Partner to Power

by K. Ward Cummings

  The first thing Hamilton did was recommend that the president nominate a special envoy to negotiate with the British. The list of qualifications Hamilton recommended for the envoy seemed to suggest himself in the role, but he and Washington both knew he had too many enemies in Congress to hope to win a confirmation vote. So, Hamilton recommended instead their mutual friend Supreme Court Justice John Jay.14

  Washington and Hamilton’s conduct throughout the developmental stages of the treaty illustrates the close, almost intuitive process of collaboration they had developed. Hamilton had learned long ago that there was a right way and a wrong way to approach Washington regarding complicated and serious matters such as this. An intensely cautious man, Washington liked to see a consensus forming around a decision before he felt confident enough to pull the trigger. Hamilton knew he would have to guide Washington carefully.

  It was no coincidence that soon an influential member of the Senate visited the president and suggested that he assign Jay the task of negotiating with the British. The senator, a prominent member of the committee that would have to approve the special envoy’s appointment, had been recruited to “drop by” the president’s residence to effectively second Hamilton’s proposal of Jay.

  It was Jay’s name that would be attached to the treaty, but Hamilton played as great a role as any in its ultimate success.15 Hamilton was not a man of half measures. When he was in, he was all in. There was hardly a feature of the treaty that Hamilton did not help shape. Not only did he provide Washington with arguments for pursuing the treaty—arguments that Washington would use on numerous occasions throughout the process—he helped get members of Congress on board. After selecting Jay for the post of envoy, Hamilton met with him to lay out the goals and the strategy for the negotiations. To ensure that Jay stayed on message, Hamilton kept up an active correspondence with him throughout the negotiation process.

  Washington did not stand in Hamilton’s way as he took charge of shaping the treaty. Given what is known about the closeness of their partnership, it is not difficult to imagine that the two men might have, at some point in their relationship—during the Revolution, or perhaps during the early days of the administration—entered into a pact to support each other and to facilitate their mutual success, with Washington the brawn and Hamilton the brains. Washington could personify Hamilton’s vision, and Hamilton would attend to the details. As the events surrounding the Jay Treaty unfolded, a portrait of the inner workings of their partnership emerged. As was so often the case during the early years of the American republic, their efforts established a model that similar partnerships would emulate.

  III

  The Shape of Things to Come

  In comparison to what was to follow, negotiating the treaty with the British was easy. The real work began after details of the document were leaked and the American public became convinced, by the friends of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson—the most prominent and persistent political voices in opposition to the treaty—that the agreement should be rejected. Public reaction ranged from resentment that Americans would still not be paid for the property they had lost during the Revolution, to anger that American sailors could still be captured by the British in the West Indies, to confusion about why Washington would seemingly give so much away while securing so little for America in return.

  The treaty’s boldest critics accused Washington of bending over backwards for the British. They pointed to the fact that England retained the right to levy tariffs against US goods and was granted “most favored nation” trading status. In their minds, the US came out of the negotiations worse off than it had been going in.

  After Jay returned to the US and submitted the treaty to Washington, the president asked for Hamilton’s help in understanding its details and consequences.16 He could have relied on Jay’s or Randolph’s characterization of the agreement, but instead he turned to his right-hand man.

  Washington asked Hamilton to prepare a memo arguing the strengths and weaknesses of the treaty—and whether or not he should support it. Hamilton must have wished that Jay had gotten more concessions from the British, but he knew Jay had done his best. It would have been a mistake to expect a treaty tilted in America’s favor, given that Great Britain was the most powerful nation on the planet and the US had little with which to bargain. After cataloguing for Washington its strengths and weaknesses, Hamilton urged the president to support the treaty.

  Despite Hamilton’s recommendation, Washington hesitated, keeping the treaty’s full details secret from voters as he decided what to do. Hamilton’s analysis had uncovered as many weaknesses as strengths, and Washington instinctively knew the terms of the treaty would not be well received by the public. When he finally released the document, there was indeed an uproar. Jefferson, Madison and their political allies had convinced the press that the treaty was a power grab by the president—that Washington had overstepped his constitutional mandate by negotiating a treaty without the involvement of Congress. They accused him of acting more like a king than the leader of a democratic republic.

  In the wake of the negative public response, Hamilton stepped in again to assist the president. This time, his aid came in the form of a carefully calibrated media campaign. Washington and Hamilton shared the opinion that attacking the treaty and the president’s authority to negotiate on the nation’s behalf was an attack on the foundational principles of the republic and on the presidency itself. It would have been undignified for Washington to answer his critics by arguing the merits of the treaty himself. However, he knew that he would not be faulted for encouraging the effort if someone were to enter the debate on his behalf. There is no record that Washington explicitly requested Hamilton’s help, but Hamilton would have known the president well enough to know that such efforts would be welcomed. When the president read the first in a series of essays Hamilton published defending the treaty17 (written under the name Camillus), he wrote Hamilton to congratulate his right-hand man and to urge him to continue.

  Hamilton’s handling of the debate was so skillful and persuasive that he was able to reverse public opinion almost single-handedly.18 He was helped by the fact that Republican criticism sacrificed reason in favor of ridicule in a slow-moving cortege of low blows and cheap shots. Analysis by biographers John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth helps illustrate the reasons Hamilton’s work was ultimately judged more persuasive by the public:

  “Camillus,” indeed, was distinguished by incisive style, rich citation and a perfectly logical narrative flow. [Hamilton’s] evaluation of the first ten “permanent” articles of the treaty were masterful. The central theme was danger: opponents of the treaty were blind to the great interrelated hazards it overcame—a British and Indian war in the Northwest and a Spanish and Indian conspiracy in the Southwest, extinction of overseas trade and decline of prosperity in agriculture as well as in manufactures, increased taxation for defences [sic] and, finally, civil war in America.19

  There were thirty-eight essays in all. Entitled “The Defense,” twenty of the essays were written by Hamilton himself. His friend, New York assemblyman Rufus King, wrote the remaining ten, but even those were heavily edited by Hamilton. The level of scholarship of the essays is remarkable, given the extent of Hamilton’s personal and professional obligations at the time. King focused on defending the mercantile elements of the treaty and argued in favor of continued free trade, while Hamilton’s essays focused on three themes: defending the treaty and its constituent articles, urging its inherent constitutionality and directly responding to individual criticisms.

  Leading a damage-control effort that would put even a modern-day press secretary to shame, Hamilton brilliantly reshaped the debate into a referendum on President Washington’s leadership. He argued that an attack on the treaty was an attack on the very man who had led the nation to victory during the Revolution. He urged the public to remember that the US was a new nation with little to leverage and, as such, had little choice bu
t to accept Britain’s terms. Putting off a fight with the British today, Hamilton argued on Washington’s behalf, would give America time to build up its resources to fight later. Any concessions by the US were worth it if they prevented a conflict. Had Jay pressed harder for better terms, Hamilton argued, he might have pushed the country into the hands of war.

  Even Jefferson and Madison had to eventually concede to the strength of Hamilton’s arguments. Tellingly, neither man chose to put his pen to the task of responding comprehensively to Hamilton’s points—clearly recognizing the futility of doing so. The treaty went on to pass the Senate by a vote of 20 to 10, and, by that time the following year, doubts about the agreement had all but slipped from the minds of most Americans.

  Hamilton and Washington had prevented yet another crisis together. This time saw Hamilton a little more behind the scenes than usual, but with the same characteristically successful outcome. Before his death in 1799, Washington would seek Hamilton’s special help one last time, in order to write his 1796 address to the people announcing his decision not to seek reelection.

  His death would end the first, and perhaps the greatest, political partnership in American presidential history. But it did not end without first helping construct out of whole cloth a republic that would rise to be the envy of the free world. Part of their legacy as a partnership is that they established a template not only for how to be a president, but also for how to serve one.

  IV

  Hamilton: Partner to Power

  What does it take to be a president’s right-hand man or woman? Can a person grow to fit the role, or does it require a preexisting set of qualities and skills? Is one adviser possessing a particular political portfolio better suited to the post than another? The answers to these questions lie at the heart of why Washington selected Hamilton, rather than Jefferson or Randolph, to be his closest adviser and provide clues about the selection of subsequent presidents’ right hands.

  Of the five most frequent models of right hand to the president, Hamilton represents (1) the cabinet officer. Across the arc of American political history, every chief executive has at some time or another employed the services of his own version of Alexander Hamilton. As Washington’s experience with his most trusted aide illustrates, the use of a cabinet member in the role comes with challenges, which Washington himself encountered each time Jefferson inferred from an action or comment that the president favored his treasury secretary over his secretary of state.

  Had Randolph been free of scandal, Washington would certainly have assigned him total stewardship of the Jay Treaty. The president was hypersensitive to cabinet rivalries after having witnessed the often heated exchanges between Hamilton and Jefferson. After that experience, Washington would not have deliberately instigated a confrontation between Hamilton and Randolph over a matter that fell so squarely into Randolph’s portfolio. Managing cabinet rivalries and avoiding displays of favoritism have been a preoccupation of every US president, and this explains why comparatively few right-hand men and women have been members of the cabinet. There have been some notable exceptions, of course…

  Albert Gallatin, the US treasury secretary from 1801 to 1814, may be the most important of the least-known founding fathers. The longest-serving treasury secretary in history, he was the right hand to both Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Working closely with Jefferson, he devised and executed the financial and congressional plan to fund the Louisiana Purchase and then, interestingly, helped the president plan the Lewis and Clark Expedition. When President Madison wanted to appoint Gallatin secretary of state, Senate leaders objected, so Madison made him treasury secretary instead. But Madison still used him as a secretary of state. Not only did Gallatin arrange for the funding that financed America’s role in the War of 1812, he represented the president at the peace negotiations with the British afterward…

  As secretary of state to President James Monroe, John Quincy Adams is among the few right-hand men who could claim a leading role in establishing the American national identity. Monroe’s greatest accomplishment as president may have been what was referred to in his day as the “Principles of 1823” but what we know today as the Monroe Doctrine. Outlining his “Principles” to Congress in his annual message, Monroe declared that the US consisted of all the lands of North America between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans within the US borders with Canada and Mexico. His assertion put expansionist countries Great Britain, Spain and Russia on notice that North America was closed to settlement. Monroe worked closely with Secretary of State Adams to establish this principle. They were friends and worked closely on a number of foreign-policy issues during Monroe’s eight years in office, but the Monroe Doctrine stands as their crowning achievement, partially for the role it played in giving lasting definition to the term “American”…

  And Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy became his older brother’s right hand after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. International affairs are not expected to be a significant feature of an attorney general’s portfolio, but after the secret attempt to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro went horribly wrong, the president began to reconsider the recommendations he was receiving from his advisers. He started leaning more heavily on his younger brother for advice, eventually coming to rely on him for recommendations on all major domestic and international matters. When in 1962—during what would become known as the Cuban Missile Crisis—the president needed help negotiating with the Soviets, he turned to Robert Kennedy. Working back channels on behalf of the president, the attorney general helped negotiate the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuban soil—neutralizing a threat that might have resulted in nuclear war.

  No president since Kennedy has favored one agency head above the rest as he did his brother. This does not mean, however, that it will not happen again—a president can choose whomever he or she wants as a right hand. What is clear is that in the event of such a reoccurrence, there will certainly be unwelcome consequences similar to those experienced by the Washington Administration.

  On at least one occasion, Alexander Hamilton bragged that he saw Washington as little more than the aegis for his ambition—the means of his ascent. At some point in the mid-1790s, as Hamilton entered his middle years and as Washington’s health began to fail, the two men seemed to switch places in their relationship. Each man still needed the other, and Washington was clearly still in charge, but the power in the relationship, which had tilted so decidedly in Washington’s favor for the better part of two decades, seemed to lean more toward Hamilton.

  Like Roosevelt and Hopkins or McKinley and Cortelyou, Washington and Hamilton were like two halves of the same person. Washington might very well have become president without Hamilton’s help, and Hamilton might have been treasury secretary even if Washington had not become president. But, given each man’s strengths and weaknesses, it is difficult to imagine them achieving the same level of greatness without each other.

  There are times in American history when the wrong man was in the White House at the wrong time. It is hard to argue, for example, that President Andrew Johnson was the right man to lead the nation through Reconstruction after the Civil War. And, though Herbert Hoover was an extraordinary administrator, he was clearly the wrong man to be president during the Great Depression.

  George Washington proved he was the right man at the right time, but he was especially so with Hamilton at his side. Without their partnership, the country might look very different today.

  Decades later, when Abraham Lincoln and his right-hand man William Seward inhabited the executive mansion, they could reflect on the example set by Washington and Hamilton as they struggled to hold the country together through arguably the greatest threat the republic had faced up to that point. They could draw strength from the knowledge that, with the right partnership in the White House, even seemingly insurmountable challenges can be overcome.

  IAGO AT REST

  William Seward came to the White House convinced
that President Lincoln was out of his depth, but as the pair began to work together, Seward came to admire Lincoln’s keen understanding of human nature, his political judgment and his leadership.

  The Presidency, even to the most experienced politicians, is no bed of roses.1

  —President Abraham Lincoln

  On an unseasonably warm February morning in 1865, Abraham Lincoln boarded the presidential yacht, the River Queen, anchored off the coast of Hampton Roads, Virginia, for a top-secret conference with Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy. The two men were meeting to discuss a possible ending of hostilities between the North and South. A gathering of men of such prominence bode well for a resolution, but after four hours of discussions, the negotiations ended without result. President Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward waved goodbye as the boat carrying Stephens and his party steamed back toward the Virginia shore. As a token of their good parting, Seward sent a former slave in a rowboat after them with a case of champagne. As Stephens waved to the president in appreciation, Seward shouted, “You can keep the wine, but return the negro!”2

  This is the story of how a partnership between two political rivals evolved into a close professional and personal friendship and the tense secret meeting they took together with Vice President Stephens that, had it been successful, might have ended the Civil War. This is also a love story of sorts, about a relationship that was surprisingly close and that would certainly raise eyebrows today for the depth of its intimacy.

  William Seward may very well have been Lincoln’s best friend during his White House years. In his first year in office, the president spent more time with Seward than he did with his own wife.3 Both men had difficult marriages4 and turned to each other for the companionship they could not find at home. On the day that Lincoln learned that his secretary of state had been gravely injured in a carriage accident and was lying in bed unconscious at home, he rushed to see him. Lincoln found Seward resting comfortably. He had recovered well enough to receive the president, but he was still too weak to sit up to properly greet him. Quietly entering Seward’s room, the president of the United States lay down beside him,5 arranging his long body next to Seward’s, and placed his head close on the pillow. Together, they talked softly until Seward fell asleep.