Washington: A Life

by Ron Chernow

Publications were avowedly partisan and made no pretense of objectivity. It was a golden age for wielding words as rapier-sharp political weapons. The penchant for writing essays under Roman pseudonyms, designed to underscore the writer’s republican virtues, lent a special savagery to journalism, freeing authors from any obligation to tone down their rhetoric.

WASHINGTON’S SECOND TERM, a period of domestic strife, was dominated by the French Revolution and its profound reverberations in American politics.

As war convulsed Europe, Washington, a former war hero, might have been tempted to become a warlike president, but he wisely abjured the use of force at this first serious threat.

Washington, a hardheaded realist, believed devoutly in neutrality and never doubted that nations are governed by their interests, not by their emotions.

Despite his theoretical opposition to slavery, he cautioned his overseers against the “idleness and deceit” of slaves if not treated with a firm hand.21

In essence, the overseers became slaves to the long hours of the slaves they supervised.

Washington suggested that the main hindrance to emancipating his slaves related to his fear of auctioning them off indiscriminately and breaking up families:

After leaving office, Jefferson was demoted to a lower rung in Washington’s ever-shifting hierarchy of relationships.

Their correspondence, however friendly, centered on mundane matters, such as crops and seeds, and Washington never again sought him out for policy advice. He dropped the salutation “My dear Sir” in favor of the cooler “Dear Sir.”

For someone as cordial as Washington, the avoidance of meetings with an old friend underlined the true depth of his hostility toward Jefferson.

This action officially inaugurated the U.S. Navy, although it would take four more years before a separate Navy Department was born.

The perceptive Morris saw that the violence was no incidental by-product of the revolution but fundamental to its spirit.

An essential difference between the American and French revolutions was that the American version allowed a search for many truths, while French zealots tried to impose a single sacred truth that allowed no deviation.

Washington’s Indian policy was a tragedy of noble intentions that failed to fix a seemingly insoluble problem.

As was so often the case when slavery was involved, Washington did not see the absurdity of presenting himself, a large slave owner, as a shining example for the Indians to emulate.

Because the whole point of the expedition was to establish the sovereign principle of law and order in the new federal system,

In a classic balancing act, he had conferred new luster on republican government, showing it could contain large-scale disorder without sacrificing constitutional niceties, and his popularity only grew in consequence.

The choices of Wolcott and Pickering confirmed that Washington could not duplicate the quality of his first-term team and was moving toward a more overtly Federalist cabinet.

In the end Washington selected Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, who, as a senator, had been the main architect of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which shaped the federal court system. A former judge of the Connecticut Superior Court, Ellsworth was confirmed on March 4, 1796, and, to Washington’s vast relief, remained in place past the end of his second term.

debate over the Jay Treaty papers,

Since Jefferson’s political philosophy was based on faith in the common people, Washington’s persisting popularity thrust him into the uncomfortable position of being at odds with the people’s apparent choice.

In the aftermath of the Jay Treaty, the diatribes against Washington reached a new pitch of savagery as his foes were emboldened to disparage his presidency and blacken his wartime reputation.

The skies darkened considerably on the diplomatic front, however, as rumors filtered back to Washington that the French government, incensed over the treaty, contemplated sending a fleet to American waters to seize ships bound for Great Britain. In time France would make good on the threats, launching the Quasi-War against the United States during the presidency of John Adams.

Another casualty of the treaty fracas was Washington’s relationship with James Monroe, who had fought with him at Trenton.

The imbroglio with Monroe signaled the demise of yet another Washington friendship with a prominent Virginian, a list that now encompassed George Mason, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Edmund Randolph.

In undertaking these sales, Washington harbored a secret agenda, hoping to use the proceeds to help emancipate his slaves.

Conscious that he would someday free his slaves, Washington wanted to avoid doing anything that might interfere with that plan.

Whatever his shortcomings as a master, Washington continued to refine his plan to free his slaves someday. So long as he was president, the subject was taboo; Washington told David Stuart that “reasons of a political, indeed of [an] imperious nature” forbade any such action.

By asserting executive vigor, his disclaimers notwithstanding, the farewell address placed Washington decidedly in the Federalist camp.

For opponents who had spent eight years harping on Washington’s supposed monarchical obsessions, his decision to step down could only have left them in a dazed state of speechless confusion.

THE MOST FLAGRANT OMISSION in Washington’s farewell statement was the subject most likely to subvert its unifying spirit: slavery.

Whatever his private reservations about slavery, President Washington had acted in accordance with the wishes of southern slaveholders. In February 1793 he signed the Fugitive Slave Act, enabling masters to cross state lines to recapture runaway slaves. He remained zealous in tracking down his own fugitive slaves, although like Jefferson, he didn’t care to call attention to such activities. When a slave named Paul ran away in March 1795, Washington, while approving measures to apprehend him, advised William Pearce that “I would not have my name appear in any advertisement, or other measure, leading to it.”37 He was especially worried about his name surfacing in northern papers.

Beyond moral scruples, Washington found slave ownership a political embarrassment. During his second term, the Aurora taunted him by declaring that, twenty years after independence, Washington still possessed “FIVE HUNDRED of the HUMAN SPECIES IN SLAVERY.”

After Judge was spotted, Martha pressured her husband into wielding the powers of the federal government to recapture her. She felt miffed by Judge’s flight and could never understand why blacks felt no gratitude toward lenient masters. As she once wrote to Fanny, “The blacks are so bad in their nature that they have not the least gratitude for the kindness that may be showed to them.”

Abusing his presidential powers, Washington instructed Wolcott to have the Portsmouth customs collector kidnap Judge and send her back to Virginia: “To seize and put her onboard a vessel bound immediately to this place [Philadelphia] or to Alexandria, which I should like better, seems at first view to be the safest and least expensive [measure].”52 Perhaps contributing to Washington’s vigilance in hunting down Judge was that she was a dower slave, which meant that he would have to reimburse the Custis estate for her loss.

That the Washingtons faulted Judge for “ingratitude” and pretended that she was like a daughter again shows the moral blindness of even comparatively enlightened slave owners. Judge’s flight belied whatever sedative fantasies the Washingtons might have had that slaves developed familial relations with their masters, transcending the indignity of bondage.

When Washington heard about the bargaining, he dismissed such negotiations as “totally inadmissible.”56 He found himself tangled in the coils of a terrible contradiction: just as he meditated the emancipation of all his slaves, he was trying to return one of them to bondage. Abashed, he told Whipple that “however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of people (if the latter was in itself practicable at this moment), it would neither be political or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow servants, who by their steady attachments are far more deserving than herself of favor.”57 In other words, Washington insisted that, as long as slavery existed, he must obey its cruel logic. He and Martha clung to the self-serving tale that Judge had “been seduced and enticed off by a Frenchman” who had roguishly sated his lust and then discarded her.58 Unwilling to compromise, Washington demanded that Judge either return voluntarily and “be forgiven by her mistress” or be put “on board a vessel bound either to Alexandria or the Federal City,” conveniently bypassing Philadelphia.59 In a telling concession, Washington instructed Whipple to forget about capturing Judge if forcibly abducting her served to “excite a mob or riot.”60 Shortly to leave office, Washington wanted no incident that might tarnish his departure, especially since he feared that...

Martha refused to let the matter drop.

The other slave who shocked the Washingtons by his disappearance was Hercules, who was owned directly by the president.

Washington’s catalog of accomplishments was simply breathtaking. He had restored American credit and assumed state debt; created a bank, a mint, a coast guard, a customs service, and a diplomatic corps; introduced the first accounting, tax, and budgetary procedures; maintained peace at home and abroad; inaugurated a navy, bolstered the army, and shored up coastal defenses and infrastructure; proved that the country could regulate commerce and negotiate binding treaties; protected frontier settlers, subdued Indian uprisings, and established law and order amid rebellion, scrupulously adhering all the while to the letter of the Constitution. During his successful presidency, exports had soared, shipping had boomed, and state taxes had declined dramatically. Washington had also opened the Mississippi to commerce, negotiated treaties with the Barbary states, and forced the British to evacuate their northwestern forts. Most of all he had shown a disbelieving world that republican government could prosper without being spineless or disorderly or reverting to authoritarian rule. In surrendering the presidency after two terms and overseeing a smooth transition of power, Washington had demonstrated that the president was merely the servant of the people.

But whatever his chagrin about the partisan strife, Washington never sought to suppress debate or clamp down on his shrill opponents in the press who had hounded him mercilessly.

To his everlasting credit, he showed that the American political system could manage tensions without abridging civil liberties. His most flagrant failings remained those of the country as a whole—the inability to deal forthrightly with the injustice of slavery or to figure out an equitable solution in the ongoing clashes with Native Americans.

As he had told Lafayette with fervor, after having fought the British for American freedom, he could not “remain an unconcerned spectator” as France tried to obliterate that freedom.

In short order, a deal had been struck that Alexander Hamilton would be second in command to Washington—an understanding that was to have fateful consequences for President Adams.

Before making this decision, Adams did not bother to consult Washington, who was thunderstruck to learn from the newspapers of his appointment and unanimous Senate confirmation.

BY 1798 the Federalist party had grown haughty by being too long in power. “When a party grows strong and feels its power, it becomes intoxicated, grows presumptuous and extravagant, and breaks to pieces,” Johns Adams later wrote, having presided over just such a situation as president.

The storybook ending might call for an elderly Washington to bask in the serene glow of wisdom. Instead he took to the warpath against the Jeffersonians with a vengeance.

George Washington possessed the gift of inspired simplicity, a clarity and purity of vision that never failed him.