by Logan Beirne
56 Ibid., 360.
57 Washington to Colonel David Henley, November 25, 1778, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 18:292. In another example (excerpted from Beirne, “George v. George v. George,” 308–9), Washington reasoned, “it being represented to me that the Millers, either from an unwillingness to part with their Flour, or the difficulty of obtaining Wheat from the Farmers, do not Imploy their Mills, by which means the Army under my Command is like to suffer for want of Bread.” Faced with this crisis, and fighting to save the Continental Army, he handled the millers in a way that is telling: “I do hereby Authorize and Instruct [Carpenter Wharton] to enquire into the State of this matter; with full powers if it should be found that the default is in the Miller, to Sieze [sic] the Mill and grain, and Imploy it for the use of the Public . . . paying the full Value . . . .” Rather than taking the grain to save his troops, he instead used a process that respected the miller’s property and allowed for compensation. Orders to Carpenter Wharton, December 20, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 7:391. Also, see Washington to Major General John Armstrong, December 28, 1777, ibid., 13:28.
58 Washington to Colonel David Henley, November 25, 1778.
59 On one occasion, Washington’s policy was put to the test by some pesky farmers. Washington complained that he was having a difficult time getting wheat from the farmers, which meant that his army was likely to “suffer for want of Bread.” Orders to Carpenter Wharton, December 20, 1776. To remedy the infuriating situation, he ordered his troops to approach each farmer and “with full powers . . . to take his Grain for the Public Service.” But he also ordered that each farmer be paid in full for any wheat taken. Ibid. Then Congress stepped in, and Washington took a harder line. After Congress directly authorized him to do so, he “issued a Proclamation ordering the Farmers to Thresh out their Wheat and prepare it for Mill, and that in case of Noncompliance within certain Periods, it shall be Siezed upon for the use of the Army and only paid for as Straw.” Washington to Major General John Armstrong, December 28, 1777. This order seemingly violated the policy of just compensation, for straw was far less valuable than wheat, but Washington was not merely being a hypocrite, however; he proceeded because he was carrying out Congress’s wishes. It was more acceptable for civil authorities to initiate such controversial action than the military.
60 Washington to Henry Laurens, December 14[–15], 1777.
Chapter 31: Not-So-Civil War
1 Based on a sketch from 1780. Benson J. Lossing’s sketch likewise depicts Germain in a strange light. Other portraits are more flattering.
2 General Cornwallis to his brother, qtd. in Franklin B. Wickwire and Mary Wickwire, Cornwallis: The American Adventure (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), 115.
3 “The Battle of Camden,” The American Revolutionary War, http://www.americanwars101.com/battles/800816.html.
4 Charles Lee to Horatio Gates, in The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1124.
5 The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1126.
6 Lord Germain to Royal Governor Sir James Wright, November 9, 1780.
7 Journals of the Continental Congress, October 5, 1780.
8 Washington to George Mason, October 22, 1780.
9 Colonel John Watson of the British Army, in The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1169.
10 William S. Powell, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 5:160.
11 C. F. William Maurer, Dragoon Diary: The History of the Third Continental Light Dragoons (Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2005), 299.
12 Memoirs of Captain Tarleton Brown, in The Spirit of Seventy-Six , 1147.
13 Nathanael Greene to Francis Marion, April 24, 1781, in ibid., 1173.
14 Nathanael Greene to Joseph Reed of Pennsylvania, January 9, 1781, in ibid., 1152.
15 Ibid., 1153.
16 The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1160.
17 Major St. George Tucker of the Virginia militia to his wife, March 18, 1781, in ibid., 1166.
18 Alexander Hamilton, 1781, in ibid., 1160.
19 Ibid.
20 Charles James Fox, in Henry Lee, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States (1827), 179.
21 Washington to Major General Benedict Arnold, June 19, 1778, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 15:472. Although he sought to protect Loyalists, Washington was more inclined to give his troops’ discretion the benefit of the doubt, such as when Major Ballard was faced with felony charges in New York for confiscating Loyalist property. Washington wrote to New York’s governor that “the good of the service sometimes requires things to be done in the military line, which cannot be supported by the civil law.” Washington to Governor George Clinton, December 13, 1779, in The Writings of George Washington, 17:252–53. Washington, however, made clear to Clinton that he would nevertheless not tolerate any confiscations where there were “appearances of oppression or fraud” or “spirit of plunder.” Ibid., 17:253.
22 Washington to Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, August 19, 1775, in The Writings of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 1:327.
23 But see Thomas Shanks commission.
24 Glenn A. Phelps, “The Republican General,” in George Washington Reconsidered, ed. Don Higginbotham (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 184.
25 Logan Beirne, “George vs. George vs. George: Commander-in-Chief Power,” Yale Law and Policy Review 26 (2007), 288.
26 For example, see Journals of the Continental Congress, July 24, 1776, 5:605–6 (discussing congressional actions); Washington to John Hancock, January 30, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, 1:214–21 (referencing confiscation by the state of New York).
27 For further discussion of Washington’s refusal to confiscate property or suspend habeas corpus, see Bruce Chadwick, George Washington’s War (Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, 2004), 227–30.
28 Circular to the States, June 8, 1783, in The Writings of George Washington, 26:490.
29 Washington’s Farewell Address, September 19, 1796, in The Writings of George Washington, 35:222–23.
30 Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Main Series, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1955– ), 12:356.
Part VI: Could Have Been King
1 “Washington’s Spectacles,” American Optical (1918), courtesy of the Optical Heritage Museum.
2 Rudolph Marx, M.D., “The Health of the President: George Washington,” Health Guidance, June 15, 2008.
3 David Fleishman, “Optical Treasures: Missing-Stolen,” Antique Spectacles, http://www.antiquespectacles.com/treasures/stolen.htm.Many thanks to David Fleishman for his help in learning more about Washington’s elusive spectacles.
4 Ibid.
5 While these glasses were believed to be Washington’s, there is no way to verify whether they were definitely his. Nor is there any way to verify whether they were the same ones he wore at Newburgh in 1783, but this passage is more concerned with their symbolism as a reminder of Washington’s actions. Ibid.
Chapter 32: O God! It Is All Over!
1 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), 62.
2 Ibid., 61, quoting a letter from John Bell, Esq. to a friend in Europe “during an early period of the American Revolution,” from Massachusetts Magazine, 1791.
3 The Memoirs of Lafayette, in The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1208.
4 Journal of Dr. James Thacher, August 15, 1781, in ibid., 1215.
5 Chernow, Washington: A Life, 407.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., 1214.
8 Washington Irving, Life of George Washington, 4:843.
9 Washington to Lafayette, September 2, 1781, in The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1217.
10 The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1219.
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11 Sir Henry Clinton, The American Rebellion, in ibid., 1222.
12 General George Weedon to Nathanael Greene, September 5, 1781, in ibid., 1218.
13 Colonel St. George Tucker to his wife, September 15, 1781, in ibid., 1224.
14 Ibid.
15 Journal of Dr. James Thacher, in ibid., 1233.
16 Ibid., 1232.
17 Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, “History of Campaigns in the Southern Provinces,” in ibid., 1236.
18 Lord Cornwallis to Sir Henry Clinton, October 20, 1781, in ibid., 1237.
19 Washington to Cornwallis, October 17, 1781, in ibid., 1239.
20 Ibid.
21 Journal of Dr. James Thacher, October 19, 1781, in ibid., 1243.
22 Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, November 1781, in ibid., 1243–44.
Chapter 33: Winning the Peace
1 Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 213.
2 The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1276.
3 Ibid.
4 Sir George Otto Trevelyan, George the Third and Charles Fox: The Concluding Part of the American Revolution (1912), 1:5.
5 Draft Message from the King, March 1782, in The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1281–82.
6 King George III is believed to have had porphyria, a genetic disease. T. M. Cox, N. Jack, S. Lofthouse, J. Watling, J. Haines, M. J. Warren, “King George III and Porphyria: An Elemental Hypothesis and Investigation,” Lancet 366 (2005): 332–35.
7 The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1277.
8 Henry Laurens was named as the fourth commissioner, but he was “strangely dilatory in joining his fellow commissioners” and played less of a role in the main discussions. The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1249.
9 Ibid., 1250.
10 John Jay to Robert R. Livingston, November 17, 1782, in ibid., 1265.
11 Ibid., 1250.
12 Ibid., 1261.
13 Ibid., 1250.
14 Ibid.
15 Thomas Rodney to Caesar Rodney, June 15, 1781, in ibid., 1251.
16 Statement of Chevalier de la Luzern, May 28, 1781, in Journals of the Continental Congress, 20:562n.
17 John Adams to Robert R. Livingston, September 6, 1782, in The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, ed. Jared Sparks (Boston, 1829–1830), 6:401.
18 Decoded letter from John Jay to Gouverneur Morris, October 13, 1782, in The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1263.
19 Edmond Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne (1876), 267.
20 The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1270.
21 Comte de Vergennes to Benjamin Franklin, December 15, 1782, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. William B. Wilcox (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 38:405.
22 Benjamin Franklin to Comte de Vergennes, December 17, 1782, in ibid., 38:416–17.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
Chapter 34: Spectacles & Speculation
1 The Spirit of Seventy-Six, 1249.
2 Washington to Nathanael Greene, August 6, 1782, in The Writings of George Washington, 24:472.
3 Washington to James McHenry, September 12, 1782, in ibid., 25:152.
4 Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Knopf, 2004), 138.
5 Ibid., 138–39.
6 Washington Irving, Life of George Washington, 4:400.
7 George L. Marshall, Jr., “The Rise and Fall of the Newburgh Conspiracy: How General Washington and His Spectacles Saved the Republic,” Early America Review, Fall 1997.
8 Robert F. Haggard, “The Nicola Affair: Lewis Nicola, George Washington, and American Military Discontent during the Revolutionary War,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146 no. 2 (June 2002): 139–69.
9 Lewis Nicola to Washington, May 22, 1782, in George Washington Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 For example, see Irving, Life of George Washington, 4:402; Thacher, Military Journal of the American Revolution, 509.
13 Washington to Colonel Lewis Nicola, May 22, 1782, in The Writings of George Washington, 24:273.
14 Ibid., 274.
15 Chernow, Washington: A Life, 428.
16 Henry Knox to Benjamin Lincoln, March 3, 1783, in Francis Samuel Drake, Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox (1873), 79–80.
17 Alexander Hamilton to Washington, February 13, 1783, in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 3:254.
18 Journals of the Continental Congress, April 29, 1783, 24:297, 307. The second quotation is based on Washington’s address from March 15, 1783.
19 Journals of the Continental Congress, April 29, 1783, 24:296.
20 Marshall, “The Rise and Fall of the Newburgh Conspiracy.”
21 Washington to Alexander Hamilton, March 12, 1783, in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 3:287.
22 Washington to Governor Benjamin Harrison, March 19, 1783, in The Writings of George Washington, 26:240.
23 Thomas Fleming, “Unlikely Victory,” in What If? The World’s Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley (New York: Berkley Books, 2000), 155–88.
24 Washington to Governor Benjamin Harrison, March 19, 1783, 241.
25 Marshall, “The Rise and Fall of the Newburgh Conspiracy.”
26 Journals of the Continental Congress, April 29, 1783, 24:296.
27 Chernow, Washington: A Life, 434. Chernow provides a great depiction of this scene.
28 Washington to Elias Boudinot, March 18, 1783, in The Writings of George Washington, 26:229n.
29 Chernow, Washington: A Life, 434.
30 Journals of the Continental Congress, April 29, 1783, 24:307–8.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., 309–10.
33 Irving, Life of George Washington, 4:415.
34 James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 175.
35 Washington to Tench Tilghman, January 10, 1783, in The Writings of George Washington, 16:28.
36 Washington to David Rittenhouse, February 16, 1783, in The Writings of George Washington, 25:138.
37 Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography (1948–57), 5:435.
38 Samuel Shaw, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw (1847), 104.
Chapter 35: Greatest Man in the World
1 Stanley Weintraub, General Washington’s Christmas Farewell: A Mount Vernon Homecoming (New York: Free Press, 2003), 107.
2 James R. Gaines, For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions (New York: Norton, 2007), 150.
3 Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1989), 1788.
4 Memoirs of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge (1830).
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 John Trumbull to his brother, May 10, 1784, qtd. in Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (New York: Penguin, 2006), 42.
10 Gerard Vogels to his Wife, in The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, 1:195n.
11 Qtd. in George Washington as the French Knew Him, ed. Gilbert Chinard (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 69.
12 Ibid., 196.
13 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), 61.
14 Ibid., 35.
15 Ibid.
16 Chernow, Washington: A Life, 453.
17 Ibid., 455.
18 Ibid., 456.
19 Washington’s Address to Congress on Resigning His Commission, December 23, 1783, in The Writings of George Washington, 27:285.
20 James Thomas Flexner, George Washington in the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), 526.
21 Washington
’s Address to Congress on Resigning His Commission, 286.
22 Proceedings of the town of Charlestown, 63.
23 Washington to Henry Knox, February 20, 1784, in The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, 1:138.
24 Which brings us full circle back to Part I.
25 John Marshall, The Life of George Washington, ed. Robert Faulkner and Paul Carrese (1838; Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 84.
26 Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1991), 206. Wood writes, “Though it was widely thought that Washington could have become king or dictator, he wanted nothing of the kind.”
27 This occurred after eleven states ratified, since only nine were required for the Constitution to go into effect. North Carolina and Rhode Island were the last two states to ratify the Constitution, and did so after it went into operation.
28 Virginia utilized direct election, of which Washington received 100 percent, and the other states sent delegates. Each delegate had two votes to cast. Every delegate voted for Washington with his first vote, and then used his second vote to decide among eleven candidates for the vice presidency.
29 Carol Borchert Cadou, George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (Manchester, Vt.: Hudson Hills Press, 2006), 215.
30 Ibid.
31 Proceedings of the town of Charlestown, 62.
Epilogue
1 “How to Read the Constitution,” Excerpt from Justice Thomas’s Wriston Lecture to the Manhattan Institute, Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2008, A19.
2 William Eskridge and John Ferejohn, The Republic of Statutes: The New American Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 439.
3 Justices Stevens and Souter have since retired and been replaced by Justices Kagan and Sotomayor.
4 C-Span Weekend, C-Span television, March 19, 2006, comments of William Galston, former Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor to President Clinton, 1993–95. “Both the Supreme Court and leading academics have come to accept that evidence of the original understanding of the Constitution is relevant to any discussion of the document’s meaning.” John Yoo, The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 25. For example, see Michael Glennon, Constitutional Diplomacy, 1st ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Louis Henkin, Foreign Affairs and the U.S. Constitution, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Harold Koh, National Security Constitution, 1st ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).