Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  The battle swung back to Virginia where, by the end of March, the last of the elections to the convention had been held. Along with many weak Delegates, some counties had chosen able spokesmen who, in Washington’s words, would throw a “greater weight of abilities” against the Constitution than opponents had mustered in any other state. Mason was elected and was more violently hostile than ever to the document he had helped to draw. Henry also was to be a member and was believed to be implacable. Friends of a stronger central government began to admit that ratification by nine States was desirable before the Virginians met. Some were fearful the Old Dominion might reject if her Delegates were not certain the new government could become operative without Virginia. Washington believed the opposition weaker than before the polling and maintained that neither Virginia nor any other state could afford to remain outside the Union after nine made it a certainty.

  Madison went to work to form a coalition with Randolph, from whom Washington now expected feeble opposition, if any. The General undertook the delicate task of urging Maryland friends to prevent a move some of the adversaries of the Constitution had in mind—to adjourn their convention and await the action of Virginia. Postponement would be equivalent to rejection. That was the argument Washington advanced, because indications were that if Maryland acted at all, she would ratify. Maryland fulfilled Washington’s expectations by a decisive vote for the Constitution and thereby aided the cause in Virginia, where Henry’s followers had predicted their sister State would reject the new plan of government. Although it continued to be taken for granted that South Carolina would follow Maryland and be the eighth ratifying state, the uncertainty in Virginia alarmed northern and eastern friends of the Constitution. Washington wrote Lafayette on April 28 with something approaching awe:

  A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come. Should everything proceed with harmony and consent, according to our actual wishes and expectations, I must confess to you sincerely . . . it will be so much beyond anything we had a right to imagine or expect eighteen months ago that it will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it.

  Five days after Washington wrote this the Virginia convention met in Richmond. The General waited eagerly for news of its organization and initial debate, and when it came had to restrain himself lest he mistake a good beginning as assurance of a happy ending: A large number of Delegates had been present on the opening day and had voted to consider the Constitution paragraph by paragraph. On June 4, Henry began the attack with a demand for justification of the opening words, “We, the people.” Why was it not “We, the States”? This challenge forecast a fight over every line of the Constitution, but there were two encouraging items in the first report Washington received: Randolph had declared himself for ratification, and South Carolina had ratified.

  Some of Washington’s friends in the North, though not direct parties in the struggle of the Virginia convention, were sharers with him in his hope and enthusiasm. The vote in the Old Dominion, said Tench Coxe, would have great effect on New York; Anti-Federalists in that State, Edward Carrington reported, were shocked at the prospect that Virginia would ratify; the outlook in New Hampshire was favorable, said King and Washington’s young secretary, Tobias Lear; there might be a race between Virginia and New Hampshire for the honor of bringing the new government into being with the ninth state vote.

  Madison wrote Washington on June 23 that the discussion of the Constitution by paragraphs had been concluded. “Tomorrow,” he said, “some proposition for closing the business will be made.” The conversation of Anti-Federalists “seemed to betray despair,” but he concluded: “It is possible . . . that some adverse circumstance may happen.” Early on the twenty-eighth amazing news was brought to Washington’s door. The previous evening’s mail to Alexandria had contained the glorious report that on June 25 the convention had rejected by a vote of eighty-eight to eighty a motion to propose amendments to the Constitution prior to ratification. Then the Constitution had been accepted eighty-nine to seventy-nine. On receipt of this information, the town was illuminated, cannon fired and plans made to celebrate the birth of the new government. Virginia completed the requisite nine; the State that had moved for independence had made certain the full operation of the Constitution. At least that was the joyful boast in the Potomac port until two hours before daylight on the twenty-ninth. Then an express arrived with the intelligence that New Hampshire on June 21 had accepted the Constitution by a vote of fifty-seven to forty-six. Virginia was the tenth, not the ninth.

  The messenger who conveyed these happy tidings presented the General an invitation to attend the celebration in Alexandria that afternoon. With David Humphreys, who had been a guest at Mount Vernon for some months, and George Augustine he set out. A few miles outside Alexandria, Washington found a mounted group of townsmen awaiting him as an escort of honor. A salute of ten guns announced his arrival. At Wise’s Tavern, thirteen toasts were drunk after an elaborate dinner, each draft with the loud “Amen” of a cannon shot. “I think,” Washington wrote Pinckney, when he got home, “we may rationally indulge the pleasing hope that the Union will now be established upon a durable basis, and that Providence seems still disposed to favor the members of it, with unequalled opportunities for political happiness.” That was one view. Another was expressed by James Monroe to Thomas Jefferson: “Be assured [General Washington’s] influence carried this government.”

  Ratification by New Hampshire and Virginia relieved but did not remove the concern of Washington for successful organization of Federal government. Rhode Island, New York and North Carolina had not yet accepted the Constitution. The General thought Virginia’s southern neighbor would accede, and he did not attempt to predict what might occur in Rhode Island, whose dominant faction he denounced for “infamy” that “outgoes all precedent.” In spite of his own reasoning, which told him that New York must remain with her sister States, he somehow feared that powerful State might withdraw from the Union.

  Another uncertainty dogged him daily as he rode over his plantations and reflected on the future of America: In the States that had ratified the Constitution, would the Anti-Federalists continue to agitate for crippling amendments and attempt to obstruct the organization of the government? For a time after Virginia accepted the Constitution he felt relief because of the apparent acquiescence of Henry in the decision of the convention. It was gratifying, also, that many of those who had voted against ratification had now rejected a plan for a protest. This satisfaction lasted a few days only. Then the report from Richmond was that Anti-Federalism was far from dead.

  When James McHenry reported a whisper of a secret plan “to suspend the proper organization of the government or to defeat it altogether,” Washington’s counsel was realistic: In States where opposition was threatened, those “who are well-affected to the government [should] use their utmost exertions that the worthiest citizens may be appointed to the two houses of the first Congress.” Then, without overturning the new system of government, proper amendments to the Constitution should be approved.

  Two days after he wrote this Washington received news that was as pleasant as unexpected. On July 26 New York ratified the Constitution by a vote of thirty to twenty-seven—a victory for the Union and for Hamilton, a defeat for Governor Clinton. This action confirmed Washington in his belief that the Constitution could be put into operation without dangerous friction or strife; but he was displeased and perplexed when the New York convention sent out, over the signature of Clinton as President, a circular in which they called on the States to demand an early second convention to remove the defects of the Constitution. The North Carolina convention voted decisively against ratifying the Constitution and adjourned with a declaration that it neither ratified nor rejected the new system of gover
nment. Unaccountable as this course appeared to Washington, the refusal of Rhode Island and North Carolina to go forward with their sister States would not prevent the organization of the Union.

  He and hundreds of other Americans could hope that private as well as public happiness might be enlarged, at least insofar as happiness depended on gold. In August Washington confided to Doctor Craik: “I never felt the want of money so sensibly since I was a boy of 15 years old as I have done for the last twelve months and probably shall do for twelve months more to come.” To his humiliation, he had to put off the Sheriff of Fairfax County three times when that official came to collect money due on Mount Vernon and he had received warning that his lands in Greenbrier County would be sold unless taxes were paid. He could not remit the whole of what he owed Craik for medical attendance; the rector of his church was to send in November for pew rent of £5 that should have been forwarded in August. Washington had to devote many hours to finding money for day-by-day expenditures, but he maintained the confidence he always had about his own finances: his difficulties would be overcome in time, his peaceful life on the Potomac could be resumed in its quiet opulence and content. He told himself that he had performed his last public service in the Philadelphia Convention.

  This was his hope, but discussion of the Presidency which he had tried to disregard in the autumn of 1787 became brisker after the New Year. The Pennsylvania Packet mentioned Washington frequently as President-to-be—and never once spoke of anyone else for the office. The mail brought letters from old and distinguished friends whose appeals for his acceptance of the Presidency he could not ignore. Gen. John Armstrong wrote as if the hand of the Almighty had been placed on Washington’s head; a letter from Lafayette expressed some alarm over the magnitude of executive powers under’ the Constitution but voiced the belief that if Washington exercised the authority and found it dangerously great he would reduce it. For this and other reasons, Washington must consent to be President. A wish that he head the new government concluded a friendly letter from Rochambeau. In his answers to these letters Washington did not say he would refuse the Presidency; he affirmed only that he hoped it would not be offered him and that, if acceptance were unavoidable, it would represent the heaviest possible sacrifice.

  Without any prearrangement, the people’s celebration of the Fourth of July, 1788, became in large part a general call for the election of Washington as President. Public men echoed the public’s demand. Appropriately, the first who spoke in words that stirred and alarmed Washington proved to be Hamilton. With persuasive logic, Hamilton reviewed the circumstances and maintained that “. . . every public and personal consideration will demand from you an acquiescence in what will certainly be the unanimous wish of your country.” In like conviction that duty ran with public demand, Henry Lee and Benjamin Lincoln made their pleas. The newspapers, too, renewed their appeals, not so much this time in order to win Washington’s consent as to assure a unanimous vote for him. Washington had to admit to himself that he almost certainly would be the choice of the electors, and he wrote in manifest distress of spirit: “. . . if I should receive the appointment and if I should be prevailed upon to accept it, the acceptance would be attended with more diffidence and reluctance than I ever experienced before in my life.”

  Persuasive letters of friends did not cease, but, as it chanced, Washington had a quiet period at Mount Vernon. Service to friends and neighbors was neither particularly interesting nor unusually irksome and did not take him far from home. He had time in which to fight the battle between conscience and desire—between Hamilton’s “In a matter so essential . . . a citizen of so much consequence as yourself . . . has no option but to lend his services if called for” and his own “I have no wish which aspires beyond the humble and happy lot of living and dying a private citizen on my own farm.”

  The Congress of the Confederation by this time had carried out the recommendations made by the Convention. Presidential electors were to be chosen in the different States on the first Wednesday in January. These electors were to meet and cast their votes on the corresponding date in February. The similar Wednesday in March had been set “for commencing proceedings under the said Constitution.” New York was named as the meeting place.

  Washington believed in the free choice of electors but he took seriously the warning of Madison that the Anti-Federalists’ plan might be to “get a Congress appointed in the first instance that [would] commit suicide on their own authority.” The surest way of preventing this was to confront the Anti-Federalists boldly, resist premature amendment, and elect friends of the Constitution in sufficient number to control both Houses of Congress. In Virginia the choice of Senators by the General Assembly was completely under the control of Henry. He gave his endorsement to Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson and assured their election over Madison. Henry’s antagonism did not end there. He probably was the author of an appeal by the Virginia legislature to Congress for an immediate second convention to consider amendments. Henry was charged, further, with arranging the congressional districts in such a fashion that Madison’s county of Orange was put with others so strongly Anti-Federalist that Madison would have the utmost difficulty in procuring election to the House of Representatives. Virginia was divided into parties as hostile as if they had been piling up grievances for a generation. Washington did not lead the new battle, but he was heart and soul on the side of the Federalists. This was true, emphatically, of his views on the Presidency. He suspected that an effort would be made to have an advocate of destructive amendment of the Constitution placed at the head of the government. To this opinion he held, even though his informed political friends continued to assume that he would be chosen President as a matter of course.

  Washington told Lincoln: “. . . nothing in this world can ever draw me from [retirement], unless it be a conviction that the partiality of my countrymen had made my services absolutely necessary, joined to a fear that my refusal might induce a belief that I preferred the conservation of my own reputation and private ease to the good of my country.” In this same letter Washington expressed a decision that marked a definite change in his attitude toward the Presidency. Lincoln and others had been working with skill to have John Adams chosen as Vice President, and they sounded out Washington on his attitude towards the Massachusetts leader. The General’s answer was that Massachusetts might reasonably be expected to supply the Vice President. “. . . I would most certainly treat him,” said Washington of this hypothetical Vice President, “with perfect sincerity and the greatest candor in every respect. I would give him my full confidence and use my utmost endeavors to cooperate with him, in promoting and rendering permanent the national prosperity; this should be my great, my only aim, under the fixed and irrevocable resolution of leaving to other hands the helm of the State, as soon as my services could possibly with propriety be dispensed with.” There he stood: If he had to accept, he would hold the office no longer than national need required. He had mentioned that possibility previously but he never had adopted it as his main line of defence. At the end of November he still permitted himself to hope that he would not be elected and that, if he were, he might contrive to decline. All the while, he showed in his letters that his reason did not sustain his hope.

  The country did not share his doubt and confusion. Electors were chosen on the assumption that they would cast their votes for Washington who would not refuse the duty. Where contests were staged they were for seats in Congress. All the Senators elected in the seven States and reported by the second week in December were advocates of the Constitution or, at the least, could not be counted as Anti-Federalist, except for the two from Virginia. No less encouraging was the outlook for a sympathetic House of Representatives. Washington’s chief concern was for the Representatives from his own State. Fortunately, when the contest was hottest, Madison let it be known that as the Constitution had been ratified and would be put into effect, he thought needed amendments could and should be made. This a
nnouncement destroyed the chief basis of opposition and contributed to a victory for him on February 2. Somewhat to Washington’s surprise, five more Federalists, perhaps six, triumphed in the ten districts of Virginia. News of the choice of Representatives in other States came slowly, but it continued to point to the election of a Congress zealous to support the Constitution.

  Anti-Federalists did not oppose Washington for President, but they appeared to be concerting for the election of a man of their own creed for second place. The individual most often mentioned as their candidate for Vice President was George Clinton to whom Washington was bound by many ties of memory and personal obligation, but he knew that Clinton or any man of like views, might seek, as Madison had put it, to have the new government commit suicide. The practical method of dealing with such a possibility was to make common cause with Adams in whose candidacy for Vice President Washington had been increasingly pleased. Adams was a safe man to whom the presidential office eventually could be entrusted; no Anti-Federalist was. Washington let it be known in Virginia and Maryland that votes for Adams would be agreeable to him and seemed “the only certain way to prevent the election of an Anti-Federalist.”

  It now was the end of January 1789. Soon Washington began to receive, piecemeal, news that the electors in the eastern, northern and middle States had done the expected and had cast their votes for him as President. On February 16 Knox wrote: “It appears by the returns of elections hitherto obtained, which is as far as Maryland southward, that your Excellency has every vote for President and Mr. John Adams twenty-eight for Vice-President exclusive of New Jersey and Delaware, whose votes for Vice [President] are not known.” When Virginia’s vote was added to those the result was beyond change by anything South Carolina and Georgia might do. Washington had been elected and, so far, unanimously! Even Henry, as a Virginia elector, had voted for him.