Washington: A Life

by Ron Chernow

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?”

Benjamin Franklin so distrusted executive power that he pushed for a small executive council instead of a president. In advancing this idea, he had the courtesy to note, with a figurative nod toward Washington, that the first president would likely be benevolent, but he feared despotic tendencies in his successors.

Pierce Butler doubted that the presidential powers would have been so great “had not many members cast their eyes toward General Washington as president and shaped their ideas of the powers to a president by their opinion of his virtue.”

Still, with memories of the Revolution fresh, they reserved significant powers for Congress, endowing it, for instance, with the authority to declare war, thereby avoiding the British precedent of a monarch who retained this awesome power.

Legend claims that as he left the State House, Franklin bumped into Elizabeth Powel, who inquired about the form of government produced inside. “A republic, madam, if you can keep it,” Franklin replied.31 Powel later claimed that she had no recollection of the famous retort, but she did say that “the most respectable, influential members of the convention” had gathered at her house and that “the all important subject was frequently discussed” there.

Rhode Island had boycotted the convention altogether.

In fact, Washington later admitted to Jefferson that he had not planned to serve out a single term as president and had been “made to believe that in 2 years all would be well in motion and he might retire.”56 It seems safe to say that Washington never dreamed he would serve out even one full term as president, much less two. Had he realized that his decision would entangle him in eight more years of arduous service, he likely would never have agreed to be president.

In mid-January Henry Lee foresaw that even antifederalist electors would feel obliged to vote for Washington. Casting their votes on February 4, 1789, they vindicated Lee’s prediction: all 69 electors voted for Washington, making him the only president in American history to win unanimously.

Of the various government posts, it was the presidency that had the potential to slip into monarchy and subvert republican government, so every decision made about it aroused a firestorm of controversy.

Washington never engaged in flirtatious looks, but he unquestionably paid special attention to women in attendance. “The company this evening was thin, especially of ladies,” he complained in his diary after one Friday soirée.

He gave scores of charitable contributions, preferring anonymity, though he sometimes made exceptions on public holidays to set an example for the citizenry. After he designated Thursday, November 26, 1789, as the first Thanksgiving Day, for example, he contributed beer and food to those jailed for debt.

The president summoned Dr. Samuel Bard, a prominent New York physician, who diagnosed the condition as the cutaneous form of anthrax.

In all likelihood, Washington had a carbuncle or soft tissue infection.

Surgery was then a hellish ordeal, as the patient gritted his teeth and endured excruciating pain. While the younger Dr. Bard split open the abscess, his father exhorted him to persevere: “Cut away—deeper—deeper still! Don’t be afraid. You see how well he bears it!”3 Tobias Lear claimed that the tumor was “very large and the incision on opening it deep.”4 In all likelihood, the younger Bard excised the mass of infected tissue and scraped away any pus or dead tissue, all of which would have been enormously painful for Washington, who remained unfailingly courteous.

Whatever she may have said privately, Mary Washington took no more public pride in his being president than she had in his command of the Continental Army. But it’s hard to imagine that on his last visit to his mother, Washington was unmoved by the sight of a dying parent, cruelly disfigured by disease, or that he felt no residual gratitude toward her. Whatever her glaring flaws, Mary Washington had worked hard to raise him in the absence of a father.

No special memorial arose at Mary Washington’s graveside until three decades after George Washington’s death.

The auction of Mary’s belongings that October also suggested that, for all her complaints, the elderly widow had accumulated considerable property. Among the auction items cited in a newspaper advertisement were “stocks of horses, cattle, sheep and hogs, plantation utensils of every kind, carts, hay, and fodder.”18 In fact, Mary had amassed such substantial landholdings that George alone inherited four hundred acres of valuable pine land; he gave it to Robert Lewis, Betty’s son. All of this property had been owned by a woman who saw fit to petition the Virginia legislature for a private pension during the war because of her son’s alleged neglect.

While the Constitution talked about executive departments, it made no reference to a cabinet, stipulating only that the president could request “the opinion, in writing” of department heads.

Hamilton was also trailed by accurate rumors that at the Constitutional Convention he had advocated a president who would serve for life on good behavior, planting the notion that he was a closet monarchist.

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.

“where there is no occasion for expressing an opinion, it is best to be silent, for there is nothing more certain than that it is at all times more easy to make enemies than friends.”

At the time of the Constitutional Convention, Washington deemed a bill of rights superfluous on the grounds that American citizens would retain all rights that they did not expressly renounce in the document.

With Washington coughing up blood and running a high fever, Dr. McKnight hinted to Maclay that there was little hope of recovery and that death might be imminent. Beset by hiccups, Washington made strange gurgling noises that were interpreted as a death rattle.

On May 16, against all expectations and after the team of physicians had pronounced the case hopeless, the president rallied and underwent a startling improvement.

In July Congress approved the Residence Act, naming Philadelphia as the temporary capital for ten years, followed by a permanent move to a ten-mile-square federal district on the Potomac by December 1, 1800.

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.

Under the 1780 Pennsylvania statute, any adult slaves resident in the state for six consecutive months were automatically free. Three of Randolph’s own slaves had served notice that they planned to claim their freedom. Bizarrely, the attorney general of the United States urged the president and first lady to evade this local law. Coaching them how to do so, he noted that once slaves were taken out of Pennsylvania and then brought back, the clock was reset, and another six months needed to elapse before they could demand their freedom.

Not taking any chances, Washington decided to shuttle his slaves back to Mount Vernon for brief stays before their six-month time limits expired.

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.”33 This was a rare instance of George Washington scheming, and Martha Washington and Tobias Lear connived right along with him.

He envisioned the seat of Congress on the brow of the highest wood, a steep spot called Jenkins Hill, which he praised as “a pedestal waiting for a superstructure.”

Philadelphia’s citizens were by no means resigned to their city being only a temporary capital and continued to throw up new government buildings, hoping to sway legislators to stay. When they tried constructing a new presidential residence, Washington saw their secret intent and insisted that his current house was perfectly satisfactory.

When he returned to the reception, he apologized to his guests but revealed nothing of the extraordinary news. Instead, he went dutifully through his social paces, conversing with each lady in attendance. With extraordinary self-control, Washington allowed nothing in his demeanor to hint at the pent-up rage churning inside him.

The redoubtable Wayne instituted tough measures to instill discipline in the new army and shaved, branded, and whipped soldiers to sharpen their performance. While pleased with Wayne’s rigor, Henry Knox introduced a caveat: “Uncommon punishment not sanctioned by law should be admitted with caution.”65

Washington and other founders entertained the fanciful hope that America would be spared the bane of political parties, which they called “factions” and associated with parochial self-interest.

“If I could not go to heaven but with a party,” Jefferson opined, “I would not go there at all.”

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 instead of meetings, platforms, and conventions. Nonetheless these groups solidified into parties during the decade and, notwithstanding the founders’ fears, formed an enduring cornerstone of American democratic politics.

Before long the two factions took on revealing names. The Hamiltonian party called itself Federalists, implying that it alone supported the Constitution and national unity. It took a robust view of federal power and a strong executive branch, and it favored banks and manufacturing as well as agriculture.

The Jeffersonians called themselves Republicans to suggest that they alone could save the Constitution from monarchical encroachments. They believed in limited federal power, a dominant Congress, states’ rights, and an agrarian nation free of the corrupting influence of banks, federal debt, and manufacturing.

Though a planter, Washington was receptive to labor-saving gadgetry, even if it meant using female and child labor.

Although the par value of bank stock was $400 per share, Hamilton, to make it affordable to small investors, allowed them to make $25 down payments; in exchange, they received certificates called scrip, which entitled them to purchase full shares in future installments.

In the next few weeks, as the price of scrip soared, it produced a speculative frenzy that was dubbed “scrippomania.” Far from construing it as symptomatic of Hamilton’s success, Madison was appalled by this “scramble for so much public plunder.”13 Equally aghast, Jefferson wondered aloud to Washington whether “such sums should have been withdrawn from . . . useful pursuits to be employed in gambling.”

By August 11 bank scrip had zoomed from the $25 offering price to $300, with government bonds also touching delirious new heights. When bankers drained credit from the market, speculators dumped their scrip, the bubble burst, and prices plummeted. Hamilton steadied the market by buying government securities, but Jefferson was convinced that scrip had already worked its evil influence. “The spirit of gaming, once it has seized a subject, is incurable,” he wrote.

ALTHOUGH WASHINGTON had originally planned to resign during his first term, many Americans could not imagine another president and automatically assumed he would stay in office indefinitely. Whatever their quibbles about his policies, citizens still honored his exalted character and place in history.

Jefferson made bold to say that there was only a single source of discontent, the Treasury Department, and “that a system had there been contrived for deluging the states with paper money instead of gold and silver, for withdrawing our citizens from the pursuits of commerce, manufactures, buildings, and other branches of useful industry to occupy themselves and their capitals in a species of gambling.”

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.”

Madison was especially disturbed by what he deemed a violation of congressional prerogatives, a betrayal of Franco-American ties, and capitulation to “the unpopular cause of Anglomany.”35 He feared that the president would abuse war-making powers: “The constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to use it,” he wrote. “It has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.”

By the end of 1793 the diatribes against Washington no longer dwelled simply on his supposed imitation of the crowned heads of Europe. Now the opposition sought to debunk his entire life and tear to shreds the upright image he had so sedulously fostered. That December, the New-York Journal said that his early years had been marked by “gambling, reveling, horse racing and horse whipping,” that he was “infamously niggardly” in business matters, and that despite his feigned religious devotion, he was a “most horrid swearer and blasphemer.”68 For George Washington, American politics had become a strange and disorienting new world.

John Adams was adamant that “nothing but the yellow fever . . . could have saved the United States from a total revolution of government.”

By mid-October 3,500 Philadelphians, or one-tenth of the population, had succumbed to yellow fever, leaving the city, in Washington’s words, “almost depopulated by removals and deaths.”8