Washington: A Life

by Ron Chernow

It would have been easy for Washington to dwell on wartime accomplishments and bask in the sweet glow of victory. Instead, he pushed the agenda to the challenges ahead, offering alternate visions of glory and ruin. Americans had to choose whether they would be “respectable and prosperous or contemptible and miserable as a nation.”29 Worried that a weak confederacy would tempt European powers to play off one state against another, he called for “an indissoluble union of the states under one federal head.”

On the cold morning of November 25, 1783, Washington and a small contingent of eight hundred men tarried at a barrier north of the city, awaiting word of the British departure. The day was so overcast and blustery that British ships in the harbor kept deferring their sailing. In one last vindictive gesture, the British greased the flagpole at Fort George in lower Manhattan, causing a delay before the American flag could be hoisted in its place.

For seven years, the British had flattered themselves that only they could maintain order in this raucous city. In a self-congratulatory spirit, they had insisted that anarchy would descend without them. But when one British officer returned briefly from his ship to retrieve some forgotten personal items, he was struck dumb by the law-abiding crowds. “This is a strange scene indeed!” he commented. “Here, in this city, we have had an army for more than seven years, and yet could not keep the peace of it . . . Now [that] we are gone, everything is in quietness and safety. The Americans are a curious, original people. They know how to govern themselves, but nobody else can govern them.”9

The American Revolution was never a bloodless affair, as is sometimes imagined. Of 200,000 Americans who served in the war, about 25,000 died, or approximately 1 percent of the population, making it the bloodiest American war except for the Civil War.

Washington had served as commander in chief for eight and a half years, the equivalent of two presidential terms. His military triumphs had been neither frequent nor epic in scale. He had lost more battles than he had won, had botched several through strategic blunders, and had won at Yorktown only with the indispensable aid of the French Army and fleet. But he was a different kind of general fighting a different kind of war, and his military prowess cannot be judged by the usual scorecard of battles won and lost. His fortitude in keeping the impoverished Continental Army intact was a major historic accomplishment. It always stood on the brink of dissolution, and Washington was the one figure who kept it together, the spiritual and managerial genius of the whole enterprise: he had been resilient in the face of every setback, courageous in the face of every danger. He was that rare general who was great between battles and not just during them. The constant turnover of his army meant that he continually had to start from scratch in training his men. He had to blend troops from different states into a functioning national force, despite deep ideological fears of a standing army. And before the French alliance, he had lacked the sea power that was all-important in defeating the British.

He never resolved the problem of the tremendous expenses he incurred in taking care of visitors. Not only did guests devour his food, but their horses freely ate his forage. “My situation is very little understood by most people,” he explained in later life. “Whatever may be my property, the income of it is inadequate to my expenses. Not from any wish or desire I have to live extravagantly, but from unavoidable necessity proceeding from the public walks of life in which I have been and the acquaintances made thereby, which fill my house continually with company.”28 At a typical dinner, half the people might be guests. “There is not one single officer on the whole continent who will forsake the pleasure of spending a few days with his General,” said Philip Mazzei, Jefferson’s Florentine-born friend. “. . . The result is that his house is continuously filled with strangers who bring with them an even larger number of servants and horses. As there is no village in the vicinity and no inn within reach, the General has to take charge of everything.”29

He remained the prisoner of a clamorous procession of visitors. Even more time-consuming were the reams of mail that arrived daily, badgering him for recommendations, referrals, and answers to war-related queries. Feeding this flood tide of correspondence was a well-meant congressional decision to exempt from postage all mail to and from Washington. Someone else of Washington’s Olympian stature might have simply ignored unsolicited letters, but with his innate courtesy, he replied dutifully to all of them, even at the expense of his business.

spouting verses en plein air when he quit work for the day. As happened with Lafayette, Humphreys brought out a youthful idealism in Washington, even a buried utopian streak. The man who had headed an army for more than eight years told Humphreys, in biblical cadences, that he longed to see the curse of war ended: “My first wish is to see this plague to mankind banished from the earth and the sons and daughters of this world employed in more pleasing and innocent amusements.” He also wanted America to function as the promised land for the world’s downtrodden: “Rather than quarrel about territory, let the poor, the needy, and oppressed of the earth . . . resort to the fertile plains of our western country, to the second land of promise, and there dwell in peace, fulfilling the first and great commandment.”

By October 4 Washington had completed his 680-mile trip, which proved his last visit to the Ohio Country. While the dispiriting journey had failed to satisfy his economic objectives, it sharpened his views of policies needed to develop the region. He saw how fickle were the loyalties of the western settlers and how easily they might be lured someday by a designing foreign power. Since Spain had obstructed American commerce on the Mississippi River, Washington thought the United States could cement its grip on these inhabitants by offering them navigable waterways to the eastern seaboard, preferably through Virginia, creating “a smooth way for the produce of that country to pass to our markets before the trade may get into another channel.”19 He believed that “commercial connections, of all others, are most difficult to dissolve,” which foreshadowed his faith as president in enduring commercial rather than political ties with other countries

It has long been debated whether Washington’s growing aversion to slavery resulted from moral scruples or from a sense that slavery was a bad economic bargain, in which masters paid more for slaves’ upkeep than they reaped in profit from their labor. The latter problem weighed on him in the mid-1780s, when the failure of his corn crop, the principal food for his slaves, slashed the profitability of his operations. Though he probably never read it, Washington would have agreed with Adam Smith’s theory in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that slavery was a backward system because workers lacked economic incentives to improve performance.

Whether from genuine concern or from patent self-interest, Washington prided himself on his treatment of his slaves: “It has always been my aim to feed and clothe [the slaves] well and be careful of them in sickness.”34 While we have no proof that Washington wished to educate his slaves, we do know that Lund Washington’s wife, Elizabeth, a devout woman, taught slaves to read and distributed Bibles among them—an activity that would have been considered taboo on many plantations. There is no proof that Washington took sexual advantage of his slaves, although one French visitor noted that many house servants were mulattoes, “some of whom have kinky hair still but skin as light as ours.”

But the formation of a hereditary society, with membership inherited through eldest sons, awakened the hostility toward aristocracy bred by the Revolution. Blasted as elitist, the society raised the dread specter of a military caste that might dominate American political life. That Washington lacked a male heir spared him no criticism.

In his inaugural speech, he stated categorically that the Society of the Cincinnati must mend its ways. In notes prepared for the speech, he listed his reform agenda: “Strike out every word, sentence, and clause which has a political tendency. Discontinue the hereditary part in all its connections . . . Admit no more honorary members into the society. Reject subscriptions or donations from every person who is not a citizen of the United States.”

A far happier association was with the Masons. Whatever conspiracy theories later circulated about the group, the brotherhood provoked no suspicions in late-eighteenth-century America, and Washington seldom missed a chance to salute their lodges.

Washington’s advocacy of the Potomac project united a private motivation (to enhance the wealth of western landowners such as himself) with a political motivation (to bind western settlers to the United States and forge a national identity). He was disturbed by ongoing clashes between settlers and Indians but thought it fruitless to try to stem the restless droves of immigrants pushing ever farther westward. Although the government couldn’t halt this tide, it could guide it into constructive channels. “The spirit of emigration is great,” he told Richard Henry Lee. “People have got impatient and tho[ugh] you cannot stop the road, it is yet in your power to mark the way.”

The plan to extend navigation of the Potomac influenced American history in ways that far transcended the narrow matter of commercial navigation. It created a set of practical problems that could be solved only by cooperation between Virginia and Maryland, setting a pattern for a seminal interstate conference at Annapolis in September 1786 and indeed the Constitutional Convention itself in 1787. Coordinating the efforts of two states confirmed Washington’s continental perspective and sense of the irreparable harm that could be done by squabbling among states unconstrained by an effective national government.

Washington was adamant that Americans should pay their prewar debts to England, as stipulated in the peace treaty. The federal government also lacked the power to regulate trade among states or with foreign nations. Many states imposed duties on goods from neighboring states, and as Madison cynically interpreted it for Jefferson, “the predominant seaport states were fleecing their neighbors.”19 The resulting trade disputes led to scorching interstate battles. As England imposed restrictions on American trade in the West Indies, the federal government was helpless to retaliate. Without such power, Washington thought, the United States could never negotiate commercial treaties or bargain advantageously with other countries. If the states tried individually to regulate trade, he warned, “an abortion or a many-headed monster would be the issue.”

Where Jefferson and Madison dreaded a powerful national government as the primrose path to monarchy, Washington and Hamilton continued to view a strong central government as the best bulwark against that threat.

Appearances could be deceiving with James Madison. However professorial in manner, he was the largest slaveholder in Orange County, Virginia, and his fragile health masked a fanatic determination. Never a pushover in political debates, he plumbed every subject to the bottom and was invariably the best-prepared person in the room. To prepare for the revision of the Articles of Confederation, he plowed through an entire “literary cargo” of books that Jefferson forwarded from Paris.32 For a young man, he possessed extensive legislative experience, first as an effective member of Congress and now as a member of the Virginia assembly. A skillful legislator, secretive and canny, he exerted his influence in mysteriously indirect ways. Political foes who underrated James Madison did so at their peril.

In late October Knox told Washington that the rebels paid little in taxes and had seized on that issue as a pretext to wage class warfare. He warned of the insidious spread of a radical leveling doctrine. “They feel at once their own poverty, compared with the opulent,” he said, and want to convert private property into “the common property of all.”37 Overstating the menace, Knox conjured up a desperate army of twelve thousand to fifteen thousand young men prowling New England and challenging lawful government. If this movement spread, he thought, the country would be drawn into the horror of civil war.

Shays’s Rebellion crystallized for him the need to overhaul the Articles of Confederation. “What stronger evidence can be given of the want of energy in our governments than these disorders?” he asked Madison. “If there exists not a power to check them, what security has a man of life, liberty, or property?”

14 Knox favored Washington’s going but felt obliged to point out that the Philadelphia convention might be “an irregular assembly,” even an illegal one, since it would operate outside the amendment process spelled out in the Articles of Confederation.

To pique Washington’s interest, Jay sent him a clairvoyant sketch of a new government divided into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. “Let Congress legislate,” he told Washington. “Let others execute. Let others judge.”15 The letter foreshadowed the exact shape of the future government.

Of the three convention holdouts, two came from Virginia—Edmund Randolph and George Mason—and happened to be close friends of Washington; the third was Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. As heir apparent to the presidency, Washington undoubtedly took offense when Mason declared that the new government “would end either in monarchy or a tyrannical aristocracy” and complained that the Constitution “had been formed without the knowledge . . . of the people.”34 Their thirty-year friendship did not survive their heated split. “Col. Mason left Philad[elphi]a in an exceeding ill humor,” Madison afterward told Washington. “He returned to Virginia with a fixed disposition to prevent the adoption of the plan if possible. He considers the want of a Bill of Rights as a fatal objection.”

To combat vocal foes of the Constitution in New York, Hamilton published in late October the first essay of The Federalist under the pen name “Publius” and rushed a copy to Washington. Washington had told David Humphreys that the Constitution’s acceptance would depend upon “the recommendation of it by good pens,” and The Federalist must have seemed a case of answered prayers.15 Indeed, the federalists possessed the preponderance of literary talent. “For the remaining numbers of Publius,” Washington informed Hamilton, “I shall acknowledge myself obliged, as I am persuaded the subject will be well handled by the author.”

As later became clear, George Washington refused to appoint anyone to the new government who had been overtly hostile to the Constitution that brought it into being.

In the spring of 1788 Washington’s contemporaries would have been shocked to know that his western taxes for 1785, 1786, and 1787 stood in arrears and that he had posted his lands there for sale to pay them off. Hardly wishing to be a scofflaw at this juncture, Washington tried to pay his taxes promptly with tobacco notes and IOUs that he had received early in the Revolution for supplying articles to the Fairfax County militia. When he learned that Greenbrier County, where the property was located, would not accept such forms of payment, he was enraged. The Father of His Country was being treated with barefaced contempt for financial stresses arising from his wartime sacrifice.

By the time Washington was sworn in, the federal government had already been set in motion; the first order of business was to generate money to guarantee the new government’s survival. Three weeks before the inauguration, Madison introduced in the House a schedule of duties on imported goods to provide revenues. Nothing better proclaimed the new government’s autonomy: the impotent Confederation Congress had never commanded an independent revenue stream.

To posterity, it seems shocking that Washington imported slaves into the presidential mansion, but Jefferson would bring a dozen slaves from Monticello to the White House; the tradition of having slaves in the presidential household unfortunately lasted until the death in 1850 of Zachary Taylor, the last of the slaveholding presidents.

That George Washington was a habitué of risqué plays indicates he was hardly a prude. The first play he saw, on May 11, 1789, was his all-time satirical favorite, Richard Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. His box was large enough to accommodate several guests, and he invited along Senator Maclay. Even the curmudgeonly Maclay was thrilled by the experience and regretted not having brought his children:

“The president sends first and asks for our advice and consent after.”26 This decision may have done more to define the presidency and the conduct of American foreign policy than an entire bookshelf of Supreme Court decisions on the separation of powers. Where the Constitution had been sketchy about presidential powers in foreign affairs, Washington made the chief executive the principal actor, enabling him to initiate treaties and nominate appointees without first huddling with the Senate. It was an instinctive reaction from a man who had grown accustomed to command during the war. If a touch imperious, it was a far more realistic approach to foreign policy than constant collaboration and horse-trading between the president and Senate.

Under the Constitution, the vice president served as president of the Senate, thus overlapping two branches of governments. Nowadays we tend to think of the vice president as the president’s agent in the legislature, but Adams saw the vice president as a creature of that branch.

Washington believed that forming an honest, efficient civil service was a critical test for the young republic. A model president in making appointments, he never cut deals or exploited patronage and ruled out “blood or friendship” in picking people.3 The criteria he valued most were merit, seniority, loyalty to the Constitution, and wartime service, as well as an equitable distribution of jobs among the states.

Roger Sherman of Connecticut asked Hamilton if he would champion a certain appointment with the president. “No, I dare not do it,” Hamilton replied. “I know General Washington too well. But I can tell you where your only hope lies. Go to General Knox. They say Washington talks to him as a man does with his wife.”11 With his hearty appetite and ebullient personality, Henry Knox stood forth as an immense social presence in the new administration. Maclay aptly referred to him as “a Bacchanalian figure.”

with Knox, who had labored hard for the new Constitution. But Knox was destined to be the least capable of the three department heads. He worked diligently, gave Washington unquestioning loyalty, and promptly responded to requests, but he was not an original policy thinker and was relatively passive compared to the assertive Hamilton and the quietly tenacious Jefferson.

One wonders whether Jefferson’s hesitation reflected an equivocal attitude toward the new federal government itself, since he had been, at best, a lukewarm supporter of the Constitution. At first he had preferred tinkering with the Articles of Confederation and favored only “three or four new articles to be added to the good, old, and venerable fabric.”19 He was especially chagrined by the absence of a bill of rights and the “perpetual re-eligibility” of the president, which he feared would make the job “an office for life first and then hereditary.”

Jefferson also retained a congenital distrust of politics, which he personally found a form of sweet torture, the source of both exquisite pain and deep satisfaction. He especially hated bureaucracy, whereas Hamilton had no such qualms.

Such was the misery of riding circuit that several of Washington’s judicial selections declined for that reason, prompting a high turnover in the Supreme Court’s early years.

They were especially upset with having to ride circuit, noting that it created an untenable legal situation, since they might have to rule as Supreme Court justices on appeals of cases they had tried in those very courts.

Starting from scratch, Washington introduced procedures that made his government a model of smooth efficiency. Based on the fleeting mention in the Constitution that he could request written opinions from department heads, he created an impressive flow of paperwork. Jefferson noted that he would forward them letters he received that fell within their bailiwick, then asked to peruse their replies. They would gather up daily bundles of papers for his approval. Although this briefly delayed replies, Jefferson explained, “it produced [for] us in return the benefit of his sanction for every act we did.”

Through his tolerant attitude, he created a protective canopy under which subordinates could argue freely, but once decisions were made, he wanted the administration to speak with one voice.

Washington grew as a leader because he engaged in searching self-criticism. “I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors,” he once wrote. “The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this, because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults or remove prejudices which are imbibed against him.”

When Washington delivered his speech, he had little sense that a furor was about to erupt over Hamilton’s funding system or that American politics would become fractious and nasty. Even before Hamilton took office, Congress had enacted legislation to create a string of lighthouses, beacons, and buoys along the eastern seaboard for the customs service, placing Hamilton in charge of a vast public works project. He also had enormous patronage powers, as he named customs inspectors and other revenue officials. During the colonial era, the evasion of customs duties had become a time-honored practice, and Hamilton had to seek Washington’s approval for constructing ten boats called revenue cutters to police the waterways and intercept smugglers, giving birth to what later became the Coast Guard.

Hamilton’s audacious report argued that, to restore fiscal sanity, the government did not have to retire the debt at once. All it had to do was devise a mechanism to convince people that, by setting aside revenues at predictable intervals, it would faithfully retire it in future years. Such a well-funded debt, Hamilton argued, would be a “national blessing” inasmuch as it would provide investment capital and an elastic national currency.

Hamilton was also persuaded that, since the debt had been raised to finance a national war, the federal government should assume responsibility for the states’ debts as well. Such an act of “assumption” would have extraordinarily potent political effects, for holders of state debt would transfer their loyalty to the new central government, binding the country together. It would also reinforce the federal government’s claim to future tax revenues in any controversies with the states. Peerless in crafting policies embedded with a secret political agenda, Hamilton knew how to dovetail one program with another in a way that made them all difficult to undo.

Washington and other founders who opposed slavery, at least in theory, thought they had conveniently sidestepped the issue at the Constitutional Convention by stipulating that the slave trade was safe until 1808. But because Benjamin Franklin, as president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, had signed one of the Quaker petitions, they could not be summarily dismissed.

Since it would exert far-reaching influence, the choice of venue for the capital was fraught with controversy. Most obviously, it would mean a commercial windfall for nearby property owners; Madison and Henry Lee scooped up land along the Potomac to profit from any future capital.

The upshot was that, the next day, Jefferson hosted a dinner for Hamilton and Madison at his lodgings at 57 Maiden Lane. During this famous meal, in an apartment adorned with engravings of Washington, a grand deal was brokered. Jefferson and Madison agreed to aid passage of the assumption bill, while Hamilton promised to lobby the Pennsylvania delegation to endorse Philadelphia as the temporary capital and the Potomac as its final destination. For Hamilton, who favored New York as the capital, it was a bitter pill to swallow, but he viewed the assumption of state debt as the crux of federal power.

The first stop was Newport, where a Jewish merchant and fellow Mason, Moses Seixas, greeted the president on behalf of Congregation Yeshuat Israel, assuring him that the Lord had “shielded your head in the day of battle” and protected him as “chief magistrate in these states.”14 As if seeking words of reassurance, Seixas noted that the Jewish congregation had formerly been deprived of “the invaluable rights of free citizens.”15 This elicited from Washington a letter to the Hebrew Congregation that ranks as his most beautifully enduring statement on religious toleration, showing that he had no notion of foisting a Christian state on the nation:

Washington must have sensed that the government’s switch to Philadelphia would complicate matters with his slaves, for Pennsylvania had been the first state to undertake the gradual abolition of slavery, in 1780. Philadelphia, in particular, had a large community of free blacks and a robust abolitionist movement. In bringing his slaves north, Washington violated his long-standing policy of not breaking up slave families. In late October, when Tobias Lear described how the slaves would be housed in sleeping quarters in Philadelphia, he admitted as much: “None of the men will have their wives in the family.”