“We are either a United people, or we are not,” Washington had written James Madison in November 1785.13 America had always intended to succeed without a king, a dominant church, or a military leader, let alone an arthritic retiree with blurry vision, fogged hearing, a couple of teeth, and limited cash flow. Washington was no longer an ambitious youth with something to prove but a fifty-four-year-old man with everything to lose.
