Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency

by Logan Beirne

  I would like to thank the incredible Encounter team. The dedication of Roger Kimball, Sam Schneider, Lauren Miklos, Carol Staswick, Heather Ohle, and Nola Tully made this book possible. I greatly appreciate Dean Draznin, who is the best and most entertaining publicist anyone could ever dream of.

  I am deeply grateful to the incredible Jon Macey, Lee Otis, and Gene Meyer, whose help and support were vital in making this book a reality. I am indebted to Professors Akhil Amar, Hadley Arkes, Patrick Weil, John Witt, Gene Fidel, Richard Bernstein, Richard Meyer, and John Dehn for sharing their many insights with me as I wrote. I am also grateful for the excellent research assistance I received from Yale doctoral candidate Carolee Klimchock, Yale PhD student Michael Hattem, and Yale’s Courtney Grafton.

  I would like to express my tremendous appreciation for the editing, research, and advice from my amazing friends from Yale Law School: Kory Langhofer, Noelle Grohmann, Katie Schettig, Jason Green, Mark Fitzgerald, Faisal Rashid, Alexandra Roberts, Dara Purvis, Gabe Rosenberg, Steve Winter, Alicyn Cooley, Stephanie Lee, Hayley Fink, Michael Love, Andrew Giering, Patrick Moroney, Jayme Herschkopf, Alan Hurst, Chris Hurtado, Jane Diecker, Jamie Hodari, and Jake Gardener.

  A special thank you to Sean Beirne, Thomas Beirne III, Colleen Beirne, Tommy and Collin, Timmy Fitzmaurice, Anta Cisse-Green, Nelle Jennings, Joseph White, Paula Yavru, Jim McFarlane, Abby Beal, Mary Dulko, Michael Brunson, Cathy McLean, Victoria Pugliesi, Natalie Raitano, Alycia Stevenin, Joey Gonzalez, Jonathan Rollo, Cait Levin, Ariana Green, Julie Silverbrook, Ryan Williams, Bob Ford, and Stacey Phelan. It takes an army.

  And I would like to thank my partner in crime, the indomitable Deirdre Nora Beirne.

  NOTES

  FREQUENTLY CITED SOURCES

  Document Collections and Primary Narratives

  American Archives: Documents of the American Revolution, 1774–1776. Edited by Peter Force et al. Northern Illinois University Libraries, 2001– .

  Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. Edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford et al. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904–1937.

  The Papers of George Washington, Diaries. Edited by Donald Jackson et al. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976–1979.

  The Papers of George Washington (Chronological Series). Edited by W. W. Abbot et al. University of Virginia Press, 1987– .

  The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Edited by Max Farrand. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911; revised 1966.

  Smith, Joshua Hett. An Authentic Narrative of the Causes Which Led to the Death of Major André. London: Matthews & Leigh, 1808.

  The Spirit of Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants. Edited by Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris. 1958; Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1995.

  Thacher, James. Military Journal of the American Revolution. 1823; Hartford, Conn.: Hurlbut, Williams & Co., 1862.

  The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Edited by John Clement Fitzpatrick. George Washington Bicentennial Commission. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931–1944.

  Modern Works

  Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life. New York: Penguin, 2010.

  Fischer, David Hackett. Washington’s Crossing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

  McCullough, David. 1776. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

  Introduction

  1 As translated from “Conotocarious,” which is the name given to him by the Seneca Native Americans, who had called his grandfather by the same. George Washington, “To his Excellency Horatio Sharp, Governor of Maryland,” April 28, 1754, in The Journal of Colonel George Washington, ed. Albany J. Munsell (1893), 51.

  2 Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York: Knopf, 2000), 35–36.

  3 Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life, 30.

  4 James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 8. Washington’s exact height is unknown. He measured in at six foot three after his death, but it is unclear whether the doctor pointed his feet upwards to gauge his flat-footed height or allowed them to point downwards as he lay. The latter would gauge his height on his tippy-toes, so to speak. Washington told his tailor that he was six feet tall, which may have been his true standing height. But since he also complained about ill-fitting clothes, it is unclear. I am grateful to Ron Chernow for bringing this to my attention. He has provided many insights and suggested great sources.

  5 Ibid.

  6 The Papers of George Washington, Diaries, 1:144.

  7 The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, 1:73. His men were clamoring about their lack of pay and supplies before they even left Virginia. See also Governor Dinwiddie to Matthew Rowan, March 23, 1754, in The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie: Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Virginia, 1751–1758, ed. R. A. Brock (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1883), 122.

  8 Washington to Governor Dinwiddie, Will’s Creek, April 25, 1754, in The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, 1:87–90.

  9 “Speech to Indians at Logstown,” November 26, 1753, in The Writings of George Washington, 1:25.

  10 Based on sculptural rendering by Bryan Rapp.

  11 Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Knopf, 2004), 14. Ellis’s introduction offers a vivid account of this episode.

  12 Father Bruyas, qtd. in Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, ed. Frederick Hodge (1912), 124.

  13 Washington Irving, Life of George Washington (1856–1859; repr. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1876), 1:48. Nineteenth-century historians often lacked access to the primary sources now available. Thus, they wrote based on an incomplete understanding of the events. However, in tangential descriptions, I include them as lively color to nonessential points.

  14 Qtd. in Donald H. Kent, “Contrecoeur’s Copy of George Washington’s Journal,” Pennsylvania History 19 no. 1 (1952): 23.

  15 Washington to Robert Dinwiddie, May 29, 1754, in The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, 1:111.

  16 Claude Pierre Pecaudy de Contrecoeur, “Sommation de Jumonville,” in Papiers Contrecoeur et autres documents concernant le conflit anglo-français sur l’Ohio de 1745 à 1756, ed. Fernand Grenier (Quebec: Les Presses Universitaires Laval, 1952), 130. See also Jacob Blosser, “Getting Away with Murder: The Tragic Story of George Washington at Jumonville Glen,” James Madison University (2000).

  17 Robert Dinwiddie, “Instruct’s to be observ’d by Maj’r Geo. Washington, on the Expedit’n to the Ohio,” in The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, 1:59.

  18 Washington to Dinwiddie, 108.

  19 Irving, Life of George Washington, 1:41.

  20 George Washington, “Journal Entry 28 May 1754,” in Kent, “Contrecoeur’s Copy of George Washington’s Journal,” 21.

  21 René Chartrand, Monongahela 1754–55: Washington’s Defeat, Braddock’s Disaster (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2004), 27.

  22 Blosser, “Getting Away with Murder,” provides an excellent discussion of the Jumonville Affair and brought additional sources to my attention.

  23 “We carried out our arrangements to surround them, and we began to march in Indian fashion [until we] . . . had advanced quite near them according to plan, when they discovered us. Then I gave my men orders to fire.” Washington, “Journal Entry 28 May 1754,” in Kent, “Contrecoeur’s Copy of George Washington’s Journal,” 21.

  24 Washington to Dinwiddie, 116.

  25 Ibid., 1:107. See also Ellis, His Excellency, 13. I am grateful to Deirdre Beirne for her insight on this point.

  26 The Papers of George Washington, Diaries, 1:195–96.

  27 For a summary of the French perspective, see Ian Steele, “Hostage-taking 1754: Virginians vs Canadians,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 16:1 (2005), 49–73.

  28 Irving says that Jumonville was shot a
t the start of the battle. Irving, Life of George Washington, 1:42.

  29 Tanaghrisson to Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, May 28, 1754, qtd. in Fred Anderson, The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War (New York: Viking, 2005), 47.

  30 Washington to Dinwiddie, 111–12.

  31 Anderson, Crucible of War, 6.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Washington to John Augustine Washington, May 31, 1754, in The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, 1:118.

  34 Laura Wolff Scanlan, “Clash of the Empires,” Humanities 26 (2005): 3, quoting British MP Horace Walpole.

  35 C. C. Felton, qtd. in Paul F. Boller, Presidential Anecdotes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4.

  36 Ibid.

  37 “Nathanael Hawthorne,” The Spectator: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, Theology, and Art, March 23, 1871, 371.

  38 U.S. Constitution, art. 2, sec. 2, cl. 1.

  39 The unabashed presentism of this book is sure to make many academic historians cringe. However, when it comes to historical constitutional interpretation, this is an unavoidable nature of the inquiry.

  40 The University of Virginia’s Papers of George Washington Project has brought to light many documents previously inaccessible. I am extremely grateful to Professor William M. Ferraro and the whole team for their tremendous help with this book.

  41 Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington, Man and Monument (New York: Mentor, 1960), 5.

  Part I: The King of America

  1 Pierce Butler to Weedon Butler, May 5, 1778, in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 3:308.

  Chapter 1: The Not-So-United States

  1 For a succinct summary of republican ideology in eighteenth-century Anglo-America, see Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2002), 89–109. Stacey Phelan was instrumental in researching this opening.

  2 Prior to the adoption of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, Congress was called the “Continental Congress.”

  3 Warren E. Burger, “Obstacles to the Constitution,” The Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook 1987, 28.

  4 Outline of U.S. Government, ed. Rosalie Targonski, InfoUSA, U.S. Department of State (2000), 18.

  5 Tax Analysts, Tax History Museum: 1777–1815, The Revolutionary War to the War of 1812.

  6 Carl Van Doren, The Great Rehearsal: The Story of the Making and Ratifying of the Constitution of the United States (1948; New York: Praeger, 1982), 7.

  7 John W. Daniel’s oration, “George Washington” (1885), in Library of Southern Literature, ed. Edwin Anderson Alderman et al., 14:6239. Oration at the dedication of the Washington Monument, February 21, 1885.

  8 Ibid.

  9 General Washington, Speech before the Senate Chamber of the State House in Annapolis, December 23, 1783.

  10 Washington to Robert Morris, April 12, 1786, in The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, 4:15.

  11 Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), 4. He also provided for his former slaves’ care and education following their emancipation.

  12 John Pickell, A New Chapter in the Early Life of Washington: In Connection With the Narrative History of the Potomac Company (New York: Appleton, 1856).

  13 Glenn A. Phelps, “The Republican General,” in George Washington Reconsidered, ed. Don Higginbotham (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 167. For example, see Thomas Anburey, July 14, 1779, Travels Through the Interior Parts of America (1789; Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1923), 2:232. Anburey wrote about Washington, “of whom, in all my travels through the various provinces, I have never heard anyone speak disrespectfully, as an individual, and whose public character has been the astonishment of all Europe.”

  14 “Gilbert Stuart,” in The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, ed. James B. Longacre and James Herring (1834), 1:35.

  15 Ibid., 34.

  16 James Thomas Flexner, On Desperate Seas: A Biography of Gilbert Stuart (1955; New York: Fordham University Press, 1995), 124.

  17 Isaac Weld, Travels Through the States of North America, and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, During the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, 2nd ed. (London: John Stockdale, 1799), 105.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Flexner, On Desperate Seas, 124.

  20 Paul F. Boller, Presidential Anecdotes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 6.

  21 Weld, Travels Through the States of North America, 104–9.

  22 Gordon S. Wood, “President George Washington, Republican Monarch,” James Madison Leadership Conference Paper (Princeton University), 3.

  23 Pickell, A New Chapter, vii.

  24 Ibid.

  Chapter 2: Not as Happy in Peace as They Had Been Glorious in War

  1 Alexander Hamilton, “Report Relative to a Provision for the Support of Public Credit,” January 9, 1790, in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–87), 6:51–110.

  2 “Bill Providing for Delegates to the Convention of 1787,” November 6, 1786, in The Papers of James Madison, Congressional Series (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 9:163.

  3 Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer, July 21,1816, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606–1943 (bulk 1775–1826), Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. Jefferson made this statement years after the time discussed here, but it expresses the fears of the crushing public debt that gripped the nation following the Revolution.

  4 Ibid.

  5 National Gazette, September 11, 1792. Hamilton was, of course, the force behind assuming the states’ war debts and creating the national bank to service it.

  6 James Madison to Henry Lee, April 13, 1790, in The Papers of James Madison, Congressional Series, 13:147.

  7 Many of the notes were no longer held by the veterans at this point, but by speculators. For more on the speculation surrounding bonds in the 1780s, see Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007).

  8 Circular to the States, June 8, 1783, in The Writings of George Washington, 26:289–90.

  9 “To the United States Senate and House of Representatives,” in The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, 14:462–67.

  10 Washington’s Farewell Address, September 19, 1796, in The Writings of George Washington, 35:231.

  11 “To Form a More Perfect Union: Identifying Defects in the Confederation,” The Library of Congress Essay Collection: Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774–1789.

  12 Journals of the Continental Congress, 30:366.

  13 Diary Entry for June 30, 1785, in The Papers of George Washington, Diaries, 4:157. See also Chernow, Washington: A Life, 467.

  14 Proceedings of the town of Charlestown, in the county of Middlesex, and Commonwealth of Massachusetts; in Respectful Testimony of the Distinguished Talents and Prominent Virtues of the Late George Washington, ed. Samuel Etheridge (1800), 18.

  15 Thomas E. Woods, Jr., “The Revolutionary War and the Destruction of the Continental,” Ludwig von Mises Institute, Mises Daily (online), October 11, 2006.

  16 Samuel Breck, Historical Sketch of Continental Paper Money (1863), 15.

  17 Ralph Volney Harlow, “Aspects of Revolutionary Finance, 1775–1783,” American Historical Review 35 (October 1929): 46–68.

  18 Washington to Joseph Reed, December 12, 1778, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 18:396–98.

  19 In light of the economic chaos and diverging currencies, trade among the states plummeted, thereby thinning the economic tether that bound the largely independent states. In a vicious spiral, the not-so-united states competed with one another for their share of diminishing economic resources. Seeking to protect their citizens from this competition, the states imposed tariffs on goods from their sister states. But this ended up hurtin
g citizens on both sides of the border.For example, New York had long been supplied with firewood from Connecticut’s bountiful forests. But in these difficult times, the New Yorkers decided to keep their hard-earned dollars from flowing “into the pockets of detested Yankees.” John Fiske, The Critical Period of American History, 1783–1789 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898), 173. And so New York slapped a protective tariff on all ships arriving from Connecticut. These ships from the neighboring state were required to pay entrance fees and clear customs, just like ships from London. “Great and just was the wrath” of the Connecticut lumbermen. In fact, the tariff so damaged the Connecticut economy that the state held a large meeting of businessmen, who decided to suspend all trade with the “hated state” of New York. Ibid. (Fiske exaggerates the level of animosity. There was certainly resentment, but “hate” is strong, although it provides good color.) Both economies wound up worse off, as both lost a market for their goods.

  The trade war hurt not only the producers but also the consumers in both states. The tariffs relieved competition on the local producers, thus allowing them to raise their prices. For example, New York producers, sheltered by tariffs, could raise their prices without having to worry about their customers buying from cheaper Connecticut producers instead. In this way, local consumers often ended up paying more.