by Alexis Coe
“What I have recommended to you I am myself going to do. After a few moons are passed, I shall leave the great town, and retire to my farm. There I shall attend to the means of increasing my cattle, sheep, and other useful animals, to the growing of corn, wheat & other grain, and to the employing of women in spinning and weaving: all which I have recommended to you, that you may be as comfortable & happy as plenty of food, cloathing & other good things can make you.”15
But in the end, the showdown with the insurrectionists of the Whiskey Rebellion never happened. When government troops arrived at Braddock’s Field, there was no one to fight. (There was also no Washington; he’d thought better of his presence at the last minute and turned around.) “And what is equally astonishing,” Jefferson later wrote to James Monroe, “is that by the pomp of reports, proclamations, armies &c. the mind of the legislature itself was so fascinated as never to have asked where, when, and by whom has this insurrection been produced?”16 The press was stunned by Washington’s imprudence: The man famous for his self-control and judiciousness had neglected to consider whether military action was warranted. Couldn’t he have simply threatened the poor civilians into submission—or, better yet, actually talked to them?
With some effort, the troops arrested one hundred and fifty whiskey rebels. But without much evidence, and with few people willing to testify, only two men, John Mitchell and Philip Wiegel, were found guilty of treason. Although Washington bragged about the peaceful resolution, he must have felt embarrassed about the situation, or at least the reception his overreaction had received; he used a presidential pardon for the first time in history, and let the men go.
But months later, Washington still had a point to make. During his sixth annual address to Congress, he blamed “Self created Societies” for inflaming dissent against the government and causing greater divisions across the country.17 Federalist congressmen felt validated by the president’s rare use of strong language, while Democratic-Republicans felt personally attacked; they had nothing to do with the rebellion, and furthermore, free speech and public debate were protected by the Constitution. In a letter to James Monroe, then US minister to France, Madison wrote that the “introduction of [Self created Societies] by the President was perhaps the greatest error of his political life.”18
Jefferson, from retirement, continued to fuel the press attacks. From afar, it seems, he wore Hamilton down—as did life. In December, after his wife miscarried, Hamilton resigned. Knox followed twenty-seven days later, claiming he wanted to spend more time with his family.19
WASHINGTON’S SECOND—AND ENTIRELY FEDERALIST—CABINET
NAME
POSITION IN THE ADMINISTRATION
EDUCATION
POSITION DURING THE REVOLUTION
OCCUPATION
REGION
William Bradford
Attorney General (January 1794–August 1795; died in office)
College of New Jersey (later Princeton)
Captain, then attorney general of Pennsylvania
Lawyer
Philadelphia
Charles Lee
Attorney General
College of New Jersey
Coastal trade official
Lawyer
Virginia
James McHenry
Secretary of War
Newark Academy (Del.)
Surgeon and then volunteer aide-de-camp
Physician
Pennsylvania and Maryland
Oliver Wolcott, Jr.
Secretary of the Treasury
Yale
Quartermaster’s assistant
Comptroller of Connecticut, Auditor for the United States Treasury, and Comptroller for the Treasury
Connecticut and New York
Edmund Randolph
Secretary of State (January 1794–August 1795)
College of William & Mary
Virginia attorney general, Williamsburg mayor, and delegate to Congress
Lawyer
Virginia
Timothy Pickering
Secretary of State
Harvard
Adjutant general and quartermaster general
County judge
Massachusetts
* * *
Neutrality was difficult to maintain. Congress, which had been quietly questioning whether the Constitution even allowed a president to declare neutrality on his own—after all, he could not unilaterally declare war—was on edge. In March 1794, after British ships in the West Indies seized hundreds of American merchant vessels carrying food, and forcibly conscripted the sailors into the Royal Navy, Congress placed an embargo on all British ships and vessels in U.S. ports for thirty days.
Hoping to avoid another war with the British, Washington sent John Jay, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, to London to negotiate a treaty. Given the slow pace of transatlantic mail, the administration would be unable to weigh in on negotiations in real time, so Jay traveled with a set of notes.
But they didn’t come from his current cabinet. They came from Hamilton; he was now practicing law privately in New York, but that didn’t stop Washington from constantly seeking his counsel. Jefferson had always failed to realize why Hamilton won almost all their battles; he typically attributed it to Hamilton’s manipulation, or, as Washington aged, his inability to keep up, but in reality, it was a shared nationalistic worldview, and Hamilton’s gift of clearly and forcefully articulating it. The way he did so, however, wasn’t only loud and aggressive—compared to Jefferson’s behind-the-scenes letter-writing campaigns and puppeteering—but sometimes reckless.
Hamilton couldn’t just leave it to Jay, the actual negotiator, to handle discussions on his own. So he back-channeled with British leaders, assuring them America would not, as Denmark and Sweden had, defend its neutral stance with arms. The Brits’ concern over direct engagement was the only card Jay had to play, and Hamilton showed them his hand.
A year later, the big concession Jay got out of the British was something they had failed to deliver the first time around in 1783—a total surrender of northwestern military installations. The promise to name the United States a “most favoured nation” in commercial trade applied only to ships under seventy tons; upon hearing the paltry weight limit, Madison supposedly joked that American merchants would have to trade from canoes.20
The terms got worse from there. Great Britain refused to recognize America’s neutrality at sea; it would continue to seize any ship it suspected of carrying “contraband” for France. And it still expected to collect on debts incurred during the Revolution.
Jay knew the treaty wouldn’t bring “universal satisfaction”; it squeaked by in the pro-administration, Federalist-controlled Senate by twenty votes to ten—without the weight limit. He was wrong, however, in thinking it wouldn’t “administer occasion for calumny and detraction.”21 When anti-administration newspapers printed the treaty in full, people hurled stones at Hamilton on the street, burned effigies of Jay, and sent Washington an overwhelming amount of hate mail. “Tenor indecent—no answer returned,” he wrote on one.22
“At pres
ent the cry against the treaty is like that against a mad dog and everyone, in a manner, seems engaged in running it down,” Washington wrote to Hamilton, who was working behind the scenes publishing what would ultimately number twenty-eight pro–Jay Treaty essays under pseudonyms in various papers. “I have seen with pleasure,” he continued, by way of thanks, “that a writer in one of the New York papers under the Signature of Camillus, has promised to answer—or rather to defend the treaty—which has been made with G. Britain.”23
Washington called a cabinet meeting in the late summer of 1795, but Timothy Pickering, Knox’s replacement as secretary of war, and Oliver Wolcott, Jr., Hamilton’s replacement as secretary of the treasury, had their own agenda. They presented him with a letter written by Jean Antoine Joseph Fauchet, the French ambassador to the United States, around the time of the Whiskey Rebellion. It was highly critical of Washington’s foreign policy and, worse, contained a shocking—and frustratingly ambiguous—allegation: Edmund Randolph, Washington’s only remaining original cabinet member, had apparently solicited a bribe from the French. Or maybe the French had made overtures to Randolph. Some kind of intelligence was provided . . . or could be provided. Fauchet’s letter was confusing, likely because it was poorly translated. But Washington, too stressed from the treaty fiasco—which he had signed on August 15, 1795, despite the public outcry and his own reservations—was unable to tolerate even the suggestion of scandal.
A week after receiving the news, he called Randolph into his private study. The two men had known each other for decades; Randolph had served as Washington’s aide-de-camp during the Revolution, then as his private lawyer, then as U.S. attorney general, and finally as secretary of state. Washington now accused him of treason. Randolph, outraged, quit on the spot. Perhaps he expected Washington to offer to launch an investigation or request that he stay on until a replacement was named. Instead, the president, whose main concern was to stop anti-administration newspapers from getting their hands on more embarrassing fodder, coldly demanded the resignation in writing. Randolph went back to his office, packed up his things, and sent a letter to Washington that same day.
My sensations then cannot be concealed; when I find that confidence so immediately withdrawn, without a word or distant hint being previously dropped to me. This, sir, as I mentioned in your room, is a situation, in which I cannot hold my present office; and therefore I hereby resign it.24
But it didn’t end there. In December, Randolph published a pamphlet titled Vindication, the first tell-all from an American presidential administration. (Jefferson’s copy, complete with his marginalia, resides at the Library of Congress.) He claimed innocence and included a retraction from none other than Fauchet.
Washington refused to comment on the story—he never responded to the press directly—but privately called Randolph’s “long promised vindication” an “accusation.” Yet Washington felt unsure enough to solicit the opinion of Hamilton, who dismissed Randolph and his supporters as “base” and reassured Washington that the spectacle would “do good, rather than harm to the public cause and to yourself.”25 Washington never spoke to Randolph again—though he was, in the end, mistaken. His old friend’s outrage was genuine. Randolph had never sought to betray Washington to the French, or anyone else.
That scandal died after a few months, but the Republicans in the House, led by Madison, refused to let the Jay Treaty go, and a standoff ensued. In the spring of 1796, they demanded that the president share the diplomatic instructions Jay had received. Washington refused, asserting for the first time what would become known as executive privilege. The Republicans threatened to withhold the funds necessary to put the treaty into effect. Washington called that unconstitutional, arguing that the Senate and the president made treaties and the House could do nothing to veto them. He won on all fronts. Hamilton’s notes stayed private, and the treaty was a success; trade expanded, and, once the British evacuated their northwest posts, so did settlements in Ohio.26 As an added boon, Madison felt destabilized by the failed showdown, and contemplated retiring. “As a politician, he is no more,” William Cobbett—a British transplant who wrote political commentary under the pseudonym “Porcupine”—happily declared.27
And with that, Washington was no longer interested in inviting another Democratic-Republican into his cabinet, his confidence, or anywhere else. “I shall not, whilst I have the honor to administer the government, bring a man into any office of consequence knowingly, whose political tenets are adverse to the measures, which the general government are pursuing,” he wrote to Timothy Pickering on September 27, 1795. “For this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political Suicide.”28
The decision did not go unnoticed. In February of 1796, Washington’s birthday—an event once celebrated in the streets—came and went without fanfare. Members of the House of Representatives voted against adjourning for thirty minutes to wish him well.29
CHAPTER 18
Farewell to “Cunning, Ambitious, and Unprincipled Men”
In May of 1796, Washington was getting ready to escape Philadelphia for the summer. He had spent the previous few months, as his exhausting second term was winding down, checking in on the new window blinds and apple trees and structural repairs of the mansion house at Mount Vernon. Martha would be reunited with Fanny there, and Washington with Tobias Lear; the two had married the previous year and made a home nearby on the plantation.
The Washingtons were about to celebrate another marriage. Betsy, their eldest granddaughter, had “Suprize[d]” them with an engagement, as Washington wrote to her betrothed; he hoped that Thomas Law, a British citizen who had arrived from India with two of his three children, who were half-Indian, would be “fixed in America.”1 And to Betsy, he wrote to “bestow on you my choicest blessings,” and the gift of a dower slave.2
Ona (Oney) Judge, a twenty-two-year-old “light mulatto girl, much freckled,” was the daughter of Betty, an enslaved seamstress, and Andrew Judge, an indentured servant who became Washington’s trusted tailor. (We do not know whether the relationship was consensual or whether, at the end of his ten-year term of service, Judge tried to purchase Betty and their daughter from Washington; we only know that he left Mount Vernon without them.) Ona Judge had been Martha’s personal maid since she was a girl of ten, and had been brought from Mount Vernon to Philadelphia to serve her. According to ledgers from the President’s House, she led a relatively privileged existence when compared with the vast majority of the Washingtons’ slaves. She dressed in fine gowns, shoes, stockings, and bonnets; in Philadelphia, she went to see a play and “the tumbling feats” at Ricketts’ Circus, the first in America.3
And yet, as she moved through Philadelphia’s free black community, she must have felt anything but lucky. On the way to the play or the circus, Judge might have seen things that would never be available to her as a slave. Free black couples strolling together. Black-owned businesses. The all-black congregation at the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. These people weren’t going to be wedding gifts to anyone, let alone someone like Betsy, who had a notorious temper. “[I] was determined never to be her slave,” Judge would later say.
Time was of the essence. The family would soon leave for Mount Vernon, and Judge feared that “if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty.” On May 20, as the Washingtons were eating dinner, Judge walked right out the door. “I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand,” she said.4
Although Washington had once asked Lear to keep his slave-rotating scheme between the two of them, he did nothing to hide his pursuit of Judge. Two days after she “absconded” with “no provocation,” Frederick Kitt, who served as Washington’s household steward, placed an ad in the Philadelphia Gazette and Universal Daily Advertiser soliciting her capture. In it, Washington was named by title—“the President of the United States”—as was the price he was willing to pay for her
return: ten dollars.
* * *
The Washingtons returned to Mount Vernon without Judge, but it was hardly the vacation they had hoped for. Every day, there was a new disaster. James Monroe, the American minister in France, had to be recalled; he had failed to defend the Jay Treaty, and was openly sympathetic to the French. Robert Morris, the financier, had fallen behind on payments for lots in the new Federal City, endangering the plan for the capital and Washington’s own investments in the vital national venture. The Aurora and other Republican papers were relentless, and Washington now believed, despite Jefferson’s denials, that the former secretary of state was behind the bad coverage.
“Your conduct has been represented as derogating,” Washington wrote on July 6, 1796, his patience depleted. Jefferson, or at the very least his cohorts, had made him out to be Hamilton’s puppet, “a person under a dangerous influence.”5 He sent his last letter to Jefferson the next month; it was an obligatory note, no more than five sentences long, appended to some papers he’d promised to forward.6 They never spoke again.
Washington’s list of estranged friends grew to include Thomas Paine. The English-born author had helped shape Washington’s ideology, but he felt abandoned by the president, who had let him fester in a French prison during the revolution there, fearing every day was his last. On July 30, Paine penned an open letter bashing Washington on nearly every front.
Monopolies of every kind marked your administration almost in the moment of its commencement. . . . Elevated to the chair of the Presidency, you assumed the merit of everything to yourself, and the natural ingratitude of your constitution began to appear. You commenced your Presidential career by encouraging and swallowing the grossest adulation, and you traveled America from one end to the other to put yourself in the way of receiving it. You have as many addresses in your chest as James II. As to what were your views, for, if you are not great enough to have ambition, you are little enough to have vanity, they cannot be directly inferred from expressions of your own; but the partisans of your politics have divulged the secret . . . In what fraudulent light must Mr. Washington’s character appear in the world, when his declarations and his conduct are compared together!7