by Ron Chernow
Governor Clinton, realizing that he had to stop the quarreling, adjourned the session. All of New York gossiped about the highly personalized altercation. One member of Judge Yates’s family reported that both Lansing and Hamilton “got extremely warm—insomuch that Lansing was charged by the other with want of candor and indecency.”106 Still another observer noted that bickering between Lansing and Hamilton had shaded over from spirited repartee to such personal insults that a duel might follow: “Personal reflections were thrown out by Mr. Lansing against Mr. Hamilton, which were productive of serious disputation. It will be well if it does not terminate seriously.”107 Two days later, the convention still seethed about the matter.
As Hamilton tangled with Lansing, neither knew that Virginia had on June 25 become the tenth state to ratify the Constitution. Like their New York counterparts, antifederalists there posed as plucky populists, even though their ranks included many rich slaveholders. Patrick Henry, the leading antifederalist, warned delegates who supported the Constitution, “They’ll free your niggers.”108 George Washington noted the hypocrisy of the many slaveholding antifederalists: “It is a little strange that the men of large property in the South should be more afraid that the Constitution will produce an aristocracy or a monarchy than the genuine, democratical people of the East.”109
Shortly after noon on July 2, a rider rode up to the Poughkeepsie courthouse and handed the doorkeeper a dispatch for Hamilton. Soon an excited murmur arose that drowned out the voice of George Clinton. Hamilton read aloud a letter from Madison with the dramatic announcement of Virginia’s approval. It must have been a deeply moving moment for Hamilton, the climax of his partnership with Madison. Joyous federalists spilled out of the building and circled the courthouse in celebration, accompanied by a fife and drum. If New York did not ratify the Constitution, it would now be stranded and excluded from the newly formed union, lumped together with the outcast states of North Carolina and Rhode Island.
But the sparring now only intensified. At a Fourth of July parade in Albany, a riot broke out when a copy of the Constitution was publicly burned and federalist and antifederalist contingents collided, leaving one dead and eighteen wounded. Suddenly on the defensive, Clinton’s forces tried to defeat the Constitution by demanding a bill of rights and other amendments. Hamilton thought this a tactical maneuver, and on July 12 he spoke at length in favor of unconditional adoption. In what one newspaper called “a most argumentative and impassioned address,” Hamilton insisted that the convention lacked authority to make recommendations and gravely intoned that the delegates should “weigh well what they were about to do before they decided on a subject so infinitely important.”110
Thus, in mid-July, the two sides remained unalterably apart. The point is worth stressing, since some historians have minimized Hamilton’s bravura performance at Poughkeepsie by claiming that only approval by Virginia and New Hampshire tipped the scales in New York. Emotions, however, remained venomous even after ten states ratified the Constitution, and Governor Clinton still thought civil war possible. One member of the French diplomatic legation, Victor du Pont, wrote to Samuel du Pont de Nemours that if the Constitution faltered in New York, outraged federalists might pounce on Clinton and his retinue when they returned home and “smear them with tar, roll them in feathers, and finally walk them through the streets.”111 On July 17, Hamilton predicted that New York City might secede from the state if the Constitution was turned down; Clinton chided him from his chair for his “highly indiscreet and improper” warning.112 Working himself up into a grand state of pathos, Hamilton summoned the ghosts of “departed patriots” and living heroes and with his words wrung tears from onlookers.113
Days later, Melancton Smith finally broke the deadlock when he endorsed the Constitution if Congress would promise to consider some amendments. Paying indirect tribute to Hamilton, Smith credited “the reasonings of gentlemen” on the other side for his changed vote.114 On July 26, Smith and a dozen other antifederalists switched their votes to favor the Constitution, producing a wafer-thin majority. The final vote of thirty to twenty-seven was the smallest victory margin at any state convention and portended future political troubles for Hamilton. Governor Clinton would not budge but tolerated followers who changed their votes. Anticipating New York’s approval, a huge rally had taken place in New York City three days earlier to express boisterous enthusiasm for the new government. It started at eight in the morning in light rain as five thousand representatives of sixty trades—from wig makers to bricklayers, florists to cabinetmakers—marched down Broadway amid a profusion of brightly colored floats and banners. The Constitution might be denounced as a rich man’s plot upstate, but the city’s artisans were now stouthearted federalists and crafted displays to illustrate the benefits that would flow from union. The bakers hoisted aloft a ten-foot “federal loaf,” brewers pulled a three-hundredgallon cask of ale, and coopers hauled barrels built with thirteen staves. Many of Hamilton’s friends joined the crowd. Robert Troup marched alongside lawyers and judges, brandishing the new Constitution. Nicholas Cruger, his old employer from St. Croix, donned a farmer’s costume and escorted a plow drawn by six oxen.
The parade apotheosized the hero of the hour, the man who had snatched victory from the antifederalist majority. So exuberant was the lionization of Alexander Hamilton that admirers wanted to rechristen the city “Hamiltoniana.” It was one of the few times in his life that Hamilton basked in the warmth of public adulation. Sail makers waved a flag depicting a laurel-wreathed Hamilton bearing the Constitution while an allegorical figure representing Fame blew a trumpet in the air. This paled before the grandest tribute of all to Hamilton. Gliding down Broadway, pulled by ten horses, was a miniature frigate, twenty-seven feet long, baptized the “Federal Ship Hamilton.” The model ship rose above all other floats “with flowing sheets and full sails[,]... the canvas waves dashing against her sides” and concealing the carriage wheels moving the ship, noted one observer.115 The cart men fluttered banners that proclaimed, “Behold the federal ship of fame / The Hamilton we call her name; / To every craft she gives employ; / Sure cartmen have their share of joy.”116 When the Hamilton arrived near the Battery, it was received by congressmen standing outside Bayard’s Tavern. To represent the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, the ship changed pilots amid a deafening cannonade. The parade marked the zenith of the federalist alliance with city artisans. Hamilton had never courted the masses, and never again was he to enjoy their favor to this extent. Riding high on the crest of the new Constitution, Hamilton and the federalists held undisputed sway in the city.
FOURTEEN
PUTTING THE MACHINE IN MOTION
The battle royal over the Constitution exposed such glaring rifts in the country that America needed a first president of unimpeachable integrity who would embody the rich promise of the new republic. It had to be somebody of godlike stature who would seem to levitate above partisan politics, a symbol of national unity as well as a functioning chief executive. Everybody knew that George Washington alone could manage the paradoxical feat of being a politician above politics. Many people had agreed reluctantly to the new Constitution only because they assumed that Washington would lead the first government.
Within weeks of the Poughkeepsie convention, Hamilton began to woo Washington for the presidency as determinedly as would a lover. Long ago, he had hitched his career to the general’s, and he needed George Washington as president no less than America did. They had shared the same chagrin over the inept Congress and grasping state politicians and saw an assertive central government as the indispensable corrective. In mid-August 1788, Hamilton broached the subject of the presidency when he sent Washington the two-volume set of The Federalist Papers. He no longer had compunctions about revealing his authorship with Madison and Jay. This was throat clearing for the letter’s real intent: “I take it for granted, Sir, you have concluded to comply with what will no doubt be the general call
of your country in relation to the new government. You will permit me to say that it is indispensable you should lend yourself to its first operations. It is to little purpose to have introduced a system, if the weightiest influence is not given to its firm establishment in the outset.”1
Washington replied that he had seen no better gloss on the Constitution than The Federalist and predicted that “when the transient circumstances and fugitive performance which attended this crisis shall have disappeared, that work will merit the notice of posterity.” This tribute previewed things to come, since the first president would need constitutional experts in his cabinet to advise him on what actions were permissible. Washington approached the presidency gingerly. In the late eighteenth century, politicians tended to disclaim ambition and pretend that public service was purely sacrificial. So Washington closed the letter with a delicate statement that he would defer a decision on the presidency, intimating that he would rather stay at Mount Vernon: “For you know me well enough, my good Sir, to be persuaded that I am not guilty of affectation when I tell you it is my great and sole desire to live and die, in peace and retirement, on my own farm.”2
Not since the Revolution had Washington and Hamilton spoken so candidly. Their bond, if sorely tested, had never frayed, and Washington seemed relieved to unburden himself about his future. Hamilton knew that the new republic would be on trial in the first administration, and he dreaded having a mediocrity at the top. If the first government miscarried, he warned Washington, “the blame will in all probability be laid on the system itself. And the framers of it will have to encounter the disrepute of having brought about a revolution in government without substituting anything that was worthy of the effort. They pulled down one Utopia, it will be said, to build up another.”3
Far from bristling, Washington thanked Hamilton for his openness, which enabled him to assess the presidency without betraying unseemly ambition. In a confessional mode, Washington said that at the thought of being president he “always felt a kind of gloom” settle upon his mind and noted that if he became president, “the acceptance would be attended with more diffidence and reluctance than ever I experienced before in my life.”4 Sensing Washington’s need for gentle prodding, Hamilton stressed that America’s glorious destiny demanded him as president and that “no other man can sufficiently unite the public opinion or can give the requisite weight to the office in the commencement of the government.”5 Hearing this from others as well, Washington finally overcame his misgivings and agreed to stand for president.
While Hamilton endeared himself to Washington in this first election, he also antagonized John Adams, a man with an encyclopedic memory for slights. Returning from Europe in June 1788, Adams decided that any post less than vice president was “beneath himself,” as wife Abigail phrased it.6 As a favorite son of the New England states, with their hefty bloc of votes, Adams agreed to run for vice president. This created a ticklish predicament. Under the Constitution, the presidential electors cast two votes apiece, but they did not vote separately for president and vice president. Whoever garnered the most electoral votes became president and the runner-up vice president. The peril was manifest: there could be a tie vote, forcing the contest into the House of Representatives. Still worse, a vice presidential candidate might accidentally walk off with the presidency. “Everybody is aware of that defect in the constitution, which renders it possible the man intended for vice president may, in fact, turn up president,” Hamilton told Pennsylvania federalist James Wilson in early 1789. If Adams received a unanimous vote and a few votes were “insidiously withheld” from Washington, Hamilton said, Adams might edge out Washington for the presidency.7 Hamilton doubted that the sometimes irascible Adams could unite a divided country or give the new government its best chance of success. For Hamilton, the whole American experiment hinged upon having Washington as president. His worries were only compounded by the improbable presidential candidacy of George Clinton. As Hamilton maneuvered to wean electors away from Clinton, he feared they might turn to Adams instead of Washington. If so, Hamilton brooded, he might inadvertently help to defeat the one man he so desperately wanted as president.
In the fall of 1788, Hamilton and Adams had no personal relationship. Hamilton had become a major domestic figure during Adams’s long diplomatic sojourn abroad. Adams knew of Hamilton’s superlative reputation as a lawyer, but he would naturally have considered the younger man an upstart, a latecomer to the American Revolution. Hamilton, for his part, already felt ambivalent toward Adams. He could recall vividly the sympathy of the Massachusetts Adamses and the Virginia Lees with the nebulous Conway Cabal, which had encouraged the military pretensions of General Horatio Gates to supplant Washington. Hamilton told one Massachusetts ally, “The Lees and Adams[es] have been in the habit of uniting and hence may spring up a cabal very embarrassing to the executive and of course to the administration of the government.”8 At the same time, Hamilton credited Adams’s indisputable patriotism, his “sound understanding,” and his “ardent love for the public good,” and he was certain he would not “disturb the harmony” of a Washington administration.9 Hamilton confided to Madison that Adams was a trustworthy friend of the Constitution and as vice president would provide geographic balance with a Virginia president.
Nonetheless, Hamilton fretted that whether by chance or design Adams might sneak past Washington in the voting. So he approached two electors in Connecticut, two in New Jersey, and three or four in Pennsylvania and asked them to deny their votes to Adams to insure that Washington became president. As usual, Hamilton proved excessively fearful. When the sixty-nine electors met on February 4, 1789, they voted unanimously for Washington, who became the first president, and cast only thirty-four ballots for Adams, who came in second and thus became vice president. (The remaining thirty-five votes were split among ten candidates.) This relatively weak showing dealt a blow to the vanity of John Adams, who bemoaned it as a “stain” upon his character and even thought of declining the office out of wounded pride.10 At this juncture, he did not know of Hamilton’s efforts to deny him a handful of votes. When he learned of a “dark and dirty intrigue,” apparently originating in New York, to deprive him of votes, he was incensed. “Is not my election to this office, in the scurvy manner in which it was done, a curse rather than a blessing?” he protested to Benjamin Rush.11 Adams came to view Hamilton’s actions as unforgivably duplicitous.
In fact, Hamilton had approached only seven or eight electors, so that his actions could have accounted for just a small fraction of Adams’s thirty-five-vote deficit. And Hamilton had been motivated by a laudable desire to help Washington, not to harm Adams, whom he favored for vice president. Hamilton was thunderstruck when he learned that Adams had misread his actions as a calculated effort to humiliate him and lessen his public stature. Years later, he portrayed the episode as proof of Adams’s “extreme egotism” and vanity: “Great was my astonishment and equally great my regret when afterwards I learned . . . that Mr. Adams had complained of unfair treatment in not having been permitted to take an equal chance with General Washington.”12 It was the first of many hurtful misunderstandings between these two giants of the early republic.
The true target of Hamilton’s venom was Governor George Clinton, who had been in office for twelve years and ran again in the spring of 1789. Clinton had advocated the rotation of presidents in office but had no misgivings about converting the New York governorship into his personal fiefdom. Hamilton feared that Clinton would try to undermine the new government. Having waged a vigorous campaign to deny him the presidency, Hamilton now attempted to oust him as governor. Massachusetts federalist Samuel Otis informed a friend that Hamilton and Philip Schuyler planned to do everything in their power “to kill the governor politically.”13
On February 11, 1789, Hamilton chaired an overflowing meeting at Bardin’s Tavern on Broad Street, a business haunt, to anoint a candidate to challenge Clinton. The hundreds who showed up opted for a surprise
choice: Judge Robert Yates. It was dramatic proof of Hamilton’s resolve to unseat Clinton that he endorsed this erstwhile foe, whom he thought capable of assembling a winning coalition of downstate federalists and upstate antifederalist farmers. Yates had impressed him by his unswerving support for the Constitution once it was ratified in New York. Hamilton agreed to chair a correspondence committee to foster support for him. One of Yates’s dearest friends, the antifederalist Aaron Burr, showed up at Bardin’s Tavern and consented to join the group.
Once Hamilton had latched on to Yates, he was determined to strike hard at Clinton in the slashing style that was fast becoming his trademark—a combativeness that may well have been a legacy of his troubled upbringing. He advised one supporter, “In politics, as in war, the first blow is half the battle.”14 In customary fashion, Hamilton opened his campaign with a blistering series of sixteen anonymous letters printed in The Daily Advertiser under the initials “H. G.” Like his Federalist essays, Hamilton wrote these letters in a titanic burst of energy, eight of them appearing in consecutive issues at the end of February 1789 alone.