by Ron Chernow
The delegates agreed that slavery wouldn’t be mentioned by name in the Constitution, giving way to transparent euphemisms, such as “persons held to service or labor.” Slaveholders won some substantial concessions. For the purposes of representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College, they would be able to count three-fifths of their slave population. This was no mean feat: slaves made up 40 percent of the population in Virginia, for instance, and 60 percent in South Carolina. The slave trade would also be shielded from any tampering for at least twenty years. Through a fugitive slave clause, masters would be able to reclaim runaway slaves in free states—a provision George Washington would liberally employ in future years. Referring to these hard-fought victories for the southern states, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison would later castigate the Constitution as “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”16
Whatever his own nascent abolitionist views, George Washington wasn’t about to make an open stand at the convention and joined other delegates in daydreaming that slavery would fade away at some nebulous future date. Isolated critics branded Washington a hypocrite for clinging to his slaves after a revolution fought in the name of freedom. At the Massachusetts convention that ratified the Constitution, one speaker deplored his status as a slaveholder. “Oh, Washington, what a name he has had! How he has immortalized himself!” he exclaimed, then remarked that Washington “holds those in slavery who have as good a right to be free as he has. He is still for self and, in my opinion, his character has sunk 50 percent.”17 A Massachusetts newspaper, echoing this charge, regretted that Washington had “wielded the sword in defense of American liberty yet at the same time, was, and is to this day, living upon the labors of several hundreds of miserable Africans as freeborn as himself.”18
The debate over the executive branch was likewise steeped in controversy. Delegates had difficulty conceiving a mighty presidency that did not look suspiciously like a monarchy, and they trod gingerly in this treacherous territory. The idea of a separate executive branch with a president independent of the legislature and able to veto its laws was regarded as heretical in some quarters. 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.
That the delegates overcame their dread of executive power and produced an energetic presidency can be traced directly to Washington’s imperturbable presence. 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.” 19 As convention president, Washington sat through extensive discussions of what was turning into his job description. There was a tacit assumption that, the office having been conceived with him in mind, Washington would serve as the first president. With his image before their eyes, the delegates were inevitably governed by their hopes instead of their fears. 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.
For all his inscrutable silence, Washington disclosed specific views several times during the convention. When Elbridge Gerry proposed a constitutional limit of three thousand men in any standing army, Washington supposedly remarked drily that “no foreign enemy should invade the United States, at any time, with more than three thousand troops.”20 At the end of the convention, he also took a decidedly democratic stand on the question of how many people each congressman should represent, opting for thirty thousand instead of forty thousand to ensure “security for the rights and interests of the people.”21 Blessed by Washington, the convention adopted this change unanimously, in a striking instance of his irresistible appeal. That Washington was an exponent of an energetic presidency was also evident when he voted for requiring a three-fourths majority in Congress to override a presidential veto. Despite Washington’s backing, it was reduced to a two-thirds majority to forestall abuses of executive power.
Whatever pleasure he derived from being away from Mount Vernon had disappeared by September 9, when he wrote to George Augustine that the convention would likely wind up its deliberations within a week: “God grant I may not be disappointed in this expectation, as I am quite homesick.”22 The long hours and sedentary job must have proved an ordeal for him. A day earlier the convention had convened a committee on style, with Gouverneur Morris as its head, to give the Constitution its finished form. The foppish, peg-legged Morris was a delightful bon vivant with considerable verbal resources who relished Washington’s “cool, steady temper.”23 Washington, in turn, enjoyed Morris’s lively flow of quips, his “first-rate abilities,” and his “lively and brilliant imagination.”24 It was Morris who drafted the great preamble to the Constitution that began with the memorable flourish “We the People.” On September 12 delegates received printed copies of the final document, and as he led them through it, Washington personally inserted the changes that had been approved while the committee on style was hard at work.
Whatever his misgivings about individual provisions, Washington was no lukewarm supporter of the final document. As he later expressed it, the Constitution was “the result of a spirit of amity and mutual concession” and more coherent than anyone had a right to expect from so many discordant delegates with passionate opinions.25 It struck him as “little short of a miracle,” he told Lafayette, that “delegates from so many different states . . . should unite in forming a system of national government so little liable to well-founded objections.”26 In another letter he said, “It approached nearer to perfection than any government hitherto instituted among men.”27 Especially sensitive to allegations that the president was vested with excessive power, he stressed the numerous safeguards put in place, telling Lafayette that the new constitution “is provided with more checks and barriers against the introduction of tyranny . . . than any government” previously devised by mortals.28 As president, Washington went so far as to say that the “invisible hand” of providence had been manifest in the enactment of the Constitution.29
In correspondence Washington admitted to imperfections in the new charter but trusted to the amendment process to refine it. The Constitutional Convention was no conclave of sages in Roman togas, handing down eternal truths engraved in marble, and he wondered how long the document would last. He parted company with Edmund Randolph, who refused to sign the Constitution unless it provided for a second convention to enact necessary amendments. For Washington, the beauty of the document was that it charted a path for its own evolution. Its very brevity and generality—it contained fewer than eight thousand words—meant it would be a constantly changing document, susceptible to shifting interpretations. It would be left to Washington and other founders to convert this succinct, deliberately vague statement into a working reality. He also knew that the American public needed to contribute its share; the Constitution “can only lay the foundation—the community at large must raise the edifice.”30 Benjamin Franklin shared this view. 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.32
On Monday, September 17, 1787, the convention’s last day, the delegates adopted the Constitution “unanimously,” although there was poetic license in the use of the word. It had taken four long months to attain this historic agreement. After starting out with 55 delegates—all of them white
and male, and many affluent—the convention had suffered a high rate of attrition, with only 42 present at the end; of those, 39 signed the document. Eleven states approved the Constitution; Alexander Hamilton signed individually as the sole remaining delegate from New York. Rhode Island had boycotted the convention altogether. To Madison, Washington explained how important “the appearance of unanimity” was in presenting the Constitution to Congress: “Not everyone has opportunities to peep behind the curtain, and as the multitude often judge from externals, the appearance of unanimity in that body, on this occas[io]n, will be of great importance.”33 It was a telling comment from a man who placed a premium on political stagecraft.
Of the three convention holdouts, two came from Virginia—Edmund Randolph and George Mason—and happened to be close friends of Washington; the third was Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. As heir apparent to the presidency, Washington undoubtedly took offense when Mason declared that the new government “would end either in monarchy or a tyrannical aristocracy” and complained that the Constitution “had been formed without the knowledge . . . of the people.”34 Their thirty-year friendship did not survive their heated split. “Col. Mason left Philad[elphi]a in an exceeding ill humor,” Madison afterward told Washington. “He returned to Virginia with a fixed disposition to prevent the adoption of the plan if possible. He considers the want of a Bill of Rights as a fatal objection.”35 The convention’s secrecy rule deplored by Mason had stimulated candor but was immediately blasted by critics and engendered a thousand conspiracy theories. “I am sorry they began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members,” Jefferson complained to John Adams.36 To guarantee confidentiality, William Jackson, the convention secretary, burned all loose scraps of paper and entrusted the official journals to George Washington’s care—another act of tremendous faith in his integrity.
On the final day, Benjamin Franklin mentioned to some delegates that during the previous months he had often stared at the presidential chair in which Washington sat with its image of the sun: “I have often and often in the course of the session . . . looked at that [sun] behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”37 After Franklin dispensed this famous aperçu, the delegates adjourned to the City Tavern for one last round of drinks. In sending the Constitution to Congress, Washington wisely made an understated case for approval, noting the conciliatory spirit that had led to its passage: “That it will meet the full and entire approbation of every state is not perhaps to be expected . . . That it is liable to as few exceptions as could reasonably have been expected, we hope and believe.”38
On September 18, accompanied by John Blair of Virginia, Washington boarded his newly varnished coach and set out for Mount Vernon. The two men traveled in high style, Washington having refurbished his vehicle in Philadelphia, outfitting it with glass panes, brass plates, stuffed cushions, and a new carpet. In his eagerness to return home, he was misled into an uncharacteristic error. Near the Head of Elk he had to ford a river swollen by torrential rains. Instead of waiting for the turbulent waters to subside, the overly eager Washington decided to take the carriage across an “old, rotten, and long disused” bridge, as he described it.39 One of the two harnessed horses suddenly slid off the bridge and nearly dragged the other horse, along with the baggage-laden carriage, into the foaming waters. Only the prompt intervention of some nearby millers, who managed to disengage the first horse from its harness, prevented the total destruction of the carriage and Washington’s belongings.
At sunset on September 22 Washington’s coach pulled up before the mansion house at Mount Vernon. That he was ready to resume his everyday life is evident in his diary, where he jotted down his absence of “four months and 14 days.”40 The precision of detail suggests how onerous Washington considered the lost time, and he bewailed to a correspondent having “sacrificed every private consideration and personal enjoyment” to attend the convention.41 What he discovered upon returning home confirmed his latent anxieties about his neglected business affairs. As he told Henry Knox, he “found Mrs. Washington and the family tolerably well, but the fruits of the earth almost entirely destroyed by one of the severest droughts (in this neighborhood) that ever was experienced. The crops generally below the mountains are injured, but not to the degree that mine and some of my neighbors’ are here.”42 For Washington, this dispiriting discovery reenacted a now-familiar tale of making huge private sacrifices whenever he was forced to be away from home for public service.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Mounting the Seat
THE CONSTITUTION cherished by generations of Americans was fiercely controversial at first, producing heated polemics on both sides. So that its legitimacy would derive from the people, not the state governments, the framers required ratification by a special convention in each state; the document would be activated when nine states approved. By all accounts, Washington overflowed with enthusiasm for the new charter. When Richmond merchant Alexander Donald stayed at Mount Vernon in early October 1787, he was impressed by Washington’s ebullient advocacy. “I never saw him so keen for anything in my life as he is for the adoption of a new form of government,” Donald informed Jefferson.1 The months in Philadelphia, however trying, had given Washington a needed respite from business worries and revived his faltering health. “He is in perfect good health,” Donald wrote, “and looks almost as well as he did twenty years ago.”2
Everybody recognized the signal importance of Washington’s imprimatur on the new charter, reassuring a public skittish about such fundamental change. His cachet emboldened advocates (called federalists) even as it undermined critics (called antifederalists). “I have observed that your name [attached] to the new constitution has been of infinite service,” Gouverneur Morris wrote. “Indeed, I am convinced that, if you had not attended the convention and the same paper had been handed out to the world, it would have met with a colder reception . . . As it is, should the idea prevail that you would not accept of the presidency, it would prove fatal in many parts.”3
One Boston newspaper regretted that the combined prestige of Washington and Franklin in favor of the Constitution made “too strong an argument in the minds of many to suffer them to examine, like freemen, for themselves.”4 Some antifederalists took refuge in hyperbole, portraying the Constitutional Convention as a baleful nest of conspirators—a charge given some resonance by the secret nature of the proceedings. “The evil genius of darkness presided at its birth; it came forth under the veil of mystery,” wrote an opponent who styled himself “Centinel.”5 That Washington and Franklin had mingled among those conspirators made it more difficult to defame the enterprise. To bypass this problem, “Centinel” depicted Washington as an unwitting tool of “aspiring despots” who were “prostituting the name of a Washington to cloak their designs upon your liberties.”6 Washington dismissed such conspiracy theories as preposterous: “At my age and in my circumstances, what sinister object or personal emolument had I to seek after in this life?”7
After a pleasing October visit from Elizabeth and Samuel Powel, Washington had to cope with another frigid winter at Mount Vernon. Severed from the outside world by snow, he stayed in touch by mail with federalists in many states. Resigning himself to a common eighteenth-century practice, he assumed that his letters would be opened, telling Lafayette, “As to my sentiments with respect to the merits of the new constitution, I will disclose them without reserve (although by passing through the post offices they should become known to all the world) for, in truth, I have nothing to conceal on that subject.”8
While preserving an air of Olympian detachment, Washington moved stealthily in the background of the ratification process, one of his chief worries being that the Constitution’s detractors would prove more adept than its advocates. Although he admitted to defects in the charter, he tended to regard supporte
rs as righteous and reasonable, opponents as wrongheaded and duplicitous. As a stalwart realist, he thought it dangerous to demand perfection from any human production and questioned “the propriety of preventing men from doing good, because there is a possibility of their doing evil.”9 When Lieutenant John Enys stopped by Mount Vernon in February, Washington explained that he had followed doggedly the constitutional debates, consuming all the pertinent literature. “He said he had read with attention every publication,” Enys wrote, “both for and against it, in order to see whether there could be any new objections, or that it could be placed in any other light than what it had been in the general convention, for which . . . he said he had sought in vain.”10
New York quickly emerged as a major locus of dissent, and Madison, based there as a delegate in the waning days of the Confederation Congress, warned Washington of a powerful backlash gathering force: “The newspapers here begin to teem with vehement and virulent calumniations of the proposed gov[ernmen]t.”11 After leaving the convention in July, Hamilton had fired anonymous salvos in the New York press against Governor George Clinton, who felt threatened by centralized power. On September 20 the Clinton forces retaliated with vicious glee, accusing Hamilton of insinuating himself into Washington’s good graces during the war. Said the nameless critic: “I have also known an upstart attorney palm himself upon a great and good man, for a youth of extraordinary genius and, under the shadow of such a patronage, make himself at once known and respected. But . . . he was at length found to be a superficial, self-conceited coxcomb and was of course turned off and disregarded by his patron.”12 This remark hatched an enduring mythology of a wily Hamilton tricking the dunderheaded Washington into supporting him.