Turning to domestic affairs, Washington made no mention of his critics. He contrasted the peaceful and prosperous state of the United States with the desperation in Europe. “The molestations of our trade” were overbalanced by the benefits the nation derived from her neutral position. Population was growing; internal improvements were rushing forward accompanied with tax burdens so light as to be scarcely felt. “Is it too much to say that our country exhibits a spectacle of national happiness never before surpassed if ever before equaled?” And should not Americans “unite our efforts to preserve, prolong, and improve our immense advantages?”
The Republicans were so devoted to controversy that their first reaction was that Washington had raised the white flag of surrender. Some, indeed, believed that this was a prelude to his resignation. But it quickly became clear that Washington (with an assist from Hamilton who had helped him draft the speech) had made a master stroke. To the simplistic argument that the Jay Treaty was anti-French, he had opposed an equally simplistic argument, which was much closer to the experience of every citizen. He had cut as of old through layers of controversy down to the basic, unassailable truth. The nation was still free and, despite irritations on the ocean and at the conference tables, more prosperous than it had ever been. The nation was a growing colossus whose security rested not on which belligerent won the European victory but on the continuation of conditions that would allow it to achieve unhampered its maturity. If this were the case—and every American who looked around him dispassionately saw that it was indeed the case—why all this howling of faction, all these accusations that the government was selling out the country? Why all this hysteria about the details of a treaty that was serving the major end of allowing the nation to grow undisturbed?
The pendulum, which had swung so far against Washington, was swinging back. But, as Washington wrote, “the restless mind of man cannot be at peace.” A grave constitutional crisis loomed.
According to the Constitution, only the Senate had to acquiesce in a treaty. Senators were then elected indirectly, by state legislatures. There was a Federalist majority. The House was elected directly by the people and was considered the “popular,” the democratic branch of the government. It had a Republican majority which was still infuriated by the Jay Treaty, and also resented the domination which exclusive legislative concern with foreign affairs gave the Senate. There was the further fact that in his commercial treaty with Great Britain Jay had regulated trade matters which had formerly been subject to action by the entire Congress. This could be interpreted as usurpation by the Senate and the executive of matters that correctly belonged to “the people” gathered in the House.
The House had a weapon which its Republican majority intended to use the instant the Jay Treaty came back, duly signed, from England. Money bills originated in the House. Various appropriations would be necessary to implement the treaty. The House intended to reopen the whole question of the treaty and refuse to vote the money if, as seemed most probable, they did not approve it.
This issue was hanging over Washington’s head when he celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday. The House showed its teeth by voting, fifty to thirty-eight, not to recess for half an hour so that the members could call on the President. Nonetheless, bells rang, cannon boomed, and the Presidential Mansion was besieged by visitors. Towards nightfall, Washington received the best possible birthday present: a copy of the treaty Pinckney had negotiated with Spain.
Having withdrawn from her alliance with England against France, Spain was afraid that the Jay Treaty would be followed by an alliance between England and the United States that would overwhelm her North American possessions. Conciliation seemed called for. Spain had opened the Mississippi to American shipping and cleared away in a satisfactory manner all the other controversies that had for so long embroiled the southwest frontier.
No one, of course, could object to this treaty or to another in which, by not exorbitant sums, the navyless United States bought off the Barbary pirates.
Late in February, a certified copy of the ratified Jay Treaty appeared. The leaders of the House expected Washington to take no action until they had been consulted, but on leap-year day, 1796, Washington declared the treaty the law of the land. The House instantly struck back, voting sixty-two to thirty-seven that their body had the right to reconsider treaties and demanding that Washington turn over to them all papers, omitting only those that would embarrass current foreign negotiations, which might “throw light” on the treaty or how it had been negotiated.
Washington’s oldtime constitutional adviser, Madison, believed he would give in to the request. The politically active Virginia attorney (later Chief Justice) John Marshall explained that “the difficulty of resisting the popular branch” was always great and “particularly so when the passions of the public have been strongly and generally excited.” Marshall pointed to the wide popularity of the House’s demand, the overwhelming vote, the implication that if he refused, Washington had something to hide, and the danger he faced “of separating himself from the people.”
Washington wrote that this was “one of those great occasions than which none more important had occurred or probably may occur again.”
Washington believed that “the real question” was not the Jay Treaty but whether the House could increase its power. This guess was corroborated in Jefferson’s private correspondence with Monroe: “On the precedent now to be set will depend the future construction of our Constitution.… It is fortunate that the first decision is to be in a case so palpably atrocious as to have been predetermined by all America.” Jefferson admitted that the challenge would “bring on an embarrassing and critical state in our government,” but he considered the risk worth taking.
If the House were permitted to sabotage the Jay Treaty after it had constitutionally become the law of the land, the wound with England would be reopened without there being any constitutional way of closing it—or, indeed, of making any treaty that the executive could in good conscience ratify or a foreign power accept. How would Washington steer a rudderless ship of state between the Scylla of war with England and the Charybdis of war with France?
A forewarning of what would happen was given by the fact that every time an American vessel had reached home, its anchor was permanently dropped: no one wanted to risk the reprisal of British cruisers. And since farm prices depended on export, prosperity was skidding into general depression.
The Republicans argued that war was not a danger since it was only necessary to twist the British lion’s tail to make him back down. But so far the lion had shown no tendency to cower. And a war with England, so obviously fomented by the Republicans, might well, the geographic distribution of political views being what it was, create civil war within the United States. The Union might well be destroyed.
Washington’s personal feelings were also much involved. The House was not only encroaching on the Senate but had demanded presidential papers as a right. Washington had been careful not to encroach on the other branches, and he had no intention of letting any other branch encroach on the executive. This was not only a constitutional matter: he had never in his life willingly allowed anyone to push him around.
Another consideration was Washington’s strong desire to escape from the Presidency at the next major election, which would mark the end of his second term. If potentially catastrophic internal turmoil raged, he would surely be forced to stay on. Such compulsion would be more than a personal tragedy: it might well frustrate his desire to demonstrate that republican succession could be peacefully achieved by a free election. He would probably (as he realized) die during a third term, which would mean that the Vice President would succeed as a crown prince succeeds in a monarchy.
As for the constitutional confusions, Washington recognized that they existed, but he felt that each branch should be recessive except when the nation was clearly endangered. The House could veto a foreign policy decision if it had been achieved by fraud or pre
sented “such striking evidence of national injury … as to make war or any other evil preferable.” Washington believed that “every unbiased mind,” would agree that this was not the case with the Jay Treaty.
Whether or not it turned the people against him, Washington felt he had no choice. To the amazement and rage of the Republican leadership in and out of the House, he refused, on constitutional grounds, to turn over a single document.
Never before had Washington been subject to such vituperation. However, he adhered to his old principle of not entering into public controversy beyond the constitutional requirements of his office. Again, this served him well. As other men ranted and accused and waved their fists in the air, the extreme virulence of their attacks on the President and the Jay Treaty encouraged a backlash. So many protests flooded into the House against their intended action that the majority wavered and at last withdrew the claim. Jefferson commented bitterly, “Congress has risen. You will see by their proceedings the truth of what I have always observed to you: that one man outweighs them all in influence over the people, who have supported his judgment against their own and that of their representatives. Republicanism must lie on its oars, resign the vessel to its pilot, and themselves to the course he thinks best for them.”
This did not mean that the Republicans were reconciled. According to John Marshall, Washington’s unequivocal denial of the claims of the House “appeared to break the last cord of that attachment which had theretofore bound some of the active leaders of the opposition to the person of the President. Amidst all the agitations and irritations of the party, a sincere respect and real affection for the Chief Magistrate, the remnant of former friendship, had still lingered in the bosoms of some who had engaged with ardor in the political contests of the day. But, if the last spark of affection was not now extinguished, it was at least concealed under the more active passions of the moment.”
July, 1796, saw the last exchange of letters between Washington and Jefferson. For some reason, Jefferson felt called on to deny that it was he who had released an old official document to the press. He added disingenuous assertions that he was no longer engaged in politics. Washington answered angrily. He had not believed until recently “that parties would, or even could, go to the length I have been witness to, nor … that, while I was using my utmost exertions to establish a national character of our own, independent, as far as our obligations and justice would permit, of every nation of the earth; and wished, by steering a steady course, to preserve this country from the horrors of a desolating war, that I should be accused of being the enemy of one nation, and subject to the influence of another; and to prove it, that every act of my administration would be tortured, and the grossest and most insidious misrepresentations of them be made (by giving one side only of a subject, and that too in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or a common pickpocket). But enough of this. I have already gone further in the expression of my feelings than I intended.”
The inescapable fact was that Washington had suffered a major-defeat. He had wished to relinquish to his successor a unified nation that would demonstrate to all the world harmony achieved under free government. He had wished to bring together all rational points of view in his person and his government. He could still, it is true, sway the people to ends he considered essential, but in so doing he had to batter away a numerous and vocal group which comprised many of his former dear companions.
Johns Adams confided to his wife that Washington was deeply hurt. “All the studied efforts of the Federalists to counterbalance abuse by compliment don’t answer the end.”
FORTY-SIX
Washington’s Farewell Address
(1796)
During May, 1796, Madison wrote Monroe in cipher, “It is now generally understood that the President will retire, and Jefferson is the object on one side, Adams apparently on the other.” Although the Federalists were worried—“If a storm gather,” Hamilton asked Washington, “how can you retreat?”—Washington wrote firmly that he would “close my public life on March 4 [1797], after which no consideration under heaven that I can foresee shall again draw me from the walks of private life.”
In that embattled springtime, Washington believed that he would have to withdraw facing his enemies sword in hand. Although he did not intend to make his announcement before late fall, when “it shall become indispensably necessary for the information of the [presidential] electors,” he jotted down a bitter and defensive draft of a farewell address. To prove that his desire to retire four years before was known “to one or two of those characters” (Madison and Jefferson) who were trying to “build their own consequence” by accusing him of tyrannical ambitions, Washington quoted entire the address which Madison had helped him prepare at that time.
Having argued for unity, for tolerance, for true neutrality, Washington launched angrily into one of those paragraphs which affirm what they deny: “As some of the gazettes of the United States have teemed with all the invective that disappointment, ignorance of facts, and malicious falsehoods could invent, to misrepresent my politics and affections—to wound my reputation and feelings—and to weaken, if not entirely destroy, the confidence you have been pleased to repose in me; it might be expected at the parting scene of my public life that I should take some notice of such virulent abuse. But, as heretofore, I shall pass them over in utter silence.”
He continued in a pitiful vein quite uncharacteristic of the proud old hero: he hoped that, “as I did not seek the office with which you have honored me, that charity may throw her mantle over my want of abilities to do better; that the gray hairs of a man” who had spent “all the prime of his life in serving his country, be suffered to pass quietly to the grave, and that his errors, however numerous, if they are not criminal, may be consigned to the tomb of oblivion.”
He denied willful error. His administration, “the infancy of the government and all other things considered,” had been “as delicate, difficult, and trying as may occur again in any future period,” and throughout he had, to the best of his abilities, “consulted the true and permanent interests of our country, without regard to local considerations—to individuals, to parties, or to nations.” He had not served because of ambition or in any ignorance of the hazards to which he was exposing his reputation. Noting that he had refused “the bounty of several legislatures at the close of the war,” he stated that his service had brought no addition to his finances but rather the reverse. “I leave you with undefiled hands, and uncorrupted heart, and with ardent vows to heaven of the welfare and happiness of that country in which I and my forefathers to the third and fourth progenitor drew our first breath.”
Worried, as he later stated, by “the egotisms” in this draft, Washington allowed it to lie in his desk until, at Hamilton’s request, he sent it to his adviser. He empowered Hamilton to prepare an altogether new speech but wished also to have his own draft back in revised form. Hamilton did what he was asked. He removed from Washington’s draft the most achingly personal passages and expanded it into an appeal to the nation concerning the problems being immediately faced. However, he realized that this document would not contribute to Washington’s permanent reputation. Undoubtedly inspired by real affection and admiration for his longtime patron and also by the desire of the Federalists to have in the succeeding years a great figure to cling to, Hamilton wrote a new draft intended to be “importantly and lastingly useful.” Washington agreed with his adviser that the new version—known to history as “Hamilton’s Main Draft”—was the better. It became the basis for “Washington’s Farewell Address.”
Washington began his own revisions by transcribing the text in his own handwriting, making innumerable verbal changes. The ideas he found expressed were with a few exceptions his own. No man was more familiar than Hamilton with Washington’s sentiments, and long experience had taught him that Washington would not knowingly allow himself to be pushed. The way to in
fluence him was to put forward ideas in a manner that made them seem an extension of his own thinking. Had Hamilton drafted the address according to his own thinking, Washington would have simply laid it aside. The experienced aide only inserted sentiments with which Washington might not agree if he thought he could do it so inconspicuously that the President would not notice. Almost all of them came out. Washington also cut out almost all the “egotisms” which Hamilton, probably in deference to Washington’s draft, had inserted in the new manuscript.
The chances are very good that, had Washington been left to himself, he would never have released the defensive, angry, and almost lachrymose draft which he had written long before the need and which would have shattered his principle of avoiding partisan controversy. However, the fact remains that it was Hamilton who presented the alternative on which the final address was based. Despite Washington’s many changes, much of Hamilton’s style remains. This is most conspicuous in the prolixity. Washington’s natural tendency was to be concise, to pack sentences until a dense but clear paragraph covered all phases of the problem. Hamilton argued things out, as in a legal brief. The Farewell Address could be considered Hamilton’s had it expressed Hamilton’s ideas. It expressed Washington’s. It was as much Washington’s as any presidential paper was likely to be that had been drafted by an intimate aide. If all such documents were attributed to the speech writers, history would read very differently and surely less accurately. Although grounded on Hamilton’s Main Draft, the famous paper is correctly called Washington’s Farewell Address.
The address, as finally promulgated, passed quickly over personal considerations—Washington had not sought the Presidency, had not wished a second term, was getting older, and hoped from his retirement to see the nation continuing on a virtuous path that would lead the rest of the world to liberty.
The next section stated that since union was the basis on which American liberty rested, and also the nation’s protection against involvement in foreign broils, it would obviously be the focus of attack from “internal and external enemies.” The Constitution was the instrument of unity. A thirst for innovation could be dangerous. Only experience should inspire changes.
Washington- The Indispensable Man Page 38
