George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  28. To Jonathan Trumbull Jr., 4 December 1788, GWP; from G. Morris, 6 December 1788, GWP; from Hamilton, 18 November 1788, GWP.

  29. Diary, 19–25 December 1788, GWP; to Madison, 16 February 1789, GWP; Madison to James Madison Sr., 24 February 1789, PJM.

  30. To Lafayette, 8 December 1784, GWP.

  31. To Lafayette 29 March 1789, GWP.

  32. To John Langdon, 20 July 1788, GWP; to William Gordon, 23 December 1788, GWP.

  33. To James McHenry, 31 July 1788, GWP.

  34. To Benjamin Lincoln, 26 October 1788, 31 January 1789, GWP. During the Revolution, Adams had complained about “the superstitious veneration that is sometimes paid to General Washington.” George W. Cormer, The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1948), 141. Madison spoke for those skeptical of Adams when he observed that the New Englander “has made himself obnoxious to many,” and cited his “political principles,” his hostility to General Washington at stages of the war, and “his extravagant self-importance.” Madison to Jefferson, 17 October 1788, in PJM.

  35. Larson, The Return of George Washington, 250; Marcus Cunliffe, “Elections of 1789 and 1792,” in Gil Troy, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and Fred L. Israel, eds., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–2009, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File (2012), 1.

  36. Diary, 7 January and 2 February 1789, GWP; Pennsylvania Mercury, February 14, 1789; Federal Gazette, April 20, 1789; DHFFE, 4:161–66; to Knox, 29 January 1789, GWP; from Knox, 19 February 1789, GWP.

  37. Massachusetts Centinel, February 7, 1789; Pennsylvania Packet, February 7, 1789; Larson, The Return of George Washington, 277–78.

  38. To Richard Conway, 6 March 1789, GWP; to George Augustine Washington, 31 March 1789, GWP; to Thomas Green, 31 March 1789, GWP; to Knox, 1 April 1789, GWP. Washington added to Mount Vernon’s management another nephew, Robert Lewis, son of his sister Betty. To Betty Lewis, 15 March 1789, GWP.

  39. To Richard Conway, 6 March 1789, GWP; Martha Washington to John Dandridge, 20 April 1789, in Fields, Worthy Partners, 213.

  40. Adams was miffed at his low vote total, calling it “scurvy . . . an indelible stain on our country, countrymen, and Constitution.” Adams to Benjamin Rush, 17 May 1789, AP.

  41. To the Mayor, Corporation, and Citizens of Alexandria, 16 April 1789, GWP; Wood, The Idea of America, 240.

  42. New York Daily Gazette, April 27, 1789; Federal Gazette, April 22, 1789.

  43. Pennsylvania Gazette, April 22, 1789; Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser, May 7, 1789;

  44. Pennsylvania Packet, May 1, 1789; New York Packet, May 1, 1789; “To the Ladies of Trenton,” 21 April 1789, GWP.

  45. New York Packet, May 1, 1789; Gazette of the United States, April 25, 1789; Elias Boudinot to Hannah Boudinot, 24 April, in Clarence Winthrop Bowen, ed., “The History of the Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of George Washington,” New York: D. Appleton & Co. (1892), 28–30 [also in DHFFE 15:337]; New York Daily Advertiser, April 24, 1789; Freeman’s Journal, April 29, 1789.

  46. Diary, 23 April 1789, GWP.

  47. New York Daily Gazette, May 1, 1789.

  48. Stewart, Madison’s Gift, 86; Fisher Ames to George Richards Minot, 3 May 1789, in Seth Ames, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, Boston: Little, Brown & Co. (1854), 1:34.

  49. “Undelivered First Inaugural Address: Fragments,” 30 April 1789, GWP.

  50. First Inaugural Address, 30 April 1789, GWP.

  51. Edward Thornton to James Bland Burges, 11 June 1792, in S. W. Jackman, “A Young Englishman Reports on the New Nation: Edward Thornton to James Bland Burges, 1791, 1793,” WMQ 18:85, 110–11 (1961); Farrand 1:83, 86–87 (2 June 1787); George Mason to James Monroe, 30 January 1792, in Rutland, Papers of George Mason 3:1254; Albany Register, March 2, 1799; James Monroe to Andrew Jackson, 14 December 1816, in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (1901) 5:342–45; Charles King, ed., The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (1894) 6:643–44 (10 May) (conversation of Monroe); Kapp, Life of Steuben, 584; Richard Krauel, “Prince Henry of Prussia and the Regency of the United States,” Am. Hist. Rev. 7:47–48 (1911). Nearly 100 years ago, Louise Burnham Dunbar gathered a number of reports and confessions of monarchical preferences among Americans in the 1780s. Louise Burnham Dunbar, A Study of “Monarchical” Tendencies in the United States from 1776 to 1801, Urbana: University of Illinois Press (1922), 60–75, 84–85; Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2014). James McClurg’s motion at the convention to have presidents serve for “good behavior” is discussed in chapter 40, note 15. A month before Washington took office, his former aide, James McHenry, enthused in a letter, “You are now a king, under a different name,” and stated himself “well satisfied that sovereign prerogatives have in no age or country been more honorably obtained; or that, at any time they will be more prudently and wisely exercised.” From James McHenry, 29 March 1789, GWP.

  52. Benjamin Rush to Thomas Ruston, 29 October 1775, GWP, in Butterfield, Letters of Benjamin Rush 1:92.

  53. From Colonel Lewis Nicola, 22 May 1782, GWP; to William Gordon, 23 December 1788, GWP; Richard Brookhiser, “Afterword: The Forgotten Character of George Washington,” in Gregg and Spalding, Patriot Sage, 303. In the first draft of the inaugural address, Washington had included a reassurance to his countrymen that since he had no children of his own, he could have no dynastic ambitions—“no family to build in greatness upon my country’s ruins.” He did not have to include that passage, however, because Americans well knew he had no direct heir and took reassurance from it.

  54. To Edward Rutledge, 5 May 1789, GWP.

  42. ON UNTRODDEN GROUND

  1. Jonathan Gienapp, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era, Cambridge: Belknap Press (2018), 10, 4.

  2. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800, New York: Oxford University Press (1993), 10.

  3. Charlene Bangs Bickford and Kenneth R. Bowling, Birth of the Nation: The First Federal Congress 1789–1791, Madison: Madison House Publishers (1989), 7; Jefferson to Walter Jones, 2 January 1814, in PTJ.

  4. Fergus Bordewich, The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government, New York: Simon & Schuster (2016), 29.

  5. Gazette of the United States, April 25, 1789; Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, The Fear of an Elective King: George Washington and the Presidential Title Controversy of 1789, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (2014), 4; William Knox to Winthrop Sargent, 16 March 1789, DHFFC 15:70; to Anthony Wayne, 4 May 1789, GWP.

  6. Thomas E. V. Smith, The City of New York in the Year of Washington’s Inauguration: 1789, New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co. (1889), 5–7, 12; John Page to Robt. Page, 16 March 1789, DHFFC 15:71; Elias Boudinot to Hannah Boudinot, 15 May 1789, DHFFC 15:557–58; Frank Monaghan and Marvin Lowenthal, This Was New York: The Nation’s Capital in 1789, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co. (1943), 31, 32, 36–37; Judith Sargent Murray to Winthrop and Judith Sargent, 29 May 1790, DHFFC 19:1624; Rufus Wilmot Griswold, The Republican Court: American Society in the Days of Washington, New York: Appleton & Co. (1868), 33, 88.

  7. Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit, eds., The Diary of William Maclay, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1988), 8–10 (28 and 29 April 1789).

  8. From Robert Livingston, 2 May 1789, GWP; from Hamilton, 4 May 1789, GWP; Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 21–23 (4 May 1789).

  9. Flexner 3:195, 3:200.

  10. Theodore Sedgwick to Ephraim Williams, June 1789, quoted in Joseph Charles, “Hamilton and Washington: The Origins of the American Party System,” WMQ 12:217, 253 (1955); Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 212 (4 March 1790), 134–35 (26 August 1789), 2
61 (6 May 1790); Flexner 3:204; Maclay to Benjamin Rush, DHFFC 19:1445 (7 May 1790).

  11. Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 44–45 (18 May 1789); Martha Washington to Fanny Bassett Washington, 23 October 1789, in Fields, Worthy Partners, 220.

  12. Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 3–4 (24 April 1789), 27–29 (8 May 1789); Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, The Fear of an Elective King, 5.

  13. Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 29–32 (9 May 1789), 33 (11 May 1789), 37–40 (14 May 1789).

  14. From David Stuart, 14 July 1789, GWP.

  15. To David Stuart, 29 July 1789, GWP.

  16. Gazette of the United States, June 24, 1789; Madison to Samuel Johnston, 21 June 1789, PJM; William Few to Gov. Telfair, DHFFC 2:45 (20 June 1789); Madison to James Madison Sr., 5 July 1789, PJM.

  17. To Madison, 23 September 1789, GWP; to Madison, 5 May 1789, 11 May 1789, 17 May 1789, 12 June 1789, 5 August 1789, and 8 September 1789, GWP.

  18. From Knox, 23 May 1789, 9 June 1789, 6 and 7 July 1789, GWP; to Jay, 8 and 14 June 1789, GWP; from the Board of Treasury, 9, 10, 11, and 15 June 1789, GWP; to Ebenezer Hazard, 3 July 1789, GWP.

  19. Fisher Ames to George R. Minot, 8 July 1789, DHFFC 16:978.

  20. Fisher Ames to George Minot, 14 May 1789, DHFFC 15:543–44; Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 64, 66–67 (2 and 4 June 1789); Elkins and McKitrick, 66–71. Many Americans resented British mercantile dominance, but the British generally offered good credit, high-quality goods, and reliable shipping, and they knew American tastes. French merchants sometimes sent goods to the United States like anchovies, olives, and truffles, that Americans would not buy. John Stover, “French-American Trade During the Confederation, 1781–1789,” North Carolina Hist. Rev. 35:399, 405, 412; Vernon G. Setser, The Commercial Reciprocity Policy of the United States, 1774–1829, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1937), 91–92. Between 1784 and 1790, imports from France were less than one-twentieth the level of imports from Britain.

  21. To David Stuart, 28 March 1790, GWP; Adams to Benjamin Rush, 11 November 1807, AP.

  22. Bordewich, First Congress, 56; Annals of Congress, 1st Cong., 1st Sess., 383–96 (19 May 1789); Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 104–5 (9 July 1789), 109–16 (14–16 July 1789); Annals of Congress 1:555–57 (18 June 1789), 1:592–607 (19 and 22 June 1789); Bickford and Bowling, Birth of the Nation, 38–39; William Loughton Smith to Edward Rutledge, 21 June 1789, DHFFC 16:831–33.

  23. Bordewich, First Congress, 88; to Madison, 31 May 1789, GWP; Circular to the Governors of the States, 2 October 1789, GWP.

  24. William Loughton Smith to Edward Rutledge, 21 June 1789, DHFFC 16:833; John McVickar, A Domestic Narrative of the Life of Samuel Bard, M.D., New York: The Literary Rooms (1822), 136–37.

  25. Massachusetts Centinel, June 27, 1789; Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), June 22, 1789; Langstaff, Life of Samuel Bard, 172–73; from David Stuart, 14 July 1789, GWP; to McHenry, 3 July 1789, GWP; Gazette of the United States, July 4, 1789; Madison to Edmund Randolph, 24 June 1789, PJM; to the Society of the Cincinnati, 4 July 1789, GWP; Gazette of the United States, July 8, 1789; Bordewich, The First Congress, 103.

  26. To Richard Henry Lee, 2 August 1789, GWP; to James Craik, 8 September 1789, GWP.

  27. “Benjamin Lincoln Lear’s Account of Washington’s Attendance on the Senate,” 5 August 1789, DHFFC 16:1239: Bordewich, The First Congress, 132–33. The nominee was Benjamin Fishbourn.

  28. “Washington’s Notes,” 8 August 1789, DHFFC 8:757.

  29. E.g., from Henry Knox, 7 July 1789, GWP.

  30. Conference with a Committee of the United States Senate, 8 August 1789, GWP; Conference with a Committee of the United States Senate, 10 August 1789, GWP; from Ralph Izard, 10 August 1789, GWP; to United States Senate, 21 August 1789, GWP.

  31. Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 128–31 (22 August 1789); Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Diary of John Quincy Adams 6:427 (10 November 1824); Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, 56–57.

  32. Jack D. Warren Jr., “‘The Line of My Official Conduct’: George Washington and Congress, 1789–1797,” in Kenneth R. Bowling and Donald R. Kennon, Inventing Congress: Origins and Establishment of the First Federal Congress, Athens: Ohio University Press (1999), 256.

  33. Lindsay M. Chervinsky, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2020), 163, 167–70, 97; Circular Letter from Thomas Jefferson, 6 November 1801, PJM; Fred I. Greenstein, “Presidential Difference in the Early Republic: The Highly Disparate Leadership Styles of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson,” Presidential Studies Q. 36:373, 376 (2006).

  34. Stuart Leibiger, Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1999), 10; Fred I. Greenstein, Inventing the Job of President: Leadership Style from George Washington to Andrew Jackson, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2008), 17.

  35. To John Armstrong, 6 February 1791, GWP; from William Lindsay, from William Finnie, and from Reuben Wilkinson, 30 April 1789, GWP; to Samuel Vaughan, 21 March 1789, GWP; Bordewich, The First Congress, 80.

  36. To Betty Washington Lewis, 13 September 1789, GWP.

  37. To Betty Washington Lewis, 12 October 1789, GWP; to John Adams, 10 May 1789, GWP.

  38. Diary, 17–20, 22 October 1789, GWP; to Benjamin Harrison, 10 October 1784, GWP.

  39. T. H. Breen, George Washington’s Journey: The President Forges a New Nation, New York: Simon & Schuster (2016), 73; Greenstein, “Presidential Difference,” 385. The Boston visit involved an elaborate pas de deux between the president and Governor John Hancock, who repeatedly invited Washington to be his guest, despite Washington’s policy of staying only at public inns to avoid burdening private citizens with his entourage, and also to avoid incurring any obligations to his host. Washington declined Hancock’s multiple invitations until the governor had no choice but to call on Washington. From John Hancock, 21, 23, 26 October 1789, GWP; to John Hancock, 22, 23, 26 October 1789, GWP; Diary, 25 October 1789, GWP; Boston Gazette, October 26, November 2, 1789; Massachusetts Centinel, October 28, 1789.

  40. Diary, 24 October 1789, GWP.

  41. Diary, 28 and 29 October 1789, 5 November, GWP; Joseph Barrell to Samuel Blachley Webb, 1 November 1789, in Ford, Correspondence of Webb 3:144.

  42. Diary, 6 November 1789, GWP.

  43. To Catharine Macaulay Graham, 9 January 1790, GWP; to Gouverneur Morris, 13 October 1789, GWP.

  44. Louis-Guillaume Otto to Comte de Montmorin, 12 January 1790, DHFFC 17:197–99.

  43. THE DEBT AND THE RESIDENCE

  1. To the United States Senate and House of Representatives, 8 January 1790, GWP.

  2. Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 75 (12 June 1789), 88 (24 June 1789); Bickford, “‘Public Attention Is Very Much Fixed on the Proceedings of the New Congress,’” in Bowling and Kennon, Inventing Congress, 141.

  3. Bickford, “Public Attention,” 8; Bordewich, The First Congress, 3; “Location of the Capital,” 4 September 1789, PJM; Bowling, The Creation of the United States, 4; from Pierre L’Enfant, 11 September 1789, GWP; R. B. Bernstein, “A New Matrix for National Politics: The First Federal Elections, 1788–90,” in Bowling and Kennon, Inventing Congress, 116.

  4. Americans in the 1780s debated these standards as they relocated their state capitals and county seats—for example, moving Virginia’s capital from Williamsburg to Richmond, and South Carolina’s from Charleston to Columbia. Kenneth R. Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C.: The Idea and Location of the American Capital, Fairfax: George Mason University Press (1991), 2.

  5. The consensus in favor of a “new” city received a boost from the insistence of the Pennsylvania ratifying convention that the state did not want the seat of government in Philadelphia or two of its suburbs, even though Philadelphia w
as the nation’s largest city, was centrally located, and had housed Congress for nearly seven years along with the Constitutional Convention. Some Pennsylvanians, however, feared federal control of the city’s vital port facilities, and competition for public support with the state government, which was then in Philadelphia. Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C., 131. That opinion of the ratifying convention, however, soon dissipated. Pennsylvania’s congressmen and senators insisted that once the temporary residence was in Philadelphia, inertia would transform the residence into a permanent one that Pennsylvanians would be delighted to have.

  6. Annals of Congress 1:881 (3 September 1789); resolution of Richard Bland Lee, 4 September 1789, DHFFC 11:1400–1; Pennsylvania Gazette, March 18, 1789; New York Daily Advertiser, September 3, 1789.

  7. Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C., 89; Bordewich, The First Congress, 147–49; New York Daily Journal, July 9, 1790.

  8. Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C., 44–46, 57, 122, 125; to Richard Henry Lee, 8 February 1785, GWP; to William Grayson, 22 June 1785, GWP; Pennsylvania Packet, January 5 and 29, 1789, April 15, 1789; Independent Gazette, February 3, 1789; Maryland Journal, March 24, 1789, reprinted in Lee W. Formwalt, “A Conversation Between Two Rivers: A Debate on the Location of the U.S. Capitol in Maryland,” Maryland Hist. Mag. 71:310 (1976); Maryland Journal, January 23, 1789. The five legislator-investors in the Potomac Project were Senators Richard Henry Lee of Virginia and Charles Carroll of Maryland and Congressmen Alexander White of Virginia and Michael Jenifer Stone and Daniel Carroll of Maryland.

  9. Bordewich, The First Congress, 145.

  10. The serpentine progress of the residence legislation in September 1789 is best explored with a learned guide such as Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C., 137–60, or Bordewich, The First Congress, 148–57. Maclay’s diary offers wonderful vignettes of the politicking, but his views of the action were necessarily fragmentary. Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 138–40 (28 August 1789), 140–41 (29 August 1789), 142 (1 September 1789), 146 (4 September 1789), 157–59 (23 September 1789), 161–65 (24 September 1789), 169 (28 September 1789). The newspaper accounts of the debates offer only partial views as well. New York Daily Advertiser, September 4, 5, 7, 8, and 22, 1789. The balloon flight and exhibition, staged by Joseph Decker, were reported by Maclay (159–61, 23 September 1789) and by Washington’s nephew and secretary, Robert Lewis (Diary, 7 and 14 August 1789), GW/LOC Digital Collection. See Bordewich, The First Congress, 113; Smith, The City of New York in the Year of Washington, 184.