Washington's Advice On Love & Marriage
George Washington to William Gordon, 20 December 1784
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Washington was not always so serious in his thoughts on love and marriage, particularly when it came to his contemporaries.
With tongue in cheek, in a letter of 20 December 1784 to the historian William Gordon, he remarked upon the recent marriage of Revolutionary war veteran Joseph Ward, who was 47 at the time of his marriage to Prudence Bird:
| I am glad to hear that my old acquaintance Colo. Ward is yet under the influence of vigorous passions--I will not ascribe the intrepidity of his late enterprize to a mere flash of desires, because, in his military career he would have learnt how to distinguish between false alarms & a serious movement. Charity therefore induces me to suppose that like a prudent general, he had reviewed his strength, his arms, & ammunition before he got involved in an action--But if these have been neglected, & he has been precipitated into the measure, let me advise him to make the first onset upon his fair del Tobosa, with vigor, that the impression may be deep, if it cannot be lasting, or frequently renewed! |
The letter-book copy of this letter is in the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress and is printed in the Confederation Series, 2:197.
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