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Not taking any chances, Washington decided to shuttle his slaves back to Mount Vernon for brief stays before their six-month time limits expired. As minors, Christopher Sheels, Richmond, and Ona Judge were all debarred from seeking their freedom. To keep the adult slaves in bondage, Washington resorted to various ruses so they would not know why they were being sent home temporarily. As he said bluntly, “I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive both them [i.e., the slaves] and the public.”
Such devious tactics ran counter to Washington’s professed abhorrence of slavery, not to mention his storied honesty. Even more startling was the acquiescence of Tobias Lear, the young idealist who had balked at working for Washington because the latter owned slaves. In the midst of corresponding with Washington over foiling the Pennsylvania law, Lear suddenly remembered that he and Washington were supposed to be long-term opponents of slavery, and he wrote guiltily to the president: “You will permit me now, Sir . . . to declare that no consideration should induce me to take these steps to
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With or without the dentures, Washington had to endure constant misery. He spent Sunday, January 17, 1790, at home in excruciating tooth pain, writing in his diary the next day, “Still indisposed with an aching tooth and swelled and inflamed gum.”1 Later in the year Tobias Lear bought laudanum for Washington’s household account, which was likely used to relieve the tortured presidential mouth. Washington could also have derived opiates from poppies grown at Mount Vernon.
Having profited from wartime trade, the town’s wealthy merchants set the social tone—one French visitor said, “The rich alone take precedence over the common people”—and much of its political life centered on their brilliant affairs. 9 The social demands placed on George and Martha Washington grew apace as rounds of extravagant parties enlivened the new capital. One resident stood amazed at the sheer number of sumptuous gatherings. “You have never seen anything like the frenzy which has seized upon the inhabitants here,” he informed a friend. “They have been half mad ever since the city became
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Hamilton, in a superhuman burst of energy, produced more than thirteen thousand words that buried his opponents beneath an avalanche of arguments. His exegesis of the “necessary and proper” clause not only made way for a central bank but would enable the federal government to respond to emergencies throughout American history.
Perhaps by design, Hamilton delivered, and Washington accepted, the argument in favor of the bill right before that deadline expired, leaving no time for an appeal inside the cabinet.
Unlike his fellow planters, who tended to regard banks and stock exchanges as sinister devices, Washington grasped the need for these instruments of modern finance.
With this stroke, he endorsed an expansive view of the presidency and made the Constitution a living, open-ended document.
Washington’s diaries for the early stages of his southern trip sometimes read like a disaster chronicle.
In undertaking this lengthy trip, Washington had wanted to learn the state of public opinion directly rather than by hearsay. Most of all, he hoped to ascertain whether the South was as discontented as legend claimed. In his diary, he professed pleasure with what he saw, convinced that the people “appeared to be happy, contented and satisfied with the gen[era]l government under which they were placed. Where the case was otherwise, it was not difficult to trace the cause to some demagogue or speculating character.”
54 Clearly Washington’s picture of the southern mood was overly rosy; perhaps local politicians didn’t care to deliver upsetting news to a heroic president on a jubilant tour. Within a year the country would be hopelessly divided over Washington’s policies, and the primary locus of discontent would be centered in the southern states.
America’s fervent attachment to France arose from gratitude for its indispensable help during the Revolutionary War, and no country saluted its revolution with more fraternal warmth. In a variety of ways, the French Revolution had been spawned by its American predecessor, which had bred dreams of liberty among French aristocrats who fought in the war, then tried to enshrine its principles at home. The most visible standard-bearer of these hopes was the Marquis de Lafayette, who told Washington from Paris that the “ideas of liberty have been, since the American Revolution, spreading very fast.”
Paradoxically, Jefferson, an eyewitness to the revolution’s outbreak, seemed blind to its violent potential. In August 1788 he blithely reported to James Monroe from France, “I think it probable this country will, within two or three years, be in the enjoyment of a tolerably free constitution and that without its having cost them a drop of blood.”
Nothing better illustrates the distance between the American and French revolutions than the fact that Lafayette, who was so at home in the Continental Army, seemed tragically out of place in France, naïvely pursuing the chimera of a constitutional monarchy among political cutthroats on the Paris streets.
but he asked Knox to draw up a document that could also be published as a broadside—a distinct departure showing a new sensitivity to public opinion.
The first president did not see that parties might someday clarify choices for the electorate, organize opinion, and enlist people in the political process; rather he feared that parties could blight a still fragile republic. He was hardly alone. “If I could not go to heaven but with a party,” Jefferson opined, “I would not go there at all.”2 Yet the first factions arose from Jefferson’s extreme displeasure with Hamilton’s mounting influence. They were not political parties in the modern sense so much as clashing coteries of intellectual elites, who operated through letters and conversations
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While led by slaveholders such as Jefferson and Madison, the Republicans credited the wisdom of the common people.
Far from being Hamilton’s willing dupe, Washington understood his programs thoroughly. Though he knew America would remain agricultural, he wanted to augment its manufacturing capacity. Starting with his inauguration, he had delighted in wearing clothes of American manufacture to stimulate the textile industry.
Starting in the summer of 1791, the Jeffersonians followed with alarm the rampant speculation in government bonds and bank shares. On July 4, 1791, the Treasury had begun selling shares in the new Bank of the United States, and pent-up demand proved so explosive that the entire subscription sold out in one frantic hour. Swarms of investors invaded the Treasury building, mobbing the clerks. For Hamilton’s supporters, it was dramatic proof of the trust that investors placed in the new institution. Now an unashamed bank booster, Washington exulted over this initial offering: “The astonishing
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Hamilton erred in selling most scrip in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, feeding southern fears of a northern hegemony. In August the price of scrip touched such dizzying heights that Senator Rufus King of New York reported that business had ground to a halt as people rushed to buy scrip, with “mechanics deserting their shops, shopkeepers sending their goods to auction, and not a few of our merchants neglecting the regular and profitable commerce of the city.”
William Duer, recently departed as assistant treasury secretary, had hatched a plan to corner the market in government bonds and bank shares and enlisted Alexander Macomb, a wealthy merchant, to join the effort. What made this situation so distressing for Hamilton was that he had just tapped Duer as governor of the SEUM, where Macomb was also a governor. The two men emerged as ringleaders of a speculative clique known as the Six Per Cent Club because they tried to manipulate the price of government bonds yielding 6 percent.
In this increasingly dark, conspiratorial atmosphere, Washington received three malicious letters, warning him anonymously of the secret presidential ambitions of Jefferson and of Madison’s treachery: “When you ask the opinion of the S[ecretary] of S [tate], he affects great humility and says he is not a judge of military matters. Behind your back, he reviles with the greatest asperity your military measures and ridicules the idea of employing any regular troops . . . His doctrines are strongly supported by his cunning little friend Madison.”
Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures, Jefferson claimed, would destroy any pretense of limited government and enable the government to undertake any measure it liked. Washington must have been shocked as he fathomed the depth of animosity between his two most talented lieutenants.
Three years later Washington told Edmund Randolph that, if the Union were to break up into North and South, “he had made up his mind to remove and be of the northern.”35 That Washington now identified with northern finance, commerce, and even abolitionism would have major consequences for American history.
In chatting with Madison, Washington also deplored the press onslaught against his administration, little knowing that the man from whom he was seeking commiseration was a secret author of some of those assaults. The episode showed Madison’s capacity for duplicity—that he could act as Washington’s confidant even as he betrayed him. Although Jefferson and Madison wanted to elect a Republican vice president instead of John Adams, they had no desire to replace Washington, doubtless afraid that an unfettered Hamilton would succeed him.
As Federalists and Republicans envisioned life without Washington, both feared they would be left to the tender mercies of each other. About the only thing Hamilton and Jefferson agreed upon was the absolute need to keep Washington as president. On May 23 Jefferson urged Washington to remain in office and dropped his circumspection about Hamilton. In a full-throated diatribe, he warned that Hamilton’s bank, funded debt, and excise taxes were intended “to prepare the way for a change from the present republican form of government to that of a monarchy, of which the English constitution is to be
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squarely told Jefferson that “as to the idea of transforming this government into a monarchy, he did not believe there were ten men in the U.S. whose opinions were worth attention who entertained such a thought,”70 as Jefferson noted his words. This was tough language, tantamount to branding Jefferson a crackpot, and unlike anything Washington ever said to Hamilton. The secretary of state replied with stiff dignity: “I told him there were many more than he imagined . . . I told him that tho[ugh] the people were sound, there was a numerous sect who had monarchy in contemplation, that the
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However trying he often found the press, Washington understood its importance in a democracy and voraciously devoured gazettes. Before becoming president, he had lauded newspapers and magazines as “easy vehicles of knowledge, more happily calculated than any other to preserve the liberty . . . and meliorate the morals of an enlightened and free people.”5 In his unused first inaugural address, he had gone so far as to advocate free postal service for periodicals.
month later, in a more somber mood, he warned Jefferson that Freneau’s invective would yield pernicious results: “These articles tend to produce a separation of the Union, the most dreadful of calamities; and whatever tends to produce anarchy, tends, of course, to produce a resort to monarchical government.”7
To an unusual extent, early American politics was played out in print—one reason the founding generation of politicians was so literate.
Developments in France only aggravated the growing discord in American politics. Regarding the French revolutionaries as kindred spirits, Republicans rejoiced at the downfall of the Bourbon dynasty, while Federalists, dreading popular anarchy, dwelled on the grisly massacres.
In general, he favored economic rather than political involvement with the outside world. This neutrality policy was practical in that the United States was too small to exert significant leverage among the great powers and high-minded enough to shy away from European balance-of-power politics.
the deluded Genet ignored the warning and turned one captured British merchant ship, the Little Sarah, into an armed French privateer christened La Petite Démocrate. The high-handed Frenchman then informed Jefferson that France had the right to outfit such ships in American ports. Echoing the Jeffersonian press, he dared to imply that Washington was “subservient to a Federalist party . . . whose only aim is to establish Monocracy in this country.”
Swollen with power, Genet also threatened, in a grave violation of diplomatic protocol, to appeal over Washington’s head to the American people to overturn the neutrality policy. Washington was incensed over Genet’s conduct, which brought to the surface his bottled-up rage against Jefferson. He flatly asked his secretary of state: “Is the minister of the French Republic to set the acts of this government at defiance—with impunity and then threaten the executive with an appeal to the people?”
Meanwhile Citizen Genet was not about to depart quietly. In mid-August, when John Jay and Rufus King revealed in a New York newspaper that Genet had threatened to make a direct appeal to the American people over the president’s head, the country reacted with righteous indignation.
Washington’s views on dissent were colored by his political philosophy. Along with other Federalists, he thought that officials, once elected, should apply their superior judgment and experience to make decisions on behalf of the populace. As he enunciated this position: “My political creed therefore is, to be wise in the choice of delegates—support them like gentlemen, while they are our representatives—give them competent powers for all federal purposes—support them in the due exercise thereof—and, lastly, to compel them to close attendance in Congress during their delegation.”
Some historians have faulted Washington for being intolerant of dissent, but mitigating circumstances should be cited. The concept of republican government was new, and nobody knew exactly how much criticism it could withstand. From the close of the war, Americans had worried about foreign intrusion, especially attempts by European imperial powers to roll back the Revolution, and many members of the new Democratic-Republican Societies openly flaunted their admiration for the French Revolution. Also, many members of the opposition, most notably Jefferson, had opposed or felt highly ambivalent
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We are accustomed to viewing the founding era as endowed with an inexhaustible supply of superlatively able men available for public service. But once the most gifted public servants—Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, and Jay—were already accounted for, Washington, like many later presidents, had a fiendishly hard time finding replacements for his sterling first-term cabinet and turned by default to comparative mediocrities.
In March 1794 Congress approved a proposal, backed by Washington and Knox, to build six frigates “adequate for the protection of the commerce of the U.S. against Algerian corsairs.”16 This action officially inaugurated the U.S. Navy, although it would take four more years before a separate Navy Department was born.
Many Frenchmen who had admired or even participated in the American Revolution were casualties of its bloody Gallic sequel. After testifying in favor of Marie-Antoinette, the former Count d’Estaing was beheaded. The erstwhile Count de Rochambeau, locked up in the Conciergerie in Paris, was condemned to the guillotine and survived only because Robespierre fell from power as he was about to be decapitated. The massacre of French aristocrats widened the rift between Federalists, who feared that France would export anarchy, and Republicans, who cheered the radical spirit of events in Paris,
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During his diplomatic mission Jay remained as chief justice, which struck some observers as unconstitutional. At the very least it softened the lines between the executive and judicial branches—lines that Jay himself had tried to sharpen. As Senator Aaron Burr argued, the decision created the prospect of the executive branch exercising a “mischievous and impolitic” influence over the judiciary.
On August 20, in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, near present-day Toledo, Ohio, Wayne and a force of 3,500 soldiers delivered a stunning defeat to Indian tribes. The Americans went on an unbridled rampage, trampling Indian houses and crops over a vast territory. Nonetheless Washington sang Wayne’s praises for having “damped the ardor of the savages and weakened their obstinacy in waging war against the United States.”
target was Colonel John Neville, a revenue inspector who had seen service in the Continental Army. In mid-July 1794 Neville and U.S. Marshal David Lenox tried serving processes on farmers who had not registered their stills, as required by law. In retaliation, protesters attacked Neville’s house, putting it to the torch, and also fired at Lenox. On August 1 the protests assumed a more ominous character when six thousand dissidents appeared in Braddock’s Field outside Pittsburgh—the same place where Washington had shown such heroism four decades earlier.
In sallying forth to command the troops, Washington, sixty-two, became the first and only American president ever to supervise troops in a combat situation.
With general prosperity reigning in the country, Washington found something perverse in the discontent of the whiskey rebels, telling Carlisle residents that “instead of murmurs and tumults,” America’s condition called “for our warmest gratitude to heaven.”8 He faulted the insurgents for failing to recognize that the excise law was not a fiat, issued by an autocratic government, but a tax voted by their lawful representatives.
Reaching Bedford, Washington rode in imposing style along the line of soldiers—his back troubles had miraculously eased—and the army reacted with palpable esteem for its commander in chief. As Washington passed, a Dr. Wellington noted in his diary, the men “were affected by the sight of their chief, for whom each individual seemed to show the affectionate regard that would have been [shown] to an honored parent . . . Gen[era]l Washington . . . passed along the line bowing in the most respectful and affectionate manner to the officers. He appeared pleased.”
For Jefferson, Washington’s speech was a patent attack on free speech, confirming a monarchical mentality that was “perfectly dazzled by the glittering of crowns and coronets.”23 For Madison and Jefferson, this was the pivotal moment when Washington surrendered any pretense of nonpartisanship and became the open leader of the Federalists.
In defying House Republicans, Washington delivered a stern lecture on the legal issues involved, reminding lawmakers that the Constitution restricted treaty-making powers to the president and the Senate, confining deliberations to a handful of people to ensure secrecy.
The gist of many of Washington’s remarks was that French actions toward America had been motivated by self-interest, not ideological solidarity, and flouted American neutrality in seeking to enlist the United States in the war against England.
39 Stuart converted the Washington portraits into a thriving industry, stamping out copies for so many years that he laughingly referred to them as his hundred-dollar bills—that being the price he charged for each. His daughter Jane contended that he could crank out a copy in a couple of hours and sometimes finished two portraits in a single session.
