“I am now enjoying domestic ease under the shadow of my own vine and fig tree, in a small villa, with the implements of husbandry and lambkins about me. Come, then, let me entreat you, and call my cottage your own; for your own doors do not open to you with more readiness than mine would. You will see the plain manner in which we live, and meet the rustic civility; and you shall taste the simplicity of rural life. It will diversify the scene, and may give you a higher relish for the gayeties of the court when you return to Versailles.” II. FREEDOM AND THE WRANGLE FOR PERSONAL GAIN Knowing that Washington would be at continual expense to entertain distinguished guests who would come to see him, Congress tried to grant him a reward for his distinguished services, but he had served his country without pay and he refused. In the meanwhile, the hospitality of Washington was taxed to the utmost, and his time was much taken up in important conferences over political affairs. The country was being governed by Congress under the Articles of Confederation which then bound the states, but probably with less efficiency than thirteen horses in a single rein and rope harness to draw a rattling, curtain-flapping carriage. The old state patriotisms were revived and with them the rivalries and jealousies of political sections. Whatever one state wanted seemed to be the signal for its neighbor to want something else. The United States were indeed plural with a vengeance! “E Pluribus Unum” that had so laboriously and valiantly come true, as meaning one out of many, in war, had changed about to its first condition and was again many out of one. In 1786, in a letter to General Knox, Washington wrote, “I feel, my dear General Knox, infinitely more than I can express to you for the disorders which have arisen in these states. Good God! who, besides a Tory, could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted them? I do assure you that, even at this moment, when I reflect upon the present prospect of affairs, it seems to me to be like the vision of a dream. After what I have seen, or rather what I have heard, I shall be surprised at nothing; for, if three years since, any person had told me that there would have been such a formidable rebellion as exists at this day against the laws and constitution of our own making, I should have thought him a bedlamite, a fit subject for a mad-house.” He wrote to James Madison, saying, “How melancholy is the reflection that in so short a time we should have made such large strides toward fulfilling the predictions of our transatlantic foes, who said, ‘Leave them to themselves and their government will soon dissolve’? Will not the wise and good strive hard to avert this evil?”