And that is a load of nonsense. When the entirity of Washington's career is considered, the list of persons that was probably closest to comes down to those who were also essentially his "nextdoor" neighbors. This category would generally include other well known planters such as George Mason, but his friendship with the longest duration on good terms was probably that with his comparatively obscure neighbor Bryan Fairfax.
Fairfax and Washington remained friends for decades. This friendship held firm even under its strongest test - the revolution. Fairfax was a loyalist out of conscience when Washington was leader of the revolutionaries, yet even that did not stop Washington from using his influence to protect Fairfax from persecution by others on the American side. They remained close friends until Washington's death in 1799. Fairfax was by then a clergyman and it was in him that Washington regularly confided his most personal thoughts. A few months before his death he wrote this famous passage in a private letter to Fairfax:
"The favorable sentiments which others, you say, have been pleased to express respecting me, cannot but be pleasing to a mind who always walked on a straight line, and endeavored as far as human frailties, and perhaps strong passions, would enable him, to discharge the relative duties to his Maker and fellow-men, without seeking any indirect or left handed attempts to acquire popularity."