The Return of George Washington

by Edward Larson

  Not so, “An Old Whig” charged in the Independent Gazetteer. “Our future President will be as much a king as the king in Great Britain.” Both have “the power of making all the great men,” he noted, and the President will also serve as commander in chief. While trusting Washington with the “use of great power,” the author warned that, if a future President lacked Washington’s virtue, moderation, and love of liberty, then “this country will be involved at once in war and tyranny.” Indeed, this critic predicted that within a generation some President with less republican virtue than Washington would, like Caesar, use his position to seize total power. Simply put, the essay suggested, a position created for Washington could not be trusted to most mortals.99 “If we are not prepared to receive a king,” this “Old Whig” concluded, “let us call another convention to revise the proposed constitution.”100

  These public debates would set the stage for much that followed in American politics, beginning with the emergence of two distinct national political parties during the 1790s and the bitter federal election of 1800, but at the time they had little impact on the immediate question before voters. With Pennsylvanians already divided into two entrenched factions over state constitutional issues that tracked concerns raised by the federal Constitution, events played out along party lines with predictable results. Backers of the old state constitution gained seats in the October Assembly elections, but not enough to wrest control of the State House from the party led by Clymer, Fitzsimons, and Robert Morris. Polling some added votes from urban artisans and workers hoping for improved trade under the Constitution, federalists did even better in the November elections for deputies to the ratifying convention than in the Assembly elections.101

  Pennsylvania federalists held a two-to-one majority in delegates going into their state convention on November 20 and voting patterns never changed. Deputies on both sides mostly shouted past each other such as when, with the final vote looming, antifederalist firebrand John Smilie threatened, “If this Constitution is adopted, I look upon the liberties of America as gone, until they shall be recovered by arms.” Federalist deputy Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and friend of Washington, replied to Smilie by predicting “a millennium of virtue and happiness as the necessary consequences of the proposed Constitution.”102 On the evening of the twelfth, shortly after this exchange, deputies voted for ratification by the same margin that had marked most votes at the convention: 46 to 23.

  “ALL RANKS OF PEOPLE here rejoice in the Event of this Evenings Deliberations, which was proclaimed thro’ the City by repeated Shouts & Huzzas,” Samuel Powel wrote to Washington from Philadelphia on the day that Pennsylvania ratified the Constitution.103 Washington had followed the state’s convention closely and regularly inquired about it in letters to Powel and other Philadelphia federalists. Now he rejoiced with them in the outcome and sent letters of congratulation.

  Like Washington, none of Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Convention delegates approved of everything in the final document, but all of them greatly preferred it to the Articles of Confederation. At the republican end of the constitutional spectrum, Franklin had favored a more representative Congress and a weaker presidency than the Constitution provided.104 At the nationalist extreme, Gouverneur Morris wanted a more aristocratic senate and stronger presidency than it created. They knew, however, that the document left room for these institutions to develop over time. As Morris had reminded Washington shortly after the Convention broke up, “No Constitution is the same on Paper and in Life.”105

  With ratification achieved in Pennsylvania, both Franklin and Morris hoped that, with Washington as President, the new government would evolve in line with their ideals. In mid-1788, for example, Franklin confided in a friend, “General Washington is the man that all our eyes are fixed on for president, and what little influence I have, is devoted to him.”106 Expressing his sentiments directly to Washington, Morris earlier wrote of the presidency, “Of all Men you are best fitted to fill that Office. Your cool steady Temper is indispensably necessary to give a firm and manly tone to the new Government.”107

  Franklin had wanted Pennsylvania to ratify the Constitution first but its convention ran so long that Delaware slipped in ahead by five days. New Jersey followed six days after Pennsylvania. Somewhat isolated from other states and engaged in increasingly fierce battles with Native American peoples over land on the frontier, Georgia ratified on New Year’s Eve. With its assent, four states had approved the Constitution by the end of 1787. Except for Pennsylvania, all acted quickly, unanimously, and without leaving much record of their public debates or convention deliberations.

  Available evidence points toward the key role played by Washington’s name in each state. Richard Henry Lee tried to stir up resistance to the Constitution in Delaware, for example, but one account from Wilmington stated that his opposition was effectively dismissed as mere “envy of the fame of General Washington and the dread he entertains of seeing that good man placed in the President’s chair.”108 Before the convention in its state, the New Jersey Journal published an emphatic plea for ratification falsely attributed to Washington. “Should the states reject this excellent Constitution,” he allegedly said upon signing it, “the probability is, an opportunity will never again offer to cancel another in peace—the next will be drawn in blood!” By year’s end, the quote had appeared in more than three dozen newspapers, including two in Georgia.109 Shortly before the Georgia ratifying convention in December, the leader of the state’s Cincinnati advised convention president John Wereat that the popularity of framers like Washington was “so great that the public voices seem to be for adopting the Constitution in the lump on its first appearance as a perfect system.”110

  By this point if not before, the politics of ratification had all but consumed Washington. He followed developments in every state and was one of the first prominent federalists to predict the early and easy victory in Georgia. Time and again over the fall of 1787, his correspondents reported having heard nothing from that state. In early December, he commented to Madison that increasing hostilities on Georgia’s frontier “will, or at least ought to shew the people of it, the propriety of a strict union, and the necessity there is for a general government.”111 Washington’s experiences with Native Americans in the Ohio River valley three years earlier had helped to convince him of the need for a true national government. He believed that the same would apply in Georgia. Indeed, he soon wrote in another letter that if Georgians “do not incline to embrace a strong general Government there must, I should think, be either wickedness, or insanity in their conduct.”112

  By the end of 1787, with final results having reached Mount Vernon from three states and favorable reports from many others, Washington exuded optimism about the Constitution. “New England (with the exception of Rhode Island, which seems itself, politically speaking, to be an exception from all that is good) it is believed will chearfully and fully accept it,” Washington wrote to Lafayette in early January. “And there is little doubt but that the three Southern States will do the same. In Virginia and New York its fate is somewhat more questionable.”113

  Virginia particularly concerned Washington. In early December, his own state legislator had warned him about sentiments in the Virginia Assembly: “The Constitution has lost ground so considerably that it is doubtful wither it has any longer a majority in its favor.”114 Madison sent him similar reports. In a New Year’s Day letter to Jefferson, Washington blamed the problems on Henry, Mason, Lee, and Randolph. Otherwise, Washington wrote, prospects for speedy ratification looked good and he personally expected Virginia and New York to come around. “The public attention is, at present, wholly engrossed by this important subject,” he noted.115

  As the Convention receded and ratification progressed, Washington’s feelings toward the Constitution warmed and his sense of ownership increased. In his mind, the Constitution’s defects, if any, had shrunk and the necessity of ratifying
it had grown. “My decided opinion of the matter is that there is no alternative between the adoption of it and anarchy,” he wrote privately about the Constitution in mid-December. “All the opposition to it, that I have yet seen, is I must confess addressed more to the passions than to the reason—and clear I am if another Federal Convention is attempted the sentiments of the members will be more discordant or less Conciliator than the last—in fine, that they will agree upon no gen[era]l plan.”116

  Although not conventionally religious, Washington had a profound personal sense of divine providence. Repeatedly, Washington believed, he had been saved from certain death in battle for a reason. At one point following the Revolutionary War, having secured American independence, he likely believed that purpose was behind him. Now, however, a new, grand role had emerged for him. “It appears to me,” he wrote to Lafayette, early in 1788, “little short of a miracle, that the Delegates from so many different States . . . should unite in forming a system of national Government, so little liable to well founded objections.”117 Washington did not invoke miracles lightly.

  Despite obstacles ahead, he entered the New Year at once hopeful that the states would ratify the Constitution and resigned to play his leading role in the new order. One of his autumn guests perceived it clearly. “I never saw him so keen for anything in my Life as he is for the adoption of this new form of Government,” this visitor wrote to Jefferson about Washington late in 1787, and as for the presidency, “I am fully of opinion he may be induced to appear once more on the Publick Stage of life. I form my opinion from what passed between us in a very long & serious conversation as well as from what I could gather from mrs Washington on the same subject.”118 Only Virginia and New York appeared to stand in the way, though other states would pose greater problems than Washington expected.

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  BOOK III

  From Mount Vernon to New York

  1788–1789

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  Federalist cartoon from June 1788, portraying the states ratifying the Constitution as rising columns in the federal edifice.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ratifying Washington

  THEN AS NOW, New Year’s Day served for some as a time for taking stock of the past year and looking ahead to the next. In American political history, no New Year’s offered a more pivotal occasion for this than January 1, 1788. With the states seemingly on a path toward disunion at the beginning of 1787 and many leaders, including Washington, fearing anarchy and civil war, an extraordinary convention had framed a strong new Constitution. By year’s end, Congress had sent the document to the states for ratification and, acting in rapid succession, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Georgia had ratified in December. Six additional states had called ratifying conventions for the new year, and at least two of the remaining three were expected to follow suit. Seventeen eighty-eight would decide the matter, and with it, America’s future.

  Prospects for ratification in some of those states appeared doubtful. Many Americans feared for their liberty and property under the new Constitution as much as Washington and other federalists feared for them without it. Fresh from the Convention, Elbridge Gerry would fight ratification in Massachusetts. If the state’s popular governor, John Hancock, joined him or insisted on amendments prior to ratification, then approval seemed unlikely. George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick Henry had united to oppose the Constitution in Virginia, with the silver-tongued Henry seeking to rally the masses to their side. Edmund Randolph wavered on the issue, with Washington and Madison working to win his support or silence. North Carolina, many said, would follow Virginia. Despite his close ties to Washington, New York governor George Clinton had set his powerful political machine against ratification, and the majority of New Yorkers, who benefited from state imposts on goods passing through New York Harbor, typically followed his lead. With Rhode Island’s legislative majority implacably opposed even to calling a convention, on New Year’s Day 1788, no one could count on the necessary nine states approving the new government, much less all of the major ones. Without Virginia, Washington could not become President.

  Depicting the Constitution as an assault on individual liberty and states’ rights, all antifederalists harped on the absence of a bill of rights. Federalists invariably replied that none was needed because the government would possess only enumerated powers, not plenary ones. But those powers included exclusive jurisdiction over interstate commerce; control over armed forces, foreign affairs, and matters of war and peace; authority to tax and spend for the general welfare; and all powers “necessary and proper” to carry out the enumerated ones, which, antifederalists countered, would prove virtually limitless. Lee, Mason, and Henry homed in on the President’s broad executive authority, including the power to make treaties and appoint judges with only the Senate’s assent. Even if they trusted Washington with such power, they warned that, without term limits or a split executive, the government would end in despotism or aristocracy. Luther Martin foresaw further risks from empowering appointed judges to construe the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Others carped on Congress’s broad taxing powers. New Yorkers balked at constitutional limits placed on state imposts while Rhode Islanders objected to the ban on state-issued paper money. To rile Virginia and the South, Henry raised the specter of a Yankee-dominated Congress abolishing slavery and limiting westward expansion. And so it went as antifederalists posited an elite conspiracy to subjugate America.

  Washington closely studied the opposition’s charges and found them not only baseless but vile and malicious. “To alarm the people, seems the ground work of his plan,” he had said of Mason as early as the past October.1 By the new year, Washington extended these charges to antifederalist leaders generally. “Every art that could inflame the passions and touch the interests of men has been essayed,” Washington complained in early April 1788. “The ignorant have been told, that should the proposed Government obtain, their land would be taken from them and their property disposed of, and all ranks are informed that the prohibition of the Navigation of the Mississippi (their favorite object) will be a certain consequence of the adoption of the Constitution.”2 Their forte, Washington soon added about antifederalists, “seems to lie in misrepresentation . . . rather than to convince the understanding by some arguments or fair and impartial statements.”3 He dismissed most of them as “contemptible characters” of “little importance.”4 He could not say that of Lee, Mason, Henry, Clinton, or Gerry, of course, but he still scorned their tactics and questioned their integrity.

  Richard Henry Lee and the looming ratification battle in Virginia was a likely topic of discussion at Mount Vernon on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, 1788, because Lee’s cousin Charles came to dinner and stayed the night. A staunch federalist, Charles Lee served as Washington’s personal lawyer and was the brother of Revolutionary War cavalry hero Henry Lee. As fellow members of Virginia’s delegation in Congress, Henry Lee and Richard Henry Lee had already clashed over the Constitution when the document came before that body for transmittal to the states. Even though Charles soon married Richard Henry’s daughter and named his son after his father-in-law, he sided with Henry Lee on the Constitution and served as a confidential conduit of information and informal vote counter for Washington on the prospects for ratification in Virginia. The Lees of Virginia were more a dynasty than a family, and often split on political issues—but never more so than over the Constitution. Although no record of the New Year’s Day conversation between Washington and Charles Lee exists, their letters suggest that it included strategy and tactics for winning Virginia’s assent to the Constitution.

  After Charles Lee left Mount Vernon on the first, Washington wrote a long letter to Jefferson in Paris. The letter mentioned the opposition of Richard Henry Lee to the Constitution, as well as that of Henry and Mason, but assured Jefferson that the majority in Virginia would vote to ratify “notwithstanding their dissention,” which was precisely the information that
Charles Lee shared in a letter to Washington and likely had conveyed in person. Of course, the members of the state’s ratifying convention had not been chosen yet, but Washington seemed certain of his “information.” In wooing Jefferson to support ratification, it did not hurt that Jefferson loathed Patrick Henry for having pushed an official inquiry into Jefferson’s wartime conduct as governor.

  In his letter to Jefferson, Washington went on to ask about developments in France, where revolution loomed, and to express his sentiments on the coming changes. “The rights of Mankind, the privileges of the people, and the true principles of liberty,” Washington wrote on that New Year’s Day, “seem to have been more generally discussed & better understood throughout Europe since the American revolution than they were at any former period.”5 Washington saw America as a beacon for the Western world that would shine still brighter under the proposed new Constitution. Ratifying and implementing that Constitution, he believed, offered the best hope for Americans to preserve and expand their rights, privileges, and liberty.

  On the same day that Washington wrote to Jefferson, another Parisian resident, Lafayette, penned a letter to Washington offering warm wishes for a new year—one that he felt certain would lead to Washington’s selection as President. “I Read the New proposed Constitution with An unspeakable Eagerness and Attention,” Lafayette declared, “and find it is a Bold, large, and solid frame for the Confederation.” He objected only to the lack of a bill of rights and to the “great powers” and unlimited tenure of the President. By holding that executive office, Lafayette noted, Washington could correct these defects through his recommendations and precedents, “which cannot fail to insure a Greater perfection in the Constitution, and a New Crop of Glory to Yourself.” The letter, which opened with Lafayette’s depiction of himself as Washington’s “adoptive son” and closed with a pledge of “filial love,” spoke of his own hope for a constitution and bill of rights for France.6