30. To David Stuart, 15 June 1790, GWP.
31. These conclusions are reinforced by Jefferson’s account of Hamilton’s earnest entreaty to him when they stood in the street outside the president’s residence, talking about the assumption issue. “The President was the center on which all administrative questions ultimately rested,” Hamilton said in this account, and “all of us should rally around him, and support with joint efforts measures approved by him.” Jefferson, “Anas,” DHFFC 19:1991 (4 February 1818) (emphasis supplied).
32. Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C., 185–86, 125, 205; Bordewich, The First Congress, 247–48; from Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 3 March 1775, GWP; Annals of Congress, 1st Cong., 2d Sess., 1755 (28 July 1790); to Madison, 28 December 1784, GWP (Enclosure dated 28 December 1784); Kate Mason Rowland, The Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (1898), 1:235–36; Diary, 1 May 1790, GWP (conversation with White concerning western settlers). Lee’s connections to Washington were especially strong. His brother Henry Lee was a favored cavalry officer during the Revolutionary War and became a close political ally of Washington’s; his other brother, Charles Lee, became Washington’s personal lawyer and then his attorney general.
33. New York Daily Advertiser, September 7, 1789.
34. Louis Guillaume Otto to Comte de Montmorin, DHFFC 19:1804 (13 June 1790).
35. To Henry Knox, 13 August 1790, GWP.
45. THE BANK
1. Rappleye, Robert Morris, 216–19, 236–39.
2. To Tobias Lear, 5, 9, and 17 September 1790, 17 November 1790, GWP.
3. Bordewich, The First Congress, 276, 278; Kenneth Bowling, “The Federal Government and the Republican Court Move to Philadelphia, November 1790–March 1791,” in Bowling and Kennon, Neither Separate Nor Equal, 15. The president attempted to swap some of his western lands for a farm outside Philadelphia, where he might follow relaxing agricultural pursuits, but failed to close any deal. To Burgess Ball, 19 December 1790, GWP.
4. Bowling, “The Federal Government and the Republican Court Move to Philadelphia,” 5, 7, and 23; Theodore Sedgwick to Pamela Sedgwick, 26 December 1790, DHFFC 21:23–38.
5. Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 365–66 (20 January 1791).
6. Bowling and Veit, Maclay Diary, 340 (8 December 1791); to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, 8 December 1790, GWP.
7. Jack D. Warren Jr., “‘The Line of My Official Conduct’: George Washington and Congress, 1789–1797,” in Bowling and Kennon, Neither Separate Nor Equal, 262–63.
8. “Final Version: First Report on the Further Provision Necessary for Establishing Public Credit,” 13 December 1790, PAH.
9. Bowling, Politics in the First Congress, 154; Gazette of the United States, February 19 and 23, 1791; Bordewich, The First Congress, 292–93; Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution, New York: Oxford University Press (1986), 102–5; Note, from Edmund Randolph, 12 February 1791, GWP; Fisher Ames to Thomas Dwight, 7 February 1791, DHFFC 21:720; Ames to George R. Minot, 17 February 1791, in DHFFC 2:863–65.
10. Gienapp, The Second Creation, 211; Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C., 215–19; Alexander White to Charles Simms, 20 February 1791, in Simms Papers, LOC; American Daily Advertiser, February 16, 1791.
11. Madison “Detached Memorandum,” in DHFFC 21:810–12, 21:766–69 (note “Bank Bill Veto Controversy”).
12. Gienapp, The Second Creation, 211; DHFFC 14:439 (4 February 1791) (Rep. Boudinot).
13. “Madison’s ‘Detached Memoranda,’” ca. 31 January 1820, PJM.
14. From Edmund Randolph, 12 February 1791, GWP; “Enclosure: Opinion on the Constitutionality of the Bank,” 12 February 1791, GWP.
15. From Jefferson, 15 February 1791, GWP. With his opinion letter, Jefferson enclosed the text of Madison’s speech in the House of Representatives against the bank bill, which had appeared in the Philadelphia press. General Advertiser, February 7, 1791; Federal Gazette, February 12, 1791; “The Bank Bill,” 8 February 1791, PJM.
16. From Madison, 21 February 1791, GWP. One of Madison’s draft veto messages noted only the constitutional objection to the bank, while the other added a second argument—that it would unfairly favor some Americans over others.
17. From Hamilton, 23 February 1791, GWP, and “Enclosure: Opinion on the Constitutionality of an Act to Establish a Bank,” 23 February 1791, GWP. Hamilton gave the back of his hand to the contention that when the Constitutional Convention declined to give Congress the power to create corporations, it effectively denied Congress that power. It was very common, Hamilton observed, for a law to have impacts beyond or other than the intent of its drafters.
18. To Hamilton, 23 February 1791, GWP, and note 2; Madison, “Detached Memoranda,” supra; Proclamation, 30 March 1791, GWP; Annals of Congress, 1st Cong., 3d Sess. 2:2025 (1 March 1791); 2:1824–25 (3 March 1791); Warren, “‘The Line of My Official Conduct,’” 265 and note 43.
19. Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, 242.
20. John Trumbull to John Adams, 20 March 1791, AP.
21. To Edward Rutledge, 16 January 1791, GWP; to David Humphreys, 16 March 1791, GWP.
22. Diary, 29 and 30 March 1791; Breen, George Washington’s Journey, 210.
23. Diary, 15, 16, and 18 April 1791, GWP; Breen, George Washington’s Journey, 221–22.
24. Breen, George Washington’s Journey, 153; Columbian Centinel (Boston), June 11, 1791; Maryland Journal, May 31, 1791; Diary, 11 and 24 April, 3, 6, 12, 20, 26, and 30 May, 1 and 2 June 1791, GWP.
25. Breen, George Washington’s Journey, 209, 211, 232–33, 207; from Tobias Lear, 5 April 1791, GWP; to Tobias Lear, 12 April 1791, GWP; from Tobias Lear, 5 June 1791, GWP.
26. Diary, 27, 28, and 29 June 1791, GWP; to David Humphreys, 20 July 1791, GWP.
27. “Substance of a Conversation with the President,” 5 May 1792, PJM.
46. SECOND-TERM BLUES
1. Inaugural Address, 4 March 1793, GWP; to David Humphreys, 23 March 1793, GWP.
2. To Hamilton, 8 April 1794, GWP; to William Pearce, 31 January 1796, GWP; to Knox, 25 June 1794, GWP; Jefferson, “Anas,” 4 February 1818, PTJ. Strikingly, Jefferson was seventy-five years old when he wrote the description of the aging Washington, a full decade older than Washington was when he left the presidency. Of the leading Washington biographers, Flexner has been most impressed by the decline in Washington’s faculties. Flexner 4:155–56. The next four chapters will show that the author of this volume, without denying the impact of age on Washington, does not share Flexner’s view on that subject.
3. To Burwell Bassett Jr., 4 March 1793, GWP; to James Craik, 9 April 1793, GWP; to David Stuart, 9 April 1793, GWP; to Bryan Fairfax, 9 April 1793, GWP; to Frances Bassett Washington, 10 June 1793, GWP; from Tobias Lear, 24 June 1793, GWP.
4. To Howell Lewis, 3 November 1793, GWP; to William Pearce, 18 December 1793, GWP; to Hiland Crow, 23 December 1793, GWP; to John Christian Ehlers, 23 December 1793, GWP; to Henry McCoy, 23 December 1793, GWP; to Thomas Green, 23 December 1793, GWP. Although Washington had no direct offspring, his siblings provided a vast supply of nieces and nephews—eight from his sister Betty Lewis alone. Washington employed at least a half dozen nephews over his career, plus several of Martha’s Dandridge relations.
5. To William Pearce, 12 January 1794 and 14 July 1794, GWP; to Arthur Young, 12 December 1793, GWP; Advertisement, 1 February 1796, GWP; to William Pearce, 7 February 1796, GWP; to David Stuart, 7 February 1796, GWP.
6. To Thomas Pinckney, 20 February 1796, GWP; to William Strickland, 20 February 1796, GWP.
7. Jefferson to Madison, 11 August 1793, PTJ. Two years after leaving the cabinet, Jefferson was still complaining about Randolph, writing to a friend, “The fact is that he has generally given his principles to the one party and his practice to the other; the
oyster to one, the shell to the other. Unfortunately the shell was generally the lot of his friends the French and Republicans, and the oyster of their antagonists.” To William Branch Giles, 31 December 1795, PTJ.
8. “Memoranda of Conversations with the President,” 1 March 1792, PTJ. Jefferson’s conversations with Washington over two days had a humorous side. The two Virginians, occupying the highest offices in the nation, competed with each other to express their weariness with public duties, recounting the sacrifices they had made and professing a desire to retire to their respective plantations. After that conversation, Washington served another five years as president, while Jefferson was secretary of state for two more years, vice president for four, and president for eight. Although Jefferson did not think so, Flexner concluded that Washington “sided more often with Jefferson than Hamilton.” Flexner 4:109–10.
9. From Hamilton, 21 June 1793 and 31 January 1795, GWP; from Jefferson, 29 July and 12 August 1793, GWP.
10. Chervinsky, The Cabinet, 211–12 (noting that Mifflin and Washington had “a historically sour relationship” and a “decades-long dislike of each other”).
11. “A Citizen,” National Gazette, July 27, 1793; Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, 3 December 1795, PTJ; Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, 288; to Oliver Wolcott Jr., 6 July 1795, GWP.
12. To Randolph, 29 July 1795, GWP.
13. 23 March 1793, Jefferson to William Carmichael and William Short, 23 March 1793, PTJ; from Hamilton, 5 April 1793, PTJ; from Jefferson, 7 April 1793, GWP; to Jefferson, 1 December 1793, GWP; to David Humphreys, 23 March 1793, GWP; to Earl of Buchan, 22 April 1793, GWP.
14. To Jefferson, 10 March 1793, GWP; from the Inhabitants of Belpre, Northwest Territory, 14 March 1793, GWP; to the Cabinet, 21 March 1793, GWP.
15. From William Gordon, 17 August 1793, GWP.
47. THE CALAMITOUS FRENCHMAN
1. Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, 333–34; Samuel Flagg Bemis, “Washington’s Farewell Address: A Foreign Policy of Independence,” in Burton Ira Kaufman, ed., Washington’s Farewell Address: The View from the 20th Century, Chicago: Quadrangle Books (1969), 90–91.
2. Flexner 4:39; Jefferson to Madison, 19 May 1793, PTJ.
3. Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, 337; to Jefferson, 12 April 1793, GWP; to the Cabinet, 18 April 1793, GWP; from Jefferson, 18 April 1793, GWP; to Madison, 7 April 1793, GWP; Jefferson, “Anas,” 18 April 1793, PTJ; Bemis, The Jay Treaty, 91.
4. “Minutes of a Cabinet Meeting,” 19 April 1793, GWP; “Neutrality Proclamation,” 22 April 1793, GWP; from the Philadelphia Merchants and Traders, 16 May 1793, GWP; from the Citizens of Salem, Massachusetts, 31 May 1793, GWP; from the Baltimore Mechanical Society, 4 June 1793, GWP; from Edmund Randolph, 11 June 1793, GWP; from Tobias Lear, 17 June 1793, GWP; from the Citizens of Hartford, Connecticut, 2 August 1793, GWP; from the Grand Jurors of Sussex County, Delaware, 7 August 1793, GWP; Address from the Citizens of New York City, 8 August 1793, GWP; from the Citizens of Burlington County, New Jersey, GWP; from the Citizens of Kent County, Delaware, 14 August 1793, GWP; Resolutions of the Citizens of Essex County, New Jersey, 17 August 1793, GWP; from the Citizens of Dorchester County, Maryland, 19 August 1793, GWP; Resolutions of the Citizens of New Haven, Connecticut, 19 August 1793, GWP; Enclosure: “Resolutions from Kent County, Maryland, Citizens,” 31 August 1793, GWP; Resolutions from Petersburg, Virginia, Citizens, 2 September 1793, GWP. The public meeting process could be manipulated by clever political operators, but anecdotal reports buttressed the conclusion that the people generally supported neutrality.
5. Jefferson to Madison, 19 May 1793, PTJ; Madison to Jefferson, 19 June 1793, PJM; see “Veritas,” National Gazette, June 5, 1793 (calling the neutrality policy “shamefully pusillanimous” toward France); from Edmund Randolph, 24 June 1793, GWP (in Virginia, “the friends to the general government are far inferior in number to its enemies”); Genêt to Le Brun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 31 May 1793, in Frederick J. Turner, “Correspondence of the French Ministers to the United States, 1791–1797,” in Annual Report of the American Historical Ass’n for the year 1903, Washington (1904) 2:216.
6. “Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on a Cabinet Meeting,” 6 May 1793, GWP; to Henry Lee, 6 May 1793, GWP.
7. Memorial from George Hammond, 2 and 8 May 1793, PTJ; Introductory Note: To George Washington, 15 May 1793, PAH; Memorandum from Alexander Hamilton, 15 May 1793, GWP; Jefferson to George Hammond, 15 May 1793, PTJ; from Knox, 16 May 1793, GWP; Jefferson to Genêt, 11 June 1793, PTJ. Washington’s Cabinet was united on the debt-repayment issue. When France stopped reimbursing Americans who had claims for illegal ship seizures, the American government stepped in to pay the injured parties, then subtracted those amounts from its debt to France. From Hamilton, 8 June 1793, GWP; from Jefferson, 6 June 1793, GWP; Genêt to Jefferson, 18 June 1793, PTJ; Jefferson to Genêt, 23 June 1793, PTJ; “Notes of a Cabinet Meeting and on Conversations with Edmond Charles Genêt,” 5 July 1793, PTJ; Cabinet Opinion on the Payment of the U.S. Debt to France, 11 March 1794, GWP.
8. “Reasons for the Opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary at War Respecting the Brigantine Little Sarah,” 8 July 1793, PAH; Jefferson to Gouverneur Morris, 13 June 1793, PTJ.
9. From George Clinton, 9 June 1793, GWP; from Thomas Mifflin, 22 June 1793, GWP; Enclosure: Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on a Conversation with Edmond Genêt, 10 July 1793, GWP.
10. Cabinet Opinion on the Little Sarah [Petite Démocrate], 8 July 1793, GWP; Memorandum from Alexander Hamilton and Henry Knox, 8 July 1793, GWP; Cabinet Opinion on Foreign Vessels and Consulting the Supreme Court, 12 July 1793, GWP; from Jefferson, with “Enclosure Questions for the Supreme Court,” 18 July 1793, GWP; to Justices of the Supreme Court, 23 July 1793, GWP; from the Supreme Court Justices, 8 August 1794, GWP.
11. Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on a Conversation with Edmond Genêt, 10 July 1793, PTJ; Jefferson to Madison, 7 July 1793, PTJ.
12. To Henry Lee, 21 July 1793, GWP; “Notes of Cabinet Meeting on Edmond Charles Gênet,” 2 August 1793, PTJ; Cabinet Opinions on the Roland and Relations with Great Britain, France, and the Creek Indians, 31 August 1793, GWP; Carol Berkin, A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism, New York: Basic Books (2017), 117–18. In his annual message to Congress in December, the president listed a number of British violations of the neutrality policy. Annual Message, 5 December 1793, GWP. Nevertheless, unlike Genêt, British diplomats observed traditional norms in conducting diplomatic business.
13. “Notes on a Cabinet Meeting,” 1 August 1793, PTJ; Cabinet Opinion on the Recall of Edmond Genêt, 23 August 1793, GWP; Cabinet Opinion on French Privateers and Prizes, 5 August 1793, GWP; Cabinet Opinion on Relations with France and Great Britain, 7 September 1793, GWP; Berkin, A Sovereign People, 129–30, 134. When the instruction to request Genêt’s recall reached the American minister in Paris, Genêt was agitating with commanders of a French fleet docked in New York, urging them to attack Halifax, then assault New Orleans. The mariners ignored Genêt’s pleas.
14. Christopher Young, “Connecting the President and the People: Washington’s Neutrality, Genet’s Challenge, and Hamilton’s Fight for Public Support,” J. of the Early Republic 31:435, 455–56 (2011); e.g., from the Citizens of New London, Connecticut, 22 August 1793, GWP; Enclosure, “Resolutions of Caroline County, Virginia, Citizens,” 10 September 1793, GWP; Enclosure, “Address from Annapolis, Maryland, Citizens,” 5 September 1793, GWP; Enclosure, “Resolutions from James City County, Virginia, Citizens,” 12 September 1793, GWP; from Alexandria, Virginia, Citizens, 5 October 1793, GWP; Enclosure, “Resolutions from the Albemarle County, Virginia, Citizens,” 10 October 1793 GWP; Enclosure, “Resolutions from Culpeper County, Virginia, Citizens,” 25 October 1793, GWP; Resolutions from Frederick County, Virginia, Citizens, 5 November 1793, GWP; Resolutions from Shenandoah County, Virginia, Citizens, 13 N
ovember 1793, GWP; Stewart, Madison’s Gift, 151; Jefferson to Madison, 11 August 1793, PTJ.
15. Jefferson to Madison, 1, 8, and 12 September 1793, PJM; J. H. Powell, Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1949), 48, 114; Susan E. Klepp, “‘How Many Precious Souls Are Fled?’: The Magnitude of the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic,” in J. Worth Estes and Billy Gordon Smith, eds., A Melancholy Scene of Devastation: The Public Response to the 1793 Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic, Canton, MA: Science History Publications (1997), 163–82.
16. From Jefferson, 15–16 September 1793, GWP; from Oliver Wolcott Jr., 1 October 1793, GWP; to Tobias Lear, 25 September 1793, GWP; Oliver Wolcott Jr. to Oliver Wolcott Sr., 12 September 1793, in George Gibbs, ed., Oliver Wolcott’s Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and Adams, New York: n.p. (1846), 1:110.
17. From Knox, 18 September 1793, 24 September 1793, 1 October 1793, GWP.
18. To Madison, 14 October 1793, GWP.
19. To Madison, 14 October 1793, GWP.
20. To Jefferson, 11 October 1793, GWP; from Edmund Randolph, 13 October 1793, GWP; to Hamilton, 14 October 1793, GWP; to Madison, 14 October 1793, GWP; from Hamilton, 24 October 1793, GWP.
21. To Randolph, 30 September 1793, GWP; Oliver Wolcott Jr. to Oliver Wolcott Sr., 10 October 1793, in Gibbs, Wolcott Memoirs 1:110; from Timothy Pickering, 21 and 28 October 1793, GWP.
22. From William Moultrie, 7 December 1793, GWP; from Genêt to Jefferson, 25 December 1793, PTJ; from Oliver Wolcott Jr. to Oliver Wolcott Sr., 10 March 1794, in Gibbs, Wolcott Memoirs 1:129; from Edmund Randolph, 27 February 1794, GWP; Berkin, A Sovereign People, 130–31. In early July, Genêt had told Jefferson that he planned to send an agent through the west to incite revolution in Louisiana and Canada, and to recruit Kentuckians and Indians to attack New Orleans, creating an independent nation on the Mississippi River. Jefferson replied that American citizens could not participate in such activities, although anyone else was welcome to do so. Remarkably, the secretary of state gave Genêt a letter introducing his agent to Kentucky’s governor. From Henry Lee, 14 June 1793, GWP; Notes of Cabinet Meeting and Conversations with Edmond Charles Genêt, 5 July 1793, PTJ; Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, 349.
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