The Return of George Washington

by Edward Larson

  Diagram drawn for George Washington of his Mount Vernon plantation showing its five farms and main house.

  CHAPTER 8

  The First Federal Elections

  WASHINGTON STILL RODE THE CIRCUIT of his five Mount Vernon farms almost daily during the summer of 1788, conferring with his managers and observing the work of his slaves. But his mind was elsewhere. Since his return from Philadelphia in September 1787, more of his correspondence dealt with issues relating to ratification than with business, personal, or family matters. In January, for example, when the Constitution’s fate hung in balance at the Massachusetts convention, he wrote to a friend of having nothing “either interesting or entertaining” to communicate from Mount Vernon because his full attention was concentrated on the news from Boston.1 By July, when New York had replaced Massachusetts as the focus of federalists’ fears, he commented to John Jay, “We are awaiting the results [from the New York convention] with the greatest anxiety.”2

  Even the news that New York had ratified the Constitution did not diminish Washington’s obsession with federal politics. His concern merely shifted from ratifying to implementing the new government. The Constitutional Convention had asked Congress both to submit the Constitution to the states for ratification and, “as soon as” nine states had done so, to “fix the Day on which Electors should be appointed by the States which shall have ratified the same, and a Day on which the Electors should assemble to vote for the President, and the Time and place for commencing Proceedings under this Constitution.”3

  As the number of ratifying states approached nine, attendance at Congress in New York steadily increased. After months of inaction, it regained a quorum by late spring. In early July, after word spread that New Hampshire and Virginia had ratified, all thirteen states were represented for the first time since 1776. “Congress have deliberated in part on the arrangements for putting the new Machine into operation, but have concluded on nothing but the times for chusing electors,” Madison reported to Washington from Congress on July 21.4 Washington’s response spoke to his single-mindedness. “We have nothing in these parts worth communicating,” he wrote back. “Towards [Congress in] New York we look for whatever is interesting, until the States begin to act under the New form, which will be an important epocha in the annals of this Country.”5

  Washington actually began concentrating his attention on Congress as soon as Virginia ratified the Constitution in June. He asked Madison to stop at Mount Vernon on his way back to New York from the state convention. Madison had played a leading role at the ratifying convention and would do so as well in Congress. At both places, his words carried added weight due to his close ties to Washington. Fittingly, Madison arrived at Mount Vernon on July 4. He stayed for three days, with at least one of them spent almost entirely in conversation with Washington. Madison was a brilliant if compulsive political strategist—still single and childless at age thirty-seven—who eschewed idle chatter and social conversation. Any day spent planning or plotting with him would be as intense as it was rewarding. Based on their prior and subsequent correspondence, Washington and Madison likely discussed both congressional and state obstacles to launching the new federal government.

  One ticklish task facing Congress upon Madison’s return involved choosing a place for the new government to convene. Many states coveted the new federal seat, and while the government need not remain at the place first picked, that city might have an advantage in the final settlement. New York and Philadelphia stood out as the top contenders to serve as the government’s temporary seat. Although not put forward as an immediate option, Washington and Madison already hoped that the government might end up on the banks of the Potomac River near Mount Vernon. They favored that site for its central location. It lay at the midpoint of the country’s north-south axis and, if Washington’s company could open the upper Potomac for commercial navigation, at the terminus of the main route west.

  The tug-of-war in Congress went back and forth for two months with various cities considered but none able to win a majority, which delayed passage of legislation launching the new government. “The only chance the patowmac has is to get things in such a train that a coalition may take place between the Southern & Eastern States on the subject, and still more that the final seat may be undecided for two or three years, within which period the Western & S. Western population will enter more into the estimate,” Madison advised Washington in August.6 This led both men to hope that Congress would opt for an interim seat, with Washington favoring New York because it struck him as too far north to retain the prize.7 He got his wish in September when, rather than name any specific city, and thereby give that place an edge in the contest for the permanent site, lawmakers simply agreed to have the new government convene at “the present seat of Congress.”8

  Despite the hoped-for outcome, the drawn-out debate vexed Washington. It not only set back the federal elections but, by exposing how local interests could stymie national action, raised worse fears in his mind. “The present Congress, by it great indecision in fixing on the place at which the new one is to meet, have hung the expectations & patience of the Union on Tenter hooks,” Washington complained, “and thereby (if further evidence had been wanting) given a fresh instance of the unfitness of a government so constituted to regulate with precision and energy the Affairs of such an extensive Empire.”9 In short, he wrote to Madison in September, the impasse “might have given advantages to the Antifederalists,”10 which by this point was Washington’s greatest concern. It likely came up in his meeting with Madison; it certainly featured prominently in their letters. The antifederalists had lost the battle over ratification but vowed, as Patrick Henry put it at the end of Virginia’s convention, to continue the war “in a constitutional way.”11 By this he meant both forcing a second federal convention by getting the requisite two-thirds of states to request one and seeking to elect antifederalists to the First Federal Congress.12 Washington feared both prospects. Preventing them kept him fully engaged in the ongoing fight for a new union.

  AT THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, federalists had dismissed pleas by Randolph, Mason, and Gerry for a second convention, but the idea would not die. Antifederalists raised it at various state ratifying conventions and succeeded in getting New York’s convention to endorse it in a circular letter to the states. Upon first reading the circular, Washington complained to Madison that it would “be attended with pernicious consequences.”13 He soon penned a long lament to Benjamin Lincoln, the Revolutionary War general who had led the militia that crushed Shays’s Rebellion and who had just been elected Massachusetts’s lieutenant governor. “My apprehension is,” Washington wrote, “that the New York circular Letter is intended to bring on a general Convention at too early a period, and in short, by referring the subject to the Legislatures, to set everything afloat again.”14 By “everything” he meant the entire governmental structure and division of power between the states and center. The amendments proposed by New York’s state convention included both structural ones shifting federal power back to the states and personal ones protecting individual rights within the federal system. Privately, Washington expressed his willingness to have the First Congress consider the latter but not the former.15

  Even without a second convention, however, antifederalists could strangle the new government at birth by taking over the First Federal Congress.16 Voicing this fear, Washington soon wrote to Madison about the antifederalists, “Their expedient will now probably be an attempt to procure the Election of so many of their own Junto under the New Government, as, by the introduction of local and embarrassing disputes, to impede or frustrate its operation.”17 Henry was already stumping Virginia to this end and Clinton’s party would soon do the same in New York. Still smarting from their treatment at the state convention, Pennsylvania antifederalists met during September in Harrisburg to endorse a list of key constitutional amendments and slate of congressional candidates who supported them.

  In h
is letter to Lincoln, Washington left no doubt about his determination to counter this strategy by pushing for a federalist Congress and administration. Declaring that nothing “on our part ought to be left undone,” he wrote, “I conceive it to be of unspeakable importance, that whatever there be of wisdom, & prudence, & patriotism on the Continent, should be concentrated in the public Councils, at the first outset.”18 Given the consequences at stake, he could scarcely leave himself out of the federalists’ phalanx. “To be shipwrecked in sight of the Port,” Washington wrote to Madison in September, “would be the severest of all possible aggravations to our misery.”19

  Lincoln’s reply deftly turned these expressed fears into compelling reasons why Washington must accept the presidency. “The information which your Excellency has received, respecting the machinations of the antifederal characters, appears from what circulates in this part of the country, but too well founded,” Lincoln wrote from New England. “Every exertion will be made to introduce into the new government, in the first instance, characters unfriendly to those part of it, which in my opinion are its highest ornaments . . . with a view to totally change the nature of the government.” This, he asserted, would cost America its “honour” and Americans their “freedom and felicity.” Federalists should counter by flooding “the executive and the legislative branches” with their best candidates, Lincoln argued, “for the first impressions made therein will probably give a tone to all future measures.” You will receive a unanimous vote from the electors, Lincoln assured Washington, and antifederalists “must know that the influence of your Excellency will have in the organization of the new government and in enforcing the precepts of it, will embarrass their Scheames if not totally baffle them.” Their only hope lies in you declining the presidency, Lincoln warned: “your election they cannot hinder.” “Duty” calls, he told Washington; do not refuse it.20

  Lincoln was not alone in appealing to Washington’s sense of duty at this critical juncture. The flood of mail to Mount Vernon that followed ratification and preceded the naming of electors carried many such pleas. “In a matter so essential to the wellbeing of society as the prosperity of a newly instituted government a citizen of so much consequence as yourself to its success has no option but to lend his services,” Hamilton advised Washington. “Permit me to say it would be inglorious in such a situation” to refuse.21 “The World looks up to You Sir,” the wealthy British reformer Samuel Vaughan implored Washington, “to put a finishing hand to a Constitution for settling the unalienable Rights of the People on a lasting foundation.”22 Chancellor Livingston, who had known Washington since the Revolutionary War, commented, “No motives of private ease, or personal convenience will weigh with you when the great interests of the community require your service.”23 Similar calls came from Madison, Lafayette, Gouverneur Morris, and others. They resonated with Washington’s own core beliefs. “It behoves all the advocates of the Constitution,” he wrote, “to combine their exertions for collecting the wisdom & virtue of the Continent to one centre; in order that the Republic may avail itself of the opportunity for escaping from Anarchy.”24 Washington had to count himself within this essential group.

  BY ALL ACCOUNTS, HOWEVER, Washington did not want the presidency. On the same early autumn day that he wrote these stirring words about all the Constitution’s advocates pulling together in one center to forge the new government, Washington made the rounds of his five Virginia farms. Seven plows broke the fields at one, he noted in his diary; most hands were drawing rails or making fodder at the others. Washington loved this life and knew it well. He was at home at Mount Vernon as nowhere else. Work continued on expanding his house and gardens. Washington always had new ideas for improving this or changing that on his plantation—and enough slaves at least to attempt their implementation. His letters spoke of domestic bliss and his impending end. “The great searcher of human hearts is my witness,” Washington wrote in a typical assertion from this period. “I have no wish which aspires beyond the humble and happy lot of living and dying a private citizen on my own farm.”25 This, he pleaded in vain to Hamilton, “is my great and sole desire.”26

  Martha, too, wished to remain at Mount Vernon. She had two grandchildren, aged nine and seven, living with her there and doted on them excessively. Although comfortable in high society, Martha did not enjoy it as much as her husband did. She had more than enough visitors to satisfy her need for company. Having moved to Mount Vernon from an even grander plantation thirty years earlier, she had made it her home and a much finer estate. Slightly older than George, Martha wanted nothing more than to live out her life quietly with her husband. By all accounts, they were happily married.

  Although Washington’s friends knew of his reluctance to accept the presidency, the public did not. Not only had he never publicly declared that he would not serve but, by presiding over the Constitutional Convention, Washington led most Americans to think that he would.27 Thus, as more states ratified the Constitution, more people wrote to him for jobs in the prospective new federal administration. Once ratification became assured, the trickle of supplications turned into a stream, particularly from persons holding state posts, like harbormaster and customs collector, that would pass to federal control. Many also came from down-on-their-luck war veterans looking to their former commander for relief.

  Perhaps the most pathetic petition came from former Virginia governor Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who had rebuffed Washington’s pleas to support the Constitution and instead opposed it at the state ratifying convention. “It gives me great pain my dear sir, to make this application,” Harrison wrote, “and I hope you will believe me when I say, that nothing but dire necessity, could have prevailed upon me to do it.” Explaining that the postwar collapse in land prices had brought him “very deep distress,” Harrison sought the post of customs collector at Norfolk.28

  To every supplicant, high or low, Washington replied in a similar way. The new government did not yet exist, he observed, and he did not want to lead it.29 “The impropriety of my anticipating events or hazarding opinions, would scarcely permit me to touch, however slightly, on these delicate topics,” he explained to one job seeker in June 1788.30 Further, Washington typically included words to the effect that, should he accept the presidency, he was “determined to go into it perfectly free from all engagements of every nature whatsoever.”31 He maintained this pose as late as March 1789, when his old friend Benjamin Lincoln, disappointed by the lack of income generated by the office of lieutenant governor and “embarrassed” by the depressed value of his investments, asked him for a job.32 To Lincoln, though, Washington added, “You need not doubt my inclinations are very sincere & very strong to serve you.”33 By year’s end, Lincoln had the customs post in Boston. Washington gave no such reassurance to Harrison but instead coldly noted that in all appointments “due regard shall be had . . . to political considerations.”34 Antifederalists like Harrison, Washington as much as said, need not apply. A member of Virginia’s landed gentry with a pedigree far longer than Washington’s, Harrison took offense at this rebuff. “I did not conceive the application improper,” he wrote back. “The idea of being a placeman under any government is disagreeable.”35

  Written to senior leaders entitled to frank responses, these letters to Lincoln and Harrison tipped Washington’s hand somewhat. Even though both letters still used a conditional construction—“if” or “should”—when speaking of him becoming President, they offered clues to Washington’s plans for office.36 He wanted the executive branch staffed by federalists, they suggested, just as he wanted Congress and even the states dominated by his faction. “There will be great reason,” Washington had explained earlier to Maryland federalist James McHenry, “for those who are well-affected to the government, to use their utmost exertions that the worthiest Citizens may be appointed to the two houses of the first Congress and where State Elections take place previous to this choice that the same principle govern i
n these also.”37 Under the Constitution, the various state legislatures chose the federal senators and could pick the presidential electors, so state elections would directly impact the federal government. Washington wanted a clean sweep for the Constitution.

  IN RETROSPECT, WASHINGTON’S ASCENT to the presidency seems so foreordained as to need no explanation. It appeared so at the time as well. Virtually everyone expected it, yet Washington’s closest friends and advisors obviously felt a need to encourage him. The tenor of these appeals was different from those made prior to the Constitutional Convention, when Washington truly wavered on going. Then, he had asked his closest confidants—Madison, Jay, Knox, Humphreys, and others—whether he should attend and they differed in their responses. Everyone expressed pros and cons. Washington anguished over the choice. This time, he never asked anyone if he should serve—they simply offered their advice and uniformly stated that he must accept the presidency. “I am clearly of opinion that the crisis which brought you again into public view left you no alternative but to comply,” Hamilton wrote in September 1788, “and I am equally clear in the opinion that by that act pledged to take part in the execution of the government.” Washington’s reputation and fame would suffer more by him not serving than it could by him serving, Hamilton maintained.38

  Washington gave his own reasons for not committing himself on whether he would or would not accept the presidency. Beyond sincerely not wanting the job, he thought it both unfitting and counterproductive to take a public position. “I could hardly bring the question into the slightest discussion,” he explained to Hamilton in October 1788, “without betraying, in my Judgment, some impropriety of conduct, or without feeling an apprehension that a premature display of anxiety, might be construed into a vainglorious desire of pushing myself into notice as a Candidate.”39 After all, he had pledged to retire following the war, and advancing himself could lead some to think that he supported the new government for selfish motives. Further, in several letters from this period he wrote about seeing “nothing but clouds and darkness before me” in the presidency.40 Finally, to weaken the government, he cautioned, antifederalists might conspire to deprive him of the post.41 So long as losing remained a risk, he observed, saying that he would not accept the presidency might make him sound like Aesop’s fabled fox who disparaged the unreachable grapes.42 “If after all, a kind of inevitable necessity should impel me” to become President, Washington wrote to Gouverneur Morris in late November, “it will be time enough to yield to its impulse.”43