Washington- The Indispensable Man

by James Thomas Flexner

  On February 4, 1789, Washington became the unanimous choice of the Electoral College. His election was not only inevitable but absolutely necessary. As Madison observed, his leadership was the only aspect of the new government that really appealed to the people.

  What happened next was frightening. The vote could not be official until the electors’ ballots had been counted in the presence of both legislative houses. However, the senators and representatives gathered so slowly that, while the nation drifted rudderless for more than a month, there was no quorum. Washington’s worry over the “stupor and listlessness” being displayed was not lightened by the news that the delay in getting going had cost the government in tax revenues the then huge sum of £300,000.

  However much he was himself kept waiting, Washington was opposed in principle to holding up anyone else. Most of his baggage was packed. Week after week he paced his long piazza or stared disconsolately down his curving driveway. His eager expectations shredded into dismay. “My movements to the chair of government,” he now wrote, “will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.” The situation was darkened by Martha’s gloom. She was too unhappy to accompany her husband to the official world in which they were again to move. He could summon her later.

  Added to everything was the fact that Washington possessed hardly any cash. Wishing to pay off his debts in Virginia before he left the state, he tried to borrow over a thousand pounds. His credit was not considered good enough. Finally, he managed to secure five hundred from a citizen of Alexandria. This went so fast that he had to beg another hundred so that he could pay the expenses of his trip to the temporary capital, New York City.

  At long last, on April 14, Washington received formal notification of his election. He set out in his coach “with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express.”

  Among the worries that now bothered him was a fear that the people might resent his return to public office after his promise that he would never do so. The enthusiasm with which he was greeted on the road not only extinguished this fear but raised its opposite. As he moved, he could not see the countryside because of the dust churned up by the horsemen who in relays surrounded his carriage. At every hamlet there were speeches; at every city he had to lead a parade and be toasted at a sumptuous dinner; everywhere and always people were jostling him, shaking his hand, cheering and cheering until his ears ached. Throughout the jubilations that stretched down the long days and late into the nights, Washington sensed a hysteria which he found “painful.” How easily and with what frenzy could this irrational emotion turn, if the government did not immediately please, “into equally extravagant (though I will fondly hope unmerited) censures. So much is expected, so many untoward circumstances may intervene, in such a new and critical situation that I feel an insuperable diffidence in my own abilities.”

  The task which he was now approaching was both more uncertain and infinitely more important than that which had lain before him when in 1775 he had ridden north to take command of the Continental Army. His duty then had been to win military victory. Since such victories had been won ten thousand times, there was no philosophical reason to doubt that success was possible. And, if he did fail, the result would be sad for America, catastrophic perhaps for himself and his companions, but no more than a tiny footnote in the history of mankind.

  Washington’s present mission might change all history. As he himself put it, “the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” He was on his way to lead an enterprise which, if it succeeded, would prove to all the world, and for the future to time immemorial, the falsity of the contention that men were “unequal to the task of governing themselves and therefore made for a master.” That contention had, down the ages, been accepted by many of the greatest thinkers. Supposing the failure of the American experiment should seem to prove them right? How long would it be before this “awful monument” to the death of liberty would forgotten, before the experiment was tried again? And if, through inability or misunderstanding, Washington contributed to the catastrophe, how deep and eternal would be his personal guilt?

  Washington subscribed to the religious faith of the Enlightenment: like Franklin and Jefferson, he was a deist. Although not believing in the doctrines of the churches, he was convinced that a divine force, impossible to define, ruled the universe, and that this “Providence” was good. With what passion he now turned for reassurance and guidance to this force is revealed by the inaugural address he delivered with trembling voice and trembling hands on April 30, 1789, to a joint meeting of the houses of Congress. The religious passages took up almost a third of the address.

  Speaking not for conventional effect but from his own heart, he avoided, as was his deist custom, the word “God.” He expressed “my fervent supplication to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect” for assistance in the effort of the American people to find “liberties and happiness” under “a government instituted by themselves.” Every step which the United States had taken towards becoming “an independent nation,” so he continued, “seems to have been distinguished by some token of Providential agency.” The recent creation of a united government through “the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities … cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude along with an humble anticipation of the future blessing which the past seems to presage.”

  In responding to the constitutional provision that the President recommend measures he judged “necessary and expedient,” Washington hardly went beyond urging a spirit of compromise and the pursuit in public matters of “private morality.… There exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.”

  Washington taking his oath of office as President. Detail from an engraving by Amos Doolittle after a drawing by Peter Lacour (Courtesy of the New York Public Library)

  Various witnesses to the occasion tell us that “time had made havoc” on Washington’s face and that his aspect as he spoke was “grave almost to sadness.” As he proceeded, he moved his manuscript from his left to his right hand and put several fingers of his left hand into his breeches pocket. Then he extracted his right hand and made with it “an ungainly gesture.” The famous orator, Fisher Ames, was amazed by the effect of Washington’s simple delivery: “It seemed to me an allegory in which virtue was personified, and addressing those whom she would make her votaries. Her power over the heart was never greater.” The whole audience, even Vice President John Adams, who was passionately jealous of Washington, were greatly moved.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  A Second Constitutional Convention

  (1789)

  At the Constitutional Convention, many a problem had been compromised by not being solved at all, but left to be worked out in practice. The first active period of the new government, the more than five months that comprised the first session of Congress, was, in effect, a second Constitutional Convention. The task was made easier because there were now general guidelines to follow. It was made more difficult because postponement was no longer possible. Fortunately a summer of peace and prosperity inserted few outside distractions into the task of government-building. The only major crisis came near the very start. Washington was stricken with a deathly illness.

  He had developed a tumor of the thigh that was diagnosed as anthrax. So that no noise would disturb the stricken hero, straw was placed on the sidewalk outside his house to deaden footsteps, while ropes banned carriages. Surgery was
considered necessary. When the tumor was laid open, it proved to have spread much further than had been foreseen. In those days before any anesthesia deadened pain, the younger surgeon quailed at the task before him. “Cut away,” the older surgeon cried. “Deep—deeper—deeper still. Don’t be afraid. You see how well he bears it!” The operation was a success. The time soon came when Washington could be laid full-length in his carriage to profit from what exercise jogging over rough streets gave him. Yet it was forty days before he could return to his desk. His own comment was, “The want of regular exercise with the cares of office will, I have no doubt, hasten my departure for that country from whence no traveler returns.”

  “Few who are not philosophical spectators,” Washington wrote concerning his presidential duties, “can realize the difficult and delicate part which a man in my situation has to act.… I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.”

  Washington’s most obvious plight did not particularly bother him. Having once been the only soldier in the Continental Army, he was not dismayed to find that, at the opening of the government, he and the Vice President were the only members of the new executive. Their solitary eminence did not draw the two men together. In his fear of tyranny (and perhaps his jealousy of Washington) Adams had fought in the Continental Congress against Washington’s desire to build a professional, long-term army. Adams’s selection as Vice President had been dictated by the old need to balance a Virginia leader with a leader from Massachusetts. Recognizing the political wisdom of the choice, Washington had agreed to it, but he had no intention of working closely with his old opponent, nor did Adams want to work closely with Washington. It lay within the bounds of the Constitution that the Vice President could become the President’s prime minister, but the Washington-Adams hostility placed the Vice Presidency in the shadow whence it has never emerged.

  The Constitution made no specific provisions for a cabinet.* Whether what were defined as “the heads of the great departments” were to be under the jurisdiction of the President was not stated: the President was merely empowered to require their opinions relating to their duties. Clearly, however, they were among the major nonelective officers (including the justices of the Supreme Court) who were to be appointed by the President with the approval of the Senate.

  When Congress acted to establish the great departments, it was argued that the provision that the senators must approve the appointments implied that they should also insist on the power to veto dismissal. Such a provision would, by allowing the senators to keep in office cabinet ministers with whom they agreed but who opposed the policies of the President, reduce the President to a figurehead similar to a constitutional monarch. Thus the issue became a rallying ground for all who distrusted a strong executive.

  Washington remained silent, but his intimate collaborator, Madison, persuaded the House to vote against empowering the Senate to veto dismissals. The Senate was not so easily persuaded. There was a tie vote there, which the presiding officer, Vice President Adams, broke to preserve the authority of the executive. Who can doubt that, had the President been less popular and trusted than Washington, the decision would have gone the other way, changing the whole direction of the American government.

  The Constitution provided that the President should negotiate treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate. Was the Senate’s concurrence to be secured by distant communication or face to face? Washington tried the latter method by going to the Senate chamber to be present at the debate concerning a proposed treaty with the Creek Indians. So much time was wasted, despite the frowns that increasingly darkened Washington’s face, by what he considered inconsequential bickering that, as he left the chamber, he was overheard to say that he would “be damned if he ever went there again!” Thus was forever ended the possibility that the American executive might, like the British, present and defend its acts at legislative sessions.

  Taking literally the separation of powers, Washington did not mobilize congressional support for programs he favored. It was his constitional duty to make recommendations to Congress in his annual address, and this he did, although charily and always in terms of general principles rather than specifics. But once the legislative debates began, he meticulously kept hands off. He considered that legislative action had ceased to be his concern until, according to constitutional provision, a bill that had been enacted was placed on his desk for approval or veto.

  Only one bill that passed during the first session really outraged him. He had regarded as a major argument for a centralized government the possibility of imposing on a national scale customs duties that would apply to British shipping the restrictions that the British applied to the American. Due to opposition in the Senate that could not be overcome, the customs bill submitted to Washington contained no such clauses. He considered a veto, but his principles forbade.

  Washington believed that the presidential veto was not primarily intended to be used because of disagreement over policy. Its true object was to enable the President to protect the Constitution. This assumed that the President would be an impartial judge, unmoved by the pressures of partisan conflict—such a man as Washington in fact was. When later Presidents became the leaders of political parties, they could no longer be expected to be impartial. Then the necessary task was assumed, with no constitutional authority, by the Supreme Court. Here was a fundamental change in the governmental structure, all the more because a presidential veto can be overcome by a two-thirds vote of Congress, while a Supreme Court ruling can be negated only by the infinitely complicated task of amending the Constitution.

  Another use of the veto, foreseen by Hamilton in The Federalist, was to protect the Presidency from congressional encroachment. For this Washington had no need, perhaps because his own hands-off policy in relation to the legislature reassured the Congress. Once Congress had abandoned its effort to control the tenure of the department heads, it enhanced the power of the Presidency by showering responsibilities on Washington.

  The initiation of even the most minor appointments was entrusted to him. He took the task with deep seriousness. Since many appointees would be the only aspects of the federal government visible in their neighborhoods, it seemed essential to the ever deepening unity he sought that they both please and impress the inhabitants. His youthful experience with the British system of preferment through family connection made him seek, as few of his successors have done, to avoid all favoritism, to judge altogether on the qualifications of the individual. These qualifications did include influence in the community, which would bring prestige to the government rather than take it away, but Washington wanted no incompetent representatives of leading clans. The usually critical John Adams noted, “He seeks information from all quarters and judges more independently than any man I ever knew.”

  While Washington made do with holdovers from the Confederation—Knox as Secretary of War and Jay as Secretary of Foreign Affairs—Congress set up the great departments. They entrusted Indian affairs (revealingly) to the Secretary of War, who had little else to do as there was hardly any standing army. Europe, being on the far side of a broad ocean, seemed to impinge so little that the new post of Secretary of State combined foreign affairs with various domestic responsibilities. Regarding (as the eighteenth century typically did) the power to tax as the power to govern, a direct line that bypassed the President was drawn between the House of Representatives and the Secretary of the Treasury. The Attorney General, thought of as lawyer advising the President, was given a retainer rather than complete employment.

  Knox continued as Secretary of War. Washington offered to Jay the expansion of his former office, but he expressed a preference, to which Washington agreed, for the chief-justiceship of the Supreme Court. Washington thereupon wrote Jefferson, who was Minister to France and on his way home for a visit, offering him the secretaryship of State. Since neither of the Morrises was available, everyone whom
Washington consulted agreed that the obvious man for the Treasury was Hamilton. The attorney-generalship being so minor a post, Washington felt justified in appointing a young friend who would be an agreeable companion: Edmund Randolph of Virginia.

  Surveying the team which would be completed if Jefferson agreed, Washington was sanguine. The men were able and he saw no conceivable reason why they should not all pull together in harmony.

  As the congressional session was drawing to a close, news arrived that cut to the very roots of Washington’s existence. His mother, who had for some time suffered from cancer of the breast, had died at the age of eighty-one.

  Their relationship had always been stormy. Mary Ball Washington’s attitudes towards her son’s activities in the French and Indian War and in the Revolution had been the same: he was meddling in matters that should not concern him to the neglect of his duty to her. Although he had set her up in a small and elegant house at Fredericksburg and seen that she was well supplied with money and goods, she had embarrassed him, when he was away as commander in chief, by complaining “upon all occasions and in all companies” that she was neglected, left “in great want.” She even initiated a movement in the Virginia legislature whereby the state would come to the financial rescue of the mother of the Commander in Chief. Washington found her action extremely humiliating and squashed it.

  After the war, her demands for money became so oppressive and annoying that Washington suggested that she sell her house and live with one of her children. He quickly added that this was not an invitation to Mount Vernon. Since Mount Vernon was always crowded with strangers, she would be forced to do one of three things: be always dressed for company, appear in deshabille, or be a prisoner in her own chamber. The first, her son assumed, would be too fatiguing at her age. The second would be unsuitable as his guests were often “people of the first distinction.” Nor would it do for her to stay in her room: “for what with the sitting up of company, the noise and bustle of servants, and many other things, you would not be able to enjoy that calmness and serenity of mind which, in my opinion, you ought now to prefer to every other consideration in life.” But Mary Washington had no more desire to become a conventional fireside figure than her son had to be the most obedient of sons. The old lady had died in her own house, putting up to the last a daily “small battle” against taking her medicine.