by Ron Chernow
A little after noon on April 30, 1789, following a morning filled with clanging church bells and prayers, a contingent of troops on horseback, accompanied by carriages loaded with legislators, stopped at Washington’s Cherry Street residence. Escorted by David Humphreys and Tobias Lear, the president-elect stepped into his carriage, which was trailed by foreign dignitaries and crowds of joyous citizens. The procession wound slowly through the narrow Manhattan streets, emerging two hundred yards from Federal Hall. After alighting from his carriage, Washington strode through a double line of soldiers to the building and mounted to the Senate chamber, where members of Congress awaited him expectantly. As he entered, Washington bowed to both houses of the legislature—his invariable mark of respect—then occupied an imposing chair up front. A profound hush settled on the room. Vice President Adams rose for an official greeting, then informed Washington that the epochal moment had arrived: “Sir, the Senate and House of Representatives are ready to attend you to take the oath required by the constitution.” “I am ready to proceed,” Washington replied.43
As he stepped through the door onto the balcony, a spontaneous roar surged from the multitude tightly squeezed into Wall and Broad streets and covering every roof in sight. This open-air ceremony would confirm the sovereignty of the citizens gathered below. Washington’s demeanor was stately, modest, and deeply affecting: he clapped one hand to his heart and bowed several times to the crowd. Surveying the serried ranks of people, one observer said they were jammed so closely together that “it seemed one might literally walk on the heads of the people.”44 Thanks to his simple dignity, integrity, and unrivaled sacrifices for his country, Washington’s conquest of the people was complete. A member of the crowd, the Count de Moustier, the French minister, noted the solemn trust between Washington and the citizens who stood packed below him with uplifted faces. As he reported to his government, never had “sovereign reigned more completely in the hearts of his subjects than did Washington in those of his fellow citizens . . . He has the soul, look, and figure of a hero united in him.”45 One young woman in the crowd echoed this when she remarked, “I never saw a human being that looked so great and noble as he does.”46 Only Congressman Fisher Ames of Massachusetts noted that “time has made havoc” upon Washington’s face, which already looked haggard and careworn.47
The sole constitutional requirement for the swearing-in was that the president take the oath of office. That morning a congressional committee decided to add solemnity by having Washington place his hand on a Bible during the oath, leading to a frantic, last-minute scramble to find one. A Masonic lodge came to the rescue by providing a thick Bible, bound in deep brown leather and set on a crimson velvet cushion. By the time Washington appeared on the portico, the Bible rested on a table draped in red velvet.
The crowd grew silent as New York chancellor Robert R. Livingston administered the oath to Washington, who was visibly moved. As he finished the oath, he bent forward, seized the Bible, and brought it to his lips. Washington felt this moment from the bottom of his soul: one observer noted the “devout fervency” with which he “took the oath and the reverential manner in which he bowed down and kissed the Bible.”48 Legend has it that he added “So help me God,” though this line was first reported sixty-five years later. Whether or not Washington actually said it, very few people would have heard him anyway, since his voice was soft and breathy. For the crowd below, the oath of office was enacted as a kind of dumbshow. Livingston had to lift his voice and inform the crowd, “It is done.” He then intoned: “Long Live George Washington, President of the United States.”49 The spectators responded with huzzas and chants of “God bless our Washington! Long live our beloved President!”50 They celebrated in the only way they knew, as if greeting a new monarch with the customary cry of “Long Live the King!”
When the balcony ceremony was concluded, Washington returned to the Senate chamber to deliver his inaugural address. In an important piece of symbolism, Congress rose as he entered, then sat down after Washington bowed in response. In England, the House of Commons stood during the king’s speeches, so that the seated Congress immediately established a sturdy equality between the legislative and executive branches.
As Washington began his speech, he seemed flustered and thrust his left hand into his pocket while turning the pages with a trembling right hand. His weak voice was barely audible. Fisher Ames evoked him thus: “His aspect grave, almost to sadness; his modesty, actually shaking; his voice deep, a little tremulous, and so low as to call for close attention.”51 Those present attributed Washington’s low voice and fumbling hands to anxiety. “This great man was agitated and embarrassed more than ever he was by the leveled cannon or pointed musket,” said Senator William Maclay in sniggering tones. “He trembled and several times could scarce make out to read, though it must be supposed he had often read it before.”52 Washington’s agitation might have arisen from a developing neurological disorder or might simply have been a bad case of nerves. The new president had long been famous for his physical grace, but the sole gesture he used for emphasis in his speech seemed clumsy—“a flourish with his right hand,” said Maclay, “which left rather an ungainly impression.”53 For the next few years Maclay would be a close, unsparing observer of the new president’s quirks and tics.
In the first line of his inaugural address, Washington expressed anxiety about his fitness for the presidency, saying that “no event could have filled me with greater anxieties” than the news brought to him by Charles Thomson.54 He had grown despondent, he said candidly, as he considered his own “inferior endowments from nature” and his lack of practice in civil government.55 He drew comfort, however, from the fact that the “Almighty Being” had overseen America’s birth: “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the affairs of men, more than the people of the United States.”56 Perhaps referring obliquely to the fact that he suddenly seemed older, he called Mount Vernon “a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary, as well as more dear to me, by the addition of habit to inclination and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time.”57 In the earlier inaugural address drafted with David Humphreys, Washington had included a disclaimer about his health, telling how he had “prematurely grown old in the service of my country.”58
Setting the pattern for future inaugural speeches, Washington did not delve into minute policy matters but outlined the big themes that would govern his administration, the foremost being the triumph of national unity over “local prejudices or attachments” that might subvert the country or even tear it apart.59 National policy needed to be rooted in private morality, which relied on the “eternal rules of order and right” ordained by heaven itself.60 On the other hand, Washington refrained from endorsing any particular form of religion. Knowing how much was riding on this attempt at republican government, he said that “the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”61
After this speech, Washington led a broad procession of delegates up Broadway, along streets flanked by armed militia, to an Episcopal prayer service at St. Paul’s Chapel, where he was given his own canopied pew. After these devotions ended, Washington had his first chance to relax until the evening festivities. That night lower Manhattan was converted into a shimmering fairyland of lights. From the residences of Chancellor Livingston and General Knox, Washington observed the fireworks at Bowling Green, a pyrotechnic display that flashed in the sky for two hours. Washington’s image was displayed in transparencies hung in many windows, throwing glowing images into the night. Such a celebration, ironically, would have been familiar to Washington from the days when new royal governors arrived in Williamsburg and were greeted by bonfires, fireworks, and illuminations in every window.
All of New York was astir with the evening festivities,
and Washington had trouble returning to Cherry Street with Tobias Lear and David Humphreys. “We returned home at ten on foot,” wrote Lear, “the throng of people being so great as not to permit a carriage to pass through it.”62 The comment shows how closely people pressed against Washington in the thickly peopled streets. By the time he went to bed, he had initiated many enduring customs for presidential inaugurations, including the procession to the swearing-in venue, taking the oath of office en plein air, delivering an inaugural speech, and holding a gigantic celebration that evening. Because Martha was still absent, the inaugural ball was deferred until May.
The odyssey of George Washington from insecure young colonel in the French and Indian War, through his tenure as commander in chief of the Continental Army, and now to president of the new government, must have seemed an almost dream-like progression to him. Perhaps nothing underlined this improbable turn of events more than the extraordinary fact that while Washington had debated whether to become president that winter, on the other side of the ocean King George III had descended into madness. In late January Samuel Powel conveyed this startling piece of news to Washington: “I do not recollect any topic which, at present, occupies the conversation of men so much as the insanity of the king of Great Britain. I am told . . . that Dr. Franklin’s observation upon hearing the report was that he had long been of opinion that the King of Great Britain was insane, tho[ugh] it had not been declared to the world till now.”63
There was nothing vindictive in Washington’s nature, no itching for retribution, and he reacted with sympathy to news of the king’s malady. “Be the cause of the British king’s insanity what it may,” he told Powel, “his situation . . . merits commiseration.”64 The strangely contrasting fates of the two Georges grew stranger still in late February, when Gouverneur Morris reported from Paris an unlikely development in the king’s madness. “By the bye,” he wrote to Washington, “in the melancholy situation to which the poor King of England has been reduced, there were, I am told, in relation to you, some whimsical circumstances.” In a deranged fit, wrote Morris, the king had “conceived himself to be no less a personage than George Washington at the head of the American Army. This shows that you have done something or other which sticks most terribly in his stomach.”65 The delusion proved fleeting. On April 23, 1789, exactly one week before George Washington was sworn in to cheering crowds, George III recovered so miraculously from his delusional state that a thanksgiving service was conducted at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. It is hypothesized by some that he had suffered from a rare hereditary disorder called porphyria, a condition not properly diagnosed until the twentieth century. Restored to his senses, he had to contemplate the sobering reality that the upstart George Washington, who had once scrounged for advancement in his royal army, now served as president of an independent American republic.
MARTHA WASHINGTON WASN’T THRILLED at being first lady and, like her husband, talked about the presidency as an indescribable calamity that had befallen her. She professed a lack of interest in politics, having told her niece Fanny the previous year that “we have not a single article of news but politic[s], which I do not concern myself about.”66 Whether she was really so blasé about politics, or merely preferred not to express her opinions, is unclear. The tone of her letters grew wistful as she thought about New York. She and her husband had already sacrificed more than eight years to the war, and after so much hardship Mount Vernon had seemed like their long-deserved sanctuary. Now Washington’s presidency would likely eliminate any chance for a private final phase of their lives. Martha couldn’t have found it easy to be married to a man who was also married to the nation, but she understood his reasoning in becoming president, telling Mercy Otis Warren that she could not blame him “for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country.”67
Martha Washington never defied her husband openly, but when forced to do anything against her will, she could be quietly willful. She would pout and sulk and drag her feet in silence. In one letter Washington said that he wanted to be “well fixed at New York” before he sent for her, but one suspects that Martha’s delay reflected her disinclination to leave Virginia.68 A few days after his inauguration, Washington wrote with some urgency to George Augustine, asking him to hasten Martha’s departure, “for we are extremely desirous of seeing her here.”69 This suggests that her delay had lasted longer than expected. By that point, Washington knew that she would miss the ceremonial ball planned for May 7 at the Assembly Rooms on Broadway. Evidently Martha’s presence had been anticipated, for a special elevated sofa had been created that would enable the president and first lady to preside in state over the celebration.
On May 14 Washington’s nephew, nineteen-year-old Robert Lewis, arrived at Mount Vernon to escort his aunt to New York and discovered with amazement that “everything appeared to be in confusion.”70 Martha was still supervising the packing in an unusually chaotic scene for this well-organized woman. Finally on May 16, with one wagon heaped with nothing but baggage, she piled into her coach with her two grandchildren, Nelly and Washy, accompanied by a retinue of six slaves. As a crowd of slaves clustered around the departing group, emotions ran high. “The servants of the house and a number of the field Negroes made their appearance to take leave of their mistress,” Robert Lewis recorded in his journal. “Numbers of these poor wretches seemed greatly agitated, much affected. My aunt equally so.”71 The slaves’ tears were surely genuine, but one wonders whether they were shed for the six friends and family members being forcibly relocated to New York; perhaps the remaining slaves feared mistreatment at the hands of overseers in the Washingtons’ absence. Martha decided to take two personal slaves, Molly (or Moll) and a sixteen-year-old mulatto girl named Ona (or Oney) Judge, who had become her favorite. Two other slaves, Austin and Christopher Sheels, would act as waiters in New York, while Giles and Paris, who had accompanied Washington to the Constitutional Convention, would reprise their roles as coachmen.
The Martha Washington who set out for New York was a more matronly woman than the doughty wife who showed up regularly at the Continental Army camp each winter. Like her husband, she now wore spectacles on occasion. Ever dutiful, she did her best to live up to her new station on the national scene. With political instincts to rival her husband’s, she had ordered green and brown wool from Hartford to make riding costumes for herself and was lauded in the press for being “clothed in the manufacture of our country.”72
En route to New York, Martha had no better luck than her husband in escaping the hordes who competed to greet her. Nevertheless, as she got her first taste of being first lady—the term was not adopted until later administrations—she experienced a rising sense of excitement. Upon reaching the outskirts of Philadelphia, she was hailed by the state’s chief executive, and a cavalry honor guard conducted her into town. On May 27 the new president took time out from his duties to receive his wife at Elizabethtown, where she got the same tumultuous reception bestowed on him a month earlier. As Martha wrote appreciatively to Fanny, the welcoming committee had come “with the fine barge you have seen so much said of in the papers, with the same oarsmen that carried the P[resident] to New York.”73 Little Washy Custis was flabbergasted by the boat ride and by the grand parade that swept up the entire party the moment the big, burly governor of New York, George Clinton, received them on the Manhattan side. Meanwhile sister Nelly spent hours at the window on Cherry Street, transfixed by the fancy carriages passing down below.
No sooner had she arrived in the capital than Martha learned that she would be a prop in an elaborate piece of political theater. One day after her arrival, she had to host a dinner for congressional leaders, and the day after that, all of New York society seemed to cram into the Cherry Street mansion for her first reception—a function for which she had not been consulted. She was plunged into a giddy whirl of activity. “I have not had one half hour to myself since the day of my arrival,” she told Fanny in early Jun
e.74 She narrated this abrupt transformation with a note of quiet wonder: the woman who had been dubious about this new life sounded positively breathless with amazement. She had been taken in hand by a professional hairdresser, a novel experience for her. “My hair is set and dressed every day and I have put on white muslin habits for the summer,” she wrote home in early June. “You would, I fear, think me a good deal in the fashion if you could but see me.”75
The town was enchanted with Martha Washington, whose conviviality offset her husband’s reserve. She won over the toughest critic: the wife of the vice president, who found her the perfect republican counterpart of her husband. “I took the earliest opportunity . . . to go and pay my respects to Mrs. Washington,” Abigail Adams informed her sister. “She received me with great ease and politeness. She is plain in her dress, but that plainness is the best of every article . . . Her hair is white, her teeth beautiful, her person rather short than otherwise.”76 The favorable impression grew upon second viewing: “Mrs. Washington is one of those unassuming characters which create love and esteem. A most becoming pleasantness sits upon her countenance and an unaffected deportment which renders her the object of veneration and respect.”77
