I recently read in Russ Rick’s '50 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know Volume 2" that George Washington supposedly embezzled government funds during his presidency. I was wondering if this has been researched any more thoroughly and confirmed, or is it still up in the air?
I’ve never heard of Washington embezzling; however, as a general during the revolution, he did a bit of expense account padding.
Washington served and refused a salary, asking only payment for his expenses. His expenses as a general were quite lavish: they came to over $449,000 (rough equivalent of over $4 million today). They were all well documented, and can be found in the book “George Washington’s Expense Account” by George Washington and Marvin Kitman. The actual documents can be found online at the Library of Congress.
When Washington was elected president, he offered to serve without pay again, for expenses only. Congress got smart and said “no thanks,” and gave him a salary of $25,000.
according to the curator at Springfield Armory NHS on a visit in 1987, the site was chosen because, amongst other things, it was on a canal in which Washington had a financial interest.
I’ve heard of George Washington Carver, but never George Washington Embezzler.
I should note that Kitman’s book was published in paperback with “humor” written on the spine. Although it really does include photos of Washington’s expense account, and Kitman really does examine and explain it, we’re not talking about a sober academic examination of historic documents (although Kitman is pretty level-headed throughout).
public officials at this time were virtually expected to augment their meagre official salaries with skimming something off the top, and any man would have been called a fool who didn’t look out for his own interest.
A Recent Edition of Kitman’s book. You can look inside. Check out the blurb on the cover:
But would $25,000 really have been considered meager at the time?
That was his presidential salary.
If he was padding his accounts/being sleazy it was a Martha Stewart situation – unlike many Revolutionaries Washington was ungodly wealthy – wiki says he was worth $500 mil. in today’s greenbacks. We can quibble how accurate a figure that is – but even if it is off by a factor of 5 - it puts not taking a military salary a bit more into perspective.
It also explains, somewhat, how every bum fiddle town can say Washington was an investor or owned part of this or that - he was into a lot of things.
Then why did he have to borrow money to go to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia?
Perhaps most of his wealth was in the form of non-cash assets?
Much of his wealth was in land and slaves – not easily convertible.
Washington was a shrewd manager and knew the value of a buck. (I doubt he’d have wasted a dollar throwing it across the Potomac). What he did was legal, but he didn’t show any particular restraint on keeping expenses down (no incentive). No one dared criticize him for it at the time – he had just won the war – but Congress learned its lesson.
I still don’t quite understand why, if George was a rich man, he had to take out more than what he should have from his presidental salary which is what the book states. Don’t get me wrong though i’m not a Wahington basher, just curious.
Are you sure that you (or the book) is not just confusing either Washington’s actions or the timeline? Echoing earlier comments, I have never heard that Washington took a shilling that he had not legitimately spent and recorded–he just lived a lavish lifestyle and was sufficiently scrupulous about recording his expenses as general (not as president) that he was able to provide documentation to recoup all of them.
You could be right? I believe the book said that a newspaper reporter brought the story forward that more money had been taken out of the treasury by George than should have been? Whether this was 100% true and for what reasons was never known apparently? I was just wondering if any more was known on the subject.
Washington *was * financially shrewd and he *did * know the value of a buck, as noted above. That said, he was also extremely honest and kept scrupulously detailed records. Remember, he served as general and commander-in-chief of the Continental Army for eight years. Yes, his expense accounts were daunting when he presented them to Congress, but he’d also been on the job for awhile. Washington had several opponents in Congress who would’ve been glad to nickel-and-dime him. None did, because they knew the books would - and did - stand up under careful scrutiny.
I’ve read a lot about Washington, as a general, as President and throughout his life, and have never read anything *at all * to suggest that he was an embezzler. He wasn’t perfect, but he never derived a benefit from his government service that he didn’t earn.
Some people just get irritated when a historic personage really was as great as he was thought to be all along. :dubious:
Another George Washington, G. W. Plunkitt, made this distinction in “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall”.
That’s the sort of stuff that Washington did. He invested a lot in land speculation, got his friends named surveyors in exchange for them scouting out land for him (like in the case of William Crawford), and he made sure that when a national capital was selected, he made sure that it was on land owned by him and his friends. Some of what he did would be shady today, but it wasn’t considered as much so at the time he did it.
He’s often overshadowed by George Washington Jay Walker.
In a bitter letter written 1796 Tom Paine referenced the sort of deals Capt. Amazing brought up.