The silence engulfing the Convention especially limits what is known about Washington because, as the presiding officer, he rarely spoke on substantive matters inside the Assembly Room, where Madison dutifully recorded the debate. Washington did talk privately with other members, of course, and voted with the Virginia delegation.7 He also supervised the floor debate and called on members when they spoke at the Convention. But no one recorded these utterances and, scrupulously obeying the secrecy rule, Washington did not repeat them in any surviving letters or other writings. The other members likely knew where he stood on significant matters but beyond his oft-stated desire to create a true national government with power to tax, maintain an army, and regulate interstate and international commerce—positions that he had publicly championed since 1783—the record of his specific contributions to the Constitution remains frustratingly oblique. We can only surmise those details from the clues available to us.8
The public silence was all the more remarkable because the members of the Convention otherwise did not act like Catholic cardinals sequestered to elect a pope. Quite to the contrary, they enjoyed an active social life in Philadelphia. Many of them regularly dined in clubs, drank at taverns, attended evening teas and balls, and went to concerts and plays. Such outings were particularly common for Washington, who was the lion of the summer season in Philadelphia high society.
And what a season it was. Never before or since has such a large share of the country’s political, economic, and cultural elite gathered in one place for so long. As the wealthiest and most culturally sophisticated American city of the day, Philadelphia was ready, willing, and able to host them. In some of these social settings, at least among themselves and possibly within a discreet inner circle, the delegates discussed issues that they debated at the Convention.
IMITATING PARISIAN HIGH SOCIETY, a salon scene dominated by wealthy, independent-minded, married women flourished in Philadelphia during the 1780s. These ladies would invite large gatherings for evenings of tea and conversation in their parlors. During the summer of 1787, Washington was the most sought-after guest for such events and, according to his diary, he frequently attended them. Two or three evenings in a typical week, it records him having “tea” at the mansion of the Powels, the Binghams, or some other prominent Philadelphia couples.9 For Washington, teas or dinners in “a very large Company” sometimes also occurred “at home” with the Morrises.10 What he wrote of one evening out at the lavish in-town home of the lawyer Benjamin Chew and his independently wealthy, once-widowed wife, Elizabeth, Washington could have said about other evenings as well: “Drank Tea there in a very large circle of ladies.”11 He clearly enjoyed their attention, and they his. A leading figure in Virginia’s social scene since his marriage to the rich widow Martha Custis in 1759, Washington excelled in polite conversation at tea, over drinks, or while dining.
At many of these Philadelphia teas, it was the wives who charmed. Elizabeth Powel, for example, was famously spirited. “She plays the leading role in the family—la prima figura, as the Italians say,” Washington’s friend the Marquis de Chastellux wrote about her during his visit in 1780. “She has wit and good memory, speaks well and talks a great deal.” Washington particularly enjoyed her company. He spent at least fifteen evenings at the Powels’ during the Convention, wrote to Elizabeth frequently, and accompanied her to plays and concerts. “What chiefly distinguishes her,” Chastellux observed, was “her taste for conversation and the truly European manner in which she used her wit and knowledge.” Elizabeth Powel would later comment about the summer of 1787 that she “associated with the most respectable, influential Members of the Convention that framed the Constitution, and that the all important Subject was frequently discussed at our House.”12 A discreet hostess, she kept any conversations about the Constitution confidential.
Robert Morris’s wife, Mary, and Anne Bingham, daughter of the colonial mayor Thomas Willing and wife of the merchant-prince William Bingham, were every bit as engaging and politically astute as Elizabeth Powel. Washington often attended plays, concerts, and other cultural events with Mary Morris, and spent at least six evenings at the Binghams’ house, which many thought the finest mansion in town. With two formal parlors, a grand ballroom, and a marble central hall, even Washington remarked on its “great splendor.”13
Because they never published their political views, it is unclear how these women may have influenced the Convention. In all likelihood, they were conservative nationalists who favored a strong executive and hoped that Washington would fill the role.14 Consider some evidence. Mary Morris’s husband, Robert, was the leading nationalist in the Confederation Congress and architect of its effort to create executive offices. Anne Bingham’s father, Thomas Willing, was a conservative member of the Continental Congress who voted against independence and later presided over the nationalists’ Bank of the United States; her husband, William, would become an arch-nationalist United States senator. Elizabeth Chew’s husband, Benjamin, worked for Pennsylvania’s British proprietors before the Revolutionary War and was detained by patriot authorities during it. Elizabeth Powel remained in Philadelphia throughout the British occupation of 1777–78 with her husband Samuel, the mayor, widely suspected of Tory sympathies. Later, she helped to persuade Washington to serve a second term as President.
Given the leanings of their hosts, these Philadelphia salons of the 1780s were more likely modeled after those of Louis XVI’s Paris than a model for those of revolutionary France. It then may have been with a twinkle in his eye that, when asked by Elizabeth Powel at the Convention’s end about what sort of government the delegates had created, Franklin reportedly replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”15 Like some of the delegates, she may have wanted a less republican government than Franklin did.
ONCE THE CONVENTION AGREED to form a sovereign general government with three separate branches, its focus shifted to the balance of power among those branches. In the delegates’ eyes, the presidency would possess basic executive authority, the future House of Representatives would hold broad legislative power, and the Supreme Court would play a purely judicial role. The Senate proved more problematic, however, and that inevitably impacted the other branches, especially the presidency.
Prior to the Revolutionary War, most colonial governors were appointed by the king and advised by a council composed of leading local citizens. This council typically served both as a valued check on a governor’s exercise of executive authority, including in the appointment of officers, and as an upper legislative house akin to the British House of Lords. As such, it had executive and legislative functions. Some delegates saw the Senate playing this dual role in the new central government, and therefore wanted it to have a say in the appointment of judges and officers, the drafting of treaties, and the execution of policy as well as in the passage of legislation. Others saw less reason to restrain the executive authority of a chosen American President than a royally appointed governor but still favored a bicameral legislature. The delegates battled for months over the precise balance of power among the branches, particularly between the President and the Senate. In his prize-winning history of the Constitution, Jack Rakove equated this task to solving a complex equation with a large number of dependent variables. “Change the value of one, and the values shift throughout,” he wrote.16
Since everyone presumed that Washington would become the new government’s first executive, no one could conceive of the position without thinking about him in it. Indeed, within the year, Pierce Butler flatly stated that his colleagues at the Convention “shaped their Ideas and Powers to be given to the President, by their opinions of [Washington’s] Virtue.”17 Although many members looked beyond Washington in crafting the executive, their faith in his virtue likely made them more open to strengthening the office.
The presidency was the Convention’s most original creation. Groping for analogies while debating it, delegates at various times alluded to the Venetian Republic’s
doge, the Holy Roman Emperor, the king of Poland, the consuls of ancient Rome, and even the pope as examples of political leaders chosen by some sort of elite electorate. None of these analogies fit. The American presidency was something new under the sun.
For Congress, in contrast, the delegates needed only look to their state legislatures. From the beginning, they leaned toward a two-chamber Congress with a broadly representative lower house, elected by popular vote and allocated by population, much like the lower house of every state’s legislature. The upper house was trickier, but for it, too, the delegates could build on the experience of state governments, most of which had some sort of senate or council with mixed executive and legislative functions and whose members were chosen by a narrower electorate and for longer terms than members of the state’s lower house. The puzzle here came in fixing the proper balance of executive and legislative duties for a national senate and determining how to allocate and choose its members. The states offered poorer precedents for the presidency, as quickly became clear.
HAVING AGREED TO BEGIN their deliberations by working through the Virginia Plan as a committee of the whole, the delegates reached the plan’s two resolutions regarding the executive on June 1. The longer of these called for a “National Executive” chosen by Congress for a single term of some fixed but unspecified length. “Besides a general authority to execute the national laws,” it stated, this officer “ought to enjoy the Executive rights vested in Congress by the Confederation.” The shorter one provided a limited means of vetoing bills passed by Congress.18
If these “Executive rights” included all those once held by the British monarch and later vested in Congress, the two resolutions gave considerable power to the executive. In addition to executing laws, the king held direct authority over war and peace, the military, foreign affairs, appointing officers and judges, convening and proroguing Parliament, and granting pardons, to name just a few. Since the Articles of Confederation vested power over war, peace, foreign affairs, and appointing officers in Congress, these powers might go to the executive under the Virginia Plan. Then again, they might not. The resolutions were frustratingly vague on such matters.
Perhaps because Washington was sitting among them, when the delegates reached these resolutions, they fell unusually silent. Even Sherman, Gerry, and Dickinson said nothing. After brief comments by two supporters of a strong executive, Madison wrote in his notes, “a considerable pause ensued” and the chair asked if the delegates were ready to vote. With the provisions coming from Washington’s delegation, no one seemed inclined to dispute them. Washington would be the first President, of course, and the delegates appeared reluctant to cross him.19 But who would follow Washington? Franklin broke the silence. Observing that the structure of the executive is “of great importance,” he urged the delegates to “deliver their sentiments on it before the question was put.”20 Franklin’s comment burst the dam and debate flooded the room. Four days later, with the discussion still going strong, Franklin would add with reference to Washington and the debate over the executive, “The first man, put at the helm would be a good one. No body knows what sort may come afterwards. The executive will always be increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.”21
That was the rub. The colonies had revolted in part against abuses by a monarch and his appointed governors. “The history of the present King of Great Britain,” the Declaration of Independence asserted, “is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”22
An injury once suffered is a lesson long learned. Upon removing their royal governors, many of the newly independent states limited executive power by having their governors elected by legislators for short terms and requiring them to act in consort with counselors or senators. Most lost the veto power. The post was so emaciated in Pennsylvania that Washington questioned Franklin’s decision to accept it.23
The inefficiencies, corruption, and demagoguery associated with unchecked legislative power in some states caused a reaction. New York and Massachusetts soon restored a measure of executive independence by having their governors elected by popular vote and arming them with a limited power to veto bills. At the Convention, the debate over executive authority was further complicated by the added powers over war, peace, and foreign policy, which governors never held but traditionally were lodged directly in the monarch. The prospect of such awesome powers passing to a national executive forced the delegates to reflect on their experiences under King George III. Franklin was right: the delegates had much to consider in crafting the presidency.
THE MEMBERS DEBATED the executive at length three separate times during the Convention: early June, mid-July, and early September. During the first of these occasions, they raised virtually all of the issues about the presidency that would later occupy them, but they had trouble even resolving whether one person or a committee should hold the office. With Washington in the room, a unitary executive should have seemed obvious to all, especially since every state had but one governor. Fearful of investing too much power in any single person, however, some delegates—including two within Washington’s own delegation—favored an executive triumvirate like those of late republican Rome. Denouncing a single executive as “the fetus of monarchy,” Randolph averred that “the people” would oppose it.24 Further, Mason added, an executive troika could better represent the country’s three regions—North, middle, and South—than any one ruler could.25
These comments on a single executive, coming as they did from old friends, surely vexed Washington, who prided himself on his republican virtue, public support, and unbiased nationalism. Every delegate who knew him well must have understood that Washington would neither consent to serve as one member of an executive triumvirate nor be suited for such a post. While he remained silently seated next to Randolph and Mason, others rallied to defend the sort of unitary executive that Washington was so clearly qualified to fill. “Delay, divisions and dissentions arise from an executive consisting of many,” Butler warned.26 “Unity in the Executive” promotes “vigor and dispatch” in office, Wilson added, and by fixing responsibility on one person, served as “the best safeguard against tyranny.”27 Gerry stressed that a troika would be particularly troublesome in war. “It would be a general with three heads,” he declared.28
While these positions came out in the course of the formal debate, delegates discussed them on other occasions as well. Like Washington, some members regularly attended evening teas and balls, where they could talk in semiprivate settings. Even those delegates who did not circulate in high society inevitably spent considerable time together outside the Assembly Room. Most of them lived tightly packed into a handful of the city’s best boardinghouses—such as those run by Mary House or Mary Dailey—and inns, where they dined at common tables. City Tavern, Indian Queen, Springsbury Manor, and other public dining halls also hosted informal “clubs” at which delegates could gather for dinner. Significantly, these lodging and dining arrangements did not segregate along state, regional, or ideological lines, but instead threw delegates together in a social and partisan mix that encouraged them to share ideas and build relationships.
As much as he enjoyed life at the Morris mansion, where he could dine in elegance every day, Washington frequently ate “in club” with other members. Indeed, on June 2, after the extent of disagreement over the power, structure, and selection of the executive first became apparent, Washington ate with the club at City Tavern, where the subject of the day’s heated debate likely came up and surely remained on everyone’s mind. While in session earlier that day, the delegates raised and could not resolve whether the United States should have one executive officer or three. Reminiscent of debates held in the same room over independence in 1776, some members had returned to first principles regarding the executive. Warning of the “natural inclination in mankind to Kingly Government,” Franklin favored measures to avoid “nourish
[ing] the fetus of a King.” John Dickinson, Franklin’s nemesis on the issue of independence in 1776, replied “that a firm Executive could only exist in a limited monarchy.”29 The delegates stood far apart.
Now, later that evening, as many of those members casually dined with the man who would be that king, Washington’s presence must have reassured them. As a frequent guest at City Tavern, Pierce Butler may have been present. If so, it might explain his later comment that powers vested in the chief executive under the Constitution would not “have been so great had not many of the members cast their eyes toward General Washington as President.”30 At the Convention’s next session, the states voted by a margin of seven to three for a single executive and, unlike most of their decisions, never revisited it. Virginia joined the majority, with Washington casting the deciding vote within its five-member delegation.31
HAVING A SINGLE EXECUTIVE did not settle either the extent of executive powers or whether their exercise would require the advice or consent of an executive counsel, or senate. At this early stage of the proceedings, the delegates simply agreed that those powers should be enumerated in the Constitution and would include a limited veto over legislation, which Congress could override by a two-thirds vote.32 Led by Wilson and Madison, even the most ardent supporters of a strong presidency consistently maintained that, in a republic, the executive should not decide matters of war and peace. “The only powers he conceived strictly Executive were those of executing the laws,” Wilson observed at the outset, “and appointing officers not appertaining to and appointed by the Legislature.” Extending these powers to war and peace, Charles Pinckney added, “would render the Executive a Monarchy, of the worst kind, towit an elective one.”33
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