by Ron Chernow
The cash-strapped Washington knew that the world reckoned him a much richer man than he really was. Mount Vernon’s glorified facade of wealth and grandeur covered up an operation that was, at best, only marginally profitable. Running the estate forced Washington to keep up appearances and act with the openhanded largesse of an affluent planter. He still felt hounded by visitors stopping by Mount Vernon and partaking liberally of his food and drink. (In one letter, he expressed exasperation with Fanny for giving away dozens of bottles of expensive wine to voyeuristic travelers and listed only three classes of people who deserved those coveted bottles: close friends, foreign dignitaries, and members of Congress and other politicos.) Part of Washington’s plan called for raising cash by selling more than thirty thousand acres of western land at a time when prices were appreciating sharply.
To help find suitable English farmers, Washington turned to the English agronomist Arthur Young, summarizing for him the riches of the four farms in question, which then had 3,260 acres of arable land, 54 draft horses, 12 working mules, 317 head of black cattle, and hogs that “run pretty much at large in the woodland.”39 Washington had no qualms about touting the proximity of the farms to the federal capital rising nearby. “The federal city in the year 1800 will become the seat of the general government of the United States. It is increasing fast in buildings and rising into consequence and will, I have no doubt . . . become the emporium of the United States.”40 Washington’s rental plan gave him yet another economic incentive to accelerate the dilatory pace of construction of the new capital.
The most momentous aspect of the plan concerned the destiny of the 170 to 180 slaves confined on the four farms. It was Washington’s fervent hope that the new owner would free the slaves and then rehire them “as he would do any other laborers which his necessity w[oul]d require him to employ.”41 Emancipating slaves was a startling innovation for any major Virginia planter to contemplate, especially if he was president of the United States. The scheme harked back to the plan that Lafayette had proposed for his experimental farm in French Guiana. In disclosing the idea to Lear, Washington explained that he had a motive “more powerful than all the rest, namely to liberate a certain species of property which I possess, very repugnantly to my own feelings, but which imperious necessity compels.”42
From the timing of his decision, one suspects that Washington’s disgust with slavery owed something to pure principle but also much to the pure fatigue of trying to wrest profits from an intractable workforce held in bondage. The realistic and idealistic sides of George Washington both conspired to rebel against the peculiar institution. Interestingly enough, when he mentioned possible obstacles to his plan, he talked of the difficulty of mingling white workers with black, but he never mentioned a far more glaring problem: a political backlash in the South against such a courageous move by the country’s foremost citizen.
As always, Washington had manifold reasons for his actions, and his response to slavery was shaped by a complex blend of impulses. On November 23, 1794, he wrote a revealing letter to his nephew Alexander Spotswood that dealt with his views on slavery—a subject, Washington admitted, that “I do not like to even think, much less talk of.”43 Washington suggested that the main hindrance to emancipating his slaves related to his fear of auctioning them off indiscriminately and breaking up families: “Were it not, then, that I am principled ag[ains]t selling Negroes, as you would cattle in the market, I would not, in twelve months from this date, be possessed of one as a slave.”44 He went on to say that he feared trouble might be brewing with the slave population and that a day of reckoning might soon be at hand: “I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a very troublesome species of property ’ere many years pass over our heads.”45
The anxious foreboding about slave revolts was immeasurably heightened by the massive slave revolt in the French colony of St. Domingue (modern-day Haiti), led by Toussaint Louverture starting in August 1791. This, the largest slave revolt in history, had led to thousands of deaths among rebel slaves and white masters, fomenting hysterical fears among American planters. When Charles Pinckney worried about the impact of these events on southern slaves, Washington shared his alarm: “I feel sincerely those sentiments of sympathy which you so properly express for the distresses of our suffering brethren [the slave owners] in that quarter and deplore their causes.”46 It seemed a terrifyingly vivid realization of the nightmares of slaveholders who feared the hatred that simmered deep inside their slaves. In response, Virginia enacted more stringent rules against slave gatherings as well as an “act against divulgers of false news.”47
President Washington extended money and arms to the French government to combat the insurrection and also made a personal donation of $250 to relieve the affected white colonists. By July 1793 thousands of white refugees from St. Domingue had streamed into American ports, where they retailed hideous tales of rape and mass killings by enraged slaves. That month Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Monroe, saying that the situation of these fugitive planters “calls aloud for pity and charity. Never was so deep a tragedy presented to the feelings of man . . . I become daily more convinced that all the West India islands will remain in the hands of the people of color and a total expulsion of the whites sooner or later take place. It is high time we should foresee the bloody scenes which our children certainly and possibly ourselves (south of Potomac) will have to wade through and try to avert them.”48 In February 1794 France decided to free the slaves in its empire, partly to hold on to St. Domingue by appeasing the agitated black population. Washington’s comments to Alexander Spotswood must be set against the backdrop of the slave revolt in St. Domingue and the conviction of many southern planters, reflected in Jefferson’s comment, that it was only a matter of time before American slaves took matters into their own hands, rebelling in bloody wrath against their masters.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Hercules in the Field
THE WINTER OF 1793-94 was a cold and dreary one in Philadelphia; the Delaware River was so choked with ice floes that vessels could not navigate. After the yellow fever epidemic, the capital remained a ghostly place, with the usual diversions of theater and dancing still temporarily taboo. “We have been very dull here all winter,” wrote Martha Washington, lapsing into the general funk. “There has been two assemblies and it is said that the players are to be here soon. If they come and open the new theater, I suppose it will make a very great change.”1
On December 31, 1793, Thomas Jefferson resigned as secretary of state, thereby liberating himself from the intolerable company of Alexander Hamilton. For all their pronounced differences, Washington and Jefferson had experienced parallel frustrations with public service. Both men gave the impression of serving under duress, yearned to regain the domestic pleasures of their plantations, and disclaimed political ambition, however dubious that notion seemed to impartial observers. A worn-out Jefferson could not wait to return to the repose of Monticello, telling one correspondent in late November, “I hope to spend the remainder of my days in occupations infinitely more pleasing than those to which I have sacrificed 18 years of the prime of my life.”2 Since the political animosity toward him had spilled over into Federalist-dominated high society, he wished to retire “from the hated occupations of politics and sink into the bosom of my family, my farm, and my books.”3 In a parting shot as secretary of state, Jefferson proposed to Congress a series of trade restrictions designed to throttle commerce with Great Britain. In Hamilton’s scornful opinion, Jefferson “threw this firebrand of discord” on congressional desks “and instantly decamped to Monticello.”4 Outwardly, Washington’s parting with Jefferson was amicable enough, and he sent him a civil farewell letter, but privately he felt that Jefferson had betrayed him by deserting him at a troubling moment in foreign affairs.
Jefferson’s preferred self-image was that of a bookish, unworldly fellow, more at home with intellectual pursuits than in the hurly-burly of politics. Once back at Montic
ello, he presented himself as a monkish stranger to all political striving, as if it were a youthful folly he had outgrown. “The little spice of ambition, which I had in my younger days,” he told Madison, “has long since evaporated . . . The question is forever closed to me.”5 To less friendly observers, however, the matter was far from closed. As early as 1792 Hamilton claimed to penetrate the secret workings of Jefferson’s mind and discover it was worm-eaten with ambition: “ ’Tis evident beyond a question, from every movement, that Mr. Jefferson aims with ardent desire at the presidential chair.”6 He interpreted Jefferson’s withdrawal from the scene as a temporary maneuver until the time had ripened for his triumphant return. Similarly, John Adams dismissed gruffly Jefferson’s pose of philosophical detachment, declaring upon the latter’s exit from Philadelphia: “A good riddance of bad ware . . . He is as ambitious as Oliver Cromwell . . . His soul is poisoned with ambition.”7 For Adams, Jefferson’s resignation was a calculated first step in a determined campaign for the presidency. “The whole anti-Federal party at that time considered this retirement as a sure and certain step towards the summit of the pyramid,” he said in later life.8 As he observed tartly, “Political plants grow in the shade.”9
At first Jefferson professed sublime indifference to politics. “I live on my horse from morning to night,” he declared to Henry Knox. “I rarely look into a book or take up a pen. I have proscribed newspapers.”10 In departing from office, Jefferson maintained that his political activity would henceforth be restricted to his hobbyhorse, “the shameless corruption of a portion” of Congress and “their implicit devotion to the treasury.”11 But when asked whether Washington was “governed by British influence,” Jefferson supposedly replied, facetiously, that no danger existed so long as Washington “was influenced by the wise advisers or advice, which [he] at present had.”12 When Governor Henry Lee told him about this patent gibe that he was biased toward Britain and hoodwinked by Hamilton’s malevolent influence, Washington reacted with fury. Jefferson could not honestly accuse him of such bias, he retorted, unless “he has set me down as one of the most deceitful and uncandid men living,” because Jefferson had heard him “express very different sentiments with an energy that could not be mistaken by anyone present.”13 Two years later, hotly rejecting the accusation of being a “party man,” Washington insisted to Jefferson that he had ruled against Hamilton in the cabinet as often as he had sided with him.14
After leaving office, Jefferson was demoted to a lower rung in Washington’s ever-shifting hierarchy of relationships. Their correspondence, however friendly, centered on mundane matters, such as crops and seeds, and Washington never again sought him out for policy advice. He dropped the salutation “My dear Sir” in favor of the cooler “Dear Sir.” Thus did the subtle Washington consign ex-colleagues to slow oblivion. If Washington suspected that Jefferson belonged to a cabal against him, Jefferson was no less insistent that “federal monarchists” had captured the president’s ear in order to vilify him, Jefferson, as a “theorist, holding French principles of government, which would lead infallibly to licentiousness and anarchy.”15 For someone as cordial as Washington, the avoidance of meetings with an old friend underlined the true depth of his hostility toward Jefferson.
We are accustomed to viewing the founding era as endowed with an inexhaustible supply of superlatively able men available for public service. But once the most gifted public servants—Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, and Jay—were already accounted for, Washington, like many later presidents, had a fiendishly hard time finding replacements for his sterling first-term cabinet and turned by default to comparative mediocrities. Moreover, some worthy figures weren’t prepared to make the financial sacrifice that accompanied public office. To perpetuate some modicum of geographic and political diversity, Washington tapped Edmund Randolph as his new secretary of state and brought in a Federalist, William Bradford of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, to replace him as attorney general. Nevertheless Randolph fell woefully short of Jefferson’s intellectual standard and was viewed in Republican quarters as an unreliable partner. His shortcomings tilted the cabinet’s power balance decisively toward Hamilton, giving a far more Federalist tint to Washington’s second term. Both Hamilton and Knox had promised to stay on until the end of 1794; Hamilton’s stature was only enhanced after a second House inquiry into his conduct granted him a full vindication in May 1794.
One of the first challenges for the new team was to figure out how to deal with the lawless North African, or “Barbary,” states—Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis—which plundered foreign vessels in the Mediterranean and enslaved their crews. Many European powers had grown resigned to paying “tribute”—a polite word for ransom money—to win the release of their crews. As American crews succumbed to these pirates and were threatened with forced conversion to Islam, Washington was offended by the need to pay bribes, especially after Algiers seized eleven American merchant ships and a hundred prisoners. Reluctantly, he authorized the payment of money to Algiers and even tried to negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce with the city-state, but he thought the time had come to back up American diplomacy with military might. In March 1794 Congress approved a proposal, backed by Washington and Knox, to build six frigates “adequate for the protection of the commerce of the U.S. against Algerian corsairs.”16 This action officially inaugurated the U.S. Navy, although it would take four more years before a separate Navy Department was born. While the six frigates represented a landmark in Washington’s plan to foster a professional military, he never neglected diplomacy and wrested treaties from both Morocco and Algiers.
Another foreign policy crisis arose from the swelling casualties spawned by the French Revolution and the concomitant European turmoil. Supported by his cabinet, Washington made a private overture to the king of Prussia, asking him to release Lafayette as a gesture of friendship toward America. Although Washington failed to win his freedom, the king eased the shockingly bad conditions of Lafayette’s confinement and allowed him books, fresh air, and more appetizing food. The respite, alas, was brief. Lafayette was soon transferred to the Austrian authorities, who shut him up in a filthy, fly-infested cell in Olmütz, where he lay in chains and ragged clothing. After Lafayette’s wife was arrested in France, Gouverneur Morris interceded on her behalf, leading Robespierre to spare her from the guillotine, but her mother, sister, and grandmother wound up as victims of the Terror.
In April 1793 the French government had established the Committee of Public Safety, giving it sweeping powers to arrest people for treason and try them under its jurisdiction; by September a Reign of Terror ensued that would claim as many as forty thousand lives.17 As an eyewitness to the bloodletting, Gouverneur Morris provided Washington with a running commentary on the atrocities. “The Queen was executed the day before yesterday,” he wrote of Marie-Antoinette that October. “Insulted during her trial and reviled in her last moments”—she had been taken through the streets of Paris in an open cart to the guillotine—“she behav’d with dignity throughout.”18 The perceptive Morris saw that the violence was no incidental by-product of the revolution but fundamental to its spirit. As he put it in lapidary prose, “In the groves [of the revolution], at every end of every vista, you see nothing but gallows.”19 An essential difference between the American and French revolutions was that the American version allowed a search for many truths, while French zealots tried to impose a single sacred truth that allowed no deviation.
By July 1794 the revolutionary tribunal in Paris accelerated the tempo of its trials and issued nine hundred death sentences per month.20 Many victims of the Terror had been stalwart friends of the American Revolution. Pulled from his quarters in the middle of the night, Thomas Paine had been tossed into prison and stayed there for months. From Paris, James Monroe, who replaced Gouverneur Morris as American minister, informed Madison that Paine was loudly blaming Washington for his predicament: “He thinks the president winked at his imprisonment and wished he might die
in gaol, and bears his resentment for it; also he is preparing an attack upon him of the most virulent kind.”21 Whatever displeasure Washington might have felt toward Paine, there is no evidence that he wanted him either abused or incarcerated.
Many Frenchmen who had admired or even participated in the American Revolution were casualties of its bloody Gallic sequel. After testifying in favor of Marie-Antoinette, the former Count d’Estaing was beheaded. The erstwhile Count de Rochambeau, locked up in the Conciergerie in Paris, was condemned to the guillotine and survived only because Robespierre fell from power as he was about to be decapitated. The massacre of French aristocrats widened the rift between Federalists, who feared that France would export anarchy, and Republicans, who cheered the radical spirit of events in Paris, whatever their unfortunate excesses.
At the same time that France was testing American patience, England, at war with France, was straining Anglo-American relations as never before. Starting in June 1793, the British government directed the Royal Navy to intercept neutral ships bearing foodstuffs destined for French ports and seize their cargo; five months later the policy was briefly expanded into a total blockade of the French West Indies. In short order, British warships stopped and seized 250 American ships, confiscating their wares. At the same time, to boost manpower in the depleted Royal Navy, captains grabbed British deserters aboard American ships—a practice known as “impressment”—accidentally tangling in their nets many innocent Americans. These high-handed maneuvers summoned up old memories of British arrogance and precipitated a political firestorm. Even Federalists waxed indignant that England was pursuing a counterproductive policy that would feed sympathy for France, foster a vengeful mood toward England, and threaten the neutrality proclamation.
