American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  Two hours later the little party pulled up in the busy town on the banks of the Potomac. “Federal to a man,” Washington had called Alexandria not long before, and now the Alexandrians had political as well as personal reasons to greet their old neighbor. Indeed, the President-elect found himself among creditors as well as friends. A few weeks earlier he had borrowed £500 in Alexandria—something “I never expected to be driven to—that is, to borrow money on interest,” owing to “short crops and other causes,” including the expenses of his trip to New York. But now he was being escorted to Mr. Wise’s tavern for a celebratory dinner. Toast after toast—thirteen in all—punctuated the meal, and if Alexandrians followed their custom, each lifting of glasses was followed by the boom of cannon. Along with the new toasts to the people of the United States and to the federal Constitution, “may it be fairly tried,” and the conventional toasts to the Congress, friendly nations, heroes of the Revolution, there were salutes of a more pointed nature:

  “May party spirit subside, and give place to universal zeal for the public good”…BOOM!

  “May religion, industry, and economy constitute the national character of the United States”…BOOM!

  “The American ladies; may their manners accord with the spirit of the present government”…BOOM!

  A sugary tribute to Washington by the mayor brought an address of saccharine modesty by the general.

  Next day Washington, his escorts, and his carriage were ferried across the Potomac to Georgetown. There, and at Spurrier’s Tavern that evening, and in Baltimore next day, guards of honor met and fell in with him—a tribute that, along with the felicitous addresses, pleased the President-elect but so delayed him that he resolved from then on to start his daily journey at sunrise and travel all day long. He could not forget that Congress was awaiting him. Among the officers who greeted him he often found comrades from wartime, and his route lay near old bivouacs and battles, but the general seemed more occupied with thoughts of the tasks ahead than with remembrances of the darker days hardly more than a decade past.

  At the outskirts of Philadelphia the military escort gave way to outpourings of persons who crowded around the general’s carriage. When Washington, seated on a superbly caparisoned white horse, crossed the Susquehanna, he found “every fence, field, and avenue” lined with cheering onlookers. Twenty thousand people choked the central streets of the city. In Trenton—another reminder of earlier, sadder times—matrons and girls scattered blossoms before him as they sang a specially composed ode beginning “Welcome, mighty Chief!” and ending “Strew your Hero’s way with flowers!” In Princeton and New Brunswick and Elizabeth Town large throngs turned out amid clamorous church bells and thunderous salutes.

  The little procession out of Mount Vernon was turning into a triumphal promenade of democracy. A people frustrated by years of war and uncertainty and hardship, a people starved for leadership and direction, citizens denied the power of directly choosing their President and often denied any vote at all—these persons were now voting with lungs and legs for their leader, a man on a white horse, a republican hero.

  A gleaming new barge festooned with red curtains, its twenty-six oars manned by the finest pilots in New York, rowed Washington across Newark Bay toward Manhattan. A long tail of sloops and smaller craft formed as the barge moved off the Battery on Staten Island. A familiar tune sounded across the water from a sloop crowded with singers; it was “God Save the King,” with the words changed to form an ode to Washington. A Spanish warship, its yards manned and rigged and bedecked with the colors of nations, fired off a salute. As the barge neared the southern end of Manhattan Island, Washington could make out masses of people crowded along the waterfront and stretching up the streets behind. Once the barge was secured, the general mounted carpeted steps to receive a delegation of officials headed by Governor Clinton. A parade was formed, but it had such trouble threading its way through the cheering crowd that it took half an hour to move from the dock to the Franklin House at 3 Cherry Street, assigned to the President-elect.

  Washington was emotionally satiated. He wrote in his diary: “The display of boats …the decorations of the ships, the roar of cannon, and the loud acclamations of the people…filled my mind with sensations as painful (considering the reverse of this scene, which may be the case after all my labors to do good) as they are pleasing.”

  A week later—on April 30, 1789—Washington left Cherry Street in a grand coach drawn by four horses, preceded by troops and accompanied by carriages filled with officials. He was wearing a dark brown suit of “superfine American Broad Cloths” that he had seen advertised in the New York Daily Advertiser; white stockings and shoes with silver buckles; and a steel-hilted dress sword. Milling crowds surrounded the procession. Along Queen Street to Great Dock Street, then north toward Wall Street and along Broad Street the long column wound its way to Federal Hall, an imposing building with its massive Doric columns. There, in the handsome Senate chamber, John Adams had been encouraging a last-minute debate over protocol—how should the President and the members of the lower house be greeted? There had been much reference to English practice, to the annoyance of republicans present. By the time Washington entered the crowded chamber, Adams seemed almost speechless. But finally he led the President-elect out of the chamber onto a small, partly enclosed portico overlooking Broad and Wall.

  A great cheer broke out from below. Chancellor Livingston administered the oath of office; Washington, looking grave, repeated the words and then lifted the Inaugural Bible to his lips.

  “It is done!” Livingston cried out, and turning to the crowd, shouted, “Long live George Washington, President of the United States!” Above the roar of the crowd and the chorus of church bells came the thunder of salutes from the Battery and the harbor. Washington bowed, turned back into the Senate chamber, seated himself next to the Vice-President, waited until the senators and representatives took their seats, and rose to deliver his Inaugural Address. His voice trembled a bit, his words at times came slowly and indistinctly, he seemed not to know what to do with his hands, but he sounded a note of profound eloquence. After the usual modest disclaimers and supplications to the “Almighty Being who rules over the Universe,” he came to the heart of the matter:

  “There is no truth more thoroughly established, than that 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: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained; And since 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.”

  THE FEDERALISTS TAKE COMMAND

  And now to the task of governing. The “old general”—still only fifty-seven—and the politicians who would launch the new republic had been gathering slowly in New York throughout the winter. The alchemy of ambition and duty had brought to the temporary capital hordes of job applicants along with elected legislators. One man who had not been eager for his job was George Washington. So often, indeed, had he informed friends during the past year that he preferred to stay in private life, and would take on public service only if duty absolutely required it, that he might have been fighting his own personal devil—a relish less of power than of fame and acclaim and deference. He had not raised a hand to influence the electors of 1789. He announced in his Inaugural Address that he would renounce any presidential salary—perhaps out of a fear of tainting his image of patriotic disinterestedness.

  Washington’s election had gone so smoothly as to arouse no controversy. Electors had been chosen in popular elections in some states, by legislatures in others, and by other methods
in several others; in New York the two houses fell into a quarrel over procedure and chose no electors at all. But wherever or however they were chosen, the electors acted on only one mandate—to cast their ballot for the Revolutionary leader.

  The vice-presidency was a different matter. Shrewd politicians had already sized up the office as vibrant with hope but barren of power. Still, the post had interested leading candidates, the most notable of whom was John Adams, who with Abigail had returned to their beloved Braintree home after their public service abroad. Vowing even more insistently than Washington that he preferred tending his farm to another stint of politics, he yet watched narrowly as the vice-presidential jockeying began. Washington made clear that while he esteemed Adams, he would be happy to accept whomever the electors chose to choose. Into this little political vacuum Alexander Hamilton moved with gusto. He could not deny Adams’ experience and distinction, but he had long disliked his frigid and dogmatic ways, his civilian suspicion of the military during the Revolution (in which Adams had not served as a soldier), and his only slightly veiled coolness to General Washington.

  Hamilton’s weapon was right at hand: by warning friends in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and elsewhere that Adams might actually beat out Washington for the presidency, and playing on fears that a thwarted Adams might become the pawn—or the head—of anti-Federalists, Hamilton persuaded a number of electors to withhold their second-choice votes from the Bostonian. Adams won the office, but his 34 votes fell far short of the unanimous 89 that Washington won. Belatedly he discovered that Hamilton had engineered the “dark and base intrigue.” Throwing away votes was a breach of honor, a perjury. He would get revenge. He would “drag out to public infamy both dupers and dupes” and “make those men repent of their rashness.” But Adams would have to wait.

  Choosing the first Congress had also been conflict-ridden and a bit manipulative. State legislatures met for the double task of choosing senators and setting up districts for electing representatives. Once again the pros and cons of the Constitution were argued across the land, as anti-Federalists backed candidates who would seek to amend the Constitution, perhaps even convene a second constitutional convention.

  Nowhere were the contests watched more closely than in Virginia. While Washington followed developments closely but silently from Mount Vernon, and Madison apprehensively from New York, Patrick Henry in Richmond rallied his followers, and dominated the selection of two senators and the rejection of Madison for the upper chamber. He engineered an appeal to Congress for an immediate second convention, and helped draw the lines for the new congressional districts in a manner that would put Madison in an anti-Federalist district. This “Henry-mander” antedated the famous “Gerrymander” in Massachusetts.

  Though fearful of seeming too eager for election and afflicted with piles, Madison returned home by stagecoach and two-wheeled chair. There he found himself pitted against a rising young politician, James Monroe. The two rivals were longtime friends, however, and agreed to tour the district together to debate the issues. Madison picked up votes by granting that additional safeguards to liberty, in a bill of rights, were necessary; and his firm backing for religious freedom helped him with the Baptist vote. His defeat of Monroe—their friendship continued unimpaired—helped Virginia send a majority of pro-Federalist representatives to New York.

  Federalists won in most of the other states too, though in some cases only after a pitched battle. In Pennsylvania as elsewhere, continuing dispute over the Constitution closely affected the elections. Pennsylvanians demonstrated that they knew election artifice too; the pro-Constitution leaders put through an election law calling for the statewide rather than districtwide election of representatives, on the calculation that they would do better statewide. Both sides “ticketed” candidates and took stands on the Constitution at “conventions” or conferences before the final voting. And both sides appealed to the crucial German vote.

  When the elections finally ended, it was clear that Washington would have a pro-Administration majority—though the general’s direct influence on the outcome was minimal, except perhaps in Virginia.

  By April the new men were settling into their New York City houses and hostelries. Invited by Governor Clinton to stay at the Governor’s House, Washington had politely declined, adding that he would hire lodgings until a presidential house could be provided. To Madison he explained that he wished not to be placed early in a situation where he must entertain. In fact, Washington wanted a house and style befitting his station. Toward the end of May, Martha Washington arrived from Mount Vernon, after a trip that had turned out to be a kind of triumphal procession of its own. Soon she was cultivating close relationships with Administration wives, especially with Abigail Adams. The Adamses had taken a somewhat run-down but pleasant house on Richmond Hill, from which Abigail gazed with rapture at the “noble” Hudson, dotted with small boats bearing produce to Manhattan. Madison settled back into the Manhattan life he had known for years. Hamilton and Jay had homes convenient to Federal Hall, the temporary location of Congress.

  Congress—the “first wheel of the government,” Washington called it—had got off to a dull start on March 4, 1789, after a long wait for newly elected senators and representatives to make their way to New York through the winter snow. Not until early April was a quorum finally mustered in the House. The Senate was enlivened by a dispute between its presiding officer, John Adams, and a Pennsylvania democrat, William Maclay. Puffed up a little by his new status, “His Rotundity,” as some critics called Adams, seemed almost obsessed by questions of parliamentary practice and protocol, especially English practice and protocol. Maclay, a frontier lawyer, tall and broad and rustic, scoffed at his pretensions and punctilio and concluded that New Englanders were too parochial to get along with anyone save their close neighbors.

  Matters came to a head when Adams wished to refer to the President’s Inaugural Address as “his most gracious speech.” Maclay rose. “Mr. President, we have lately had a hard struggle for our liberty against kingly authority. The minds of men are still heated: everything related to that species of government is odious to the people. The words prefixed to the President’s speech are the same that are usually placed before the speech of his Britannic Majesty. I know they will give offense.” He moved that they be struck out. Adams professed to be astonished: he was for a dignified and responsible government; if he had thought during the Revolution it would come to this, he never would have drawn his sword. A weeks-long quarrel then developed in the Senate over the President’s title—should he be referred to as “His Highness” or “His Elective Highness,” or the like? Good republicans claimed to be shocked by such monarchical instincts. Despite Adams’ admonition that a man could be “President” of any little organization, the final title would be simply “The President of the United States.”

  The tripartite structure of the new federal government was completed in September 1789, when Congress passed the Judiciary Act establishing a Supreme Court to consist of a Chief Justice and five associates, three circuit courts, and thirteen district courts. Washington soon nominated John Jay, who was acting as Secretary of State until Jefferson’s arrival, as the first Chief Justice of the United States. An immensely experienced man as a legislator, former chief justice of New York, and diplomat, Jay was widely regarded as learned and judicious, but by the end of the 1780s he was seen by republicans as an arch-Federalist who believed in British precedents, centralized government, and presidential power. While Washington called the new judicial department the “key-stone of our political fabric,” Jay found major cases slow in coming and spent many months working with his fellow justices to set up circuits, designate judges to ride them, appoint clerks, and ensure that the new federal judges would be received in the states with proper respect.

  President and Congress were engaged in the everyday business of government as well. They could hardly escape it; problems of taxes, imports, Indians, foreign relations engulfed
them. Washington started out with only two assistants, David Humphreys and Tobias Lear, but soon he had to recruit several other aides. Hamilton worked closely with him on political matters, Madison on legislative. Washington did not have to construct a federal executive from scratch. The Confederation had bequeathed him a Foreign Office run by John Jay and two clerks, a Treasury Board with no treasury, and a War Department with no war. A scattering of federal officers—lighthouse keepers, postmasters, tax collectors, troop commanders, diplomats—manned a long thin line of federal power. Washington’s major appointments were geographically balanced—Thomas Jefferson of Virginia (still in Paris) for Secretary of State, Alexander Hamilton of New York for Secretary of the Treasury, his old comrade-in-arms Henry Knox of Massachusetts for Secretary of War, another Virginian, Edmund Randolph, for Attorney General.

  The middle and minor offices gave Washington, Adams, and the department heads the most trouble. Little had they anticipated the stream of job applicants and applications into New York. Washington had to fend off jobseekers months before the electors were even due to meet. The Administration leaders knew how to deal with place-warmers, but many job-seekers were overqualified, if anything, and some were personal friends and even family members. To Adams applied General Benjamin Lincoln, of Shays’s Rebellion fame, Samuel Otis, Robert Treat Paine, and his close friend and adopted “brother,” Richard Cranch. When his and Abigail’s good friend Mercy Warren wrote poignantly on behalf of her husband, Adams responded that he had no patronage and, if he had, neither her children nor his own could be sure of it. Similarly, President Washington wrote to his nephew Bushrod Washington, a young lawyer hankering to be appointed United States district attorney for Virginia, that he was too inexperienced for the post, that the President must stand on principle against nepotism, and that as a practical matter he could not be partial to friends and relations, “for the eyes of Argus are upon me.”