The long farewell

Gerald E. Kahler

"The news of the death of George Washington at Mount Vernon on December 14,1799, was reported to have been "felt as an electric shock throughout the Union" Martha Washington gave permission for Congress to have her husband's body reinterred under a marble monument to be constructed in the new capital in Washington, D.C. Grieving Americans organized and participated in over four hundred funeral processions and memorial services during the sixty-nine-day mourning period that culminated on February 22, 1800, the National Day of Mourning." "Washington's death came in a highly contentious period in American political history, and a variety of groups and individuals tried to take advantage of the occasion to advance their own agendas." "The biographical sketches included in the more than three hundred eulogies examined here provide a unique historical perspective on who George Washington...

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