Washington- The Indispensable Man

by James Thomas Flexner

  The address next attacked “the spirit of party” as fostering geographic schisms and foreign intrigues; as intervening between the people and the government; as encouraging the rule of minorities and demagogues. Political contention was “a fire not to be quenched,” but “it demands a uniform vigilance lest, instead of warming, it should consume.” While denouncing “demagogues” at considerable length, the address also warned against the machinations of “a small but artful, enterprising minority.” Thus the text struck at what could be considered the inherent dangers of both the Republican and Federalist parties.

  Passages on the need for religion to establish public morality and the need for financial credit for economic health, were followed by the longest section. It dealt with foreign affairs. Those Americans who wished to serve foreign causes were described as “fools and dupes.” The basis on which national policy should be built was the Neutrality Proclamation.

  Now that the federal capital crawls with publicity men, it is hard to believe that the President had no regular channel for getting his address to the public. He decided to release it to one Philadelphia newspaper, David Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, and let it work its way from there. Since Claypoole expressed regret at relinquishing the invaluable manuscript, Washington gave it to the printer. The President was on the road to Mount Vernon when on September 19, 1796, Claypoole, devoting his front page as usual to advertising, ran the address under a small head on the second and third of his four pages. There ensued a great scurrying in the offices of other newspapers, first in Philadelphia, then along the highroads, then down the byways, then in cities across the ocean, as the address was set up again and again. Washington was now home, listening for what the reaction would be.

  The address quickly took the privileged position in American life which it has retained. It carried the magical significance, as old as mankind, of a patriarch’s dying words. And the point of view expressed was basic to American thinking, even that of most of the opposition. Washington’s attacks on those who served European policies and on faction had been made to cut both ways. Despite vocal supporters of what we today call “brinksmanship,” no responsible group really wanted to get into the foreign war; and political parties were still so much in their infancy that few yearned to come to their defense, particularly in the light of the bloody results of factionalism in France. As for Washington’s insistence on the importance of national union, regionalists might huff and puff, but no one really wanted to tear the nation apart.

  Newspapers glowed with praises; mass meetings and legislatures passed resolutions of thanks. And all but a few among the controversialists of the opposition considered it politic to ignore the address. They aimed their continuing darts where they considered Washington more vulnerable.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The End of the Presidency

  (1796–1797)

  While Washington’s Farewell Address was in preparation, the foreign problems of the United States reversed direction. The British honored Washington’s request that they withdraw the Provision Order and they peaceably evacuated the northwestern forts on schedule. The commissions the Jay Treaty had established were with mutual toleration examining the claims of unpaid pre-Revolutionary British creditors on one hand and of the more recently plundered American shipowners on the other. But when a copy of the Jay Treaty reached Paris, the French reacted with fury.

  Washington had no specific knowledge of the correspondence that passed in cipher between opposition leaders at home (principally Madison and Jefferson) and Monroe, who was supposed to be representing Washington’s government in Paris. However, Washington suspected that the French had been egged into protest “by communications of influential men in this country through a medium [Monroe] which ought to be the last to engage in it.” He concluded that if war were to break out with France, “it originated here not there.”

  The French liked to feel that their relationship was with the American people rather than with Washington’s government. Monroe was glad to describe that government as reactionary and regard himself as a representative of the people. He had begun his mission by presenting to the French National Convention an American flag with a statement that practically declared a new Franco-American alliance. This had embarrassed Jay’s negotiation.

  As soon as Monroe heard that a treaty had been signed, he asked Jay for a copy to give the French. If Jay had not refused, Paris would have had the treaty months before it reached the United States. When—it was after the Senate had approved—the treaty did finally reach France, Monroe was as outraged as was the government to whom he was supposed to justify his own government’s acts. He felt that he himself had been perfidiously used as a decoy to keep the French passive while a treaty was negotiated which neither he nor the French would approve. The radical American citizen, Thomas Paine, was Monroe’s house guest, and both expressed their indignation to any Frenchman who would listen.

  The official French protest against the treaty was dated March 11, 1796. It testified to Jay’s skill as a lawyer by not even attempting to demonstrate specific legal infractions of the old Franco-American treaties. But it insisted that what had in essence been an all-out alliance with France had been replaced by an alliance with England. As was made manifest by another French reaction that was reported to Washington, the government in Paris believed that all those who were not altogether on their side were against them. They now regarded the government of the United States (although not the American people, whom they considered the victims of repression) as an active enemy.

  Monroe and others notified Washington of a French threat to send a fleet to the United States with a special representative “directed to exact in the space of fifteen days a categorical answer to certain questions.” Washington’s relief when the issue faded away was quickly tempered by word that the French, popping in and out of their West Indian harbors, were violating provisions in the old Franco-American treaty by destroying the lucrative American trade to the British islands. American voices were not lacking to reinforce the claim which the French Minister to the United States, Pierre Adet, released to the opposition press: the French depredations were an inevitable and legitimate result of the Jay Treaty.

  To defuse the situation with France, Washington wished to appoint a special envoy, but felt he could not do so since the Senate, not being in session, could not give consent. However, his advisers ruled that he might, in the interim, replace one regularly appointed minister with another. Monroe was a liability; he would be recalled. But where would Washington find a replacement who “would not be obnoxious to one party or the other?” Seeking a reliable southerner, who was persona grata to the Jeffersonians, he had the good fortune to secure, on his second try, the South Carolinian Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, whose older brother, Thomas Pinckney, had negotiated the triumphant treaty with Spain and recently resigned as Minister to London.

  As Charles Pinckney sailed, it was far from sure that he would be received by the French. They had been threatening to break off diplomatic relations with the United States. Their minister in Philadelphia was again in the newspapers, this time with a long list of decisions made in enforcing the Neutrality Proclamation which the French insisted violated the old Franco-American treaties.

  From an opposition press, there roared a pamphlet, entitled Letter to Washington, by the author of Common Sense, whom Washington had during the Revolution supported and befriended. Paine now insisted that Washington had conspired with the French government to have him guillotined lest he expose the frightful tyranny that existed in the United States.* Paine went over all of Washington’s career in a tone of insult, insisted that every American act which displeased France was both illegal and damaging to the reputation of the United States. His peroration read, “As to you, sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whe
ther you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any.”

  Washington believed that this publication had been inspired by the French propaganda machine. He was furious to have old forgeries, published by the Tories during the Revolution to prove him at heart a pro-British traitor, revived “with the highest emblazoning of which they are susceptible, with a view to attach principles to me which every action of my life have given lie to.”

  The Federalists around Washington were able to demonstrate that Monroe had, under false identification, been writing pro-French propaganda for the American opposition press. It was charged that he was secretly assisting a renewed effort to raise an army of Americans that would settle French power on the continent by capturing Louisiana. And Adet was clearly intervening, through his official statements as French Minister, in the coming election in order to insure the choice as President of Jefferson.

  Aging men are often oversusceptible to suspicions. When a Philadelphia paper reported that Washington had been in a carriage accident, he believed the misinformation had been published for some “insidious purpose.… Evidence enough has been given that truth or falsehood is equally used and indifferent to that class of men.”

  Washington was now dwelling on the fact that, although the old Franco-American treaty had established between the signers the principle that free ships make free goods, the French were applying to American ships the much more stringent rules accepted in Anglo-American relations by the Jay Treaty. Since Washington had believed that nations could not rationally be expected to abide by treaties that were manifestly to their disadvantage, he would surely, as a younger man, have realized that the French could not be expected to allow the British so great an advantage. But now, since his own government had managed by legerdemain to adhere to the letter of the old treaties, he was tempted into accusing the French of perfidy. Furthermore, he warmed up personally to Jay, towards whom he had felt coldly since the treaty came in; and began to defend the treaty itself, concerning which he had not previously gone beyond the statement that under the circumstances he had no choice but to sign it.

  Increasingly, Washington, who had formerly wished to control every executive act, shied away from attending to business. Back at Mount Vernon after publishing his Farewell Address, he wrote Secretary of State Pickering, whom he did not really trust, only to bother him if something momentous happened. And he broke off an important letter to Hamilton by stating that he was too “fatigued with this and other matters which crowd upon me” to write further.

  Washington’s final public appearance was to be his Eighth Annual Address, delivered on December 7, 1796, some three months before his term ended. That morning his friend Eliza Powel sent to Martha a remedy for indigestion. She urged that the President “take a glass on his return from the Congress. I know his sensibility, diffidence, and delicacy too well not to believe that his spirits will be not a little agitated on the solemn and I fear last occasion that he will take of addressing his fellow citizens. He appears to have an invincible diffidence of his own abilities.”

  Another lady who admired Washington, the new British Minister’s blond and charming Scottish wife, Henrietta Liston, was present in the Senate chamber: “I happened to sit very near him and … I had an opportunity to see the extreme agitation he felt when he mentioned the French. He is, I believe, much enraged; this is the second French minister who has insulted him to the people.”

  Washington’s references to England showed the Jay Treaty being smoothly applied towards future amity. Very different were his references to France: “Our trade had suffered and is suffering extensive injuries in the West Indies from the cruisers and agents of the French republic, and communications have been received from its minister here which indicate the danger of a further disturbance of our commerce.” Although he stated that he kept “unabated” his desire for harmony with France, he warned that he could not “forget what is due to the character of our government and nation.”

  Thus, in his very last address as President, Washington swerved from his invariable policy of balancing the hostile behavior of the two major European belligerents. During the final months of his Presidency he was, indeed, inclining toward the anti-French, pro-Federalist position which he had been accused by his enemies of having always occupied.

  During the election, however, Washington adhered to his highest principles. The stakes, he felt, were much higher than any partisanship, so high that risks would have to be taken concerning what would happen after the hand was played. He saw the election as a potential demonstration to all the world that republican institutions were, in their purity, viable.

  He was, indeed, personally establishing a precedent that extended the Constitution. Despite much discussion of the issue, that document had not limited the number of terms a President could serve. The establishment of the Vice Presidency permitted succession in the monarchical manner: the President, again and again reelected if he pleased the people, would be, on his death, succeeded by his preestablished heir. Even Jefferson, during his period of closeness with Washington, had been content with the thought that the first President would serve out his lifetime. But Washington wished the succession to be determined, in an absolutely republican manner, by the ballot box. This would be the culmination of his own career, his final gift to the world.*

  Perhaps it was Washington’s realization of his own tremendous power that made him feel that if he intervened in an election he would prevent the people from making their own choice. In any case, he adhered to the resolution he had made when lesser offices were in the balance that he would play absolutely no role in the election. He had no intention of being publicly identified with either the Republicans or the Federalists. Although he believed that Jefferson had betrayed him personally and might well betray the nation to France, the old hero made absolutely no move to block Jefferson’s road to the Presidency.

  The Federalist candidate, John Adams, won, but, owing to a confusion in the Federalist vote for Vice President, Jefferson came into that office. Washington made no recorded comment.

  If Washington had believed that because he had taken no part in the election, he would finally escape abuse, he was sadly disappointed. The Federalists had used every opportunity to point out that, unlike the Republicans, they had been loyal to Washington. Republican propagandists still felt that establishing the prestige of their party depended on demolishing the prestige of Washington.

  In one of his last acts in the Presidency, Washington wrote, “To the wearied traveler who sees a resting place and is bending his body to lean thereon, I now compare myself, but to be suffered to do this in peace is, I perceive, too much to be endured by some. To misrepresent my motives, to reprobate my politics, and to weaken the confidence which has been reposed in my administration are objects which cannot be relinquished by those who will be satisfied by nothing short of a change in our political system.”

  Adams’s inauguration proved, however, that love for the hero had not died. No man in all probability had been so deeply jealous of George Washington for so long a time as the President-elect. He looked forward to having the spotlight turn to him at last, away from the tall Virginian whom he considered uneducated, unintellectual—and lucky. But when Adams, his short, rotund body resplendent in a pearl-colored suit, appeared in the chamber of the House to take the oath, most of the eyes that turned to him were wet. And in a moment, the eyes turned back to Washington, who was sitting, in an old-fashioned black coat, to one side of the dais.

  Adams complained to his wife of “the full eyes, the streaming eyes, the trickling eyes, etc.” Adams’s situation was made even less satisfactory by the expression on the retiring President’s face. He seemed, so Adams wrote, “to enjoy a triumph over me. Methought I heard him say, ‘Ay, I’m fairly out and you’re fairly in. See which of us will be happiest!’”

  When Adams had taken the oath, made his speech, and departed; when the inauguration was over, the audience rushed after Washingto
n to the street. They followed him towards the Francis Hotel where he intended to congratulate the new President. As Washington went through the door and the door closed behind him, the crowd, seeing their hero pass from them, made “a sound like thunder.”

  * Although Paine had served in the French National Convention, the English-born agitator had insisted that since he remained an American citizen, it was Washington’s duty to extract him from the jail in which he had been placed for his activities in the French government. Washington, who felt that American neutrality prevented him from intervening even in favor of his spiritual son, Lafayette, made no exception for Paine.

  * The precedent Washington established, that a President should retire after two terms, held until it was breached by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was then formally written into the Constitution.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Home Again

  (1797–1799)

  During Washington’s eight years in office almost all the “public” furnishings which Congress had supplied for the Presidential Mansion had been worn out or broken. He had replaced almost everything, sometimes several times, at his own expense, and usually elegantly. He believed in upholding the dignity of his office, and could not himself bear to live shoddily. Since Congress had given John Adams $14,000 to buy presidential furniture, Washington tried to sell what he had himself bought to his successor at what he said were bargain prices. The fine furnishings still seemed to the New Englander expensive. He confided to his wife that “everyone cheats as much as he can” and that Washington “says he must sell something in order to clear out.” Yet Adams was so tempted that he allowed Washington to depart for Mount Vernon with the false hope that the basic furnishings of the main reception room would stay in place.