A New York newspaper proclaimed Washington at least a demigod, looming “upon a scale of eminence that heaven never before assigned to a mortal.” Another observer thought Washington was “the only man which man, woman and child, Whig and Tory, Feds and Antifeds appear to agree on.” If a demigod, he was an anxious one, concerned, as he wrote on his fifth day in office, “that more will be expected from me than I shall be able to perform.”5
The government was lodged in America’s second largest city, which then was a grimy seaport rebuilding from fires and neglect during British occupation. The streets, a Virginian grumbled, “are badly paved, very dirty and narrow as well as crooked and . . . full of hogs and mud.” A new congressman complained of the smells, which included the contents of chamber pots spilled out from houses. The urban din sometimes drowned out the debates at Federal Hall, the one public structure with pretensions to grandeur. The diverse population included about 2,000 enslaved Blacks, perhaps as many free Blacks.6
Washington’s first challenge was defining his office. There were many alternative approaches to it, none dictated by the Constitution. The president might choose to be an administrative handmaiden to Congress, a distinguished figurehead mostly trotted out for formal occasions. Or he could attempt to dictate laws for Congress to enact. He might function solely as a constitutional safety net, preserving his authority for moments of crisis. Or perhaps the office should change as situations required.
Washington, a master of public display, struggled with basic questions of how to comport himself. What social interactions should he allow and in what settings? How often should he be available for meetings, with whom, and for how long? These were not mere punctilios of etiquette, but were patterns that would define the new government, which “needs help and props on all sides,” a skeptical senator said. “The President’s amiable deportment,” he added, “smooths and sweetens everything.”7
Washington sought advice from friends. Most counseled a middle course, neither too casual nor too regal. “Steer clear of extremes,” Hamilton wrote, proposing a weekly reception open to the public, plus large entertainments quarterly, and also family dinners with friends. Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania, whose diary provides an inside view of the new government, recognized that the crowds clamoring to see Washington could distract him from actually doing anything, but also that the president could not withdraw from the public “like an Eastern lama.”8
Washington published a newspaper announcement that he would receive any person between two and three on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, would return no visits, and would attend no private social events. The Tuesday afternoon receptions evolved into starchy, men-only affairs enjoyed by no one, least of all the president. Martha’s arrival in New York converted the Friday events into nonalcoholic evening receptions for both sexes. At the more casual Friday soirees, Washington wore no sword.9
Thursday dinners included up to a dozen guests, usually officials and legislators, sometimes with families. The events could lapse into awkward solemnity. A Massachusetts representative compared one to a funeral. The problem often was the host. At one dinner, the president “wore a settled aspect of melancholy.” He sometimes absentmindedly tapped the table with his fork or knife, evidently eager for the meal to end. His failing hearing hindered conversation, and so did his adventures with dentures. His current oral device, which must have been a torture to insert against tender gums, contained both human teeth and some fashioned from a hippopotamus tusk.10
The exacting scrutiny of Washington’s every word and action had to be wearying. Martha chafed at life in a goldfish bowl, describing herself as “more like a state prisoner than anything else.” Because of the “bounds set for me which I must not depart from,” she often preferred to stay home.11
* * *
The uncertainty surrounding the president’s role in the new government plunged the Senate into three weeks of agonizing over how to address him, a matter on which the Constitution was silent. In the army, Washington had been “Your Excellency,” a title that also applied to state governors and the president of the Confederation Congress. Some thought the president’s title should be more grand.
The question nonplussed Vice President Adams, who despised the term “president” as mundane, used by such lowly figures as leaders of cricket clubs and fire companies. Something more august, he insisted, would command the respect of foreigners. “Excellency” drew support from some senators, as did “highness,” and “elective highness.” Senator Maclay—a self-avowed common man—ridiculed the proposals to saddle America with “all the fooleries, fopperies, finches, and pomp of royal etiquette.”12
Washington was wisely reticent about this unexpected dispute. His majestic silence avoided adopting Adams’s position, which was out of step with the entire revolutionary and independence movement, without alienating his own vice president. Goaded by Adams, the Senate settled upon the ludicrous title of “His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of the Rights of the Same.” The House of Representatives spared the nation, and Washington, when it thumpingly rejected the ponderous title in favor of “President of the United States.” The portly Adams was not so fortunate; senators informally christened him “His Rotundity.”13
However whimsically medieval the debate over titles might seem in retrospect, it appeared to confirm the fears of Anti-Federalists that the government would lean toward the aristocratic. David Stuart, the physician and legislator who became Washington’s intimate after marrying Jack Custis’s widow, reported from Virginia, “Nothing could equal the ferment and disquietude occasioned by the proposition respecting titles.” Stuart added that Virginians applauded Washington for walking the streets like everyone else. “The great herd of mankind form their judgments of characters more from such slight occurrences,” he wrote, “and perhaps they are right, as the heart is more immediately consulted” on small matters “and an error of judgement is more easily pardoned than one of the heart.” Washington had again sidestepped a controversy.14
Through the early days of his presidency, Washington kept a low public profile, much as he had when he entered the House of Burgesses thirty years before. He took time to get the feel of his position, to sniff out political crosscurrents and identify where power lay, who would wield it, and how. He asked Stuart to report the public’s opinion “of both men and measures, and of none more than myself,” especially his mistakes. Washington had to know the criticisms so he could either reform his conduct or explain himself better.15
Everything the government did set a precedent. Madison, the leading figure in Congress, wrote to his father that the legislature was “in a wilderness without a footstep to guide us.” Constitutional questions, he noted, were difficult to resolve “and must continue so until its meaning on all great points shall have been settled.”16
Washington enjoyed several advantages as he ventured into that wilderness. The Philadelphia Convention had been a four-month tutorial on the attitudes and interests of each region, state, and economic group. Nearly a year of debates over ratification reinforced those lessons. Moreover, with only ten representatives and two senators identifying as Anti-Federalist, Washington faced little organized opposition, though North Carolina and Rhode Island still were outside the union and three large states had Anti-Federalist governors (New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia). His alliance with the brainy Madison, whom he consulted constantly, was another advantage. In one request to Madison, the president wrote apologetically, “I am very troublesome, but you must excuse me. Ascribe it to friendship and confidence.”17
With customary diligence, Washington set about mastering his job. He gathered briefings from Henry Knox on the Indian tribes on the Northwest and Southwest borders. He asked John Jay about foreign negotiations, secured estimates of the nation’s crushing debts, and inquired why the postal service was losing money.18
* * *
; Most congressmen were pleasantly surprised by the decorum of their first session. “There is less party spirit,” wrote a Massachusetts legislator, “less personality, less intrigue, cabal, management, or cunning than I ever saw in a public assembly.”19
Their first major task was enacting a tariff that would pay the government’s bills, but the effort stretched on as some legislators demanded special treatment for products important back home—molasses for New England, iron and leather goods for Pennsylvania, and so on. A dispute developed over whether the tariff should be lower on ships from countries with which the United States had a commercial treaty (notably, France). Madison urged that distinction, but Congress chose to tax all foreign ships the same, concluding that a tax break for the French would reduce revenue without reducing British commercial domination.20 Publicly mute on the question, the president wrote in a private letter that Madison had “the purest motives, and most heartfelt conviction,” but “the subject was delicate, and perhaps had better not have been stirred.” In this situation, Washington exhibited again what John Adams called his “gift of silence.”21
Washington also said nothing when Congress debated whether the Senate, because it confirmed executive appointments, also should approve dismissals of those officers. Vice President Adams’s tie-breaking vote in the Senate ensured the president’s power to fire executive officers. Washington’s reassuring presence, a South Carolinian worried, caused Congress to trust the executive too much: “Things which alarm and give uneasiness if committed by anyone else are overlooked when done by him.”22
The president spoke up for the constitutional amendments that would become known as the Bill of Rights. When campaigning for Congress months before, Madison had promised to support some of the amendments recommended by state ratifying conventions. To honor that pledge, he proposed protections for individual rights, omitting any that would limit the government’s taxing or commercial power or supremacy over the states. Washington provided a letter calling some of Madison’s proposals “importantly necessary,” and others “necessary to quiet the fears of some respectable characters and well-meaning men.” When Congress adopted many of the proposals, the president sent them to the states for ratification.23
After less than two months in New York, however, matters took a dangerous turn: Washington developed a fever from an infection on the back of one thigh, which swelled, a congressman reported, “as large as my two fists.” Draining the growth was the only option. Washington bore the brutal procedure without anesthesia, but the attending physician feared for Washington’s life. The municipal government blocked traffic in front of the president’s residence so street noise would not bother him.24
The press reported his illness only in vague generalities. Even fragmentary reports, a Boston newspaper reported, caused public anxiety. Two weeks after the surgery, Washington wrote that “feebleness still hangs upon me, and I am yet much incommoded by the incision,” which forced him to lie on one side. His carriage was modified to transport him in a reclining position. For the Fourth of July, he donned his blue-and-buff army uniform and waved at a passing parade from the doorway.25
When the wound proved slow to heal, his convalescence stretched out. “I had no conception,” he wrote to Dr. Craik, “of being confined to a lying posture on one side [for] six weeks—and that I should feel the remains of it for more than twelve.” He blamed the infection on sedentary living and “the cares of office,” which would “no doubt hasten my departure for that country from whence no traveler returns.”26
Before he was fully recovered, the president initiated two confrontations with the Senate that would frame relations between that body and the executive. The first involved the appointment of a revenue collector for the port of Savannah. Though the Senate had confirmed Washington’s appointees until then, it declined that one. Annoyed, the president startled senators by barging into their chamber without warning. Vice President Adams yielded his chair. The president asked why the Senate had rejected his nominee.
After a silence, Senator James Gunn of Georgia acknowledged that his opposition likely caused the rejection. The Senate’s view, Gunn said, was “that no explanation of their motives or proceedings was ever due or would ever be given to any President of the United States.” Because of his respect for this president, Gunn continued, he would explain on this occasion that his opposition grew from a personal dispute unrelated to the nominee’s competence. Washington left.27
Though the president later expressed “very great regret” over the episode, he accepted the Georgian’s position, which was the first exercise of senatorial courtesy, an unwritten practice that still allows a single senator to torpedo an executive appointee who resides in his or her home state. “As the president has a right to nominate without assigning the reasons,” Washington wrote at the time, “so has the Senate a right to dissent without giving theirs.”28
Two weeks later, a second encounter framed the president’s power to make treaties “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” Thinking that the constitutional language directed him to seek the Senate’s “advice,” Washington decided to confer with the Senate before sending a commission to negotiate with the Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee tribes. He and War Secretary Knox were struggling to balance the tribes’ rights with the land hunger of whites.29
This time, in early August, Washington gave notice that he was coming to the Senate. Forewarning did not, however, produce a more collegial outcome.30
Washington again took Adams’s chair. He announced that Secretary Knox was present to respond to questions. He handed a paper to Adams that listed seven questions on which he sought the Senate’s views. Adams read the paper aloud, but street noise drowned him out. Robert Morris, Washington’s close friend, asked Adams to read it again.
Another lengthy silence brought to Washington’s face “an aspect of stern displeasure.” Senator Maclay objected that the president’s questions could not be answered yes or no, but required discussion. As each was posed separately, the senators decided to postpone it. When the Senate had put off several of them, Maclay recorded, Washington “started up in a violent fret” and protested, “‘This defeats every purpose of my coming here.’” He agreed to postpone resolution of the matter, then stalked out of the chamber.
Two days later, Washington returned in full command of himself. He sat serenely through the Senate’s discussion. Afterward, by one account, he said “he would be damned if he ever went there [the Senate] again.” He never did, which set another precedent. Rather than consult the Senate before beginning negotiations, he decided to negotiate treaties first and then present them for approval. The Senate’s power to “advise and consent” shrank. The Senate’s role would be solely to affirm or reject a completed treaty.31
The episode over the Savannah collector cemented the Senate’s power over presidential appointees; the treaty episode expanded the president’s foreign-affairs power. Future presidents might consult with individual senators on pending treaty talks or appointments, but they would never again attempt to confer with the entire Senate.32
* * *
By the end of the summer, Congress created the new executive departments, allowing Washington to appoint their heads. He chose younger men of talent: Hamilton as secretary of the treasury, Knox as secretary of war, Jefferson (then serving as minister to France) as secretary of state, and Edmund Randolph as attorney general. Though a generation older than all but Jefferson, Washington knew their abilities. Hamilton and Knox had been officers in the army. Randolph and Hamilton were at the Constitutional Convention. Washington had served with Jefferson in the House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress.
Washington kept them on a short leash. He consulted with them constantly, meeting them by ones and twos, then in 1791 began the practice of meeting with the department heads together, crowding them into the second-floor study in the president’s house. Washington’s
cabinet procedures, described by Jefferson, ensured his control over policy. If a matter came directly to a cabinet officer but required no action, the president was to be informed of the situation. If action was warranted, the president would review the proposed response before it was implemented. Frequently Washington had no comment on proposed responses; sometimes he dictated revisions. Thorny matters required direct consultation between the president and his subordinate. As Jefferson summarized the process, Washington “was always in accurate possession of all facts and proceedings” and took responsibility for “whatever was done.”33
In short, Washington was in charge. He concealed from the public, and sometimes from history, the hands-on management habits developed in the army and at Mount Vernon. He allowed Hamilton to take the lead on economic policies, Jefferson to sign diplomatic correspondence, and featured Knox on military and Indian issues. Yet Washington’s control over executive policy was so tight that some call him the originator of the “hidden hand” presidency. Jefferson followed the same procedures when he became president in 1801.34
For the only time in American history, a single person was responsible for appointing every executive official and judicial officer, including every Supreme Court justice. Washington called making appointments “the most irksome” part of his job. He applied three criteria to each appointment: the applicant’s fitness for the job, his prior “merits and sufferings” (that is, his war experience), and the geographic distribution of executive jobs. When an appointment had an impact on a congressman’s district or a senator’s state, he consulted with that legislator.35
In August 1789, Washington’s mother succumbed to breast cancer at age eighty-one. Unable to reach Virginia in time for the funeral, Washington wrote to his sister that the loss was “awful and affecting,” but noted that Mary Washington had reached “an age beyond which few attain, and . . . with the full enjoyment of her mental faculties.” As he usually counseled others, he professed “due submission to the decrees of the Creator.”36
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