In 1787, two events changed the course of history in America—and the world. And George Washington, who two years later would become the first U.S. president, would play an indispensable role in both.
One was, of course, the drafting of the U.S. Constitution to safeguard our liberties and create a federal government checked by separation of powers. The other less well known event concerns a mode of transportation that would not come into fruition until the next century: the steamboat. As we celebrate George Washington’s birthday, his championing of a pivotal inventor gives insight into what made the father of our country so special.
In 1787, two steam-powered vessels invented by two different men sailed short but successful voyages on American rivers. These voyages would spur the race to create a commercially viable passenger and freight steamboat that culminated in Robert Fulton’s celebrated vessels some 20 years later. More importantly, as America’s first great invention, the steamboat ushered in an age of American innovation that continues to this day. But none of this may have happened without a fateful meeting in 1784 of George Washington and James Rumsey, a visionary tinkerer dismissed by many as a crackpot.
Washington – retired but never ‘at rest’ – boosts career of ‘crackpot’ inventor
Only a few months earlier, Washington had retired as general, after leading the Continental Army to victory over Great Britain. Setting an example by peacefully ceding power, he was eager to get back to Mount Vernon, where Washington was less a “gentleman farmer” than an agricultural entrepreneur. Among other things, he acquired vast holdings of real estate, pioneered crop rotation, and built a flour mill that produced more than 200,000 pounds per year that was sold throughout the colonies and exported to Europe. No wonder a new book on Washington’s business endeavors by historian Edward Lengel is entitled First Entrepreneur.
As a businessman engaged in trade, as well as a citizen concerned about the new nation’s economy, Washington turned his focus after the war to creating faster modes of transportation for people and goods. In the fall of 1784, he traveled more than 600 miles from Mount Vernon, in northern Virginia, to the western part of the state (now West Virginia). Washington's purpose was to inspect his properties and look for ways shorten travel time through the then-formidable Allegheny Mountains, by building both roads and canals. On his first stop in the town of Bath (now Berkeley Springs, West Virginia), Washington became enthralled with a local inventor who was designing a new boat to conquer river travel.
James Rumsey, a 41-year-old jack of all trades and home builder, was part-owner of the inn in Bath where Washington was staying. When Rumsey approached him, Washington agreed to view a demonstration of Rumsey’s model boat that others had scorned and ridiculed. As Andrea Sutcliffe writes in Steam: The Untold Story of America’s First Invention, before steam technology took hold, many “citizens viewed inventors as self-indulgent crackpots, not pioneers of progress.”
But Washington viewed inventors as visionaries desperately needed for America’s economy to thrive. The next day, Rumsey placed his mini-vessel, roughly the size of a toy boat, into a stream that flowed into the Potomac River. Washington was awed as the boat propelled itself against a rapid current.
Subsequently, Washington wrote a letter of endorsement to help Rumsey secure funding from investors and patent rights from state legislatures (there would not be a U.S. Patent Office until after the U.S. Constitution authorized one). Rumsey, wrote Washington, “has discovered the art of working boats by mechanism” and that “this discovery is of vast importance.”
As Sutcliffe writes, “Washington’s influence was golden”’ when Rumsey approached the legislatures of Virginia and other states. As then-Virginia State Delegate James Madison would write to fellow future President Thomas Jefferson in 1785, when Rumsey had approached the legislature just a year earlier, “the apparent extravagance of his pretensions brought a ridicule upon them, and nothing was done.” But, Madison continued, when the legislators learned of Washington's endorsement, “it opened the ears of the Assembly.” Rumsey was granted a patent by Virginia, as well as Maryland and Pennsylvania.
As his experiment progressed, Rumsey decided to use steam to power his boat—a radical notion at the time. Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s leading scientific minds, was skeptical that steamboats would ever be a practical form of travel. According to Sutcliffe, Franklin thought that “steam was not a strong enough force to move boats upstream.”
Yet, Washington kept an open mind. He arranged for Rumsey to be hired as superintendent of the Potomac Navigation Company, a firm chartered to improve Potomac River navigation in which Washington was an investor. Not only did Rumsey receive steady income, he got the opportunity to test boats in various parts of the Potomac.
When word got around of Rumsey’s progress, competition to build a passenger steamboat was spurred. Pennsylvanian John Fitch was also able to gather support for the steam-powered vessel he was building. When Fitch visited Mount Vernon to ask Washington for an endorsement, Washington politely declined out of loyalty to Rumsey and warned Rumsey in a letter to speed up on building the steam-powered boat, as “many people guessing your plan have come very near the mark.”
On August 22, 1787, Fitch demonstrated his boat on the Delaware River before the delegates attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He offered boat rides to the delegates, taking them a few hundred yards on the river and back. Not to be outdone, Rumsey debuted his own steamboat on December 3 of that year on the Potomac River in Shepherdstown, Virginia (now in West Virginia). Instead of just offering the equivalent of carnival rides, as Fitch had on the Delaware, Rumsey took several of the town’s leading ladies (including Mrs. Rumsey) on a two-hour river voyage.
Though the boat traveled just six miles, the townsfolk had never seen anything like it. No one had. As aerospace engineer and author Rand Simberg (an adjunct scholar at my organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute) has written, the steamboat was “the first vehicle to be moved by something other than animals (including humans), or wind or current.”
Washington nurtures innovation as President and private citizen
Just as Rumsey and Washington had envisioned, the steamboat ultimately brought the country closer together. And inventors were able to apply steam power to the nation’s first trains, mills and factories.
As important, the inventors in America now had the admiration of most of their fellow citizens. This elevated status was reflected in the creation of the U.S. Patent Office by the Patent Act of 1790, a law championed by the recently elected President Washington.
Throughout his life, Washington lent a helping hand to many creators and fellow entrepreneurs. After he was president, Washington would take another innovator – also named James – under his wing. James Anderson, Washington's farm manager at Mount Vernon, had emigrated from Scotland and was familiar with the great distilleries there. Anderson thought, with the grains harvested in its fields, Mount Vernon would be a great spot for a whiskey distillery. He convinced Washington, and soon the Mount Vernon distillery would become the largest producer of rye whiskey in America.
Today, with major funding from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, the distillery has been reconstructed and is open to the public. Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens even makes and sells whiskey based on Washington and Anderson’s old recipe. What better way to toast the American innovation that George Washington shepherded in.
Washington’s genius – in politics, the military and business -- was to see the potential in Rumsey, Anderson and others and help them hone their talents to the benefit of their fellow citizens. In sensing and encouraging potential in others, Washington stands as a role model not just for political and military leaders, but for CEOs, venture capitalists and angel investors. On the federal holiday celebrating his birthday (and on his real birthday of February 22), let’s also celebrate George Washington’s role in nurturing innovation as a private citizen and protecting the freedom to innovate in the public policies for which he advocated.
Author’s note: Readers can see a replica of the Rumsey steamboat that sailed the Potomac at the Historic Shepherdstown Museum, open April through October and by appointment. To celebrate Washington’s entrepreneurship, readers can visit the recently rebuilt flour mill and whiskey distillery at Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens. My organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, will soon release a short film on the interconnection of whiskey and American liberties called I, Whiskey.
