The Great Divide

by Thomas Fleming

  After supper, Samuel Adams arrived with two members of the governor’s council. There are good grounds for suspecting Sam was behind this scheme to assert the Bay State’s political ascendency. In the Continental Congress, his penchant for devious politicking had won him the nickname “Judas Iscariot.” The President’s diary reports that Mr. Adams said he was there to “express the Governor’s concern that he had not been in a condition to call upon me as soon as I came to town.”

  Washington was not an admirer of Sam Adams. He remembered all too clearly that Sam had been the man behind the scheme to replace him with Horatio Gates. The President’s summary of their conversation in his diary bristles with barely concealed dislike. “I informed them in explicit terms that I should not see the Governor unless it was at my own lodgings.” The delegation talked and talked about Hancock’s crippled state—and got nowhere.

  The supposedly ailing governor capitulated the next morning. He rushed a note to the President announcing that “the Governor will do himself the honor of paying his respects in a half hour. This would have been done much sooner had his health in any degree permitted.” Hancock was now ready to “hazard everything” to make the required visit. Since it was the Sabbath, Washington was attending a morning service when the note arrived. He did not reply until one o’clock. His answer more than matched Hancock’s third person language and left no doubt about the political implications of the contest.

  “The President of the United States presents his best respects to the Governor, and has the honor to inform him that he shall be at home ’til 2

  o’clock. The President of the United States need not express the pleasure it will give him to see the Governor; but at the same time he most earnestly begs that the Governor will not hazard his health on the occasion.”

  Soon the street outside the President’s lodgings was a scene of a hastily staged drama. Governor Hancock arrived in his splendid coach and was lifted out by a team of brawny servants. His legs were swathed in red flannel bandages. The servants carried him into the inn and he hobbled upstairs to Washington’s drawing room. There, the President of the United States wryly informed his diary, he “drank tea with Governor Hancock.”7 Washington and his aides almost certainly celebrated this triumph with not a few private chuckles.

  As he toured Boston, the President was in a cheerful mood. When he visited a sailcloth factory, in which the workers were all young women, he told the foreman he had hired “the prettiest girls in Boston.” At a sumptuous dinner in his honor, he noted in his diary “there were upwards of 100 ladies. Their appearance was elegant and many of them were very handsome.” At this and other banquets, women swirled around the President, all but entranced by his height, his affability, and his fame.

  Back in New York, refreshed and satisfied with his trip, the President turned his attention to another large responsibility: America’s relations with the Indian tribes on the nation’s western frontier. Most troublesome was the large and warlike Creek nation, which had killed numerous Americans migrating into western Georgia. The Creeks were formidable opponents, with no less than five thousand warriors at their command.

  President Washington sent a three-man delegation to visit them and negotiate a truce. The diplomats were ordered to urge the tribe to forge a relationship with the United States, rather than Spain. Madrid’s power loomed large from the Creeks’ point of view. Spain controlled Florida and the Louisiana Territory, which included New Orleans and the vast swath of the continent west of the Mississippi.

  Although the United States and Spain had been allies during the Revolution thanks to French persuasions, the Spanish monarchy had few friendly feelings for the new nation. Madrid saw American independence as a threat to Spain’s colonies in Mexico and Central and South America. Many people assumed that the Spanish were pleased by the Creeks’ random terrorism.

  A key figure in this three-cornered game was Alexander McGillivray. He had a French grandfather as well as a Scottish father, but his mother and grandmother were Creek. McGillivray swiftly emerged as a canny leader, adept at playing the white men off against each other. Washington put his secretary of war, Henry Knox, in charge of negotiations.

  Knox had persuaded Washington that making the War Department responsible for Indian affairs would strengthen the presidency. The Boston general favored buying the land that the western settlers wanted from the tribes, and persuading the Indians to settle in enclaves where the federal government would guarantee they would not be molested. Whether Knox could persuade someone as slippery as McGillivray to accept this arrangement seemed a dubious bet. But McGillivray and a delegation of his fellow chiefs came to New York and signed a mutually satisfactory treaty of peace.

  The Creeks were not the only Indians who worried the President. Further north, the warlike Miamis and Shawnees, armed and encouraged by the British in Canada, had murdered an estimated fifteen hundred would-be settlers by the time Washington became president. Envoys were also dispatched in this direction, hoping that these tribes would accept the Knox approach to peace.

  The President had yet to receive a reply from Thomas Jefferson, and had begun fretting over his lack of a secretary of state. Washington wanted to discuss the Creek situation with the Spanish minister to the United States, but the envoy was about to return home and Congress was not in session. Washington wondered if he could consult him without the Senate’s “advice and consent.” Another worry was the frequent capture of American ships in the Mediterranean by Algerine pirates. The President wrote a letter to the Emperor of Morocco, asking for his help in eliminating these seagoing predators.8

  Far more important to President Washington was the problem of defending the United States in a war. At the moment, the nation had exactly 840 troops in its regular army. They were stationed at West Point and at Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania. For a decade, these soldiers had not been asked to do anything more military than guard cannon and ammunition left over from the Revolutionary War. Almost to a man, Congress suffered from a malignant hatred of a regular army. The enmity had erupted in the last years of the war, when the officers insisted Congress should keep its 1778 promise to pay them pensions. Instead of heeding Washington’s repeated pleas to establish a small peacetime army, Congress had ordered him to discharge the remaining regiments in service at the end of the Revolution, retaining only the token garrisons at Fort Pitt and West Point.

  This was an extremely unwise decision; the British had yet to turn over six western forts they had promised to evacuate under the terms of the peace treaty. With no army to make London think twice about ignoring the treaty, the forts were still in British hands, giving His Majesty’s diplomats and soldiers easy access to the already restless northwest tribes.9

  To relax from his presidential chores, Washington turned to a recreation that many New Englanders and not a few New Yorkers disapproved of—the theater. In 1774, the Continental Congress had banned play-going along with horse racing and other supposedly degenerate pastimes from their virtuous new republic. The New England delegates had been among the leaders in this outbreak of their inherited puritanism. As a result, only the British army staged plays during the early years of the Revolution.

  At Valley Forge, this ban had been breached with General Washington’s approval. His younger officers began staging plays, at which he was a frequent attendee. The Continental Congress issued a steaming rebuke—which the soldiers and their general ignored.

  In 1789, New York’s John Street Theater was still frowned upon in many quarters. President Washington soon changed almost everyone’s mind. On May 11, he and Martha enjoyed one of their favorite plays, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. The drama was considered racy even by those who enjoyed a naughty laugh now and then. Soon, Washington was inviting guests to the roomy presidential box.10

  The President told the new chief justice, John Jay, and his wife, Sarah, that he would understand if they declined. Huguenot Protestants like Jay were known f
or their puritanism. But Jay’s severity had been softened not a little by his attractive New Jersey spouse. They accepted and thanked the President for a very pleasant evening.

  Soon the presidential box was regularly packed with government VIPs. Even viper-tongued Senator Maclay, a fierce Presbyterian, accepted an invitation. President watchers began paying close attention to who was invited to enjoy the latest drama. On November 24, 1789, they saw a highly significant set of visitors. The new Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, sat with his wife, Betsy, and her father, Senator Philip Schuyler, one of the nation’s wealthiest men. Was it a hint that Washington had seen and approved the plan for a new financial system that Congress had asked Hamilton to submit?

  Washington’s unique combination of fame and political dexterity was on the way to making the president the central figure in the new federal government. What would Thomas Jefferson think of this phenomenon? He had called the presidency a poor edition of a Polish king. Would Jefferson also be surprised to discover that his former councillor and close friend, James Madison, was working as Washington’s partner in the elevation of this new office to such unexpected power?

  CHAPTER 7

  The Secretary of State from Paris

  ON OCTOBER 8, 1789, Thomas Jefferson departed from Le Havre for America. Like many trans-Atlantic voyagers, he had to sail from the French port on a packet ship and rendezvous with an America-bound merchant ship at the English port of Cowes. The envoy went ashore and bought some British newspapers, hoping to stay in touch with the ongoing drama of the French Revolution.

  The papers described the dramatic events of October 4–5, when the Paris mob surged into Versailles, slaughtered the bodyguards of the king and queen and forced them to return to Paris as virtual prisoners. Jefferson was unperturbed by this violence. He wrote cheerfully to Thomas Paine: “I have no news but what is given under that name in the English papers. You know how much of these I believe. So far I collect from them that the king, queen, and National Assembly are removed to Paris. The mobs and murders under which they dress this fact are like the rags in which religion robes the true god.” Along with revealing his dislike of traditional Christianity, Jefferson was again keeping the murderous side of the French Revolution at arm’s length, lest it damage his transcendent faith in its future.1

  Elsewhere in England, Edmund Burke, the American Revolution’s former champion, reacted with horror to the mob’s invasion of Versailles. He focused with special intensity on Queen Marie Antoinette’s ordeal. He portrayed “this gentle soul” forced to flee her rooms “almost naked” while her guards were being butchered before her eyes. Did a single person, beyond these personal protectors, rise to her defense? Not one. Burke found it hard to believe that in a nation of men of honor, “ten thousands swords” had not “leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.”

  These words were from an essay that Burke had begun composing, “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” It would soon detonate with a large political impact in Britain and America, changing minds and hearts in both countries.2

  On the day Jefferson sailed, James Madison wrote him an earnest letter, urging him to accept President Washington’s offer to become his secretary of state. “It is of infinite importance that you should not disappoint the public wish on this point,” Madison declared. “The Southern and Western country have it particularly at heart. To every other part of the Union it will be entirely acceptable.” The ex-councillor was still trying to assuage the psychological wound Jefferson had received as Virginia’s wartime governor.3

  Jefferson never received this letter. His ship docked at Norfolk in late November and there he learned from the newspapers that Washington had asked him to be secretary of state. Jefferson promptly wrote to the President, admitting that when he compared his present post with the large and uncharted waters a secretary of state would navigate, he preferred to remain a diplomat.

  Jefferson also admitted that he would enter upon the new appointment “with gloomy forebodings from the criticisms and censures of a public just indeed in their intent but sometimes misinformed and misled.” But he simultaneously admitted “it is not for an individual to choose his post. You are to marshal us as may be best for the public good.”

  Washington firmly but cordially declined to play the general and give him an order. “It must be your option,” he wrote, making it clear that he would have no objection if Jefferson wished to continue to serve “abroad.”4

  Part of Jefferson’s ambivalence reflected his knowledge of the current political situation in Virginia, as his many correspondents had described it to him. Thanks to Patrick Henry, a large portion of the state’s electorate remained hostile to the federal government. This was particularly true in the Piedmont section of the state, which included Jefferson’s home county of Albermarle.

  Not long after Christmas, Congressman Madison and Thomas Jefferson shook hands at Monticello after a five-year separation. There is little doubt that Madison reiterated the advice he had written in his undelivered letter of October. As he saw it, Jefferson’s role in the new government was far more important than his own. The symbolic power of his name would do much to win support in Virginia and elsewhere.

  Madison had been unable to mount a satisfying counterattack against Patrick Henry in the House of Representatives. But he had pushed through the Bill of Rights, defeated John Adams’s call for resounding presidential and vice presidential titles, and emerged as the informal leader of the new Congress. He assured Jefferson that he would remain a strong ally if new disputes with Henry arose. Nevertheless, the envoy remained dubious about the wisdom of accepting the President’s offer.

  With typical energy and shrewdness, Madison proceeded to orchestrate a letter writing campaign to change Jefferson’s mind. One of his first recruits was President Washington, who told the reluctant candidate that “the secretary of state would play a very important role in the successful administration of the general government.” This, the President added, was “of almost infinite consequence to the future happiness of the citizens of the United States.”

  Madison followed up these resounding presidential words with a letter of his own, reporting “a universal anxiety is expressed for your acceptance.” By way of further persuasion, Madison recruited James Monroe to head an Albermarle County Committee that sent Jefferson an address of welcome in which they declared “America still has occasion for your services.”5

  These words stirred deep emotions in Jefferson. He replied to his neighbors that he would never forget that they had been the first to summon him to serve “in the holy cause of freedom,” and he pledged himself ready to bow “to the will of my country.” Two days later, Jefferson accepted Washington’s offer and promised to be at the President’s service as soon as he could prepare his neglected farms and mansion for another extended absence.

  After his meeting with Madison, Jefferson read over the long letter he had written in Paris describing the idea that had seized his mind, the earth belongs to the living. He found nothing to change and mailed it to New York, where Madison was back in Congress. When Madison found time to reply, he was torn between friendship and candor. The latter emotion soon prevailed. He diplomatically conceded that the idea was “a great one.” But he was skeptical of its value as a political lodestar. He “regretfully” found it “not very compatible with the course of human affairs.”

  Madison broke the theory into four parts:

  1. The living generation can only bind itself.

  2. A generation spans nineteen years.

  3. A generation’s actions are limited to that term, and, to be valid, have to be expressly enacted by its congress or parliament.

  4. In every society, the will of the majority binds the minority.

  Madison calmly demolished each of these propositions, mostly on the basis of their impracticability. After the ordeal he and George Washington had endured to create the Constitution and
the new government, he was especially opposed to the idea of each generation revising all its laws and customs every nineteen years. Such a government would lose “those prejudices in its favor which antiquity inspires.” Worse, every revision would arouse pernicious factions.

  Even weaker was the contention that the new generation had no obligation to honor the debts of the previous generation. “Debts may be incurred principally for the benefit of posterity,” Madison wrote. A good example was the present debt of the United States, which was incurred to win a war bestowing freedom on the next generation and hopefully on all those that would follow it.

  Instead of splitting the generations apart, Madison found that the “nature of things” tends to bind them together. In this unity, the principle of “tacit assent”—rather than literal reenactment of all the laws—was indispensible. If explicit assent had to be obtained for every principle and idea in a nation every nineteen years, there was a danger of “subverting the foundation of civil society.” As for the majority binding the minority, Madison could find no law of nature that supported the idea.

  The Congressman attempted to soothe his friend by assuring him that he was not trying to “impeach either the utility of the principle [that the earth belongs to the living] in some particular cases.” But this was a pleasure he had little hope of enjoying. “The spirit of philosophic legislation has never reached some parts of the Union, and is by no means the fashion here [in New York] either within or without Congress.” Those last words were very close to being sarcastic. But Madison was confident that Jefferson’s friendship was strong enough to tolerate it.6

  Jefferson never replied to Madison’s letter. But he also never abandoned his idea that the earth belongs to the living, and its corollary, the overriding importance of majority rule. From the perspective of two hundred-plus years, it is obvious that the two men had very different political philosophies.