by Ron Chernow
Distraught over these accusations, the hypersensitive Hamilton appealed to Washington to rebut the notion that he had imposed himself upon the commander in chief and had then been dismissed by him: “This, I confess, hurts my feelings and, if it obtains credit, will require a contradiction.”13 By return mail, Washington laid both falsehoods to rest: “With respect to the first, I have no cause to believe that you took a single step to accomplish [it] or had the most distant [ide]a of receiving an appointment in my [fam]ily till you were invited thereto. And [with] respect to the second . . . your quitting [it was] altogether the effect of your own [choic]e.”14
To combat vocal foes of the Constitution in New York, Hamilton published in late October the first essay of The Federalist under the pen name “Publius” and rushed a copy to Washington. Washington had told David Humphreys that the Constitution’s acceptance would depend upon “the recommendation of it by good pens,” and The Federalist must have seemed a case of answered prayers.15 Indeed, the federalists possessed the preponderance of literary talent. “For the remaining numbers of Publius,” Washington informed Hamilton, “I shall acknowledge myself obliged, as I am persuaded the subject will be well handled by the author.”16 The perceptive Washington saw that The Federalist transcended journalism and would take on classic status, telling Hamilton that “when the transient circumstances and fugitive performances which attended this crisis shall have disappeared, that work will merit the notice of posterity.”17
In November, when Madison sent Washington the first seven installments of The Federalist, he admitted in confidence to being one of its unnamed authors and urged Washington to convey the essays to influential Virginians who might get them published. Without tipping his hand, Washington became a secret partner in the Federalist enterprise, transmitting the essays to David Stuart in Richmond. “Altho[ugh] I am acquainted with some of the writers who are concerned in this work,” wrote Washington, playing things close to the vest, “I am not at liberty to disclose their names, nor would I have it known that they are sent by me to you for promulgation.”18 To maintain the flow of reprints in Virginia, Madison sent Washington packets of new Federalist essays and bound editions as they appeared. Curiously, Washington had not figured out that John Jay was the third member of the Federalist triumvirate. When a letter appeared in a Baltimore paper announcing that Jay had denounced the Constitution as “a wicked conspiracy,” Madison had to reassure Washington that the letter was “an arrant forgery.”19 In March, Henry Knox finally let the cat out of the bag: “The publication signed Publius is attributed to the joint efforts of Mr. Jay, Mr. Madison and Colo. Hamilton.”20
By mid-January 1788 the Constitution had been adopted by decisive margins in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, and Connecticut. These early victories were deceptive, however, for closely contested state conventions lay ahead. The most formidable opposition, Washington surmised, would be marshaled in New York and Virginia. As the biggest, richest, and most populous state, Virginia had to be the linchpin of any union. While he believed that most Virginians stood four-square behind the Constitution, Washington conceded the influential nature of its opponents, especially George Mason, Edmund Randolph, and Patrick Henry, who he feared would stoop to demagoguery. With these dissenting delegates, Washington engaged in low-key lobbying, telling Randolph that the new charter was “the best constitution that can be contained at this epoch and that this or a dissolution of the union . . . are the only alternatives before us.”21 In a sign of subtle disenchantment with Virginia, Washington observed that it was “a little strange that the men of large property in the south should be more afraid that the constitution should produce an aristocracy or a monarchy than the genuine democratical people of the east.”22 It is hard not to see a veiled criticism of southern slavery behind this comment.
As he awaited its convention, Washington knew that, if Virginia failed to join the union, he would be ineligible for the presidency. After the first five states voted for the Constitution, political wrangling intensified over the future leadership of the impending government. In Massachusetts, scheduled to hold the sixth ratifying convention, federalists tried to woo a wavering John Hancock by promising to support him for vice president if Washington ran for president. They also intimated that, if Virginia didn’t ratify and Washington couldn’t run for president, they would line up solidly behind Hancock for the top job.
By May, Massachusetts, Maryland, and South Carolina had also ratified the Constitution, bringing the total to eight states, one short of the magic number needed to enact it. This put additional pressure on the states that were about to hold their conventions. Washington followed the cascading victories with mounting excitement. “The plot thickens fast,” he told Lafayette. “A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come.”23
In early June, as Washington visited his “aged and infirm mother” in Fredericksburg, national attention turned to the Virginia Ratifying Convention.24 Though he was ailing and felt “extremely feeble,” James Madison delivered astounding oratory on behalf of the new charter.25 Washington’s nephew Bushrod, awed by Madison’s talents, reported to Mount Vernon that Madison had spoken “with such force of reasoning and a display of such irresistible truths that opposition seemed to have quitted the field.”26 In a pivotal shift, Governor Randolph capitulated and teamed up with the federalists from fear that Virginia would be ostracized if it didn’t ratify. This argument gained additional currency when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify and ended all suspense about the Constitution’s future. Still unaware of what had happened in New England, Virginia four days later approved the Constitution by a ten-vote margin. In late July New York became the eleventh state to sign on, leaving only Rhode Island and North Carolina beyond the pale of union. Not until June 28 did Washington receive news of the Virginia and New Hampshire victories. He must have known that these tidings would carry in their wake an insistent plea for him to become the first president. In backing the new charter, Washington had waged an enormous high-stakes campaign, and his prestige soared even higher with its enactment. “Be assured [Washington’s] influence carried this government,” declared James Monroe.27
The town of Alexandria blazed with lights in celebration of the Constitution as the news ricocheted up and down the Potomac by precisely timed discharges of cannon. When Washington rode to Alexandria for a festive dinner, he “was met some miles out of town by a party of gentlemen on horseback and escorted to the tavern, having been saluted on his way by the light infantry company in a respectful manner,” he told Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.28 On June 3 he welcomed the triumphant Madison back to Mount Vernon but found him worn down by the tremendous campaign he had conducted. With paternal delicacy, Washington advised the younger man “to take a little respite from business” and linger at Mount Vernon: “Moderate exercise and books occasionally, with the mind unbent, will be your best restoratives.” He coaxed the harried Madison into staying for four days, during which time the two men remained in seclusion for many hours, discussing practical details of the upcoming government.
With the Constitution having squeaked by in Virginia, George Washington owed an incalculable debt to Madison for making his presidency possible. Some Virginia foes of the new charter reacted graciously in defeat. By shifting ground, Edmund Randolph had redeemed his political future, later telling Washington that “the constitution would never have been adopted, but from a knowledge that you had once sanctified it and an expectation that you would execute it.”29 Quite different was the obstinacy of George Mason, which provoked a caustic aside from Washington: “Pride on the one hand and want of manly candor on the other will not, I am certain, let him acknowledge an error in his opinions . . . though conviction should flash on his mind as strongly as a ray of light.”30 What bothered Washington was less Mason’s opposition than his bullh
eaded rigidity. Of Mason’s followers, he said, “They are in the habit of thinking that everything he says and does is right and (if capable) they will not judge for themselves.”31 As later became clear, George Washington refused to appoint anyone to the new government who had been overtly hostile to the Constitution that brought it into being.
Once the Constitution was adopted, Washington could not evade the question of whether he would serve as president. He stood in a league of his own, his stature inimitable. Like other founders, he regarded any open interest in power as unbecoming to a gentleman. As a result, he preferred to be drawn reluctantly from private life by the irresistible summons of public service. He eschewed the word president, as if merely saying it might connote an unsavory desire on his part. As with attending the Constitutional Convention, he again worried that people would think he had yielded to the allure of worldly pomp and had cynically broken his pledge not to return to public life. His usual besetting fears of failure also reemerged. Years later, chatting confidentially with Madison, Washington recalled that “he had from the beginning found himself deficient in many of the essential qualifications [for president], owing to his inexperience in the forms of public business, his unfitness to judge of legal questions and questions arising out of the constitution.”32 Once again he was preoccupied with presumed taunts and criticisms, the inner voice of his own unspoken fears.
For both political and psychological reasons, Washington needed to undergo a protracted period of indecision about the presidency. Part of him felt genuinely burdened by public life, especially since he experienced “the increasing infirmities of nature,” as he told Lafayette.33 He was torn, as always, by unacknowledged ambition mingled with self-doubt. During his October visit to Mount Vernon, Alexander Donald felt that Washington’s pro forma denial of interest in the presidency masked his true feelings. “As the eyes of all America are turned towards this truly great and good man for the first president, I took the liberty of sounding him upon it,” Donald told Jefferson. “He appears to be greatly against going into public life again, pleads in excuse for himself his love of retirement and his advanced age. But, notwithstanding of these, I am fully of opinion he may be induced to appear once more on the public stage of life.”34
Having been lionized for renouncing power at the war’s end, Washington found it hard to concede normal human ambition. In the Columbian Magazine of November 1787, a poet calling himself “Cinna” wrote rapturous verses that cast him in superhuman terms. Evoking the universal fraud and avarice of a corrupt age, “Cinna” held forth Washington as the rare exception, the man “Whom boundless trust ne’er tempted to betray, / Nor power impelled to arbitrary sway.”35 Such idolatry made it difficult for Washington to be truthful about his feelings. He also had to reckon with heightened paranoia after the convention, a widespread apprehension that the new president might transform himself into a king. The only way he could proceed, it seemed, was to show extreme reluctance to become president, then be swept along by others.
As his name was bruited about for president, Washington was caught in an excruciating predicament. Merely to broach the topic, even in strict confidence with friends, might seem to betray some secret craving on his part. As he later confessed to Hamilton, he dared not seek advice: “For situated as I am, I could hardly bring the question into the slightest discussion, or ask an opinion, even in the most confidential manner, without betraying, in my judgment, some impropriety of conduct.”36 For this reason he must have been grateful to friends who talked to him forthrightly about the presidency. A month after Washington left Philadelphia, Gouverneur Morris told him that among the “thirteen horses now about to be coupled together, there are some of every race and character. They will listen to your voice and submit to your control. You therefore must, I say, must mount this seat.”37 From abroad, Lafayette cheerfully added his voice to the chorus: “I beg you, my dear general, do not refuse the responsibility of the presidency during the first few years. You alone can make this political machine operate successfully.”38 This was a powerful argument for Washington, who had gone to Philadelphia feeling that the war would be incomplete without a new Constitution; now, he knew, the Constitution would be incomplete without an effective new government.
Perhaps the most subtly persuasive pleas emanated from Hamilton, who could easily picture himself holding a significant place in a Washington administration. He stalked Washington for the presidency with all the cunning at his disposal, piling up every good, unselfish reason for running. In mid-August 1788 he wrote to Washington and introduced the forbidden subject but never used the word president . He presented the first presidency as the logical, nay inevitable, sequel to the Constitutional Convention for Washington: “You will permit me to say that it is indispensable you should lend yourself to [the new government’s] first operations. It is to little purpose to have introduced a system, if the weightiest influence is not given to its firm establishment in the outset.”39 Washington had to undergo this ritual of spurning the proffered crown. “On the delicate subject with which you conclude your letter, I can say nothing,” Washington replied. “For you know me well enough, my good Sir, to be persuaded that I am not guilty of affectation when I tell you, it is my great and sole desire to live and die, in peace and retirement, on my own farm . . . while you and some others who are acquainted with my heart would acquit, the world and posterity might probably accuse me of inconsistency and ambition .”40 So among those whose opinion Washington considered was posterity. He portrayed himself as paralyzed by indecision and referred to the “dreaded dilemma of being forced to accept or refuse” the presidency.41 Whenever he mused about the problem, he told Hamilton, he “felt a kind of gloom upon my mind.”42
As their exchanges continued, Hamilton upped the stakes, telling Washington he had no choice but to assume the presidency. Now older and more self-confident than the wartime aide-de-camp, Hamilton addressed Washington as a peer. The success of the new government was hardly self-evident, and only Washington, he argued, could put the new Constitution to a fair test. If the first government failed, “the framers of it will have to encounter the disrepute of having brought about a revolution in government, without substituting anything that was worthy of the effort.” 43 Hamilton contended that Washington’s refusal to become president would “throw everything into confusion.”44 This was what Washington yearned to hear: that overwhelming necessity demanded that he make the supreme sacrifice and serve as president.
Washington believed that the new government needed a fair trial and an auspicious start. He always credited the power of first impressions and now imagined that “the first transactions of a nation, like those of an individual upon his first entrance into life, make the deepest impression.”45 With Madison, he employed a powerful metaphor: “To be shipwrecked in sight of the port would be the severest of all possible aggravations to our misery.”46
Beyond the image projected by the first government, also important was the fact that the first president, in conjunction with Congress, would shape its institutional structure. In Madison’s words, the first two years would “produce all the great arrangements under the new system and . . . may fix its tone for a long time to come.”47 Washington knew this, but the prospect of such crushing responsibilities only intensified his dilemma. Having sat through the Constitutional Convention, he knew the sketchy nature of Article II, which dealt with the presidency: “I should consider myself as entering upon an unexplored field, enveloped on every side with clouds and darkness.”48 He also knew the presidency would convert him into a partisan figure, threatening his chaste reputation as the personification of America. In this vein, the Federal Gazette of Philadelphia worried that his wartime reputation would be blotted as he shifted from the “fields of military glory” into “the thorn-covered paths of political administration.”49
The public clamor for Washington to become president arose from his heroism, his disinterested patriotism, and his willingness to surrender his
wartime command. Another, if minor, factor was his apparent sterility and lack of children, which made it seem that he had been divinely preserved in an immaculate state to become the Father of His Country. In March 1788, in listing the arguments for electing Washington, the Massachusetts Centinel included this one: “As having no son—and therefore not exposing us to the danger of an hereditary successor.”50 This was a plausible fear at a time when monarchs routinely made dynastic marriages and when people worried that European powers would subvert the new republican government. John Adams expressed to Jefferson his relief that Washington would be a childless president: “If General Washington had a daughter, I firmly believe she would be demanded in marriage by one of the royal families of France or England, perhaps by both; or, if he had a son, he would be invited to come a courting to Europe.” 51 To sway Washington to run, Gouverneur Morris slyly alluded to his childless state: “You will become the father to more than three millions of children.”52
Assailed by doubts, Washington decided to serve only if convinced that “very disagreeable consequences” would result from his refusal.53 As the election drew near, he made it plain that accepting the presidency would be his life’s most painful decision. “Be assured, my dear sir,” he told Lafayette, “I shall assume the task with the most unfeigned reluctance and with a real diffidence, for which I shall probably receive no credit from the world.”54 One way Washington reconciled himself to the job was to regard it as a temporary post that he would occupy only until the new government was established on a firm footing. In early October 1788 he confided to Hamilton that, if he became president, it would be with the hope “that at a convenient and an early period my services might be dispensed with and that I might be permitted once more to retire.”55 In fact, Washington later admitted to Jefferson that he had not planned to serve out a single term as president and had been “made to believe that in 2 years all would be well in motion and he might retire.”56 It seems safe to say that Washington never dreamed he would serve out even one full term as president, much less two. Had he realized that his decision would entangle him in eight more years of arduous service, he likely would never have agreed to be president.
