The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, 1783–1789

by Edward J. Larson

had removed the common enemy that had drawn the states together, the letter built to its main point: national supremacy. “It is indispensable to the happiness of the individual States, that there should be lodged somewhere, a Supreme Power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederated Republic.” Long on theme but short on specifics, the letter called for “an indissoluble Union of the States under one Federal Head,” a continental army supported by uniform state militias, taxing power for Congress, and “complete

Henceforth, as Washington realized perhaps more than anyone, he no longer represented merely himself, the army, or Virginia. He represented the nation, and on him its future rested. That made it all the more noteworthy that he chose, as his first public outing on the following Sunday, to attend Catholic Mass. Washington had an instinctive sense of theater. He spoke more through actions than words. And now he was acting on behalf of the nation.

Wartime experiences had made Washington an American—arguably the first American—but he always remained a Virginian, too. For him, Virginia stood at the nation’s heart.66 It was America’s largest, longest-settled, and most centrally located state as well as Washington’s home. He could not image a United States without it and had been more than ankle deep in the mire of Virginia ratification politics since returning from the Constitutional Convention in September 1787. Within days of his arrival home, Washington began reaching out to Virginia’s political elite, starting with a letter telling the states’-rights-minded former governor Benjamin Harrison that ratification “is in my opinion desirable.”67 Over the ensuing months, he regularly hosted Virginia federalists at Mount Vernon and continually corresponded with them about ratification.

Washington worried more about Henry’s opposition than about that of any other Virginian, to the point of fearing that the former governor might seek to lead the state into a separate southern confederacy with himself at the helm.

Jay wrote, “Consider then, how weighty and how many considerations advise and persuade the People of America to remain in the safe and easy path of Union [and] to continue to move and act as they hitherto have done, as a Band of Brothers.”

Washington closed his letter to Lafayette with the observation, “While you are quarrelling among yourselves in Europe—while one King is running mad—and others are acting as if they were already so, . . . we shall continue in tranquility here” and trade with all.56

Washington favored giving the Constitution a fair trial without amendment and felt that only federalists could be trusted with that responsibility. “It is my most earnest wish that none but the most disinterested, able and virtuous men may be appointed to either house of Congress: because, I think, the tranquility and happiness of this Country will depend upon that circumstance,”

“I rejoice in the belief,” the new President was to say, “that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.” Toward this end, the speech exclaimed, America would play a part, “the salutary consequences of which shall flow to another Hemisphere & extend throughout the interminable series of ages!”9 Washington never made a clearer proclamation of what made the United States special.