Every year, the US marks Presidents Day on the third Monday in February. While it’s not the holiday with the most pomp and circumstance, it’s not all business as usual. The US Postal Service isn’t delivering mail. Many banks are closed. Same with many government agencies. And then there are all the sales.  

Today, the federal holiday typically honors all US presidents. But it began as a way to mark George Washington’s birthday. So we reached out to Douglas Bradburn — president and CEO of Washington’s Mount Vernon in Virginia — to talk about the holiday, estate, and nation’s first president…

Q: Generally, how accurate are Americans’ views of Washington? Is he underrated or overrated?

I think George Washington is a little underrated, but I’m biased being the president of Mount Vernon, and I spend a lot of time thinking about him. It’s hard to say he is underrated because whenever they do those polls of Americans or historians about who the best presidents are, Washington has always been in the top three. 

He was the general that won the American Revolution. That’s part of the reverence or the celebratory aspect of Washington that people think about when they talk about him as president.

Q: Is there something about Washington that even you didn’t know until taking over the Mount Vernon Estate?

George Washington had a very large distillery. He was in fact the largest distiller in the region at the time of his death. Today at Mount Vernon, we produce his whiskey available for sale. Another thing about Washington that’s less well known is that he was a great dancer. He was an athlete, sportsman, and horseman. But dancing was his thing. I think he’d be a TikTok star. 

Q: The estate includes the George Washington Presidential Library. What’s one item in its collection that’s particularly special? 

We have one of the few remaining examples of Washington’s correspondence with his wife, Martha Washington. She burned their correspondence before she died, so very little exists. But one letter we have was actually discovered in a desk drawer a generation after Martha had passed. He writes to Martha and titles it “My dearest.” He says, “I retain an unalterable affection for you, which neither time or distance can change.” It’s a remarkable thing because he couldn’t just go to the Hallmark store and pick up a card. He whipped that up. 

Q: In the last few years, there’s been a large reckoning about America’s history — especially in how slavery is represented. How does the Mount Vernon Estate, which was home to hundreds of enslaved people, address that history?

First and foremost, we try to tell that history. At Mount Vernon, we have the outbuildings of the Mansion House Farm — these are the spaces that enslaved people lived in. Their world can be shared with the people that visit as well. Because George Washington was one of the most famous men in the 18th century and one of the most well documented, that allows us to tell many of the individual biographies of people who were enslaved. 

From our point of view, there’s always more work to be done. But we’re committed to telling those stories as well as we can.

Q: Presidents Day tends to be one of those federal holidays that many forget about. Why is it important to celebrate?

It really is a civic marker for Americans to think about leadership in the context of a representative democracy. Who do they want to be in those positions? What kind of characteristics should they have? Where have we seen successes and failures in the past? At Mount Vernon, it’s a special day because it’s a free admission day. If people haven’t been here, it’s a bucket-list site.