“ABOUT TEN O’CLOCK I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity; and . . . set out for New York in the company of Mr. Thomson and colonel Humphreys,” Washington wrote in his diary for April 16.59 The party did not travel alone for long. A crowd of Virginians met Washington outside Mount Vernon and led him to Alexandria for a midday reception. “Again your country demands your care,” the mayor proclaimed. “Go; and make a grateful people happy.” Echoing the theme of national unity that resonated throughout his trip, Washington replied that, despite his “love” of retirement, “an ardent desire, on my own part, to be instrumental in conciliating the good will of my countrymen towards each other” had induced him to accept the presidency.
After an early dinner with those he called “my affectionate friends and kind neighbors,” Washington left Virginia about 2 P.M. aboard the Potomac River ferry.60 A sea of Marylanders hailing him as their President waited at the Georgetown landing to escort him as far as Spurrier’s Tavern on the post road about halfway to Baltimore. There, he spent the night. With Washington assuming the office, the presidency was already serving as a source for American identity.
Crowds grew as Washington advanced deeper into the more densely populated middle states. “This great man was met some miles from Town, by a large body of respectable citizens on horseback, and conducted, under a discharge of cannon . . . through crowds of admiring spectators,” a report from Baltimore noted.61 A committee of merchants and former army officers had organized this rousing reception in what was then America’s fifth-largest city. Calling on “citizens of the United States” to venerate their President, the committee’s welcoming address declared, “We behold a new era springing out of our independence.”62 Then or the night before, Washington received a long poetic tribute that closed with the plea:
The Federal Union closer bind,
Firm public faith restore;
Drive discord from the canker’d mind,
Each mutual blessing pour.63
The scene in Maryland repeated itself in Delaware, where local citizens met Washington at the state line on the nineteenth, escorted him to Wilmington for the night, and accompanied him as far as Pennsylvania early on the twentieth.64 There, with portraitist of the Revolution and Philadelphia impresario Charles Willson Peale orchestrating events, celebrations topped anything Washington’s party had yet encountered.
State president Thomas Mifflin, who as president of the Confederation Congress had received the General’s resignation six years earlier, greeted Washington at the Pennsylvania border and—with other officials, two cavalry units, a detachment of artillery, and a body of light infantry—escorted him to Philadelphia. After breakfast in Chester, Pennsylvania, Washington mounted a richly ornamented white horse to lead the procession, which grew as more troops and citizens joined it along the way. Cedar and laurel branches lined the bridge across the Schuylkill River, with evergreen arches covering each end. As Washington passed under the first triumphal arch, Peale’s daughter Angelica, hidden in the branches, lowered a laurel wreath onto or just above his head.65
Philadelphia exploded upon Washington’s arrival. Cannons fired and bells rang through the day; fireworks lit the night’s sky. “The number of spectators who filled the doors, windows, and streets, which he passed, was greater than on any other occasion,” a newspaper noted. “All classes and descriptions of citizens discovered . . . the most undisguised attachment and unbounded zeal for their dear chief.”66 A banquet followed at City Tavern, beginning with a toast to “The United States” and ending with one to “Liberty without licentiousness.”67 After spending one night at Robert Morris’s home, where he received more civic tributes in the morning, Washington left the city at 10 A.M. on the twenty-first.68
After traveling north along the Delaware River for thirty miles in Pennsylvania, Washington took a commercial ferry across to New Jersey. This passage occurred near to where Washington and his army had crossed in rowboats on that fateful Christmas Night in 1776, to surprise the Hessian troops at Trenton and reverse the course of the Revolutionary War. Now, however, a vast throng lined the far side to hail Washington’s return with such loud “huzzas” that, according to one observer, “the shores reecho the cheerful sounds.”69
Local units of the New Jersey militia then preceded Washington, again on horseback, to the old stone bridge over Assunpink Creek, south of Trenton, where his army had held off British troops on January 2, 1777. A floral arch now spanned the bridge, with laurel-entwined pillars and a banner reading “The Defender of the Mothers, will be the Protector of the Daughters.”70 Led by some of those mothers defended by his army in 1777, white-robed daughters to be protected by his presidency serenaded Washington at the arch:
Virgins fair, and Matron grave,
Those thy conquering Arms did save,
Build for thee triumphal Bowers.
Strew, ye Fair, his Way with Flowers.71
At the last line, the girls scattered petals along Washington’s path. “The scene was truly grand,” one newspaper observed, and the sentiments it evoked “bathed many cheeks with tears.”72
From the Assunpink bridge, Washington rode into Trenton for dinner and a public reception, then to Princeton for another formal welcome. On April 22, he traveled with military escort to New Brunswick, New Jersey, for dinner and finally to Woodbridge for the night.
By 9 A.M. on the twenty-third, Washington had reached Elizabethtown, New Jersey, on the Hudson River’s western bank, where a purpose-built barge waited to ferry him to New York. “She is 47 feet keel,” one newspaper reported, “and rows with 13 oars on each side, to be manned by pilots of New-York, who are to be dressed in white frocks and black caps, trimmed and ornamented with fringe.”73 Fit for a king or perhaps a pharaoh—another paper likened it to “Cleopatra’s silken-corded barge”—the craft had a canopied pavilion with festooned red curtains.74
Seven members of Congress and three New York officials joined Washington on the barge, which gathered a flotilla of boats in its wake, including two with choirs and one bearing Henry Knox, John Jay, and other federal officers. Ships in the harbor and batteries onshore fired their guns in salute as the barge rounded Manhattan Island heading for Murray’s Landing on the East River at the foot of Wall Street. Pulling alongside, one of the floating choirs sang its version of “God Save the King”:
These shores a HEAD shall own,
Unsully’d by a throne,
Our much lov’d WASHINGTON,
The Great, the Good!75
“We now discovered the Shores crowded with thousands of people,” one congressmen on board wrote about the barge’s approach to Manhattan. “You could see little else along the Shores, in the Streets, and on Board every Vessel, but Heads standing as thick as Ears of Corn before Harvest.”76 Governor Clinton warmly greeted his old friend at the landing and walked with him, other officials, a military honor guard, and two bands through a crush of well-wishers to the residence rented by Congress for the President about a half mile away. They finally arrived there about 3 P.M. The near-universal response to the jubilation was, one newspaper reported, “Well, he deserves it all!”77
EVEN AS NEW YORKERS added to the prestige of the presidency by cheering Washington’s entrance into their city, John Adams displayed a misunderstanding of the foundations for power under republican rule by futilely trying to impose authority on the office by fiat. Installed as Vice President and the Senate’s presiding officer two days earlier, as Washington entered the city Adams was lecturing the Senate about the imperative of giving the President a proper title. He wanted something like “his Most Benign Highness” or “your Majesty,” it turned out, and dismissed the mere designation of “President” as something suited to the chief officer of a cricket club or fire company. America’s chief executive must have a title equal to that of European royalty or he will lose respect at home and abroad, Adams believed, and one superior to the “your Excellency” commonly afforded state gove
rnors, or else the relative place of the central government in the federal scheme will slip and anarchy result. Further, he claimed that titles would attract people to serve in government and sought a similar or the same one for his office, too.78
At the time, Congress still had not yet fixed when, where, and how to inaugurate the President. On a motion apparently made by Adams himself, the Senate named a committee on the twenty-third to consider both this pressing issue, as well as the question of what titles to confer on the President and Vice President.79 The House appointed a parallel committee on the following day. Opposition quickly surfaced to the second matter. Privately calling it “truly ridiculous,” Pennsylvania senator William Maclay tried to delete consideration of titles from the Senate committee’s charge.80 He later blamed “this Whole silly Business” mostly on Adams. No title could possibly “add to the respect entertained for General Washington,” Maclay maintained.81 Rather than gain respect by becoming President, Washington gave respect to the presidency by holding it. Later, with Madison taking the lead and Washington in full accord, the House formally refused to confer any supplementary title on the President. Aware that everything he did in office set precedent, Washington answered to “Mr. President.”
DODGING THE CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE of executive titles, on April 25 the House and Senate agreed on the time, place, and manner for inaugurating the President. With Washington’s assent, they set the date for April 30 and asked the highest available judicial officer, New York chancellor Robert Livingston, to administer the oath of office.82 By then, sixty-seven of Congress’s seventy-nine members had reached New York and taken their seats. Both houses initially agreed to stage the event inside Federal Hall’s first-floor House chamber, which (while larger than the second-floor Senate chamber) would have limited the audience to invited guests.
Then the members had a brilliant idea. “To the end that the oath of office may be administered to the President in the most public matter, and that the greatest number of people of the United States, and without distinction, may be witnesses to solemnity,” the New-York Daily Gazette reported, Congress switched the venue for the swearing-in ceremony to “the outer gallery adjoining to the senate-chamber.”83 This put the event outside, on a balcony overlooking the wide intersection of Wall and Broad Streets. At the urging of local clergy, Congress also added that, after the inauguration, the official party would go to the Episcopal Church’s stately St. Paul’s Chapel on Broadway for prayers led by one of the congressional chaplains.84
By moving the inauguration outside where thousands could watch and scheduling public prayers for the new President in a local church, Congress implicitly recognized the remarkable popular response to Washington becoming President. More than Congress, the presidency was becoming the publicly recognized symbol of the constitutional union, and, by reaching out to the public as he did during his journey to New York, Washington helped to forge a nation. Countless individual spectators to his journey spoke in almost breathless wonder about the moment when they seemed to catch his eye or he appeared to doff his hat or bow to them alone.85 In Europe, all Americans knew, people bowed to kings. On his journey, Washington continually bowed to people as his way of acknowledging tributes and cheers. It endeared him to them.
Adams missed this point by wanting to separate the people from the President by interposing regal titles. “The glare of royalty and nobility, during his mission to England, had made him believe their fascination a necessary ingredient to government,” Jefferson later wrote about Adams, but Washington knew better.86 The American experience, he had noted in his undelivered inaugural address, reversed the presumption that “the many were made for the few” by establishing that government was made for the many.87
Washington would replicate his jubilant journey to New York with trips through New England and the South over the next two years, making it his goal as President to visit every state. Further, while in office, he regularly received the public at his residence.88 Although not an informal man, his became an open presidency quite unlike the insulated monarchies of Europe.89 Indeed, Madison soon observed that Washington was the only feature of the new government that captured the popular imagination.90
In his diary for the day of his triumphal entry into New York, Washington wrote that, while he found the pageantry pleasing, “considering the reverse of this scene, which may be the case after all my labors do no good,” he also found it painful.91 Expanding on this point in a letter written two weeks later to South Carolina’s Edward Rutledge, Washington cautioned about the cheering crowds, “I fear if the issue of the public measures should not corrispond with their sanguine expectation, they will turn the extravagant (and I may say undue) praises which they are heaping upon me at this moment, into equally extravagant (though I will fondly hope unmerited) censures.”92
Washington saw public opinion as a formidable but fickle foundation for political power and tried to cultivate it. His evident success led the less popular Adams, with a mixture of esteem and envy, to view Washington somewhat as an actor playing a part: a “Character of Convention,” Adams called him, designedly made “popular and fashionable with all parties and in all places and with all persons as a center of union” first during the war and again as President.93 Designed or not, it worked. Washington unquestionably was the most popular person in America.
With Congress scheduling his inauguration for the last day of April, Washington had a week to settle in before becoming President. Upon his arrival in New York, he dined at the governor’s mansion but thereafter let people know that he would not accept any further dinner invitations, and so received none.94 He took his meals at the presidential residence with Lear and Humphreys.95 Having hired the innkeeper Samuel Fraunces to oversee the kitchen, Washington had come full circle from the emotional farewell dinner with his officers at Fraunces Tavern more than six years earlier. Now, however, it was members of Congress and other dignitaries, not military officers, who called on Washington. From “the time I had done breakfast, thence ’till dinner, & afterwards ’till bed time,” he noted about these days between his arrival and inaugural, “I could not dispatch one ceremonius visit before I was called to another—so that in fact I had no leizure to read, or answer the dispatches which were pouring in from all quarters.”96
Many accounts had Washington conferring often with Madison on matters of state and the inaugural address during this period.97 Meanwhile, Congress worked mostly on raising revenue and establishing courts. By the thirtieth, if not before, Washington had a brief new inaugural address in hand and was ready to take office. With people streaming into New York to watch the ceremonies, local, state, and federal officials hurriedly organized the various events.
“WE HAVE HEARD MUCH of the BIRTH DAY of our COLUMBIA,” New York’s Gazette of the United States proclaimed in large type on April 29. “TO MORROW is the Day of her ESPOUSALS—when, in presence of the KING of KINGS, the solemn Compact will be ratified between her, and the darling object of her choice.” Washington, the paper exclaimed, by “UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGES OF A GREAT AND VARIOUS PEOPLE” would become President!98 In lower Manhattan, that much-awaited day began with a cannon volley at sunrise followed by church bells ringing throughout the morning.
Crowds gathered in front of the President’s house but Washington remained inside until a deputation from the Senate and House arrived shortly after noon to report that Congress was ready to receive him. The retired General wore a tailed suit of brown Connecticut broadcloth with American eagle buttons and tight, calf-length pants; white, knee-high silk stockings; and silver-buckle shoes. A hat, powdered hair, and dress sword completed his inaugural costume.99 Stepping outside, Washington bowed to the crowd before boarding a state coach. His own carriage with Humphreys and Lear on board waited behind the presidential coach as troops and dignitaries arrayed themselves in a preset order. At 12:30 P.M., the parade began moving slowly south on Cherry to Queen Street, then around to Broad Street before swinging north toward Federa
l Hall.
One company of cavalry and three of infantry, about five hundred soldiers in all, led the procession through cheering crowds from the presidential residence onward. The delegation from Congress followed the troops, then came Washington, his two aides, heads of the federal departments, Chancellor Livingston, and other invited dignitaries. Citizens fell in behind the official party as it passed, all winding their way toward Federal Hall. “About two hundred yards before reaching the hall,” wrote the popular American author Washington Irving, who witnessed the event as a child, “Washington and his suite alighted from their carriages and passed through the troops, who were draw up on each side, into the hall and senate chamber, where the Vice-President, the Senate and House of Representatives were assembled.”100
The senators had gathered in their chamber first and, at the Vice President’s prodding, discussed whether they should stand or sit while the President spoke. The underlying issue, debated now on the fly, involved the weighty matter of whether members of Congress stood equal, superior, or inferior to the President. Adams, Lee, and South Carolina senator Ralph Izard related their personal observations of the king addressing Parliament, but others dismissed those comments as of “no consequence” in a republic. Before the Senate settled anything, however, House members filed in behind their Speaker and took seats to the senators’ right. More than an hour more passed before Washington finally reached the chamber, passed between the now-standing members, bowed to each side, and took a seat on the dais between the Vice President and Speaker. Then the members sat. Lacking any clear instruction on protocol, the members tended to stand and sit along with the President, suggesting a rough sort of respectful equality between the branches.101
Soon after Washington sat down, Adams stood up to invite him onto the Senate’s outer gallery for the oath of office. Thousands were waiting to watch.102 “The windows and the roofs of the houses were crowded,” Eliza Morton observed from atop one of those roofs, “and in the streets the throng was so dense that it seemed as if one might literally walk on the heads of the people.”103 Washington stepped outside first, followed by Adams, Livingston, and as many of the assembled dignitaries and members of Congress as would fit. The only known live drawing of the event, a sketch by Peter Lacour turned into a print in 1790, shows eighteen people crammed on the narrow porch with Washington. Decades later, Morton could still recall the “universal shouts of joy and welcome” that greeted Washington’s appearance on the gallery.104
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