Description: This is the sixth and final volume of Washington's papers in the Confederation period. The series begins on I January 1784 with the hero of the American Revolution back at Mount Vernon under his own "vine and fig tree". It ends in September 1788 on the eve of his return to public life as president under the new Constitution. Unlike the series devoted to Washington's Revolutionary War and presidential papers, the Confederation Series is composed almost entirely of personal letters and includes very few official documents.

Beginning with the decision made early in 1787 to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer, Washington's papers in volume 6 of the series reveal him as once again a public figure no longer standing outside and above the fray as he had been seeking to do with some success since leaving the army at the end of 1783. In the first nine months of this year Washington continued to give meticulous attention to his personal affairs at Mount Vernon as he had done before, but his correspondence, particularly that with James Madison, makes it clear that his overriding concern had become the ratification of the new Federal Constitution and that his mind was turning to the role he should, and must, play in establishing the new government. The next volume of the Papers, volume 1 of the Presidential Series, which has been in print since 1987, traces the path to the presidency that Washington followed from September 1788 until his departure for New York in the spring of 1789.

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