Washington- The Indispensable Man

by James Thomas Flexner

  Thus, Washington’s disapproval of the Democratic Societies grew out of his basic conviction. However, his public denuciation was contrary to his convictions, since it was divisive. When still a member of the cabinet, Jefferson had warned him that speaking out against the Societies would be “calculated to make the President assume the station of the head of a party instead of the head of the nation.” Had Jefferson still been by his side. Washington would undoubtedly have again listened and been stopped. As it was, raddled and hurried after a strenuous campaign, no longer thinking with the clarity that he had once possessed, he slipped into what was for him—however typical it might have been of many Presidents who succeeded him—a major misstep.

  Washington was not one to confess mistakes or take back anything he had said. Yet he gave the most convincing proof of his realization that he had veered onto the wrong road. He never again as President denounced publicly any aspect of the opposition. Nor did he ever again make any public statement capable of rational interpretation as limiting the basic freedoms of the people.

  FORTY-THREE

  A Disastrous Document

  (1795)

  The opening of 1795 brought major changes in Washington’s cabinet. Knox, needing to attend to unwise land speculations he had made in Maine, resigned as Secretary of War. Hamilton also resigned. He was angry and disgusted at the attacks to which public office subjected him. The charges that he had taken graft being untrue, he required to support his family a greater income. He had carried through as much of his scheme for revolutionizing the economy as Congress would accommodate, and did not consider it worth his energies merely to administer laws already passed. He surely recognized that conciliating Britain was so essential to the United States that his daily presence in the pilot house was not necessary. And he intended to remain, as he practiced law in New York, Washington’s principal adviser.

  Washington had scraped the bottom of the barrel of truly able founding fathers. As replacements, he brought in two men who proved to be malign, not only in his administration but in that of his successor, John Adams. Recognizing that (there being hardly any army) the functions of Secretary of War were mostly Indian affairs, he appointed Timothy Pickering, a stony-faced Puritan with hawk eyes. Pickering had opposed Washington at the time of the Conway Cabal, but he was an able administrator who agreed with Washington’s desire not to drive and isolate the tribes, but rather to embrace them in the life of the United States. To administer the Treasury, Washington accepted Hamilton’s first assistant: fat, plausible, scheming Oliver Wolcott, Jr.

  Although Washington could not know that his new cabinet ministers had a low opinion of his abilities as compared to Hamilton’s, he did not trust them. Unlike their predecessors, they were not consulted concerning executive decisions; they were limited to the routine of their departments. And Hamilton himself waited in vain for appeals for advice. Perhaps Washington was annoyed that his aide had left his side. In any case, the President enforced a distinction between members of the government, who had a right to certain authority, and civilians, who had none. Hamilton was now a civilian. Much water was to flow under the bridge before Washington was forced by desperation to turn again to his former right-hand man.

  However, the passage of every month made Washington more in need of someone to lean on. Randolph was the only remaining original member of his cabinet. Randolph was Washington’s longtime disciple and affectionate friend. If he depended more on charm than genius, was too light a weight to be capable of himself taking over, this may have reassured the aging President, who knew that his own powers were failing. In any case, he came (as it turned out tragically) to depend on the mellifluous-voiced Randolph more than he had ever before depended on any one man.

  Congress dawdled through its session, waiting to hear from Jay. On January 31, 1795, an excited sea captain reported the rumor that a treaty had been signed, but for week after week thereafter there was no confirming word. As Congress prepared to adjourn on March 3, Washington, convinced that a treaty must soon arrive, prepared by calling a special session for June 8. The Congressmen were on their way home when the Jay Treaty did appear. One can imagine the anxiety with which Washington and Randolph opened the dispatch box. They quickly discovered that they had every reason to be perturbed.

  The best thing about the treaty was that the British were willing to sign. Here were rules, however unsatisfactory to the United States, which would, if followed, prevent a disastrous war. But had Jay really been unable to escape making so many concessions? As Washington commented sadly, he was “not favorable to it.”

  On the long-disputed issue of the Canadian border, the British contracted to evacuate the western posts even if at an irritatingly distant date, June 1, 1796. But Jay had agreed to perpetuate the Canadian fur interest by allowing the British to trade freely with the Indians in American territory.

  The treaty included the stipulation that nothing therein would be binding which was contrary to the previous international obligations of the United States. The old treaties with France could therefore, at least in principle, not be violated. However, there were many provisions to which the French and their partisans would object. Jay had not only abandoned all claims that free ships made free goods and bowed (as he could not avoid doing) to the Consolato del Mare. He had agreed that almost everything that could be of any use to France was contraband which could legally be removed by British raiders from American vessels. And he had thrown away what the Jeffersonians regarded as their best method of retaliation against the British: the possibility that private British funds in the United States might be sequestered.

  Washington had interpreted the Senate’s consent to the Jay mission as authorization to negotiate all difficulties with the British, long-standing ones in addition to those specifically caused by the war. Jay had thus been empowered to regulate commercial relations as long as he observed one unalterable proviso: the British must open their West Indian islands to American shipping. This proviso Jay had honored only pro forma: the British had agreed to admit only tiny American ships—seventy tons or less. In return for this minuscule concession, Jay had conceded, to vast potential damage to the southern states, that no American ships would carry to Europe a variety of American goods—including the cotton which the South was just beginning to grow—which were also produced in the West Indies. That the commercial part of the Jay Treaty was to be in effect for only fifteen years would do little to diminish what Washington realized would be the screams of outrage. It would be shouted that Jay had not only sold out the cause of France and freedom, but the prosperity of the United States as well.

  Washington admitted that he needed more “intimate” knowledge of American trade fully to understand the commercial sections of the treaty, and the man most fully informed would have been enchanted to step into the situation and inform him. But Washington made no effort to get in touch with Hamilton. He agreed with Randolph that they two would keep the contents of the treaty completely secret for the three months until the special session of Congress would convene. The Senate would then, under whatever rules concerning publication it would itself establish, undertake its constitutional role of “advice and consent.” Washington wished the Senate’s decision not to be set awry by what would certainly be, if the provisions were now made public, three months of violent controversy.

  The elderly President hoped that he would be able to follow the Senate’s decision. He himself saw only the horns of a dilemma. If the treaty were denied, war with England would be more than probable. If the treaty, with all its obvious imperfections, were ratified, national discord would rise to terrifying heights.

  When the special session finally convened, Washington presented the treaty to the Senate with no recommendation. The Senate resolved continued secrecy and then, after eighteen days of stormy debate, reached its conclusion by exactly the required two-thirds vote: twenty to ten. They advised ratification of all of the articles except the one that dealt with trade t
o the British West Indies. This should be the subject of “further friendly negotiations.”

  The need to renegotiate one section of the treaty put Washington into a constitutional quandary. If the consent of the Senate had to be procured concerning the new provisions, how could this be done without keeping the whole treaty issue dangling? And when a revised clause finally came back from England it would become the subject of renewed debate at a time when passions might well have risen extremely high. Washington considered preparing immediately a text for submission to the Senate, but was dissuaded by Randolph, who pointed out that doing so would imply that he had made up his mind to sign the rest of the treaty. Finally, Washington decided that he might as well, for once, consult his cabinet. After his Hamiltonian ministers, who wished to accelerate the accommodation with England, urged unanimously that new senatorial consent did not have to be secured, Washington accepted this view.

  Although the Senate had advised him to keep the full text of the treaty secret until he had himself acted, Washington concluded that the time had come to publish. However, he was anticipated by a Virginia senator who leaked the text to an opposition editor. The pamphlet that was soon flying around the nation stated that the people were being given what their government had tried to hide from them.

  Now that the responsibility of ultimate decision had come to him, neither Washington’s conscience nor his temperament would allow him to follow his original intention of passing the buck by automatically following the Senate. After a month had gone by, Randolph noted that he was still undecided.

  Since the treaty was now known to all and was under public discussion, Washington felt that he could with propriety consult Hamilton. But he knew Hamilton well enough to write a letter that would prevent the former Secretary of the Treasury from considering himself the final authority. Washington, so he stated, believed that Hamilton had paid as much attention to commercial matters “as most men.” He therefore wished “to have the favorable and unfavorable side of each article stated and compared together that I may see the tendency and bearing of them, and, ultimately on which side the balance is to be found.”

  Despite Washington’s lukewarm wording, Hamilton leapt at the opportunity with such hunger that his letter, to which he was to add two supplementary mailings, occupies, in his collected works, forty-one printed pages. His final conclusion was the Senate’s: the West Indian article was unacceptable but the rest of the treaty should be signed.

  With this conclusion Randolph and indeed all Washington’s advisers agreed. Then a new blow struck. The British, who had of their own volition relaxed the Provision Order that was so destructive to American commerce, suddenly revived it. That such action could perhaps be justified under the Jay Treaty’s vague definition of contraband, made the situation the more frightening since it seemed an indication that the British intended to interpret the treaty in the harshest possible manner. If this revelation had been known to the Senate, the Senate might have acted differently. Their decision therefore ceased to be a staff on which Washington could lean. The executive was now off on its own.

  Washington asked the advice of Hamilton and also his cabinet ministers. Hamilton recommended that Washington ratify, but instruct his representative in London not to deliver the document until the Provision Order was rescinded. The three lesser cabinet ministers urged that, having signed the treaty, the President should have it delivered with an accompanying memorandum of protest. Washington decided, without notifying Hamilton or the lesser cabinet ministers, to follow Randolph’s advice on a course less favorable to Britain. He would hold off ratification until the Provision Order was actually withdrawn.

  Randolph then suggested that the reopening of the negotiation could be used to clarify other points to the American advantage. The President empowered the Secretary of State to prepare a memorial to this effect. Then, finding “the intense heat of the city” almost unbearable, Washington did what he had never done before. Leaving the government in the hands of a favorite minister, he went off to Mount Vernon for a long stay in the midst of crisis.

  It seemed an inexorable fate that the relaxation Washington needed desperately and hoped to achieve when at Mount Vernon should prove utterly elusive. A persistent small matter during that summer of 1795 was that he had allowed his personal staff so to deteriorate that he had to write all his correspondence, official as well as private, in his own hand. The major matter was the storm of indignation over the Jay Treaty, which passed beyond all previous bounds of controversy. Even Federalists were up in arms: the mercantile community felt that they were better off with no treaty than they would be under Jay’s provisions. And the national majority interpreted the treaty as an about-face in American foreign policy. It had been assumed that, since the United States had never denounced her treaty of alliance with France, she was, even if cautious of her neutrality, in the pro-French orbit. The Jay Treaty was interpreted as an alliance with Britain. No one seemed to give credence to Washington’s belief that the Jay Treaty would be a continuation (if an unfortunate one) of the effort to keep the United States unentangled with either belligerent—as neutral as the facts of the war permitted.

  Jefferson exulted that the treaty “has, in my opinion, completely demolished the monarchical party here.… Those who understand the particular articles of it, condemn these articles. Those who do not understand them minutely, condemn it as wearing a hostile face to France. The last is the most numerous class, comprehending the whole body of the people.”

  Everyone was after Washington to turn the treaty down out of hand. He still believed that to do so meant war with England. But now, all other courses seemed also to point to the same war. Once the French received news of the American reaction, they would surely use it to lead American public opinion by the nose to their own ends. “I have never,” he mourned, “since I have been the administration of the government, seen a crisis which, in my judgment, has been so pregnant of interesting events; nor one from which more is to be apprehended.”

  Washington, who had down the years found his way out of so many crises, was in an utter quandary. He considered dashing for Philadelphia, but feared that his mainstay, Randolph, was on the road to Mount Vernon and they would miss each other. Then a strange letter appeared in his postbag. It was signed by Pickering:

  “For a special reason which can be communicated to you only in person, I entreat therefore that you will return.” Washington should in the meantime “decide on no important political measure.… Mr. Wolcott and I (Mr. Bradford concurring) waited on Mr. Randolph and urged his writing to request your return. He wrote in our presence.… This letter is for your own eye alone.”

  In great puzzlement and perturbation, Washington commanded the hitching up of his horses.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Tragedy with a Friend

  (1795)

  Kept in ignorance of what the executive was doing—they were not shown the Jay Treaty before it went to the Senate and subsequently did not now know what the President was deciding—Pickering, Wolcott, and Bradford resented Randolph’s perpetual close contact with the President. They suspected that the insinuating Virginian was urging Washington to repudiate the treaty in order to foment a war with England that would throw the United States into the hands of such Jacobins as they suspected Randolph secretly was.

  When finally, at Washington’s order sent from Mount Vernon, Randolph revealed to his colleagues what was planned, Wolcott wrote Hamilton, “What must the British government think of the United States, when they find the treaty clogged with one condition by the Senate, with another by the President, with no answer given in precise form after forty days, no minister to that country to take up negotiations proposed by ourselves,* the country rising into flame, their minister’s house insulted by a mob, their flag dragged through the streets as in Charleston and burnt before the doors of their consul, a driveler and a fool appointed chief justice?† Can they believe that we desire peace? I shall take immediate measures
with two of my colleagues this very day.… We will, if possible … save our country.”

  The disgruntled cabinet ministers possessed a document. It was a dispatch to his government from Fauchet, the French Minister in Philadelphia, which had been captured in mid-ocean. The British government had sent it to their minister in Philadelphia with the comment that it “might be made useful to the King’s service.” The Minister handed it on to Wolcott. Wolcott, in consultation with Pickering and Bradford, decided that it could be used to ruin Randolph.

  On the evening of Washington’s arrival in Philadelphia—August 11, 1795—he was relaxing with Randolph in the President’s house when Wolcott and Pickering appeared. “After taking a glass of wine,” Pickering remembered, “the President rose, giving me the wink. I rose and followed him into another room.

  “‘What,’ said he, ‘is the cause of your writing me such a letter?’

  “‘That man,’ said I, ‘in the other room’—pointing to the room in which we had left Randolph—‘is a traitor!’”

  Pickering spent two or three minutes summarizing the situation and then, so his account continues, handed Washington the dispatch. The President then said, “Let us return to the other room to prevent any suspicion of the cause of our withdrawing.”

  Eventually the guests went off and left Washington alone with the fateful document. Once before he had been faced with a similar crisis. He had been handed papers which pointed to the treason of a general he had deeply trusted. The revelation concerning Benedict Arnold had been one of the blackest moments of his life. Then he had been surrounded with friends: Lafayette, Hamilton, and many another. Now, except for servants, he was alone in the silent Presidential Mansion. Martha and the children, his secretary who was his entire staff, were all away. In the dark city that stretched outside his window, the only intimate he might have consulted was the man accused. Who knows how long he hesitated before he unfolded the sheets and began to read?