes struggled with debt.
- Agricultural notes about "Hessian flies" and crop rotation (he was basically a 18th-century nerd for soil science).
Why the Farewell Address is misunderstood
If you ask anyone about the writings of George Washington, they’ll point to the Farewell Address. It’s the big one. But Washington didn't even "speak" it. He published it in a newspaper, the Philadelphia Daily American Advertiser. He wanted it to be a letter to the people, not a speech to politicians.
Alexander Hamilton helped write it. James Madison wrote an earlier draft. It was a collaborative effort, but the spirit is all Washington. He was terrified that the country would split into "factions" (political parties). Reading it today feels like a gut punch. He warns that parties will lead to a "frightful despotism." He was basically predicting Twitter two centuries before it happened.
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The prose here is denser than his usual stuff. It’s formal. It’s heavy. But if you look past the 18th-century "thees" and "thous," he’s basically saying: Please don't screw this up.
The weirdly specific world of his diaries
Washington's diaries are... dry. Honestly. If you're looking for deep emotional confessions, you’re in the wrong place. He records the weather. Every. Single. Day.
"Clear and cold."
"Rainy morning."
It feels repetitive until you realize why he was doing it. He was a farmer. The weather was his business. In the writings of George Washington, you see a man obsessed with his land. He tracks when the first peach blossoms appear and when he started planting clover. It’s a record of a man trying to build something that lasts.
He also writes about his "people." Washington’s relationship with the enslaved population at Mount Vernon is documented in these writings with a chilling, business-like detachment that eventually evolves into a complicated, guilt-ridden internal conflict. By his final will—perhaps his most significant piece of writing—he ordered that his enslaved people be freed after Martha’s death. It’s a document that shows a man finally acknowledging the massive moral failure of his era, even if he didn't have the courage to do it sooner.
Spies and secret codes
During the Revolution, Washington became a master of intelligence. His letters from this period are full of "invisible ink" and "ciphers." He wasn't just writing to his generals; he was managing the Culper Spy Ring.
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He’d write letters that looked like normal business correspondence but contained hidden messages. This side of the writings of George Washington reads like a spy novel. He was obsessed with "disinformation" before it was a buzzword. He’d intentionally write letters with false troop movements, hoping the British would intercept them. It worked.
How he actually wrote
Washington didn't use a laptop, obviously. He used a quill and ink that he often had to mix himself.
His handwriting was actually pretty good. It was a round, legible "copperplate" style. But as he got older and his hand started to shake, or when he was writing in a hurry on a horse, it got messier. You can see the physical toll of the war in the ink blots and the slanted lines.
He also didn't have a "delete" key. If he messed up, he had to scrape the ink off the paper with a small knife or just cross it out and keep going. This makes the writings of George Washington feel incredibly immediate. You see his thought process. You see the edits. You see the hesitation.
The letters to his "Family"
Washington didn't have biological children, but he had his "military family." His letters to the Marquis de Lafayette are some of the most emotional things he ever wrote. He loved Lafayette like a son.
In these letters, the "Marble Man" melts. He’s warm. He’s affectionate. He signs them with genuine "attachment." It’s a reminder that the guy who led the Revolution was deeply lonely in his leadership and clung to the few people he could trust.
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What we get wrong about his "Rules of Civility"
Everyone loves to bring up the Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. People act like Washington came up with these rules as a blueprint for his life.
Actually? He was 11 years old. It was a school exercise. He was copying a French Jesuit manual from the 1500s.
Sure, he lived by them—don't spit in the fire, don't kill lice in front of people, that kind of thing—but it wasn't some grand philosophical manifesto. It was a kid trying to learn how to act like a gentleman so he could move up in the world. Using these as the definitive writings of George Washington is like using your third-grade spelling test to define your legacy.
Practical steps for exploring the archive
If you want to actually read this stuff without getting a headache, don't start with the 90-volume set. That's for the pros.
- Start with the "Circular Letter to the States" (1783): It’s his "retirement" letter after the war. It’s arguably better than the Farewell Address. He outlines exactly what a country needs to survive: a bit of central power, a lot of unity, and a "pacific disposition."
- Visit Founders Online: This is a free resource from the National Archives. You can search the writings of George Washington by keyword. Want to know what he thought about dogs? Search "hound." Want to see him lose his temper? Search for his letters to General Charles Lee.
- Read the "Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport": This is a masterclass in religious tolerance. He writes that the U.S. government "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." It’s one of the most beautiful things ever written about American identity.
- Look at the images: Seeing the actual scans of the letters is different from reading the transcript. Look for the "George Washington Papers" at the Library of Congress website. The physical paper tells a story—the stains, the folds, the wax seals.
The writings of George Washington prove he wasn't a natural genius or a silver-tongued orator. He was a guy who worked incredibly hard to communicate clearly because he knew the stakes were high. He wrote his way into a presidency and then wrote his way out of it.
If you want to understand why the United States exists in its current form, stop looking at the paintings. Read the mail. It's all there, in the messy, ink-stained, weather-obsessed, and deeply human record of a man who was just trying to keep it all together.