George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  Washington decreed the Constitution “a new phenomenon in the political and moral world: and an astonishing victory of enlightened reason over brutal force.” His pride shone through his words:

  We exhibit at present the novel and astonishing spectacle of a whole people deliberating calmly on what form of government will be most conducive to their happiness; and deciding with an unexpected degree of unanimity.22

  * * *

  Knowing he would be leaving Mount Vernon for renewed public service, Washington turned again to his troubled business affairs. His nearly 60,000 acres of western land generated little income. A malfunctioning chimney started a fire at Mount Vernon’s mansion house. Summer storms washed out crops, and a late-July hurricane drove the river’s tide to new highs. The heavy rains slowed the work to open the Potomac, while the company’s money dwindled.23

  Washington still rode his property daily, focusing on the building of a brick barn. He dug out his old surveying tools to lay out a road from his ferry landing. On New Year’s Day 1789, he prepared detailed instructions to his farm managers for the coming year, outlining a six-year planting cycle designed to coax better yields from the reluctant soil.24

  Effort and ingenuity, however, were making little headway. In April 1788, he reported that “want of money” was causing “more perplexity and . . . uneasiness than I ever experienced before.” Four months later, he moaned that he “never felt the want of money so sensibly since I was a boy of 15 years old.”25

  The “tardy remainder” of states (North Carolina and Rhode Island) were resisting ratification, but creation of the government would not wait for them. Each ratifying state scheduled an election for the House of Representatives, and for its legislature to choose that state’s senators. The expiring Congress set three dates: On the first Wednesday in January, voters would choose the electors who would select the president; on the first Wednesday in February, those electors would meet in each state capital to elect the president and vice president; on the first Wednesday in March, the new government would begin.26

  Demands poured in that Washington serve as president. “Without you,” wrote Henry Lee, “the government can have but little chance of success.” Washington always replied that he sought no position, professing the wish only “to live and die in peace and retirement on my own farm.” He still feared criticism for returning to office after retiring from the army, and thought the Anti-Federalists would oppose him.27 He also knew that the job would be difficult. Nevertheless, he understood the force of Gouverneur Morris’s insistence that “no other man can fill that office. . . . You alone can awe the insolence of opposing factions.”28

  He truly had no choice. His agreement to attend the Philadelphia Convention had included an implied warranty that if a satisfactory constitution emerged, he would make it work. In the nearly two years since, Washington had transformed into a working politician. For what other reason was he closeted with Madison for five days before Christmas 1788, and again two months later? They had elections to follow and government positions to fill, taxes and budget practices to consider. Trade regulations, military arrangements, and foreign policy had to be reviewed. For the previous two years, Washington had done the things politicians do: developed strategies for change; worked to influence public opinion; polished messages and fostered a network of like-minded individuals; nurtured a public image that would help him achieve his goals.29

  Washington’s pleas that he preferred retirement expressed his fear of failure and his wish never to appear hungry for position. He also was feeling his years. That marvelous physique now ached, and he was, he always recalled, “of a short-lived family.”30 But those reasons were not enough to justify declining the presidency.

  By late January, as the electors prepared to choose the president, Washington told Lafayette his goals: to establish a vigorous government that won respect from foreign nations, built prosperity, and developed western lands, while fostering manufactures and inland navigation.31 Behind these specifics was a powerful idealism. In an earlier letter, he had written that America was entering a new era, “a more happy one than hath before appeared on this checkered scene of existence.” The prospect of the new government, he added, “affords me more satisfaction than I have ever before derived from any political event.”32

  * * *

  Later generations would wonder at the presidential election of 1789. No political parties organized campaigns. No candidates stumped for votes. No elector was pledged to any candidate. Politics, eighteenth-century-style, was built on personal connections and the written word. Pro-Constitution leaders pushed for Washington. He rarely mentioned the presidency, but urged the election of Federalists to Congress.33 He also paid little attention to the vice presidency. When John Adams, a Constitution supporter, emerged among Federalists as a consensus choice for the office, Washington wrote a private letter supporting Adams, but did it only five days before electors were to vote, too late to have any impact on the balloting.34

  The ten states participating in the vote—New York’s legislature failed to agree on how to choose electors—designated electors in different ways. Only in Virginia did individual voters choose by districts; several states used some form of statewide voting, while three state legislatures selected electors. In New Jersey, the governor and his appointed privy council made the choice.35

  Washington rode to Alexandria in early January 1789 to vote for the elector from his congressional district, and a month later to vote for his congressman. The voting by the presidential electors on the first Wednesday of February was supposed to be secret, but leaked tallies confirmed Washington’s victory. Expecting to win, he had already ordered cloth from Connecticut for a new homespun suit that would highlight American industry.36

  Federalists won a commanding share of congressional seats, but the official count of the presidential vote was delayed by the same defect that afflicted the old Congress: no quorum. On Congress’s scheduled opening day, only eight of twenty-two senators and thirteen of fifty-nine representatives were present.37

  At Mount Vernon, Washington inspected the Potomac improvements, made what he thought would be his last visit to his mother in Fredericksburg, and wrote more instructions for managing his farms. His anxiety about the presidency, expressed to Knox, was unfeigned:

  My movements to the chair of government will be accompanied with feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful abode for an ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skill—abilities & inclination which is necessary to manage the helm.38

  Martha shared his misgivings, describing herself as “truly sorry” he would be president. “When, or whether he will ever come home again,” she added, “God only knows—I think it was much too late for him to go in to public life again.” Unable both to pay off an overdue loan and also to cover the expense of moving, Washington took out a new loan at 6 percent interest.39

  When a quorum of Congress assembled in early April, it unsealed the electors’ votes. Each was supposed to cast two votes; the candidate with the highest total would be president; the runner-up would be vice president. Of the seventy-two electors, three voted for no one. The others all gave one vote to Washington. Adams won thirty-four, fewer than half of the second votes, with the rest spread among ten others. Washington, the colossus of American politics, had won unanimously, again.40

  * * *

  On April 16, leaving Martha to follow with the two grandchildren, Washington departed for New York. He bade farewell to his neighbors in Alexandria “from an aching heart,” then began a journey that resembled a king’s progress. People lined the roads and formed escorts, sometimes choreographed, sometimes improvised.41

  Greeted by a parade at the Pennsylvania border, Washington sent his carriage to the rear and mounted a horse so he w
ould look more impressive. As he crossed the Schuylkill River Bridge, a mechanism dangled a laurel crown above his head at each end. He rode through military displays, ritual gunfire, and ringing church bells. As 20,000 Philadelphians cheered, he bowed continuously until reaching a banquet and its endless toasts.42

  Leaving the city in morning rain, Washington sent his escort home to stay dry. The press gushed its approval. “Our beloved magistrate delights to show, upon all occasions, that he is a man,” simpered one newspaper, “and . . . acts as if he considered himself the father—the friend—and the servant of the people.”43 Trenton trotted out the obligatory cavalry and infantry, though greater notice went to a choir of thirteen girls in white who sang adoring songs while strewing roses at the feet of Washington’s horse. Amid the ceremony, Washington’s mind filled with memories of a fierce skirmish fought over that same ground years before.44

  Thirteen white-clad oarsmen rowed him across New York’s Lower Bay as two choirs sang from nearby boats. Playful porpoises leapt alongside, expressing the animal kingdom’s evident delight. Ships and shore batteries fired salutes until he reached the landing, where Governor Clinton ushered him to a rented residence.45 The uproar made Washington somber, not elated. To his diary, he confided that the celebrations “filled my mind with sensations as painful . . . as they are pleasing.” He dreaded that his time as president might bring on “the reverse of this scene.”46

  Compared to his journey, the inauguration on April 30 was a low-key affair. Representatives and senators, accompanied by horsemen, escorted him to the newly renovated Federal Hall (formerly city hall). Washington wore his brown suit of Connecticut cloth, knee-high stockings, buckle shoes, and a ceremonial sword.

  Federal Hall, New York City, 1789

  Courtesy of the Library of Congress

  He passed through the Senate chamber to an open second-story balcony, where New York chancellor Robert Livingston administered the constitutional oath before a crowd in the street below. When Livingston proclaimed, “Long live George Washington, President of the United States,” a newspaper called the answering roar “the loudest plaudit and acclamation, that love and veneration ever inspired.”47

  As Washington delivered his address, his voice was low and his hands trembled. He had worried over the text for weeks. The first draft, prepared by his usual speechwriter, David Humphreys, had been quite long, covering seventy-three pages and making extensive policy recommendations. Washington turned it over to Madison for his views. His fellow Virginian produced a dramatically shorter speech that conspicuously refrained from proposing specific actions. Washington adopted Madison’s draft.48

  The surviving fragments of the first draft include passages wisely omitted, such as an extended justification of his attendance at the Philadelphia Convention, but they also offer an intriguing window onto Washington’s thinking. It denounced the Articles of Confederation and boldly embraced an egalitarian view, predicting that America would reverse “the absurd position that the many were made for the few.” It commented on military matters while recommending legislation designed to strengthen the union by creating a single currency and uniform weights and measures, strengthening the postal service, supporting education, and fostering invention with a patent system.49

  Madison’s draft, in contrast, featured inoffensive bromides, expressed in complex, backward-leaning syntax. The address began gloomily with Washington’s regret at leaving Mount Vernon in his “declining years,” noting the “frequent interruptions in my health [due] to the gradual waste committed on it by time.” The mood grew no lighter when he detailed his “inferior endowments from nature” and lamented that he was “unpracticed in the duties of civil administration.”

  Washington then offered supplication and thanks “to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe.” He applauded Americans for “the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government, [and] the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities.” He proposed a single action: the adoption of constitutional amendments to calm public “inquietude,” though not amendments that would make the government ineffective. He closed by asking Congress not to pay him a salary, a request that Congress ignored (perhaps recalling the extremely high expense reimbursement Washington claimed at the end of the Revolutionary War).50

  The occasion, the simplicity of the speech, and his awkward delivery moved the emotions of his audience. Many wept. A Massachusetts senator thought Washington appeared as virtue personified, yet “grave, almost to sadness,” and weighed down by his years. “Time,” the senator wrote, “has made havoc upon his face.”

  On that day, Washington embodied the transition from monarchical and aristocratic society to self-government. As a republican leader more regal than most kings, he was uniquely suited to mediate that transition. Despite America’s ideals of liberty and equality, monarchical styles still framed the expectations of many Americans. “Kingly government,” Ben Franklin had said at the Philadelphia Convention, was mankind’s natural inclination. A leading delegate had argued for a limited monarchy. Only months before the convention, some Americans invited a Prussian prince to become the American sovereign.51

  With his martial profile and formal demeanor, Washington brought a regal style. The sword that hung from his belt, like the adulation that marked his travels, drew on the symbolism of kings, their mystical connection to the people and the violent ways they held power. Americans had begun to celebrate his February birthday, as they had always celebrated the birthday of the English king. His convoluted language of modesty echoed disclaimers offered by Virginia’s royal governors, who could afford to be self-deprecating because they ruled by the king’s hereditary right. Even a fervent foe of aristocracy used a royal comparison to celebrate Washington: “There is not a king in Europe who would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.”52

  Though Washington was urged several times to claim the crown of America, he insisted on the supremacy of the people. His credentials as “a man of the people” were genuine. He had traveled more widely within the country than most Americans. He had led soldiers from every state. His army had included indentured servants, ex-slaves, and many immigrants; he had journeyed with backwoodsmen and represented frontier families in the House of Burgesses. He had parleyed with Indians and fought against them. His life at Mount Vernon was intertwined with African American slaves, some of whom he had promoted to positions of authority.53

  Moreover, he understood that he and other Americans had rejected the idea of royalty. During the war, he never questioned Congress’s power over his army. When mutiny threatened, Washington ensured the army’s submission to a people’s government that was breaking its promises to that same army. He knew it was the ideal of self-government that brought indigent Americans and wealthy Europeans to fight for independence. At the Philadelphia Convention, he had presided over a national deliberation about how to embody that ideal in a stable, effective government that could survive in a world of kings and tyrants. That ideal, as he pronounced in his inaugural address, inspired him too.

  As president, Washington would be the guardian of the union and its system of self-government, while reassuring the people with his authority. He needed to foster a return to prosperity, and to assert American rights on the world stage. The challenges were daunting, but he would not shrink from them.54 When he had challenged the nation to remake its government, it did so. Now it had placed the new executive branch in his care. He felt the burden was entirely upon him. It mostly was.

  GOVERNING

  Chapter 42

  On Untrodden Ground

  As the first president under the Constitution, Washington would play a major role in defining the presidency and constitutional government. Because, as one scholar recently observed, the Constitution was “deeply indeterminate,” creating a government according to its terms required not only legal interpre
tation, but also imagination.1

  Washington’s overarching goal was to strengthen the union of states by avoiding the paralysis that crippled the Confederation, while also proving that an effective government need not curtail liberty. There were many ways to fail, but if he succeeded, the American experiment could be a model for the world. Fortunately, the new president’s most important task was to inspire trust, which was Washington’s greatest gift, one reinforced by his long service during the Revolutionary War and retirement at the end of it.2

  Powerful centrifugal forces divided regions: New England, the middle states, the South, and the raw west. Each had its own economic interests, social structures, even speech patterns. Against those forces, Washington pledged that he “would lose the last drop of his blood” to preserve the “experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose of liberty man could be trusted.”3

  Washington embodied the government as no later president has. Until Congress created executive departments at summer’s end, he largely was the executive branch. Two former officers of the Confederation Congress continued to work without formal status: John Jay oversaw foreign affairs from his law office while Henry Knox managed the nation’s few soldiers from rooms in a tavern. Holdovers from the Confederation sat at the postal service and the treasury board, with uncertain legitimacy. The president commanded most of America’s attention.4