“I know,” Hamilton continued, “that I have been the object of uniform opposition from Mr. Jefferson.… I have long seen a party formed in the legislature under his auspices bent on my subversion … which, in its consequences would subvert the government.” He accused Jefferson (Washington knew this was not true) of wishing to create chaos by undoing the funding system, thereby prostrating “the credit and honor of the nation.”
Washington wrote Jefferson and undoubtedly expressed the same sentiments to Hamilton. “I will frankly and solemnly declare that I believe the views of both of you are pure and well meant; and that experience alone will decide with respect to the salubrity of measures which are the subject of dispute. Why then, when some of the best citizens in the United States, men of discernment, uniform and tried patriots, who have no sinister views to promote, but are chaste in their ways of thinking and acting, are to be found some on one side and some on the other of the questions which have caused these agitations, should either of you be so tenacious of your opinions as to make no allowances for those of the other?… I have a great, a sincere esteem and regard for you both, and ardently wish that some line could be marked out by which both of you could walk.”
Jefferson replied to such appeals by presenting himself as the innocent victim of Hamilton’s attacks. He stated disingenuously that he had not hired Freneau with the intention of starting a newspaper. In any case, the National Gazette was a scourge for “aristocratical and monarchical writers” and not an opponent of the government. It was up to Hamilton to reform, not him.
Hamilton admitted his role in the newspapers, insisting that he had been driven to it by the necessity to protect his own reputation and also the essential financial stability of the nation. “I find myself placed in a situation not to be able to recede for the present.” However, although he considered himself “the deeply injured party … I pledge you my honor, sir, that if you shall hereafter form a plan to reunite the members of your administration … I will fully concur.” Hamilton assured Washington, “It is my most anxious wish, as far as may depend upon me, to smooth the path of your administration and to render it prosperous and happy.”
Jefferson was later to claim that his affection for Washington had been much greater than Hamilton’s, yet he could not bring himself (perhaps because his emotions were deeply hurt) to express any affection or loyalty or any regret at leaving his friend in the lurch. Jefferson’s own records of their conversations show him taunting the substitute father he felt had betrayed him. He knew that Washington was just as eager to get home as he was, and in just as much need of paying personal attention to his estate. Yet, as he insisted that the President was trapped in office, he expatiated on the pleasures and the profit he anticipated from being able to return to Monticello. That Jefferson is described by his biographers as being himself “thin-skinned,” supersensitive, makes his behavior to Washington seem all the more extraordinary.
During the summer of 1792, Washington spent as much time at Mount Vernon as his conscience would permit. Yet it was hardly a restful period. His estate manager had for some time been his favorite nephew, George Augustine Washington, who was married to Martha’s favorite niece, Fanny Bassett. Now George Augustine was replaying the greatest tragedy of Washington’s young manhood. As the President’s half brother Lawrence had done, George Augustine was dying of tuberculosis. And Fanny appeared to be coming down with her husband’s disease. “Intermittent fevers” (malaria) were striking down Washington’s servants and slaves more severely, so it seemed to him at that strained season, than ever before. And, since the President had lacked the heart to keep his two secretaries from going off “on visits to their friends … all my business, public and private, is on my own shoulders.”
Washington now found tiring the long rides to inspect his extensive farms which he had once found relaxing, and which were now doubly necessary since his manager was completely incapacitated. A change to sedentary interests was revealed by Washington’s decision concerning the pack of foxhounds who had for so many years been his delight and pride.
During his absence, the fence of his deer park had broken, allowing “about a dozen” half-tame deer to “range in all my woods.… It is true, I have scarcely a hope of preserving them long, although they come up almost every day, but I am unwilling by any act of my own to facilitate their destruction.” Since they were “as much afraid of hounds … as the wild deer are,” Washington got rid of his hounds. Instead of leaning eagerly forward as he rode shouting to the chase, he sat quietly on his porch awaiting the shy appearance of the gentlest of forest creatures.
It must have been with mixed feelings that Washington undertook inquiries to discover whether the people would prefer to him some other man as President. He valued almost above anything else the love and confidence of his fellow citizens, but on the other hand—. The other hand showed no signs of existing. Requested to ask around Philadelphia, his secretary Lear replied that everyone viewed the possibility of his retirement with “apprehension.” This might be true in the capital, but what about the South? Jefferson, dropping in at Mount Vernon on September 31, told Washington, “As far as I knew there was but one voice” in the South. It was “for his continuance.”
On November 8, after most of the offices open to direct election had been filled, Washington was still uncertain whether he would allow his name to go before the Electoral College. This indecision prompted a letter written to him by a remarkable woman.
Eliza Powel had for some time now been Washington’s favorite female companion. She belonged to Philadelphia’s leading mercantile family: her father, Thomas Willing, had been the financial mentor of Robert Morris. Her husband, Samuel, was among Philadelphia’s richest and most sophisticated citizens. The family lived in the Willing family enclave in the middle of the city, an extensive formal garden containing four mansions. Compared to the elegance here, Mount Vernon was simple, rural. The decorative walks were bordered by statuary. Washington admired Samuel Powel’s “profusion of lemon, orange, and citron trees, and many aloes and other exotics.”
Eliza was twenty times as sophisticated as Martha Washington; clever and neurotic where Martha was homey and placid; talkative and, unlike Martha, political. Ten years Washington’s junior, Eliza had a round, firm, handsome face from which blue eyes shone. Always fashionably dressed, she was gay when she was not passionately melancholy. As is made clear by a letter in which she teased the President on his continence, she was not his mistress, but he found her extremely amusing. She would argue with him on government policy intelligently if banteringly; she made playful fun of him as no one else dared to do.
The letter she now wrote begging Washington not to resign reveals how an able woman, intimately familiar with Washington’s character, felt she could most effectively reach his emotions. She urged him to overcome his “diffidence of your abilities.” She made no mention of Jefferson or Hamilton or any specific issues. In stating that his departure would be a disaster, she did not refer to the effect on any class or group or area, but on “the repose of millions.”
Eliza gave particular emphasis to an argument so personal that others seem to have been afraid to use it. Knowing “your sensibility with respect to public opinion,” she felt obliged, as Washington’s friend, to point out that much of his popularity “will be torn from you by the envious and malignant should you follow the bent of your inclinations.” It would be said “that a concurrence of unparalleled circumstances had attended you,” and that since “ambition has been the moving spring of all your acts,” when the going became hard, “you would take no further risks” for the people. It would be said that, foreseeing collapse of the government, he was fleeing to escape the crash.
Mrs. Samuel (Eliza) Powel, President Washington’s favorite female friend. Portrait by Matthew Pratt (Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)
On an even more personal note, Eliza asked whether, even if he could retire with “the benediction of m
ankind,” his happiness would truly be enhanced. She hoped that “until the extremest of old age” Washington would “enjoy the pure felicity of employing your whole faculties” in “those duties which elevate and fortify the soul.” His pleasure as well as his duty lay in laboring “for the prosperity of the people for whose happiness you are responsible, for to you their happiness is entrusted.”
Among the papers Washington’s beloved friend so carefully kept there is no reply from Washington. He must have answered verbally. How he responded to her affectionate pleading is thus hidden, but we do know that ever stronger arguments reverberated, like a battery of cannon, in his ears. These arguments were the inescapable facts of the situation. Washington’s presence was desperately needed to keep the already festering wounds in the body politic from opening wider. He had no choice.
Since Washington had made no announcement to the contrary, on February 13, 1793, the Electoral College unanimously elected him to a second term. The aging leader was thus sentenced to a continuance of what he had described to Jefferson as “the extreme wretchedness of his existence.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Bad Omens
(1792–1793)
Before the unanimous decision of the Electoral College had blocked Washington from possible escape, the French boiler had exploded. The attempted flight of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had been followed by war between revolutionary France and aristocratic Austria and Prussia. Since the fighting was altogether landlocked there was, to Washington’s relief, no way that the United States could become physically involved. But ideas know no physical limitations.
The defeat of French armies, one of them commanded by Lafayette, touched off in Paris mass Jacobin demonstrations. The Tuileries were stormed, the King thrown into prison, the constitution suspended and a revolutionary government set up. Accused of treasonable collusion with the King, Washington’s spiritual son fled to Austria, where he was imprisoned.
When in December, 1792, news reached Philadelphia that the radical changes in the French government had been followed by military victories, cheering crowds poured into the streets. The citizenry assumed that the French happenings reflected the example of the American Revolution: “The Spirit of ’76,” advancing in Europe would pull all aristocracies down! To revel in support of France became an American passion. Cannonades were fired by all who could get their hands on cannon; oceans of liquor were consumed in toasts; and the marching song, “Ah Ça Ira! Ça Ira!,” seemed an exciting replacement for the old anthem, set to the tune of “God Save the King,” which began, “God Save Great Washington.”
The information which soon reached America of the Terror—the rise and fall of the guillotine to the seemingly endless plop of severed heads—did not dampen the enthusiasm of the American republicans. Jefferson wrote that the tree of liberty had to be watered by human blood. He was willing to see “half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is.”
Washington, who had seen men die in bloody anguish as Jefferson had not, was neither enthused nor encouraged. He believed that “cool reason, which alone can establish a permanent and equal government, is as little to be expected in the tumults of popular commotion as an attention to the liberties of the people is to be expected in the dark divan of a despotic tyrant.”
Washington was worried lest pro-French sentiment so overwhelm the American public that, for the first time since the Revolution, the nation would lose control of her own destiny by entanglement in European affairs. However, Jefferson was enchanted that the American reactions to French events “kindled and brought forth the two [political] parties with an ardor which our own interests merely could never incite.”
The Jeffersonian warnings against Hamiltonian policies had not disturbed the broad public: the Republican party had hardly extended beyond Virginia, and the Federalists had found no reason to expand beyond a small pressure group. Party lines had, indeed, remained so vague that, although it was generally felt that the Jeffersonian strength had been increased, no one knew for sure what was the political complexion of the recently elected new House of Representatives.
But now there seemed a clear issue. Conservative in philosophy and desiring to duplicate the British economic system, the Federalists viewed with horror the excesses in France and charged what they to some extent feared: the Jeffersonians were eager to import the Terror. The Republicans shouted that this Federalist attitude indicated a taste for monarchy. At last, the abusive name of Monocrat showed signs of sticking, since the majority of the people were enthusiastically pro-French. The resulting surge of popularity for his views and his own person delighted Jefferson into a move that delighted Washington. He decided not to resign after all. For the time being at least, he would stay in the cabinet.
Deprived by geography of any way to influence the European fighting, the pro-French leaders attacked conservative American symbolism and behavior. A movement was started to melt down as a disgraceful bauble the House of Representative’s silver mace. The salutations “sir” and “madam” were considered disgraceful when one could say “citizen” and “citess.” The National Gazette, which had hitherto refrained from direct attacks on Washington, felt emboldened to call his formal entertainments and “fastidious” behavior the “legitimate offspring of inequality, begotten by aristocracy and monarchy upon corruption.” The freemen of America, so the writer continued, understood their rights and dignities “too well to surrender them for the gratifications of the ambition of any man, however well he may have deserved of his country.” This marked the first public effort to discredit Washington since the far-off days of the Conway Cabal.
Washington told Jefferson that he would be glad to behave in any way that pleased the people if their pleasure could be ascertained. In the immediate future, his second inauguration loomed. He asked his cabinet to determine, at conferences which he pointedly did not attend, whether the swearing-in should be conducted in private or in public, and with what ceremony if any. The decision was for a simple occasion in the Senate chamber to which he should travel through the streets “without form, attended by such gentlemen as he choose.”
He chose to ride, on March 4, 1793, alone in his coach. That his thoughts were bitter was revealed by his second inaugural address. Here it is in its entirety:
“Fellow Citizens: I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its chief magistrate. When the proper occasion for it shall arise, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of the distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of the United States.
“Previous to the execution of any official act of the President, the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take and in your presence, that if it shall be found during my administration of the government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunction thereof, I may (besides incurring Constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who now witness the present solemn ceremony.”
Having talked thus darkly of duty and punishment, Washington took the oath, and returned, as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, to the Presidential Mansion.
On March 17, word came in that Louis XVI had been guillotined and France declared a republic. As long as the monarchy had been titularly intact, relations with France had involved no new policy decision. But now Washington was forced to an official step which involved taking sides.
For the United States to recognize the new French regime would outrage the aristocratic powers of Europe and the American Federalists. Not to recognize, would outrage the French revolutionaries and the American Republicans. Washington empowered Secretary of State Jefferson to recognize: “We surely cannot deny to any nation the right whereon our own government is founded, that every nation may govern itself according to whatever form it pleases.” Washington also agreed to pay the new French government, even bef
ore the due date, an installment on the Revolutionary War debt, which reflected borrowings from the now-assassinated French monarch.
The new situation in France created for Washington personal problems. He took down his engraving of Louis XVI, leaving the key to the Bastille to dominate the European symbolism in the Presidential Mansion. When a plea came from Madame Lafayette that he use his official influence to free his spiritual son from the Austrian prison, he could only decide, however sharp his heartache, that he could not act effectively without prejudicing the foreign policy of the United States. And at home in Philadelphia, foreign policy again forced him to behave in a manner he found painful towards a Revolutionary veteran: Lafayette’s brother-in-law, the Count de Noailles. Since Noailles was an aristocratic exile said to be on a secret mission to influence the foreign policy of the United States, any cordiality that Washington showed him would be considered a political act. And yet Washington, had he achieved his desire to return to private life, would have ridden many miles to greet on the road to Mount Vernon his old friend.
Mount Vernon itself sometimes seemed to be fading away. Not only had Washington’s estate manager and nephew died of tuberculosis but the replacement Washington had laboriously found was almost instantly incapacitated by the same disease. In April, 1793, the President took time off for a quick trip home to try to straighten out his affairs. He had hardly arrived when he learned that the European storm had crossed the ocean to break with frightening force over the United States.
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