The Federalist-dominated Congress embraced much of the proposed public-credit program: paying face value plus accrued interest, not paying the original debtholders who had sold their claims, and repaying principal slowly at a lower interest rate. The House of Representatives approved those elements by late March 1790. But it gagged on assumption of state debts, which failed on five separate votes.
Though the assumption fight triggered sectional conflicts, the configurations differed from those on the residence question. When North Carolina’s representatives arrived in early April, following that state’s recent ratification of the Constitution, they joined Marylanders and Virginians and Georgians in opposing assumption; Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Connecticut demanded it; other state delegations were divided. By May, Congress was stuck. New Englanders vowed to sink the whole credit program rather than approve it without assumption.24
Two external shocks worsened the stalemate.
* * *
In mid-March, Quakers from the middle states petitioned Congress to end the importation of Africans as slaves. At a meeting with the Quaker leader, Washington was noncommittal on the issue. When Congress turned to the petitions, Georgians and South Carolinians denounced them in language that Madison called “intemperate beyond all example.” After more than a week of passionate speechifying, Congress buried the petitions. After all, the Constitution specifically guaranteed slave imports until 1807. But the episode sharpened Southern resentment. Washington’s friend Stuart reported that Virginians doubted they could continue in a union with “the Northern phalanx . . . whose interests are so dissimilar.”25
Although Washington thought the Quaker petitions “an ill-judged bit of business,” he dismissed Stuart’s complaints. That Northerners pursued their interests, Washington replied, was unremarkable. Southerners should do the same. If New Englanders “move in a solid phalanx to effect their purposes,” he asked, while “the Southern are always divided, which of the two is most to be blamed?”26
The second shock came when the president fell seriously ill again, the second time in less than a year. The affliction came on slowly. Observers thought Washington looked unwell in April. He, as usual, thought the solution was more activity. His attempts to exercise had made him a familiar sight, striding New York streets with two aides trailing behind, or riding past Manhattan fields. After a four-day outing to Long Island, pneumonia or a virulent flu hit hard on May 9, and carried him to the edge of death.27
His aide William Jackson immediately summoned a physician, then more doctors, but they could not relieve Washington’s fever and chills. His breathing grew labored as his lungs filled. Six days after the disease struck, Senator Maclay called at the president’s residence. Every eye in the house, he recorded, was filled with tears. A physician told him that the president’s death was likely. “Too much,” wrote Senator Pierce Butler of South Carolina, “hangs on the life of this good man.” Abigail Adams reported that when Washington developed hiccups and a rattling in his throat, Martha fled the room, thinking him dying.28
Washington’s recovery was as dramatic as the affliction’s onset had been. At five in the afternoon, a Massachusetts congressman wrote, “the physicians disclosed that they had no hopes of his recovery.” Then “about six he began to sweat most profusely, which continued until this morning and we are now told that he is entirely out of danger.” As the fever sweated out, Washington coughed up the phlegm that had clogged his breathing.29
A week later, Washington described himself as a convalescent with “little inclination to [do] more than what duty to the public required.” A month later, he reported still having a cough, chest pain, and shortness of breath. The experience shook him. Observing that he had passed through two severe illnesses in a year, he wrote that another would likely “put me to sleep with my fathers.”30
According to Abigail Adams, the news of his illness was suppressed to avoid panic. Even news of his recovery was unsettling because it revealed that he had been sick. A New York paper proclaimed that “a life so precious should be watched with the eyes of Argus; health so important should be nurtured with the vigilance of angels.” A New Jersey man reported that concern was universal because “he alone has the confidence of the people.” A Virginian agreed: “Perhaps the happiness of a country never depended so much upon the life of one man.”31
After the president’s recovery, Congress focused anew on the twin issues it had to resolve: assumption and the residence. Since at least the middle of March, some had wondered if a single grand bargain might resolve both, attracting majorities from the shifting coalitions for each element of the bargain. Largely unseen, the hand of the recovering president would guide that effort. As Maclay wrote in his diary, the order of the day became, “Vote this way for me, and I will vote that way for you.”32
Chapter 44
The Compromise
In his effort to guide the congressional intrigue over the residence and assumption, Washington employed a little-noticed figure. Major William Jackson has been described as Washington’s aide, or secretary, or bodyguard. Born in England but raised in America, he served with the Continental Army, traveled as a diplomat, and was assistant secretary of war at the end of the fighting with Britain. Settling in Pennsylvania, he abandoned law studies to sign on as secretary of the Constitutional Convention, which brought him to Washington’s presidential staff.1
While other aides managed correspondence, Jackson gravitated to active chores. He gathered recommendations for executive jobs, extended invitations for dinners and meetings, and traveled with the president. The thirty-year-old bachelor was nimble in a pinch. When illness struck the president in May 1790, Jackson managed the office during Washington’s recuperation because the other senior aide, Tobias Lear, was honeymooning. When a lady’s headdress caught fire at a reception, Jackson extinguished the flames with his hands.2
In the spring of 1790, Jackson’s portfolio expanded to representing the president in the deal-making about the most pressing issues facing Congress.3
* * *
The bargaining centered on the Pennsylvania delegation, which was large, fractious, and had four horses in the residence race: Philadelphia for the temporary residence, and the Susquehanna, Germantown, and Falls of the Delaware for the permanent. The Pennsylvanians were considering a proposition that they embrace assumption in return for votes for Philadelphia as temporary residence. At the time, the Potomac forces favored a temporary residence in Philadelphia as a stepping-stone to winning the permanent residence. Before Washington fell ill, Jackson conferred several times with the Pennsylvania leader in the House, George Clymer. Jackson then delivered to other Pennsylvanians “a florid harangue on the golden opportunity” presented by the deal.
In his journal, Maclay griped that Jackson’s involvement, as Washington’s representative, was “far from proper.” Five days later, Maclay noted that Jackson and two other Washington aides were outside the Senate when it adjourned, waiting to waylay the members because “the crisis is at hand.” Nevertheless, the House narrowly rejected assumption the following Monday, April 12.4
Though that vote could not have pleased Washington, the two issues now were linked, and they would stay that way. Some reported that the Pennsylvanians were trying to win the residence by supporting assumption. Others thought Virginians were pursuing the same deal. Many saw that the bargain might be struck, but no one could make it happen.5
Some of the blocs in Congress were well defined. Most Pennsylvanians sought the temporary residence for Philadelphia, believing that once the government was in the nation’s largest city, it would never leave, certainly not for a new city—what one legislator scornfully called “palaces in the woods.”6 Most New Englanders wanted assumption and proposed to get it by trading their votes for the residence.7 New Yorkers aligned themselves with New England on assumption, but wanted the temporary residence to stay where it was. Virginians alw
ays invoked the president’s preference for the Potomac. “No Virginian can talk on any subject,” Maclay complained, “but the perfection of General Washington interweaves itself.” A South Carolinian summarized the atmosphere in Congress: “Negotiations, cabals, meetings, plots and counterplots.”8
Several officials who answered to the president—Hamilton, Jackson, and Hamilton’s assistants William Duer and Tench Coxe—plunged into the horse trading. Secretary of State Jefferson, fresh from France and Monticello, joined in. Only a few days after the crisis of Washington’s illness, Jackson huddled with Robert Morris of Pennsylvania and John Langdon of New Hampshire, senators at the center of the deal-making. “I cannot account for Jackson having meddled in this business,” Maclay fumed again.9
Jackson, like Jefferson and Hamilton, represented the president. Although Washington respected the independence of Congress, that hardly precluded explaining to lawmakers the true interests of the nation on vital issues. Madison, the savviest operative in Congress, briefed Washington as the contending forces issued ultimatums and rescinded them, proposed deals and reneged on them. Senators were dragged from sickbeds to cast key votes; one was carried to the Senate floor in his bed wearing his nightcap, with two doctors in tow. In early June, with assumption and the residence unresolved, Rhode Island ratified the Constitution. Its senators rushed to New York, forcing a fresh round of strategizing.10
In the second week of June, with the scheming nearing full boil, Washington left with Hamilton and Jefferson for an ocean fishing trip. Though Washington enjoyed fishing, little evidence suggests that the other two did. Moreover, those three did not usually while away casual hours with one another. Nonetheless, they spent three days together, bobbing on the waves off New Jersey.11
Newspaper accounts portrayed the president hauling in sea bass and blackfish, more evidence of his return to robust health. Nothing, however, disclosed the shipboard conversations in what resembled an eighteenth-century exercise in executive strategizing. Jefferson shared Washington’s enthusiasm for developing the Potomac, while Hamilton and Washington thought assumption essential to restore public credit. It is inconceivable that they did not plan, in detail, how to secure congressional approval for those measures.12
Back on land, the deal-making swerved in an unanticipated direction. After the Pennsylvanians won a House vote to adjourn Congress to Philadelphia—a ploy intended to make that city the temporary residence—a countermove by New Yorkers and New Englanders substituted Baltimore as the temporary residence. A day later, on June 11, the House accepted Baltimore by a whopping 53–6, a vote that was more a repudiation of Pennsylvania finagling than an embrace of the city on Chesapeake Bay. Yet Baltimore’s star was rising. With a population of 15,000, it offered urban amenities, while its port did not freeze. Southerners liked that Maryland was a slave state. But with the question moving to the Senate, no one was giving up.13
Congressmen bemoaned the bargaining. One scorned “this despicable grog shop contest, whether the taverns of New York or Philadelphia shall get the custom of Congress.” Another despaired over “such caballing and disgracefully mixing national with local questions that . . . I feel ashamed of the body to which I belong.” The scheming, Maclay wrote on June 18, stretched endlessly: “The Very Goddess of Slowness seems to have possessed Congress.”14
The president’s men soon would unstick those jammed congressional gears.
* * *
The outlines of the deal had been plain for weeks: Votes for (or against) assumption would be swapped for votes for (or against) a permanent residence and votes for (or against) a temporary residence. Having feverishly tried to pull off this bargain since February, Robert Morris tried again on the evening of June 11. He and two colleagues met with Jackson, Washington’s eyes and ears, and also with Hamilton’s assistant secretary of the treasury. They agreed that on the following morning, Morris and Hamilton would bump into each other as each innocently strolled along the Battery.
The accidental encounter occurred as planned. Hamilton offered to search for votes to deliver the permanent residence to Pennsylvania if Morris produced votes for assumption. Morris wanted more: the temporary residence in Philadelphia too. Hamilton agreed to Morris’s terms, but could not gather the votes to deliver both residences to Pennsylvania, while Morris lacked enough Pennsylvania votes to pass assumption.15
When the Hamilton-Morris bargain died, Jefferson approached Morris, announcing that his goals were assumption, placement of the temporary residence in Philadelphia, and placement of the permanent residence on the Potomac. Those, not coincidentally, were the president’s goals. Each step showed that a central intelligence was directing Jackson and the cabinet secretaries: President Washington.16
On June 14, Jefferson proposed a bargain to Morris and a New Jersey senator: Place the temporary residence in Philadelphia for fifteen years, then the permanent residence on the Potomac. At the same time, Madison, long the president’s ally, moved to jump-start assumption, offering pro-assumption votes to New Englanders if they supported a temporary residence in Philadelphia.17
The president’s men were feverishly trying to fit together the pieces of a maddening puzzle.
* * *
Jefferson created the legend that he hosted a dinner where the deal was struck to swap assumption for placing the residence on the Potomac. In three separate documents, he described the conversations that supposedly produced the Compromise of 1790: a contemporaneous letter to James Monroe that mentioned no dinner, and two later memoranda to himself, one composed a few years later and another twenty-five years after that. The first version, to Monroe, emphasized how dire the situation was: Without the public-credit program, the nation’s financial standing would “burst and vanish, and the states [will] separate to take care every one of itself.”18
The two later versions describe Jefferson encountering Hamilton as he was leaving the president’s house, the treasury secretary asking Jefferson to help find votes for assumption, and the benevolent Jefferson presiding over a dinner at which Madison and Hamilton made the deal: Madison agreeing to soften his opposition to assumption and to scrounge up two votes for it from Potomac valley congressmen once legislation was enacted establishing Philadelphia as the temporary residence and the Potomac as the permanent one. Hamilton was to produce New England votes to carry the residence terms of the bargain.19
Neither of the other diners ever described that discussion, though the three men may well have discussed the situation over a meal. Jefferson’s accounts, however, provide a partial view of the bargaining. Before agreeing to the compromise, Virginia legislators had to be sure their state would be reimbursed for war debts it had already paid but could only incompletely document. By June 20, Madison had spent two days with the federal commissioner appointed to settle those accounts; the Virginian emerged with reimbursement nearly as large as that claimed by any other state.20
Moreover, before Jefferson’s supposed dinner miracle, it was Madison—not Hamilton—who negotiated with New Englanders to trade the residence and assumption issues. Also, three days before the dinner meeting, Washington himself met for hours with a leading Massachusetts congressman, Theodore Sedgwick, evidently on precisely those matters. Sedgwick, a central player in the final compromise, described his session with the president in a letter to his wife that was both breathless and elliptical:
I spent two or three hours this afternoon with the President who treated me with a familiarity I have never before experienced, and with a confidence which was highly flattering to me. The substance of the conversation I may hereafter relate to you. The affairs of this country are drawing to a crisis. A very few days will determine what will be the future complexion of the government. I have much stronger hopes than I have for some time entertained of a favorable issue.
Though Sedgwick did not use the terms “assumption” and “residence,” no other issues then involved a crisis that
could determine the government’s future. Washington, having employed Jackson, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison to break the congressional logjam, seems to have stepped onto the playing field himself. New England votes for the Potomac residence would be crucial.21
The eventual compromise was implemented in a series of votes across several weeks. Massachusetts cemented the deal on June 28 and 29 when its senators broke ranks from other New Englanders to kill Baltimore’s bid for the permanent residence, leaving the way open for the Potomac. When a New York senator mounted a last-ditch effort to keep the temporary residence in New York and move the permanent one to Baltimore, Hamilton told him that assumption could pass only if the residence went first to Philadelphia, then to the Potomac.22
A central part of the deal was that Pennsylvanians would abandon their quest for the permanent site, which they had agreed to do. With many of them persuaded that Congress would never leave Philadelphia once located there, they accepted that condition.23
Maclay of Pennsylvania decided that the puppet master was the tall man in the president’s residence. “It is in fact the interest of the President of the United States that pushes the Potomac,” he wrote on June 30, “by means of Jefferson, Madison, [Senator Charles] Carrol[l] [of Maryland] and others.” Two weeks later, after several votes implementing the compromise, Maclay’s judgment was the same: “The President of the United States has (in my opinion) had a great influence in this business.”24
George Washington Page 42
