The Return of George Washington

by Edward Larson

  With lawmakers doing the choosing in Connecticut, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Georgia, the process in those states quickly and quietly led to the selection of reliable federalist electors. Indeed, in a letter to Washington, the Speaker of Connecticut’s Assembly attributed the decision to have lawmakers choose electors to the conviction that the heavily federalist state assembly would exercise more “judgment & discretion” than the people at large.23 As it turned out, all of Connecticut’s seven electors had served as delegates to the state ratifying convention and voted for the Constitution. The results were much the same in the other states that appointed electors, with South Carolina naming a particularly distinguished group that included former Continental Congress president Henry Laurens, signer of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Heyward, and former Constitutional Convention delegate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. In fact, most of South Carolina’s electors knew Washington personally and several of them had visited him at Mount Vernon.

  The remaining two states, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, used a mixed approach to select electors. Adapting more than two centuries of New England democratic tradition to a radically new political situation, they convened town meetings in mid-December for citizens to nominate and vote for electors. The names of candidates receiving the most votes went forward to the state legislature, which made the final selection. Not many people turned out for these special meetings, and most of the attention focused on contests for Congress, which took place at the same time. Nevertheless, the procedure worked well for federalists.24 “By the returns of Gentlemen for electors of President,” Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Lincoln reported to Washington after this first round of the process ended in Massachusetts, “we cannot have a bad set indeed we must have a good one. What we call good here are Gentlemen who love the constitution & will vote for _______ President.”25 The blank line, of course, stood for Washington.

  The only glitch in the process occurred in New Hampshire, when the two legislative houses split over whether to make the final decision by joint or separate ballot. Just minutes before midnight on January 7, the House gave way because its members, as one newspaper reported, did not want New Hampshire to miss the deadline “and thereby be prevented from paying that tribute which her citizens owe to the great American Fabius,” Washington.26

  News of these developments trickled into Mount Vernon through newspapers and letters from across the country during January. While invariably welcome, the reports finally laid to rest Washington’s peculiar notion that he might be spared the presidency through an antifederalist election triumph. “If the friends of the Constitution conceive that my administering the government will be a means of its acceleration and strength, is it not probable that the adversaries of it may entertain the same idea?” Washington had asked Hamilton in October 1788. “That many of this description will become Electors, I can have no Doubt.”27 On New Year’s Day 1789, Washington could still write about the presidency, “the choice is as yet very far from being certain.”28 Perhaps he believed the rumors circulated by the federalist press about Henry; perhaps he just wanted to believe them. By the end of January, however, Washington realized that federalists had virtually swept the election.

  “With all the electors yet chosen,” the Massachusetts Centinel reported in a January 21 article that surely reached Washington, “the American Fabius and Mr. Adams, are the persons for President and Vice-President of the United States—and in this the people appear to say Amen.”29 By this point, Fabius was eclipsing Cincinnatus as the favored Roman name for Washington, reflecting Fabius’s fame as a political and military savior.

  By month’s end, as if to acknowledge the massive federalist elector triumph, Washington began preparing for his inauguration by asking Henry Knox in New York to buy and send him cloth for a new suit. Washington appreciated fine clothes and, like most wealthy American gentlemen of his day, his finest ones came from Europe. Before this time, no American mill had looms capable of weaving suit-quality broadcloth. In January, Washington saw an advertisement in a New York newspaper for superfine textile from a new Connecticut woolen mill. He thought that wearing a suit cut from American cloth at his inauguration might make a statement about domestic manufacturing. He asked Knox to send enough material for a suit for himself and a riding habit for his wife. He left the choice of color for the suit to Knox, noting only that, “if the dye should not appear to be well fixed, & clear, or if the cloth should not really be very fine, then (in my Judgment) some colour mixed in grain might be preferable.” Knox chose brown.30

  Washington may have borrowed the idea. In early January, the Federal Gazette, which Washington often read, published two articles about new lines of domestic textiles suitable for formal dress. One of them expressly urged newly elected federal officials to wear “complete suits of American manufactured cloth” when sworn into office. Such a display, the article predicted, would do more good “than twenty laws to encourage American manufacturing, or to restrain undue or improper imports.”31 Washington explained his own motives in a letter to Lafayette. “I have been writing to our friend Genl Knox this day, to procure me homespun broad cloth,” Washington wrote on January 29. “I hope it will not be a great while, before it will be unfashionable for a gentleman to appear in any other dress.”32

  GATHERING IN THEIR RESPECTIVE STATES, America’s chosen electors voted on February 4. “The events of this day will be as important as ever occurred in the annals of America,” the Massachusetts Centinel asserted. “It is the prayer of every friend to our dear country that no warring and contradictory spirit may prevail.”33 Unity, at least in this newspaper’s view, meant all voting for Washington. While Congress would not open the sealed ballots from each state and count the votes for at least a month, more-or-less accurate reports seeped out about how the electors voted. Papers across America published these reports as they came in so that readers could follow the rising totals.

  Relying as much on predictions as solid information, the tallies from early February overstated the sums for Adams and Clinton by discounting the extent of vote scattering, but they were right on Washington: a clean sweep everywhere.34 “By the accounts received last evening from Connecticut, we learn that their Electors have been unanimous for Mr. Washington, and five out of seven were for Mr. Adams,” read a typical mid-month report. “In Pennsylvania the Electors were unanimous for Washington; and six out of the ten, for Mr. Adams.”35 These figures came close to correct, and by month’s end many papers had them right except for returns from far-off Georgia, which remained a mystery across most of the country into March.

  Washington followed these returns from Mount Vernon, where he received them in newspapers and personal letters. Fittingly, the final item came in a letter from Madison, who, on his way to Congress in early March, fell in with the bearer of Georgia’s electoral votes. “They are all unanimous as to the President and are all thrown away on individuals of the State as to the Vice President,” he reported to Washington.36 Even this did not get the votes quite right, because one of Georgia’s scattered second votes went to Washington’s old friend Benjamin Lincoln of Massachusetts, but the main point was clear. Washington had swept the state, and with it the country. As it turned out, Georgia’s electors had voted in an Augusta coffeehouse under the watchful eyes of former Continental Army officers. When the electors announced the vote, those officers discharged thirteen rounds from two cannons in honor of their former commander in chief.37 Washington had devoted supporters in even the most remote states and, despite the large egos of the revolutionary generation, virtually no one begrudged him the presidency.

  February also brought Washington’s birthday. With enthusiasm mounting over his ascension to the presidency, the day took on popular significance. During the colonial era, Americans joined British subjects everywhere in celebrating the king’s birthday. They no longer recognized the date, of course, except to mock their former monarch, but, hungry for holidays, they began to celebrate Washingt
on’s birthday instead. In 1789, for example, Philadelphians marked the day with church bells ringing, cannons firing, and a banquet opening with the toast, “May General Washington preside as President of the United States of America.”38 As for the temporarily deranged king in England, his delusions had become so grandiose that he now fancied himself George Washington! Gouverneur Morris reported this bizarre development in the madness of King George to Washington in a late February letter from Paris, which also noted that Washington’s acceptance of the presidency would enhance America’s standing in Europe.39 For his part, Washington took these potentially head-turning reports in stride along with all his many tributes.

  AMERICANS KNEW THE ELECTION’S OUTCOME by early March but the Constitution mandated that, to make it official, the Senate president must open the certified ballots before a joint session of Congress, and have the votes counted. This could not happen until Congress convened, which the law formally set for March 4, but it also required the presence of a majority of the members in each house. The old Congress had not had a quorum for five months and expired without adjourning on March 3, long after it ceased functioning. To mark the transition, cannons at the Battery in lower Manhattan fired thirteen rounds for the states of the old confederation at sunset on the third and eleven rounds for the states in the new union at sunrise on the fourth.40 North Carolina and Rhode Island remained outside looking in as the new Constitution took effect.

  The much-celebrated new Congress could no more convene on the fourth than the much maligned old Congress could adjourn on the third, however, because it, too, lacked a quorum. Only eight of twenty senators and thirteen of fifty-nine representatives arrived on time. Heavy, unstable ice in the rivers of the middle states slowed travel for members coming from the South.41 Some from nearby states stayed home until a quorum mustered.

  The resulting delay in counting the electoral votes left Washington waiting in the wings, as he had no desire to leave Mount Vernon until formally called to office. He used the extended time at home to tie up loose ends. In late February, he made one last trip to inspect work on Potomac River navigation before resigning his position with the project.

  Early March brought a final visit to his eighty-one-year-old mother in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Few visits to this demanding woman ever went well for Washington, and this trip may have been one of the worst. Since he had first sought to join the navy more than four decades earlier, she had always tried to stop him from taking posts that took him far from home. For her, none of his honors, none of his fame, could compensate for a perceived lack of filial piety. As she lay dying from untreatable cancer, he came one last time to take leave of her for a distant duty. At the time, Washington referred to this visit as “the last Act of personal duty, I may, (from her age) ever have it in my power to pay upon my Mother.”42 If nothing else, she had given him a strong will and now he left her to die without him.

  Also in March, Washington sent a letter with detailed instructions to the nephew who would oversee Mount Vernon in his absence. “Frugality & economy are . . . all that is required,” Washington wrote about managing the plantation that still supplied most of his income.43 But frugality and economy, as he frankly added, were rarely practiced at Mount Vernon. Between his slaves, servants, and family, Washington had more than four hundred mouths to feed on the plantation. In addition, he entertained a steady stream of visitors, sometimes many at the same time. “Unless some one pops in unexpectedly,” Washington wrote to his longtime secretary Tobias Lear in 1798, “Mrs Washington and myself will do what I believe has not been done within the last twenty years by us, that is to set down to dinner by ourselves.”44 This period covered his years at Mount Vernon following his retirement from the military in 1783.45 These expenses combined with two years of poor crops caused by bad weather and an inability to lease or sell his frontier holdings at a profit because of instability in the Ohio Valley left Washington land-rich but cash-poor by the time he became President. “My means are not adequate to the expence at which I have lived since my retirement,” he now admitted to his nephew. At least as President, Washington added, the government would cover his expenses. “If this had not happened,” he noted, frugality and economy would have become his own lot, too.46

  Before departing, Washington dealt with the immediate consequences of living beyond his means. So as not to leave Virginia with outstanding debts, he borrowed money at interest for the first time in his life. “Never ’till within these two yrs have I experienced the want of money,” Washington explained to a local lender on March 4. “Short Crops, & other causes not entirely within my Controul, make me feel it now . . . and Land, which I have offered for Sale, will not command cash but at an under value.”47 He asked for five hundred pounds and agreed to what he later described as “rigid conditions” on the loan, which included paying the maximum legal interest rate of 6 percent.48 Two days later, Washington asked for one hundred more pounds to cover “the expences of my Journey to New York.”49 He initially tried to borrow twice that total amount and later asked a wealthy friend for a loan, presumably to refinance the earlier one at a lower rate, but never obtained alternative credit and ultimately took nearly two years to repay the six-hundred-pound note. To raise more cash, Washington sent demand letters to his own debtors in March, some offering discounts for prompt payment, but got little in return.

  THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES finally gained a quorum on April 1, but the Senate still remained one shy of half. “I feel for those Members of the New Congress, who, hitherto, have given an unavailing attendance,” Washington wrote to Knox on that day. “For myself, the delay may be compared to a reprieve; for . . . my movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied with feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of execution.” He described himself as unequal to the task ahead, but promised to bring integrity and firmness to the job. “I am embarking the voice of my Countrymen and a good name of my own, on this voyage,” he concluded, “but what returns will be made for them—heaven alone can foretell.”50

  Still not knowing when Congress would call him to New York, Washington sent Tobias Lear and a trusted house slave named Will ahead to prepare for his arrival. Martha Washington decided to remain behind until her husband settled into permanent quarters. Governor Clinton had offered his home as a temporary residence, but Washington did not want to accept favors from any individuals, even close friends. “Hired (private) lodging would not only be more agreeable to my own wishes,” he wrote to Madison on March 30, “but, possibly, more consistent with the dictates of sound policy.” Washington asked Madison to find something for him before he arrived, if only “rooms at the most decent Tavern.”51

  The delay in convening Congress also gave workers more time to complete renovations on the building that would house the new government. A rounded, colonial structure built in 1700 to serve as New York’s City Hall and depicted by some as “a gothic heap,” the new “Federal Hall” received a complete face-lift under the direction of French-born civil engineer Peter Charles L’Enfant, who had served on Washington’s staff during the Revolutionary War and later devised the city plan for Washington, D.C.52 Topped now with a towering cupola and fronted by a second-floor outer balcony or “gallery,” the building remained sheathed in scaffolding even after Congress began meeting. The timbers finally came down in mid-April, revealing a new, upright façade with Doric columns capped by a classical pediment inset with an imposing American eagle. “The general appearance of this front is truly august,” New York’s Gazette of the United States reported on April 22.53 It helped give birth to the new Federal style, which dominated American architecture for a generation.

  The arrival of Richard Henry Lee from Virginia finally supplied the quorum needed for the Senate to organize and then meet in joint session with the House on April 6 for the counting of electoral votes. Elected to the Senate by antifederalists in Virginia with the hope that he would throw sand in the federal machinery, Lee visited Mo
unt Vernon on his way to New York and cemented his peace with Washington in a letter sent on April 6. “On this day we went to business, and to my very great satisfaction I heard a unanimous vote of the electing States in favor of calling you to the honorable office President,” Lee informed the General. “The public happiness, which I know you have so much at heart, will be very insecure without your acceptance.”54 Madison wrote on the same day to explain that Congress would send Charles Thomson to notify Washington officially of the election results.55 An early patriot in the mold of John Dickinson, Thomson had served as Congress’s hands-on secretary since 1774.

  After a week on the road, Thomson arrived at Mount Vernon about noon on April 14 with the news that Washington both expected and dreaded. “I am honored with the commands of the Senate to wait upon your Excellency with the information of your being elected to the office of President,” Thomson stated. “You are called not only by the unanimous votes of the Electors but by the voice of America.”56 Knowing that his words would reach a national audience, Washington spoke from a prepared text. “I have been long accustomed to entertain so great a respect for the opinion of my fellow citizens, that the knowledge of their unanimous suffrages having been given in my favour scarcely leaves me the alternative for an Option,” he said. “While I realize the arduous nature of the task which is conferred on me and feel my inability to perform it, I wish there may not be reason for regretting the choice.” To Thomson, then, Washington added, “I shall therefore be in readiness to set out the day after to morrow, and shall be happy in the pleasure of your company.”57 They would travel in Washington’s closed carriage together with Humphreys and, perched outside, three or four liveried servants.58 Thus began a 250-mile journey that had no American precedent and few parallels: a grand inaugural procession consummating America’s love affair with George Washington.