l that sails for Alexandria after he can be moved with
safety--but if he is still anxious to come on here the President would
gratify him, altho' he will be troublesome--He has been an old and
faithful Servant, this is enough for the President to gratify him in every
reasonable wish."

By his will Washington gave Lee his "immediate freedom or if he should
prefer it (on account of the accidents which have befallen him and which
have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to
remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so--
In either case however I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his
natural life which shall be independent of the victuals and _cloaths_ he
has been accustomed to receive; if he _chuses_ the last alternative, but
in full with his freedom, if he prefers the first, and this I give him as
a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me and for his faithful
services during the Revolutionary War."

Two small incidents connected with Washington's last illness are worth
noting. The afternoon before the night he was taken ill, although he had
himself been superintending his affairs on horseback in the storm most of
the day, yet when his secretary "carried some letters to him to frank,
intending to send them to the Post Office in the evening," Lear tells us
"he franked the letters; but said the weather was too bad to send a
servant up to the office that evening." Lear continues, "The General's
servant, Christopher, attended his bed side & in the room, when he was
sitting up, through his whole illness.... In the [last] afternoon the
General observing that Christopher had been standing by his bed side for a
long time--made a motion for him to sit in a chair which stood by the bed
side."

A clause in Washington's will directed that

"Upon the decease of my wife it is my will and desire that all the
slaves which I hold in _my own right_ shall receive their freedom--To
emancipate them during her life, would, tho' earnestly wished by me, be
attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their
intermixture of marriages with the Dower negroes as to excite the most
painful sensations--if not disagreeable consequences from the latter,
while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same proprietor, it
not being in my power under the tenure by which the dower Negroes are held
to manumit them--And whereas among those who will receive freedom
acco