Article 020: George Washington’s Vision Did He Really See an Angel Like Woman?

George Washington’s Vision: Did He Really See an Angel Like Woman?

George Washington is remembered as a general, revolutionary leader, and the first president of the United States. But attached to his story is a much stranger tale, one involving a mysterious woman who supposedly appeared before him during one of the darkest periods of the American Revolution and showed him visions of America's future.

The story has circulated for more than 160 years. It has been interpreted as a religious vision, a prophecy, folklore, and, much more recently, even as the type of mysterious encounter that enthusiasts of UFO phenomena might find interesting.

But did it actually happen?

The answer is complicated. There really is an old published account describing Washington's alleged vision. There was also a Revolutionary War soldier named Anthony Sherman. But the surviving evidence contains serious historical problems, and there is currently no known document written by Washington himself confirming the encounter.

That makes “Washington's Vision” an excellent example of where American history, folklore and mystery collide.

The Dark Winter at Valley Forge

The setting of the story is important.

During the winter of 1777–1778, Washington and the Continental Army encamped at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The American Revolution was far from won. Philadelphia had fallen to the British, Washington's army faced enormous logistical problems, and the future of the Revolution was uncertain.

It is against this desperate background that the legend places Washington's extraordinary experience.

According to the famous account, Washington withdrew to his quarters and spent much of the afternoon alone. He was reportedly preparing a military dispatch when he suddenly became aware of someone standing across from him.

The story describes her as a “singularly beautiful female.”

That description is important because later retellings frequently call the visitor an angel, the Virgin Mary, or some other explicitly supernatural being.

The older account itself is more mysterious.

Washington supposedly hadn't invited this woman inside. According to the story, he had actually given instructions that he was not to be disturbed.

Yet there she was.

The Mysterious Woman

Washington allegedly tried to speak to the visitor and ask why she was there.

She didn't respond normally.

The encounter then developed into something resembling a vision. The mysterious woman eventually commanded Washington to observe what was being shown to him, and scenes involving America and the wider world unfolded before him.

The vision presented three great dangers or “perils” facing the United States.

Later readers interpreted the first as the American Revolution itself.

The second appeared to depict Americans fighting one another. Because the story became widely known around the Civil War era, this portion naturally came to be associated with the Civil War.

The third was even more dramatic.

America was supposedly threatened by forces originating from different regions of the world. Warfare reached American territory, the country's survival appeared uncertain, and supernatural intervention ultimately accompanied America's deliverance.

After revealing America's future, the mysterious visitor disappeared.

It is a fantastic story.

The question is where it came from.

Anthony Sherman and the Story Behind the Story

The traditional account says that an elderly Revolutionary War veteran named Anthony Sherman told the story to a writer using the name Wesley Bradshaw.

According to the narrative, Bradshaw encountered Sherman at Independence Square in Philadelphia on July 4, 1859.

Sherman was supposedly extremely old and believed that he was one of the last people alive who knew the story.

He then recounted what Washington supposedly revealed about his experience at Valley Forge.

A version of the story appeared in the veterans' newspaper The National Tribune in December 1880, helping the legend spread across America.

There is, however, a major twist.

Wesley Bradshaw wasn't the writer's real name.

It was a pen name associated with Philadelphia publisher Charles Wesley Alexander.

And Alexander wrote other dramatic and allegorical stories involving famous historical figures. Historic Valley Forge identifies Washington's Vision as a work of fiction published in 1861, rather than an authentic transcript of an eighteenth-century event.

That creates a serious problem for treating the story as established history.

But Anthony Sherman Really Existed

This is where the story becomes more interesting than simply saying somebody invented a random soldier.

There really was an Anthony Sherman who served in the Continental Army.

Research based upon Sherman's pension records indicates that he was born around 1752 and served during the Revolutionary War.

However, those records create another problem for the traditional version of Washington's Vision.

Sherman's own pension account reportedly places him with forces associated with Benedict Arnold around Saratoga in late 1777. According to this evidence, Sherman did not join Washington's main army until 1778, around the period preceding the Battle of Monmouth.

That conflicts with the claim that Sherman was with Washington at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777–1778.

There are people who have attempted to reconcile the discrepancy. One possibility sometimes raised is that Revolutionary soldiers could move between units, serve as substitutes, or have service histories more complicated than a single pension summary suggests. A later researcher even argued from Sherman's pension material that he had substituted on different occasions and speculated this might explain his alleged presence at Valley Forge.

That's an interesting possibility to investigate, but it isn't proof.

More importantly, even proving Sherman was physically at Valley Forge would only establish that he could have heard such a story. It wouldn't establish that Washington actually experienced the vision.

There's Another Problem With Sherman's Age

The published story reportedly describes Sherman as 99 years old in 1859.

But records identifying the Revolutionary veteran Anthony Sherman give his birth as September 13, 1752.

If that is the same man, he would have been approximately 106 in 1859.

More significantly, that source gives his death as July 4, 1849.

If correct, Sherman couldn't possibly have sat down with Bradshaw in Philadelphia on July 4, 1859, because he had died ten years earlier.

That is one of the strongest problems with taking the published narrative literally.

It raises several possibilities: Alexander confused people or dates, incorporated a genuine veteran into a fictional story, inherited an earlier tradition and embellished it, or simply created the narrative as historical fiction.

Without earlier evidence, we cannot determine that Washington was the original source.

Did Washington Ever Write About It?

This may be the most important question.

Washington left behind an enormous documentary record: letters, military correspondence, diaries and other papers.

Yet historians have not identified a contemporary Washington document describing this mysterious woman and prophetic vision.

Historic Valley Forge specifically points readers toward the extensive George Washington Papers while warning that Alexander's later story shouldn't be mistaken for Washington's own testimony.

That's significant.

If we discovered a letter written by Washington in 1778 saying that a strange woman appeared inside his quarters and showed him America's future, the historical discussion would change immediately.

As things stand, we don't have that document.

What About the Library of Congress?

One argument surrounding the legend is that the account has been preserved by the Library of Congress.

That sounds impressive, but it can easily be misunderstood.

A historical publication being held by the Library of Congress establishes that the publication exists. It doesn't mean the Library of Congress investigated and certified everything written inside it as historically true.

Researchers discussing Washington's Vision have specifically warned against using the existence of a Library of Congress copy as proof that the vision occurred.

The distinction is important:

The story itself is genuinely old.

That doesn't necessarily mean the event described by the story genuinely occurred.

Was She Supposed to Be an Angel?

Interestingly, the famous description doesn't initially identify her as an extraterrestrial—or even explicitly as an angel.

She is a mysterious and extraordinarily beautiful woman who appears under unusual circumstances and initiates a supernatural vision.

Later religious interpretations naturally identified her as an angelic messenger. Some versions have even described Washington's experience explicitly as an “angelic visitation.”

That's understandable given the religious imagery that develops throughout the story.

But if we're sticking closely to the source, “angel-like woman” is actually a better description than simply declaring that Washington saw an angel.

We don't know what Washington saw because we don't know that the encounter occurred.

And Was She an Alien?

There is no historical evidence identifying Washington's visitor as an extraterrestrial.

That interpretation belongs to the modern era.

Still, viewed through the lens of modern encounter stories, it's easy to understand why the tale attracts attention from people interested in UFOs and unexplained phenomena.

A mysterious humanlike being allegedly appears unexpectedly.

Washington supposedly has difficulty communicating normally with her.

His surroundings transition into an extraordinary visionary experience.

The entity shows him events far removed from his immediate time and place.

And afterward, she disappears.

Someone reading that description today might compare elements of it with modern accounts involving anomalous entities or altered states of consciousness.

Someone living in Washington's era would have been much more likely to understand such an experience through a religious framework.

Neither interpretation establishes what happened historically.

Prophecy Written After the Fact?

There's also something historians always have to consider with alleged prophecy: when was the prophecy actually written down?

This story becomes particularly important around 1861, just as the United States was entering the Civil War.

And one of Washington's supposed visions concerns America becoming divided and fighting against itself.

That's much less impressive as a prediction if the surviving story was composed or published when the Civil War was already beginning.

This doesn't make the story boring.

In some ways it makes it more interesting.

An American writer may have taken Washington, one of the country's most powerful national symbols, and placed him at Valley Forge receiving a supernatural warning that America would survive enormous struggles.

For Americans watching their country tear itself apart in 1861, that would have been an incredibly powerful story.

So Did George Washington Really Have the Vision?

Based on the evidence available today, we cannot responsibly say that he did.

There is no known contemporary account from Washington describing it.

The famous narrative appeared generations after Valley Forge.

Its author wrote other allegorical works.

And the biographical details concerning Anthony Sherman create substantial chronological problems.

Those are serious objections.

But the legend itself is real.

People have been reading, reproducing and debating Washington's Vision for generations. Some sincerely believe an authentic oral tradition lies somewhere underneath the later publication. Others regard it entirely as Charles Wesley Alexander's patriotic fiction.

Unless an eighteenth-century document eventually surfaces, we may never be able to push the story beyond that uncertainty.

And perhaps that's exactly why Washington's Vision has survived.

Did America's future first appear as a story written during the Civil War?

Did Alexander embellish some older Revolutionary War legend?

Was there once a genuine story circulating among Washington's soldiers that became distorted over generations?

Or, during one of the bleakest moments of the Revolution, did George Washington actually experience something he couldn't explain?

We have evidence that the story existed.

What we don't have is evidence strong enough to prove that the mysterious woman did.

And more than two centuries after that brutal winter at Valley Forge, the difference between those two things is where the mystery remains.

 

Sources

Historic Valley Forge — Washington's Vision and the Charles Wesley Alexander text

National Tribune account reproduced with background on the 1880 publication

Discussion of Anthony Sherman's pension record and Valley Forge chronology

Research presenting arguments in defense of parts of the Sherman tradition