George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  Washington collected rents from some of the tenants on Bullskin Creek lands he’d bought as a teenager, but squatters on other land disputed his title. In Pennsylvania, he found that a mill he had paid to have built was in ruins and that squatters had settled there too. He retained a lawyer to evict illegal tenants and hired an agent to find new ones who would pay.26

  In those travels, which were cut short by Indian unrest, he gathered information about settlements, trade routes, and connections between streams and rivers. In the journey’s third week, he left the baggage with Dr. Craik and searched alone for alternate routes between east and west. Arriving home in early October, he acknowledged that he had not much improved his finances, but was glad to learn “the temper and disposition of the western inhabitants.” Washington saw them in limbo, with communication and trade difficult in every direction: east to the Atlantic states, north to British Canada, or south and west to Spanish colonies. That left western loyalties “on a pivot—the touch of a feather would almost incline them any way.”

  Washington agreed with Jefferson that trade was central to retaining the region’s loyalty. Virginians must “make a smooth way for the produce of that country to pass to our markets” lest the British or Spaniards beat them to it. The Potomac, he insisted, was the solution. Rising not far from Ohio River tributaries, it could bind the west to the thirteen states.27

  * * *

  Washington had thought about improving the river since his time leading the Virginia Regiment, but advances in canal-building now made the effort more feasible. Perhaps more important, this time the man leading the project knew everyone who mattered, had influence with all of them, and did not discourage easily.28

  Washington called a November 15 organizational meeting for the river project, barely five weeks after reaching home from the west. Because he had to go to Richmond, the new state capital, to seek authorizing legislation, a friend chaired that meeting. A newspaper report of the Alexandria session described the project as “a work so big that the intellectual faculties cannot take it at a view,” and predicted that riches would “pour down on us.”29

  Bell-ringing and a cannon salute marked Washington’s entrance to Richmond. At night, the residents illuminated their homes in his honor. Virginia legislators presented a resolution praising Washington’s “transcendent services” to the country. Some might be distracted by such adulation, but Washington was all business. He explained the project to young James Madison, providing legislation for a bi-state commission to sponsor the river improvement.30

  By late November, Washington was in Annapolis to secure parallel legislation from Maryland. Both states adopted his statutes and immediately appointed commissioners. Virginia’s three included Washington and Horatio Gates (him again!). With the other two Virginians staying home, Washington remained alone in Annapolis through Christmas to hammer out enabling legislation with four Maryland commissioners. On December 28, after Maryland enacted the new legislation, Washington sent it to Madison for Virginia’s concurrence. The measure authorized clearing the river of obstructions, digging canals around waterfalls, and building a road from its headwaters to either the Monongahela or the Cheat Rivers. Washington’s cover note, written at midnight, admitted that the effort had left him with “an aching head.” Virginia concurred on January 4.31

  In less than two months, Washington had secured four laws in two states, plus one interstate agreement. That record would be impressive in the Internet era; it was breathtaking in the eighteenth century. Madison marveled at Washington’s energy and effectiveness: “The earnestness with which he espouses the undertaking is hardly to be described.”32

  Without a pause, Washington turned to the project’s next stages: recruiting board members, touting the new company’s shares, and starting the work. He collected maps of the river and its lands, fired off letters to solicit European investors, and imagined Alexandria as a boomtown. By mid-April, he had raised £43,000 for the project’s first stage; by mid-May, the Potomac Company board convened with Washington as president.33

  The board adopted Washington’s model of “sluice navigation” for five of the river’s seven dangerous stretches. Workers would clear channels (sluices) into the riverbed that cargo boats could follow. The company would have to build locks to circumvent Little Falls, where the river dropped thirty-seven feet, and Great Falls, where the drop exceeded seventy feet.34

  When the Virginia legislature granted him fifty shares in the company, Washington fretted that the award would be seen as corrupt self-dealing, since he expected the project to generate massive profits. Then again, he worried, he might appear ungrateful if he declined the shares. Washington repeatedly asked friends what he should do. After months of indecision, he pledged the income from the shares to educate the orphans of soldiers.35

  Washington managed the project for the next four years. By the fall of 1785, two teams of fifty men were cutting the sluice channels. The work was hard, involving hauling and blasting boulders from the river. Most free and indentured workers ran off. The company rented slaves from nearby residents, but many owners were reluctant to send their people to perform such dangerous work.36

  A relentless cheerleader, Washington minimized troubles. “The difficulties,” he announced early on, “rather vanish than increase as we proceed.” Despite his sunny forecasts, the system did not open until 1802, three years after his death. Featuring five locks around the Great Falls but never connecting to the Ohio River, it operated for more than twenty years without returning much profit.37

  For Washington, the project meant more than profit. At one point, he described western settlement as a way to deliver humanity from war, which could be “banished from the earth” by dispersing people more widely and opening greater opportunities for their advancement. Even without such utopian rhetoric, Washington saw western settlement as building the nation.38

  The project also began to pull Washington back into public service. At the end of 1784, Virginia and Maryland resolved to address issues surrounding their shared waterways, the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay. Each state appointed commissioners to thrash out tolls, fishing and navigation rights, and lighthouse responsibilities. In late March 1785, the Marylanders arrived in Alexandria, ready to negotiate, but no Virginians met them. Governor Patrick Henry had not informed the Virginia commissioners of their appointments.39

  The Marylanders contacted George Mason, one of the Virginia appointees. Dismayed by the botched arrangements, Mason consulted Washington and lassoed another Virginia commissioner who lived nearby. To smooth the conference, Washington hosted it at his home, feeding and housing the commissioners for four days. The resulting Mount Vernon Compact defined navigational and fishing rights, tolls, and tariffs. Madison, who was supposed to have been a Virginia commissioner, won legislative approval of it.40

  At the end of 1785, frustrated anew by Congress’s impotence, Madison proposed the Mount Vernon Compact as a model for addressing the nation’s problems. For Virginia to call a multi-state conference to address commercial issues, he wrote to Washington, “seems naturally to grow out of” the Mount Vernon agreement. Virginia’s legislature agreed, inviting the other states to send delegates to Annapolis in September 1786.41 The United States, and Washington, were starting down the road to remaking the nation. Navigating that road successfully would require all of Washington’s political skills.

  Chapter 39

  Back into Harness

  After two years back home, Washington complained that, contrary to popular impression, he had not “retired to ease, and that kind of tranquility which would grow tiresome for want of employment.” Rather, he was stranded at Mount Vernon without any secretary while deluged with “a thousand references of old matters with which I ought not to be troubled, but which nevertheless must receive some answer.”1 New matters also crowded into his life. The Potomac work often lacked laborers and struggled with high water, unhappy n
eighbors, and delinquent investors. Managing Mount Vernon and his western lands was a cycle of tasks and setbacks, drought and floods, hurricanes and pests, mixed with agricultural experiments. Whatever Washington tried, his crops remained disappointing. His finances grew no stronger.

  His money woes were hardly unique. Americans in the 1780s endured what was likely the nation’s worst economic depression ever. Compared to 1774, real incomes plummeted by 18 to 30 percent, largely due to the war.2 Eight years of conflict had siphoned off productive labor. About 200,000 men (and a few women) served in the Continental Army or state militias, and about 20,000 women performed army work (cooking, washing uniforms). Soldiers and camp women planted no fields, built no buildings, and wove no linen.

  More than 30,000 patriots died in battle, of illness, or in prison; loyalists died too. More suffered severe injuries. Perhaps 20,000 enslaved people left with the British. Civilians suffered illness, want, and soldier atrocities. With a population under 4 million in 1790, the productivity loss was substantial. In addition, raids by both sides destroyed buildings and crops, while the Royal Navy bombarded seaside towns and patriots put Indian settlements to the torch.3

  After the war, roughly 60,000 loyalists left, a serious drain of talent and capital. Hamilton predicted that New York City, which lost half its population, would not recover from those departures for a generation.4

  Exports tumbled during wartime, with British markets closed to Americans and the Royal Navy capturing American cargoes. Shipping tonnage from Philadelphia declined by 90 percent. Even after peace, exports of tobacco, indigo, and rice were barely half of prewar levels, as the British still barred Americans from their West Indies ports. New England shipbuilding plummeted; Massachusetts dropped from building 125 ships per year to 15 or 20. Frontier conflicts disrupted the fur trade with Indians.5

  Lack of specie (coins or hard money) shriveled every form of economic activity, fostering a barter economy. In the six years after the peace, some Americans splurged on goods unavailable in wartime, more than doubling imports from Britain while exports lagged, which further reduced the specie in the country. States printed currency and foreign money circulated (British pounds, Portuguese johannes, and Spanish dollars), which converted simple transactions into currency negotiations.6

  Paper money brought punishing inflation. Congress printed $241 million in bills, which by 1780 were worth 1 percent of their face value. States printed another $200 million. By the end of 1781, Virginia’s currency was worth 0.1 percent of face value. Maryland food prices skyrocketed 1,900 percent between 1777 and 1800.7

  Behind the numbers were lives become desperate. In Baltimore, bankruptcies were reported daily. In October 1784, a Philadelphian reported that the streets “swarm with servants and persons seeking menial employment,” while others “crowd to the back country,” hoping for a fresh start. In two Pennsylvania counties, foreclosure orders outnumbered taxpayers between 1782 and 1789. When emigrants found western land owned by absentee landlords (like Washington), they often settled without worrying about niceties like land titles.8

  Neither Congress nor most states had a stable fiscal base. Congress’s requisitions on the states produced steadily lower returns, reaching 2 percent in August 1786. New Jersey refused to pay requisitions until New York approved the import tax that Congress had been trying to enact for five years. New York, enjoying revenues from its own import tax, did nothing. In early 1786, a congressional committee pronounced the requisition system “dangerous to the welfare and peace of the Union.”9

  The nation’s economic troubles, and congressional impotence, had profound consequences. Having promised to vacate nine military posts around the Great Lakes and in northern New York, the British simply stayed, daring Congress to eject them. When Indians and settlers fought, Congress could only wring its hands. When states violated the pledge to allow Britons to sue for prewar debts, Congress shook its head. When the corsairs of North Africa targeted American ships and enslaved American sailors, Congress could not retaliate.10

  As early as 1784, Americans considered dissolving the seemingly feckless union. “Many people,” Nathanael Greene wrote, “secretly wish that every state should be completely independent and . . . that Congress should be no more.”11

  Washington tried to be optimistic about the country’s prospects. Shortly after arriving home, he was certain that “the good sense of the people will ultimately get the better of their prejudices.” To an anxious friend, Washington soothingly compared America to “a young heir, come a little prematurely to a large inheritance,” bound to “run riot until we have brought our reputation to the brink of ruin,” then “to do what prudence and common policy” require. He offered a calming aphorism, that “democratical states must always feel before they can see: It is this that makes their governments slow—but the people will be right at last.”12

  Yet Washington’s view darkened steadily. He came to deplore the “half starved, limping government, that appears to be always moving upon crutches, and tottering at every step.” For Washington, disunion was the great risk; Congress needed greater power and the states less. “We are either a united people,” he fumed to Madison in late 1785, “or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation, . . . If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.” He despaired that the Confederation was “little more than an empty sound, and Congress a nugatory body.”13

  In 1786, dissension flared when Spain limited American trade at its ports and excluded Americans from the lower Mississippi, which blocked western crops from reaching Caribbean markets. John Jay of New York, secretary of foreign affairs for Congress, explored a deal with Spanish Minister Gardoqui to open Spain’s ports in return for a twenty-five-year exclusion of Americans from the Mississippi River. When Jay asked Congress for guidance, an angry debate pitted New Englanders desperate for Spanish trade against Southerners demanding Mississippi access. James Monroe, representing Virginia, warned of Northern intrigues to dissolve the nation.14

  While Congress quarreled in New York (its fourth home since fleeing Philadelphia in 1783), delegates from the states were to gather in Annapolis to address commercial issues. Washington was hopeful about the conference, though he wished its mandate were broader.15

  The conscientious Madison arrived in Annapolis on time, but after nearly two weeks, only eleven other delegates representing five states had joined him. They were too few to do anything except agree on the need to address all of the government’s defects, not just commercial problems. Those twelve delegates unanimously called for a second convention to meet on “the second Monday of May next,” to devise measures “to render the constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the union.”16

  Months before the Annapolis meeting, Washington wrote that “something must be done” because the government “certainly is tottering!” Yet he questioned whether the time was right. In any event, he wrote to a fellow Virginian, no convention would happen unless the nation suffered “another convulsion.”17

  As the Annapolis delegates met, that convulsion was coming.

  * * *

  The depression struck hard in western Massachusetts. When farmers and tradesmen could not pay taxes to the state government, foreclosures took their homes, tools, and livestock. Beginning in late summer, protesters blocked judges from holding court. The protesters’ logic was admirably linear: If the courts never convened, they could not order foreclosures. When militia were summoned to support the judges, they sometimes joined the protesters. The unrest spread. Armed force suppressed protests in New Hampshire and Connecticut. In Virginia, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania, protesters targeted tax collectors and courthouses.18

  Through autumn of 1786, Washington’s New England friends sounded alarm after alarm over conditions in Massachusetts. A delegate in Congress fretted that insurgents would take control of Springfield’s federa
l arsenal. Henry Knox reported that a majority in his state opposed the government, that insurgents proposed joining Vermont (not yet a state) to become part of Canada. It was, Knox concluded, “a beginning of anarchy.”19

  Concerned, Washington asked a New Hampshire friend about the causes. If the risings were due to “real grievances which admit of redress,” he demanded, “why has the remedy been delayed?” If due to “licentiousness” or British influence, the protests should be squelched. From Knox came the answer that “high taxes are the ostensible cause,” but the real spurs were class resentment and government weakness. Perhaps 15,000 men, Knox predicted, soon would mount a “formidable rebellion.”20

  Urged to use his influence to calm the insurgents, Washington refused. “Influence is not government,” he replied tersely. “Let us have one.” He would not wade into a civil upheaval with little idea of what caused it, nor any armed force behind him. Yet Washington feared that the situation showed “that mankind left to themselves are unfit for their own government.” He was “mortified beyond expression whenever [he] view[ed] the clouds which have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned upon any country.”21

  The Massachusetts unrest intensified until several thousand farmers and mechanics marched through a January blizzard toward the Springfield Arsenal, where they confronted a militia force composed of their neighbors. Cannon volleys dispersed the rebels, killing three and wounding many others. In a ten-day period, the nearly hysterical Knox sent to Washington five separate reports about the confrontation.22