by Alexis Coe
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America was born with enough wartime debt to crush it to death. The government owed forty million dollars to its own citizens, who had loaned it money, and twenty-five million to individuals around the world. France, now in the throes of its own revolution, was the United States’ main overseas creditor, and a sensitive one at that. It was already feeling unappreciated by the United States, and delayed repayment would only aggravate that feeling. But in general, all foreign nations had to be kept happy; they were key to trade and diplomatic recognition.
Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, was in charge of solving the debt problem. Emulating the British system, he proposed setting up a central bank. It would issue currency, oversee the national banking system, and assume the interest payments on states’ debts—but the principal loan would never be paid back. And while the federal government would run the Bank of the United States, it wouldn’t own it. A small group of investors would, making relief of the national debt integral to their own prosperity.
The plan inflamed regional tensions. Southerners had paid off nearly all their wartime debts already, thanks in large part to slave labor. They disliked ceding a measure of their financial autonomy to the federal government, and they were smarting about the debate over a permanent location for the capital; the majority of the sixteen proposed sites were in the north. Southerners were looking at a situation in which they’d be saddled with others’ debts (thanks to Hamilton, a New Yorker) and stripped of political influence (because of the likely northern capital location).
James Madison, representing Virginia in the House, led the fight against Hamilton’s plan. His fellow representatives balked at a system inspired by Great Britain, their old oppressors. Because of the way the bank was structured, any time citizens needed help from the government, they would have to appeal to unelected power brokers. This all but guaranteed corruption. They had just broken the cycle, and now Hamilton was trying to trap them back in it.
There had been a time when Hamilton and Madison had worked together with great success, publishing, along with John Jay, eighty-five essays that would collectively be known as the Federalist Papers (and that, ironically, had Madison advocating for a stronger federal government). In June 1790, Jefferson invited them to dinner, and while little is known about what transpired, by the end of the night, they’d made a deal. Madison and Jefferson agreed to Hamilton’s financial plan. In exchange, the northerner agreed to a southern location for the permanent seat of government.
Washington was pleased by the Compromise of 1790—in no small part because it moved the capital fifteen miles north of Mount Vernon. He signed the Residence Act in July (and the Funding Act a month later), creating a federal district around Georgetown in Maryland and Alexandria in Virginia, on his beloved Potomac. He loved renovations and was excited to oversee the construction of Federal City. In the meantime, the seat of government would move to Philadelphia, a city that he—and, perhaps more importantly, Martha—much preferred.
“I sometimes think the arrangement is not quite as it ought to have been,” Martha wrote to Mercy Otis Warren, a friend and political writer. Washington traveled often, and she seemed to resent him for leaving her alone in New York, where she had friends but few intimates; she missed Fanny, who remained at Mount Vernon. At times, she sounded not just burdened, but depressed and out of place, unhappily “occupy[ing] a place with which a great many younger and gayer women would be prodigiously pleased.”7
Martha had never taken to the city, but her young grandchildren Nelly and Wash had; they loved the lively streets and cosmopolitan schools, and they enjoyed whatever amusements came through town, including a certain Dr. King’s “exhibition of animals,” which featured sloths and porcupines. The Washingtons went to the theater on occasion, and attended Trinity Church on Broadway, but when they did, Martha felt as closely watched as the person delivering the sermon. “I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is certain bounds set for me which I must not depart from—and as I can not doe as I like I am obstinate and stay at home a great deal.”8
Even at home, Martha had to play the part of Lady Washington, which required a fashionable wardrobe, full of kid gloves and fur cloaks, and the frequent attentions of a hairdresser. On Thursdays, she hosted a dinner party attended mostly by men, and although Tobias Lear and others helped, she would be judged for the quality of the soup, fish, meats, puddings, pies, iced creams, and jellies. On Fridays, she held a reception that largely consisted of people curtsying to her or Washington bowing to them. Philadelphia would offer her little relief from her role, but the city itself—so she thought—would bring her far more joy.
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In Philadelphia, the Washingtons settled into a three-and-a-half-story brick mansion on Market Street. It had once served as British general Sir William Howe’s headquarters, and then as Benedict Arnold’s, just as he was being tempted toward treason; a financier named Robert Morris purchased it at the end of the war. Washington had been a guest there during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and now he made it his own. The bathing room became the president’s office. Martha installed a new bed in their room and expanded others.
Many of the men and women who had worked for them in New York were left behind. (“The dirty figures of Mrs Lewis and her daughter will not be a pleasant sight in view,” Washington decided, ordering the dismissal of his kitchen maid and cook.9) Instead, the Washingtons would use people they enslaved—even though Philadelphia had recently passed the Gradual Abolition Act, which freed any slave who reached the age of twenty-eight or lived in the city for six months.
In the spring of 1791, while Washington was promoting national unity on a southern tour from Maryland to Georgia, Attorney General Edmund Randolph came to Martha with a warning. While it was well known that the slaves of congressmen, foreign ministers, and consuls were exempt from the Gradual Abolition Act—those officials could keep their slaves as property as long as they stayed in town—it seems Randolph’s slaves were the first to figure out that the executive branch’s slaves were not exempt. When they discovered the truth, they informed the attorney general they intended to claim their freedom. Randolph suggested that Martha send her slaves away to avoid the same fate; even a short trip would buy the Washingtons another six months.
“[T]he idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist,” Washington wrote to Lear; it certainly was at Mount Vernon, where slaves attempted to flee with some regularity. “I do not think they would be benefitted by the change,” he added. Their owner certainly wouldn’t. “As all except Hercules and Paris are dower negroes”—meaning six of eight slaves in the Philadelphia house belonged to Martha—“it behoves me to prevent the emancipation of them, otherwise I shall not only loose the use of them, but may have them to pay for.”10 He was still cash poor and had not purchased a slave since 1775; if dower slaves escaped, he would have to reimburse Martha’s estate.
Lear’s response was full of magical thinking. He seemed to believe that Washington, or the country, would outlaw slavery within his lifetime, but he displayed a similarly paternalistic outlook—that Washington knew what was best for them, and they were better off owned by him than free to make their own decisions.
You will permit me now, Sir, (and I am sure you will pardon me for doing it) to declare, that no consideration should induce me to take these steps to prolong the slavery of a human being, had I not the fullest confidence that they will at some future period be liberated, and the strongest conviction that their situation with you is far preferable to what they would probably obtain in a state of freedom.11
And so Lear talked himself into prolonging the bondage of Washington’s slaves, starting with the one who seemed to concern them the most: Hercules, his chef, had become relatively well known for his outgoing personality and natty dress. At night, when he was done with his work, he would, according to Wash’s recollect
ion, take an “evening promenade” in his finery, purchased with money he earned selling kitchen leftovers.12 “If Hercules should decline the offer which will be made him of going home [to Mount Vernon],” Lear wrote to Washington, “it will be a pretty strong proof of his intention to take the advantage of the law at the expiration of six months.”13
Hercules, who had been with Washington since 1767, since he was just a teenager, “was mortified to the last degree to think that a suspicion could be entertained of his fidelity or attachment to you,” Lear wrote to the president in June 1791. He had acknowledged “the motive for sending him home,” had “made not the least objection to going,” and, in Lear’s assessment, “left no doubt of his sincerity.”14 Hercules took great offense at the idea that he would escape from the President’s House in Philadelphia, where Washington had at the chef’s own request brought his son, Richmond. (As Washington noted, he did so not because of Richmond’s “appearance or merits I fear, but because he was the Son of Hercules & his desire to have him as an assistant.”15) And his enslaved daughters Eve and Delia still lived at Mount Vernon; if Hercules ran away, he would probably never see his children again.
In the letter, Lear explained that he’d set up an arrangement by which Hercules would go back and forth between Mount Vernon and Philadelphia every six months with as much ease as he did anything else; his role of secretary extended to the entire household, including the desserts Martha had recently served to the Adams and Morris families. He described, in detail, the pastries a “Confectioner in town” had delivered for a recent soirée. The desserts were “very genteel & tastey,” Lear wrote, and best of all, the baker would buy back the uneaten portions to minimize trouble and expense.16 It seemed to be a good deal for the president, though Lear was anxious to see the bill.
Lear also updated Washington on the children’s lessons. Nelly was educated in French, geography, music, dance, and art at home, sometimes with friends by her side—Abigail Adams’s granddaughter, Caroline; Robert Morris’s daughter, Maria; and Attorney General Edmund Randolph’s daughter, Susan. Wash, it seemed, liked his new school in Philadelphia because he was learning very little. “Boys of his age are better pleased with relaxed discipline—and the inattention of their tutors, than with the conduct that brings them forward,” Washington wrote to Lear. He remembered this from Jacky, Wash’s father, and thought a different school might be better. “[B]efore you finally decide on this matter, it is my wish as Colo. Hamilton, Genl. Knox and the Attorney-General have sons in the same predicament (if they are not removed) that you would consult and act in Concert with them; & I shall be satisfied in whatever is done in consequence of it,” he instructed Lear.17
Washington had spent the previous few years relying on these men’s opinions for everything. Usually they wrote letters, but occasionally he would summon them to his office for individual meetings. He had instructed them, along with Vice President Adams, to meet should an emergency arise while he was away on the southern tour. Perhaps it occurred to him only then how much preferable it would be to gather together at the same time. A couple of months after he returned to Philadelphia, Washington sent out invitations for a group meeting, and the cabinet was born.
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On November 26, 1791, Washington invited Hamilton, Jefferson, Knox, and Randolph to meet in person.18 He had come to believe that the two Virginians, one New Yorker, and one New Englander would give him the best range of viewpoints he could get. (Notably absent was Adams, who had never shaken his early reputation for loving all things monarchical; the latest gossip was that he rode with no fewer than six horses, as if he were a member of a royal court.)
WASHINGTON’S CABINET
POSITION IN THE ADMINISTRATION
EDUCATION
OCCUPATION BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
POSITION DURING THE REVOLUTION
REGION
Thomas Jefferson
Secretary of State
College of William & Mary
Plantation owner
Virginia governor and delegate to Congress
Virginia
Henry Knox
Secretary of War
Self-educated
Bookseller
Artillery commander and general
Boston and Maine
Alexander Hamilton
Secretary of the Treasury
King’s College (now Columbia University)
Bookkeeper
Artillery officer and Washington’s aide-de-camp
New York City by way of the Caribbean
Edmund Randolph
Attorney General
William & Mary
Lawyer
Virginia attorney general, Williamsburg mayor, and delegate to Congress
Virginia
Washington would hold eight more meetings of the cabinet—a term coined by Madison—in 1791.19 “[I]n these discussions, Hamilton & myself were daily pitted in the cabinet like two cocks,” Jefferson later wrote.20 His description turns meetings into a blood sport, with Washington as the referee and Jefferson and Hamilton the razor-beaked competitors.
By 1792, their fights spilled out of the cockpit. Jefferson and Madison, who were ideological allies, quietly funded Philip Freneau’s National Gazette, which criticized all of Washington’s policies and attacked Federalist supporters; he was, at least in the first term, far too popular with the people to assault directly. Just as they had blamed Parliament for misleading the king, they now blamed Washington’s seemingly favorite adviser, Hamilton, for misleading the president. Hamilton was already promoting—and perhaps backing—John Fenno’s Gazette of the United States, a pro-administration paper; he sometimes wrote for it under the name “An American.”21
Neither publication bothered with the pretense of objectivity or balance. Most articles were written anonymously or pseudonymously, as was commonplace in early America; none were fact-checked, and everything, including personal lives, was fair game. Washington, who wished nothing more than to be a symbol of unity, was horrified. But the public couldn’t get enough of the infighting. Similar newspapers launched all over the country, inflaming partisanship in even the most remote regions.
While Washington suspected that Jefferson was behind the attacks on his policies, Hamilton was convinced of it. He believed “. . . Mr. Madison cooperating with Mr. Jefferson is at the head of a faction decidedly hostile to me and my administration, and actuated by views in my judgment subversive of the principles of good government and dangerous to the union, peace and happiness of the Country,” Hamilton wrote in code; the situation was so bad, he feared that his correspondence might be intercepted and read by partisan opponents.22 (Because Washington had led him to believe he was integral to the presidency, Hamilton often referred to it as “my administration.”)
POLITICAL PARTIES IN EARLY AMERICA
Though Washington was sympathetic to the Federalists, he remains the only president who never claimed a political affiliation while in office. At the time, this may have been the pragmatic approach: The Constitution doesn’t mention parties, and until 1804 the runner-up in the presidential election was automatically made vice president. Parties were also at odds with Washington’s goal of unity. Nevertheless, two disparate visions for the country quickly emerged.
PARTY
ORIGIN
PLATFORM
DEMOGRAPHIC BASE
Democratic-Republican
The exact date is disputed, but most historians agree that Madison and Jefferson founded the party around 1791 in response to Hamilton’s financial policies. (Madison had been a Federalist, but the debt crisis made him switch.)
Limit federal power and strengthen state governments;
interpret the Constitution literally; anti-British; pro–French Revolution.
Farmers and southerners who wanted stronger rights for states. They tended to be less religious and believed in the separation of church and state.
Federalist
Also founded around 1791 as supporters of a strong federal government rallied around Hamilton’s financial policies.
Strong central government; interpret the Constitution expansively;
pro-Britain; anti–French Revolution.
Conservatives, businessmen, New Englanders—and most of the founders, including Hamilton and John Adams. Tolerated a lower barrier in the separation of church and state.
And yet Washington still believed that regional prejudices were at the heart of their differences; he had mostly rid himself of such attitudes during the war, when he worked with a great many northerners. He did, however, realize the situation was untenable. In the late summer of 1792, Washington finally addressed the tensions directly in separate letters, written three days apart. In a missive to Jefferson, dated August 23, he devotes a few paragraphs to small talk about the Spanish, then tells Jefferson, in his own way, that his infighting with Hamilton is ruining everything: