The Return of George Washington

by Edward Larson

  When first debating the executive in early June, many of the members knew Washington only by reputation and no consensus had yet emerged on the nature or structure of the general government. Madison, Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, and Charles Pinckney, for example, came to the Convention committed to forming a true national government founded on proportionate representation in Congress and an independent executive under the control of a single individual. Pinckney’s initial plan used the term “President” for the executive officer and, after much back-and-forth over the title, it became the one that stuck. Under the Virginia Plan, Congress would choose this officer for a single fixed term but, to separate power, Wilson always wanted the President elected by the people or by independent electors and eligible for reelection.

  Morris and Madison quickly came around to Wilson’s view on presidential selection but, until nearly the Convention’s end, most delegates favored having Congress pick the executive for a single seven-year term. With such a long term, however, they worried about what to do if problems arose. This led them in June to add a means for impeachment and removal.34 The following month, when the Convention next debated the presidency, Mason spoke for a shrinking majority when he pronounced “that an election by the National Legislature as originally proposed was the best. If it was liable to objections, it was liable to fewer than the others.”35 By then, however, this method survived with only six states still backing it and five states opposed or not voting. Washington joined Madison in voting no, which split Virginia’s delegation and kept it from casting a vote.36 The tension in that small group, particularly between Washington and Mason, must have been palpable. With the presumptive first President opposed, the issue was ripe for reconsideration.

  Three middle-state delegations—New York, New Jersey, and Delaware—proved particularly resistant to any reforms that would significantly strengthen the presidency. Together with half of the Maryland delegation, they formed a block committed to preserve an equal say for each state in Congress and in choosing the executive. From the outset, Connecticut’s Roger Sherman pushed for the compromise of having one house of Congress represent people and another represent states, but, depicting the executive as “nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the Legislature into effect,” he wanted the President to serve without a fixed term at the whim of Congress.37 If followed, this would have created something akin to a parliamentary republic. By September, Wilson could rightly say about the presidency, “It is in truth the most difficult of all on which we have had to decide.”38

  WITH LITTLE MORE SETTLED about the presidency than that only one person would fill it a time and the delegates moving on to other issues, Washington took Sunday, June 10, to visit Bartram’s Garden, on the Schuylkill River about three miles from Philadelphia. Founded by John Bartram in 1728 as the first commercial nursery in the colonies, the garden became an international clearinghouse for American plants. Bartram and his sons John Jr. and William traveled through the colonies gathering seeds and cuttings for propagation and sale. They returned with hundreds of previously unknown species, including a widely celebrated small flowering tree that William named Franklinia for Philadelphia’s first citizen. John’s knack for finding new species led George III to name him as the King’s Botanist for North America. Following John’s death in 1777, John Jr. ran the garden while William gathered plants. When Washington visited in 1787, William was in the midst of turning the journal of his latest collecting trip into a lyrical and lasting book, Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, [and] East and West Florida, which was destined to inspire a generation of nature writers and poets. After the volume failed to find a publisher, Washington helped to underwrite its first printing in 1791.

  Three days earlier, the cool, rainy Pennsylvania spring had abruptly given way to a hot, humid Philadelphia summer, making that Sunday an ideal time for Washington to escape the city. Accustomed to the large, formal plantings at Virginia’s grand estates, he privately expressed disappointment with the small size and functional arrangement of Bartram’s Garden, but was delighted by its many curious and exotic plants.39 He returned again in September, when different flowers bloomed, and subsequently ordered hundreds of plants for Mount Vernon from the Bartrams. On his first trip to the garden, Washington also stopped by a nearby farm to examine the effect of using gypsum as fertilizer. Taking notes on the process, he soon introduced it at Mount Vernon.

  Anyone watching Washington on that steamy Sunday in June would be hard-pressed to see him as a would-be Caesar conspiring to create an imperial presidency for himself. He played the Cincinnatus, more interested in plants than power. After observing him up close as President, John Adams later described Washington as the finest political actor he ever saw—but these pastoral pursuits were not for show. That very evening, with the spring rains finally over, he penned meticulous instructions to his nephew on planting the summer crops at Mount Vernon. “Delay no more,” he wrote about the turnips, “that the whole may be put in before the season is too far advanced.”40 As other delegates fretted over the Constitution, Washington worried about turnip plants. He likely talked about them and other agricultural matters with the members who owned farms. During the course of the summer, he also visited nearby vineyards, gristmills, and even a bee yard—peppering their owners with practical questions in each instance. This facet of Washington’s character appealed to republicans wary of a national power grab. Yet as much as he cared about his plantation, Washington was determined to see the process through at the Convention and was one of the few delegates never to miss a session. “There is not the smallest prospect of my returning before harvest,” he wrote to his nephew in early June, “and God knows how long it may be after it.”41

  BOGGED DOWN IN DETAILS, once the delegates deferred further consideration of the executive on June 9, the Senate took center stage in their deliberations. The nationalistic Virginia Plan called for proportional representation in both house of Congress, with the plan’s most ardent and insightful proponents viewing population as the only just way to allocate seats. They foresaw the United States as a nation of people rather than a confederation of states. “As all authority was derived from the people,” Wilson explained early on, “equal numbers of people ought to have an equal number of representatives.”42

  While a majority of delegations accepted this nationalist viewpoint, a determined minority made up mainly of small states clung to the federalist fundamental of equal representation for every state. Motivated by some mix of high ideals and state interest, most members of these delegations wanted merely an enhanced confederation of sovereign states. “Let them unite if they please,” New Jersey’s William Paterson said on June 9 of the states favoring proportional representation, “but let them remember that they have no authority to compel the others to unite. New Jersey would be swallowed up. I would rather submit to a Monarch, to a despot, than to such a fate.”43 The New Jersey, Delaware, and New York delegations backed Paterson on this key point, as did half of the delegates from Maryland.

  Seeking compromise, Connecticut’s delegation proposed having proportional representation in Congress’s lower house and equal representation in the Senate, but such a novel and unprincipled mishmash only slowly won favor at the Convention. The battle for representation went on for weeks, first in the committee of the whole with Washington sitting as a member of Virginia’s delegation and later, after June 19, at the Convention with him presiding. A fight over deep principle with profound practical implications, it was the one clash that threatened to derail the Convention.

  “Can we forget for whom we are forming a Government? Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called States?” Wilson asked for the nationalists.44 He objected to a majority of the states having power to set the nation’s course when those states contained a minority of its people and wealth: they could easily abuse their power.

  Other delegates saw their rights and welfare flowing from the states and did not want to dise
nfranchise them. “A general government will never grant me this,” Oliver Ellsworth said of his domestic happiness, “as it cannot know my wants or relieve my distress.”45 Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey dismissed Connecticut’s proposed compromise as “a novelty, an amphibious monster . . . that never would be rec[eive]d by the people.”46

  Franklin, though, was not so sure. Looking at both sides in his folksy, pragmatic way, he noted, “If a proportional representation takes place, the small States contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large States say their money will be in danger.” Like a carpenter making a table from planks of uneven length, he would add or subtract a little from each to make a good fit.47

  By Saturday, June 30, some big-state nationalists wanted to call the bluff of those demanding equal representation. “If a minority should refuse their assent to the new plan of a general government,” Wilson asserted, “and if they will have their own will, and without it separate the union, let it be done.” It could not happen on better grounds, he added.48

  Madison and Rufus King agreed. If the Convention caved on this point, King declared, then “our business here is at an end.”49 Delaware’s impetuous Gunning Bedford Jr. shot back, “The Large States dare not dissolve the confederation. If they do the small ones will find some foreign ally . . . who will take them by the hand and do them justice.” Turning to the nationalists, he said with emphasis, “I do not, gentleman, trust you.”50 The delegates adjourned for the week in disarray with a vote on the so-called Connecticut Compromise scheduled for Monday.

  Watching the increasingly bitter debate from the chair, Washington nearly lost hope. That evening, he dined with delegates in club at Springsbury Manor and the next day met with Gouverneur and Robert Morris. According to an account of that meeting by the first editor of Washington’s papers, the perspicacious Jared Sparks, who later became president of Harvard, all three were dejected by the “deplorable state of things at the Convention.” They complained of conflicting opinions “obstinately adhered to” and members threatening to leave. “At this alarming crisis,” the account noted, “a dissolution of the Convention was hourly to be apprehended.”51

  Hamilton in fact had departed on the thirtieth, and the other New York delegates soon followed him home. “I am seriously and deeply distressed at the aspect of the Councils which prevailed when I left Philadelphia,” he wrote to Washington. “I fear we shall let slip the golden opportunity of rescuing the American empire from disunion anarchy and misery.”52 Washington replied in near anguish: “I almost dispair of seeing favourable issue to the proceedings of the Convention, and do therefore repent having had any agency in the business.”53 Firmly in the nationalist camp, Washington presumably favored proportional representation in Congress but, like Franklin, was probably willing to take from both sides to save the middle. Indeed, from this point on, all of Washington’s actions can most easily be seen as the efforts of a determined leader trying to achieve meaningful consensus.

  On July 2, when delegates finally voted on the Connecticut Compromise, the Convention deadlocked: five to five with one state split. Virginia voted no. Declaring “we are now a full stop,” Sherman backed a motion to commit the matter to a committee with one member from each state, where cooler heads might prevail. “Something must be done, or we shall disappoint not only America, but the whole world,” Gerry pleaded. As he saw it, not only the Convention, but the country, hung in the balance. “If we do nothing, it appears to me we must have war and confusion—for the old confederation would be at an end.” Led by Madison and Wilson, most big-state nationalists opposed the move but, perhaps influenced by his meeting with Washington, Gouverneur Morris endorsed the motion and it passed with Virginia voting yes.54 The delegates then stacked the committee with moderates like Franklin and Gerry from big states and hard-liners like Paterson and Bedford from small ones. A vocal critic of centralized power, Gerry chaired the committee.

  With its most divisive issue in the hands of this so-called Grand Committee, the Convention recessed early for Independence Day. “Happy indeed would it be if the Convention shall be able to recommend such a firm and permanent Government for this Union, as all who live under it may be Secure in their lives, liberty and property,” Washington wrote on July 1 to a confidant in Virginia, “but what will be the final result of its deliberations, the book of fate must disclose.” Alluding to the ongoing debates, he warned, “Whilst the local views of each State and the separate interests by which they are too much govern’d will not yield to a more enlarged scale of politicks; incompatibility in the laws of different States, and disrespect to those of the general government must render the situation of this great Country weak, inefficient and disgraceful.”55

  THE FOURTH OF JULY never came at a more opportune time. And never before or since did so many of the country’s founders gather at one place for the occasion. In its galaxy of patriot luminaries, it outshone even the first Fourth in Philadelphia, which lacked Washington and much of America’s military elite. Among the delegates in attendance on July 4, the Convention included six signers of the Declaration of Independence. And of the fifty-five delegates who attended the Convention at some point, nearly three-fourths had represented their states in Congress during the Revolutionary War and more than half had served in the Continental Army or wartime state militias. Among delegates with military service, six endured the grim winter of 1777–78 at Valley Forge, five engaged in the brutal southern campaigns of 1779–81, and five participated in the decisive victory at Yorktown in 1781. Franklin, of course, made that final victory possible by brokering the alliance with France. Every delegate could reflect on personal sacrifices endured or witnessed for independence. To them, the Fourth held sacred significance. Further, many patriot notables lived in Philadelphia, including two added signers of the Declaration of Independence, and an array of Revolutionary War officers assembled in the city on that Independence Day for the annual meeting of the state’s chapter of the Cincinnati.

  Festivities began before dawn with the assembling of the city’s militia and ended after dark in a stunning display of fireworks. The infantry shot its first feu de joie at 6 A.M., surely waking much of the city. Artillery followed with three times thirteen rounds of cannon fire. Church bells rang through the morning and troops paraded to martial music. At eleven, Washington, and many delegates and other dignitaries, attended a patriotic oration at the Reformed Calvinist Church, where the speaker predicted “the stately fabric of a free and vigorous government rising out of the wisdom of a Federal Convention” as if it were predestined to happen. The afternoon was marked by “entertainments” at various taverns, where, as one newspaper wrote, “different parties from the city and Jersey met with mutual congratulations, and spent the remainder of the day with liberality and good humour.”

  Washington joined the party at Epple’s Tavern before retiring to the Powel’s home for evening tea. Formal toasts of the day typically included ones to Washington, Franklin, and the Convention: “May they recommend, and the United States adopt, such a plan, as will secure the happiness of America,” proclaimed the party at Preston’s Tavern. Had these revelers known of the discord within the Convention, they might not have cheered so loudly.56

  The spirit of the day likely reminded the delegates of the cords already binding the states and prodded them to seek some way forward. For weeks following the Fourth, Philadelphia’s newspapers carried accounts of Independence Day orations and toasts from nearby towns and neighboring states. Everywhere, it seemed, Americans were looking toward Washington and the Convention. “The Grand Convention, may they form a constitution for an eternal republic,” one of the thirteen toasts at New Jersey’s capital declared, while in New York, citizens hailed, “The Convention in Philadelphia, may an energetic federal government be the results of their councils.” From nearby Lancaster, the first toast was to the Fourth, the second to Congress, the third to Washington, “the Father and
Savior of his Country,” the eighth to Franklin, and the ninth to “the members of the present Convention: May they do as much towards the support of our Independence, as their virtuous President did towards establishing it.” The sentiments were similar across the land. “The Convention now sitting,” remarked one correspondent in Philadelphia’s Independent Gazetteer on July 6, “stands remarkable and alone in political history.” Where before governments were forced on people, “it still seems singular to see an authority . . . presiding tacitly over the confederation of the states by voluntary election.”57

  With an insatiable public demand for his image, Washington used this pause in the proceedings to sit for artist Charles Willson Peale, the leading portraitist of the revolutionary generation. Washington had sat for Peale five prior times, beginning in 1772, when Peale portrayed him as a boyish-looking militia officer. In all, from seven sittings spread over twenty-three years, Peale would make sixty paintings and numerous prints of Washington. In Peale’s earlier portraits of him, Washington appeared younger than his age with a smooth, confident face and eyes generally looking away, as if into the future. The portrait from the Convention depicts a much older man, with some wrinkles and a slightly sagging jaw, but still in a crisp officer’s uniform and now staring straight ahead with large, firm, fixed eyes. Peale’s mezzotint print from this sitting reads, “His Excel: G: Washington Esq: L.L.D. Late Commander in Chief of the Armies of the U.S. of America & President of the Convention of 1787.” Already, Washington’s role at the Convention vied with his military service as worthy of note on a commercial print, which Peale offered for sale at one dollar per copy even before the proceedings ended.58 The only image of Washington drawn at the Convention, and one made at a low point in the deliberations, Peale’s print shows him weary but determined: a general who won a war of attrition with a world power by never surrendering.