Washington

by Ron Chernow

  Having authorized a new navy, Federalist leaders in Congress worked to marshal support for a 25,000-man army to deal with any foreign threats that materialized. They made plans to fortify harbors and, to combat the old bugaboo of a standing army, mobilize militiamen on short notice. For Republicans, such measures raised the specter of an oppressive military establishment that might be directed against homegrown dissidents. Those who deemed George Washington an uncritical admirer of Great Britain would have been surprised by the venomous letters he wrote that spring. In one, he mocked those “who affect to believe that Great Britain has no hostile intention towards this country” and insisted that its political conduct “has worn a very hostile appearance latterly.”22 He was convinced that Britain was inciting Indian nations against America and angling to alter the U.S.-Canadian border in Britain’s favor.

  The impression grew among Federalists that it would be wise to dispatch a special envoy to London to avert war, maintain trade, seek reparations for plundered ships, and settle outstanding disputes, including many lingering from the end of the war, such as Britain’s failure to evacuate forts in the northwest. Among other things, Washington wanted to forestall any trade sanctions against England in the Congress. When Hamilton’s name surfaced as the Federalists’ first choice for the new envoy, Washington seriously considered it until Republicans protested that Hamilton, a patent Anglophile, would lack all credibility at home. Washington was swayed by this objection, especially after Hamilton removed himself from consideration and pushed forward Chief Justice Jay as an ideal substitute. To Republican eyes, the Anglophile Jay was hardly free of sin; indeed, Madison whispered in Washington’s ear that Jay was a secret monarchist. But Washington proceeded with the appointment. The choice of Jay, less controversial than Hamilton, still caused an enormous uproar among government critics, and Madison affirmed that it was “the most powerful blow ever suffered by the popularity of the president.”23 For Washington, negotiation with England seemed the only alternative to outright war, and he stuck courageously by his decision to display Jay.

  During his diplomatic mission Jay remained as chief justice, which struck some observers as unconstitutional. At the very least it softened the lines between the executive and judicial branches—lines that Jay himself had tried to sharpen. As Senator Aaron Burr argued, the decision created the prospect of the executive branch exercising a “mischievous and impolitic” influence over the judiciary.24 Washington was agile in making appointments, and to make the choice of Jay more palatable, he shrewdly juggled political forces. To mollify Republicans, he recalled Gouverneur Morris from France, sending in his stead the Francophile senator James Monroe. Hamilton’s influence had not been entirely neutralized, for when Jay sailed to England on May 12, 1794, applauded by a thousand bystanders on the New York docks, the instructions he carried bore Hamilton’s imprint. Among other things, Jay would enjoy the leeway to negotiate a full-fledged commercial treaty, should the English prove amenable—something that was anathema to the Republicans. In his own instructions to Jay, Washington breathed fire against English intransigence. Of the British surrender of the frontier posts, he said: “I will undertake, without the gift of prophecy, to predict that it will be impossible to keep this country in a state of amity with G[reat] Britain long if the posts are not surrendered.”25 No one who saw Washington’s correspondence could have imagined that he was a lackey of England or plotting to install a pro-British monarchy in America.

  WASHINGTON’S LETTERS show that during his second term he was bruised and disillusioned by the scathing tone of the opposition. Increasingly deaf and embattled, he desperately needed rest at Mount Vernon, but the crush of public business allowed him only a brief stay there in June. While at home, as he was inspecting the canal and locks being built at the Little Falls of the Potomac, his horse lost its footing and nearly dashed him against the rocks. A masterful horseman, Washington nimbly pulled the animal away from danger with “violent exertions,” but the effort so badly strained his back that afterward he could not even mount a horse.26 Afraid his aching back could not withstand the long ride, he postponed his return to Philadelphia until July 3 and even then took the trip by easy stages. “I very much fear that it will be a troublesome complaint to him for some time,” Martha worried of his back condition, “or perhaps as long as he lives he will feel it at times.”27 That July and August, to escape the sweltering heat of a Philadelphia summer, he and Martha took a house in Germantown.

  People noticed that Washington seemed worn down by his cares. When English manufacturer Henry Wansey breakfasted with him, he found the president affable, obliging, and fit for a man of his age, but he detected “a certain anxiety visible in his countenance, with marks of extreme sensibility.”28 Still, he thought the president looked much younger than Martha: “She appears something older than the president, though I understand they were both born in the same year. [She was] short in stature, rather robust, very plain in her dress, wearing a very plain cap, with her gray hair closely turned up under it.”29

  Among the many burdens borne by Washington that summer was the fate of Anthony Wayne’s expedition against Indians on the northwestern frontier. In January Wayne had informed Knox of his belief that his well-drilled army, the Legion of the United States, was capable of avenging St. Clair’s ignominious defeat. The nation, in Wayne’s opinion, had a “golden opportunity . . . for advancing and striking . . . those haughty savages . . . with the bayonet . . . and fire of the American Legion.” 30 On August 20, in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, near present-day Toledo, Ohio, Wayne and a force of 3,500 soldiers delivered a stunning defeat to Indian tribes. The Americans went on an unbridled rampage, trampling Indian houses and crops over a vast territory. Nonetheless Washington sang Wayne’s praises for having “damped the ardor of the savages and weakened their obstinacy in waging war against the United States.”31 The victory broke the back of Indian power in the region and ended British influence with the dominant tribes.

  While Washington dealt remorselessly with Indians who menaced white settlers, he never surrendered hope of a humane rapprochement with them. Both Washington and Knox recognized that Indian depredations were understandable responses to the impingement of white communities on their traditional lands. Neither man engaged in bullying jingoism, and Knox even regretted that whites who murdered Indians were not dealt with as severely as Indians who did the same to whites. “It is [a] melancholy reflection,” Knox wrote, “that our modes of population have been more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru. The evidence of this is the utter extirpation of nearly all the Indians in the most populous parts of the Union.”32 No less sympathetic to the Indians’ plight, Washington noted despairingly that “the encroachments . . . made on their lands by our people” were “not to be restrained by any law now in being or likely to be enacted.”33

  Washington’s Indian policy was a tragedy of noble intentions that failed to fix a seemingly insoluble problem. He wanted to fashion a series of homelands that might guarantee the permanent safety of Indian tribes. In his last year in office, he issued his “Address to the Cherokee Nation,” which attempted to define a way for Americans and Native Americans to coexist in harmony. He again advised the Indians to abandon traditional hunting and gathering and to imitate the civilization of white settlers by farming and ranching. He urged them to domesticate animals, to farm crops, and to encourage spinning and weaving among their women. He even offered Mount Vernon as a model: “Beloved Cherokees, 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, and other grain; and to the employing of women in spinning and weaving.”34 As was so often the case when slavery was involved, Washington did not see the absurdity of presenting himself, a large slave owner, as a shining example for the Indians to emul
ate.

  If the speech was enlightened in its warm, friendly tone toward the Cherokees, it was unrealistic in asking them to abandon their culture and adopt that of their rivals. It was, in essence, telling the Indians that to survive they had to renounce their immemorial way of life—that is, cease to be Indians and become white men. At bottom lurked the unspoken threat that, if they flouted this advice, harm would follow. For all of Washington’s good intentions, it proved impossible for the federal government to prod speculators and state governments into dealing fairly with the Indians, who continued to lose millions of acres from the rapacious practices of white men.

  THE MAIN CRISIS that monopolized Washington’s time in the summer of 1794 came not from troublesome Indians but from restive white settlers. From the time Congress imposed an excise tax on distilled spirits in 1791—an important component of Hamilton’s plan to pare the federal deficit—Washington had expected resistance and vowed to exercise his legal powers “to check so daring and unwarrantable a spirit.”35 The new government, he believed, had to punish infractions and instill reverence for the law. If laws were “trampled upon with impunity,” he warned, “and a minority . . . is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government.”36 The chief locus of opposition to the whiskey tax arose in western Pennsylvania, where many farmers owned small stills and converted their grain into whiskey to make it more portable to seaboard markets. They were especially outraged by the investigative powers granted government inspectors, who could inspect barns and cellars at will. Compared to inhabitants of eastern cities, frontier settlers had a more tenuous allegiance to the federal government and tended to resent its intrusions more keenly, especially when it came to internal taxes such as the whiskey tax.

  As opposition flared into violent discontent, the first target was Colonel John Neville, a revenue inspector who had seen service in the Continental Army. In mid-July 1794 Neville and U.S. Marshal David Lenox tried serving processes on farmers who had not registered their stills, as required by law. In retaliation, protesters attacked Neville’s house, putting it to the torch, and also fired at Lenox. On August 1 the protests assumed a more ominous character when six thousand dissidents appeared in Braddock’s Field outside Pittsburgh—the same place where Washington had shown such heroism four decades earlier. The mood of bravado and secession was symbolized by a flag with six stripes, representing the four counties in Pennsylvania and two in western Virginia that were in armed revolt over the whiskey tax. “Sodom had been burnt by fire from heaven,” thundered one speaker. “This second Sodom [Pittsburgh] should be burned with fire from earth.”37 The protesters talked of seizing the federal garrison in Pittsburgh and pledged to force the resignation of anyone enforcing the whiskey tax. Fulfilling the worst Federalist fears, one dissident, taking inspiration from Robespierre, urged the creation of a committee of public safety and weeks later called for guillotines.

  On August 2 Washington assembled his cabinet to ponder measures to counter the uprising. Reluctantly convinced that he had to crack down on those defying the whiskey tax, he urged Pennsylvania officials to take the lead, but they balked at military action. When Washington canvassed his cabinet, Hamilton and Knox wanted to call out the militia posthaste, while Randolph demurred, fearing force would embolden the protesters. Washington solicited an opinion from Justice James Wilson, who certified the president’s authority to mobilize the militia. On August 7 Washington issued a proclamation calling up the militia and warned the western insurgents to “disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes” by September 1.38 The same day, Knox alerted the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia to ready thirteen thousand militia to squash the rebellion. Washington exhausted all peaceful means before resorting to force and sent out a three-man commission, headed by Attorney General Bradford, to parley with the insurgents in western Pennsylvania.

  The day after the proclamation, Knox received the president’s reluctant permission to take a six-week leave of absence in Maine, where he had encountered business setbacks. All year Washington had brooded about whether Knox’s financial plight would force him to resign. In 1790 Knox had bought two million acres in Maine with the notorious speculator William Duer, whose machinations had touched off financial panic in New York. Eager to become a country squire, Knox borrowed lavishly and constructed a baronial mansion. With its nineteen rooms and twenty-four fireplaces, the house ranked among New England’s majestic private residences. Since Knox had been the soul of loyalty to Washington, it seems puzzling that he deserted him during the Whiskey Rebellion; the president must have wondered whether his protégé had lost his way amid his social aspirations. In a major step, Washington had Alexander Hamilton assume the additional duties of secretary of war until Knox returned. It was a tough moment for Hamilton, too, since his wife was going through a difficult pregnancy and one of his sons lay desperately ill.

  When the three commissioners met with local residents in western Pennsylvania in mid-August, they encountered defiant vows to resist the whiskey tax “at all hazards.”39 Only the “physical strength of the nation,” they told Washington, could guarantee compliance with the law.40 Governor Henry Lee of Virginia was deputized to lead the army formed to put down the insurgents. In confidence, Washington sent him a vehement letter about the revolt, which he thought had been fomented by Genet and other “artful and designing” men who wished to destroy confidence in government. “I consider this insurrection as the first formidable fruit of the Democratic Societies.”41 He saw himself as the target of a whispering campaign conducted by his political opponents: “A part of the plan for creating discord is, I perceive, to make me say things of others, and others of me, w[hich] have no foundation in truth.”42 Washington’s political views sometimes sounded as if they were plucked from a study of Plutarch’s Lives or Shakespeare’s Roman plays, in which shrewdly ambitious demagogues preyed upon credulous masses.

  The evidence of unrest in western Pennsylvania mounted. A mob descended on Captain William Faulkner, who had allowed John Neville to establish an office in his home, threatening to tar and feather him and incinerate his house unless he stopped giving sanctuary to Neville. New reports suggested that the turmoil might be spreading to Maryland and other states. Eager to show governmental resolve in the face of disorder, Hamilton had long spoiled for a showdown with the instigators. “Moderation enough has been shown; ’tis time to assume a different tone,” he had advised Washington.43 Having hoped for a diplomatic settlement, Washington reluctantly agreed that a show of force had become necessary in western Pennsylvania.

  Amid the crisis, Washington bowed to the wishes of his Alexandria lodge and sat for a portrait by William Joseph Williams that featured him in a Masonic outfit. After suffering through many portraits early in his presidency, Washington had decided to scale back drastically. He admitted to Henry Lee in 1792 that he had grown “so heartily tired of the attendance which . . . I have bestowed on these kind of people [artists] that it is now more than two years since I have resolved to sit no more for any of them . . . except in instances where it has been requested by public bodies or for a particular purpose . . . and could not without offense be refused.”44 He detested the crude engravings of him made from paintings, which were crassly peddled by vendors. The pastel portrait that Williams executed on September 18, 1794, shows a particularly dour, cranky Washington, with a tightly turned-down mouth. Posing in a black coat, he wears Masonic symbols on a blue sash that slants diagonally across his chest. His face is neither friendly nor heroic but looks like that of a bad-tempered relative, suggesting that the presidency was now a trial he endured only for the public good. Unsparing in its accuracy, the Williams portrait shows various blemishes on Washington’s face—a scar that curves under the pouch of his left eye; a mole below his right earlobe; smallpox scars on both his nose and cheeks—ordinarily edited out of highly sanitized portraits.

  On September 25 Washington issued a final warnin
g to the whiskey rebels, who had dismissed his “overtures of forgiveness” and now constituted, in his view, “a treasonable opposition.”45 He viewed their actions as a grave test of the Constitution, raising the question of “whether a small proportion of the United States shall dictate to the whole Union.”46 Prepared to don his uniform to lead the fight, Washington told his tailor to make up an outfit patterned after the one he had worn during the war. He planned to travel as far west as Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where the Pennsylvania and New Jersey militia were encamped, before deciding whether to proceed farther west with the troops. Still recovering from his June back injury, Washington, accompanied by Hamilton, rode out of Philadelphia in a genteel carriage, rather than on horseback, as if they were going off on a peaceful jaunt in the autumn countryside. No longer accustomed to the alarums of war, Martha was all aflutter with fear. “The president . . . is to go himself tomorrow to Carlyle to meet the troops,” she wrote Fanny. “God knows when he will return again. I shall be left quite alone with the children.”47

  In sallying forth to command the troops, Washington, sixty-two, became the first and only American president ever to supervise troops in a combat situation. It irked him that Knox had not returned as promised, then compounded his misdemeanor by not bothering to write to him. “Under the circumstances which exist to exceed your proposed time of absence so long is to be regretted,” Washington wrote Knox in unusually pointed language. “But hearing nothing from you for a considerable time has given alarm, lest some untoward accident may have been the cause of it.”48 Knox’s absence magnified the power of Hamilton, who believed in an overwhelming demonstration of military strength. “Whenever the government appears in arms,” Hamilton proclaimed, “it ought to appear like a Hercules and inspire respect by the display of strength.”49 For Hamilton, an armed force of thirteen thousand soldiers was a suitable number to confront an estimated six thousand to seven thousand insurgents, but Republicans thought he was conjuring up a phantom revolt to establish an oppressive army. The Whiskey Rebellion, Madison insisted, was being exploited to “establish the principle that a standing army was necessary for enforcing the laws,” while a skeptical Jefferson scoffed that an “insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against, but could never be found.”50