Determination of main lines of policy did not require many days, nor did Washington have to sit long at his desk in preparing notes for his message to Congress which, according to his calendar of events, was to assemble on October 31. Details were put aside for leisured review at Mount Vernon, whither the President turned his carriage again on September 15. This time, the reason was necessity: George Augustine Washington, in a pathetic condition—had gone to Berkeley Springs in the hope of regaining strength. The owner of Mount Vernon had to make arrangements for operating the estate during his nephew’s absence. The General reached home on September 20 and commenced a survey of his affairs. His most important task after a deathly dry summer was instructing Anthony Whiting, who had succeeded Bloxham as his head farmer, in management of the property; but, as always, scores of lesser matters awaited his decision. In addition Washington had considerable correspondence with officials in Philadelphia and continued to direct the preparation of material for his address to Congress. Everything seemed to be in smooth progression, when, from a letter received October 13, Washington discovered that he had made a mistake concerning the date of the meeting of Congress: it was to assemble on the twenty-fourth, not on the thirty-first. No time was lost after that. Word was sent to Philadelphia for speed in collecting the information he would require.
Washington’s address on the twenty-fifth had a cheerful opening and prime emphasis on operations against the western Indians, but it contained no important suggestion on new legislation other than that the law imposing an excise on spirits be revised where valid objection was disclosed. Most of the later paragraphs dealt with recommendations previously made and not yet enacted. Congress’s response was one of unenthusiastic approval that slowly shaped itself into bills considered in leisured debate. Gradually, there developed a new vigor of dispute and a closer approach to rival philosophies, but the antagonisms of large States and small, Eastern interests and Southern, prevailed on occasion over the abstract question of the scope of Federal power.
Washington had to remain in Philadelphia throughout a session that proved inordinately long. Time-consuming was the President’s continuing responsibility for the District of Columbia, though he used the services of Jefferson as far as practicable and insisted officials and employees under the District commissioners report through them. When the principal surveyor, Major L’Enfant, quarreled with the men to whom he was responsible, Washington tried several devices to retain the services of the brilliant designer but came to the conclusion that L’Enfant could not work in harness. Dismissal of the engineer was distressing, but no alternative existed.
Another continuing labor was presented by the ominous decline in the health of George Augustine. Fortunately, Whiting seemed to possess both intelligence and industry and took ever an increasing share of the work on the estate. During the autumn, because of Congress, L’Enfant and Mount Vernon, Washington had a heavy load but he carried it without getting—to use his own words—“on a stretch.” October brought a development in relations with England: a British Minister, George Hammond, the first diplomatic agent to be accredited formally to America, arrived in Philadelphia to take up his residence there. As soon as practicable, Washington selected Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, for the corresponding post at the Court of St. James’s.
No question so frequently was discussed at the President’s conference with his heads of departments as that of relations with the Indians. Almost every informed public servant in the United States believed a settlement with Britain would put an end to most of the murderous raids along the Ohio and its tributaries. Peace with the Creeks would be easy when Spain no longer supplied them with powder and arms. Meantime, Washington continued to work for amity with well disposed tribes and for victory over the coalition against which St. Clair had been dispatched.
On December 8 unofficial reports were received in Philadelphia of a costly defeat sustained by St. Clair within fifteen miles of the Miami town where he was to establish a post. It was said that his casualties reached no less than six hundred and that Gen. Richard Butler and other senior officers were among the slain. The next evening, Washington received dispatches from St. Clair that included words to make the President set his jaw: “Yesterday afternoon, the remains of the army under my command got back to this place, and I now have the painful task to give you an account of as warm and as unfortunate an action as almost any that has been fought, in which every corps was engaged and worsted, except the First Regiment. That had been detached. . . .” St. Clair had been warned against surprise, yet he had permitted the Indians to gain overpowering advantage almost before the alarm could be sounded!
Washington, on reading St. Clair’s report, could not have overlooked a postscript in which the ill-faring commander remarked that “some very material intelligence” had been communicated by Capt. Jacob Slough to General Butler during the night before the action but was not forwarded to St. Clair or known to him for days. A man less self-mastered than Washington might have winced at that, because he had appointed Butler to command in the face of protests. Good soldier or poor, vigilant or forgetful, Butler was dead and, with him, thirty-eight other officers. Twenty-one who held commissions were wounded. Casualties exceeded nine hundred. All the cannon with the main force had been lost. The “most disgraceful part of the business,” said St. Clair, “is that the greatest part of the men threw away their arms and accoutrements, even after the pursuit . . . had ceased.” Nothing so humiliating to the white man had been experienced in Indian warfare since Braddock’s bewildered Redcoats had been the target of unseen marksmen on the Monongahela.
Washington, after a first wrathful outburst, took this defeat in the spirit he had shown when disasters had come to his arms in days far darker. When members of Congress reassembled Monday the twelfth, the President sent a message in which he said: “Although the national loss is considerable, according to the scale of the event, yet it may be repaired without great difficulty, excepting as to the brave men who have fallen on the occasion, and who are a subject of public as well as private regret.” Copies of St. Clair’s reports were sent precisely as received, and when published, they were complete. Not even the ugliest line on the beaten troops was eliminated. Washington had learned the value of candor in dealing with the American people and he knew that one reason for their trust in him was their belief he would tell them the whole truth. Inquiry by Congress was not avoided, nor was public criticism silenced by this forthright action. Washington himself was not blamed; Knox escaped with less abuse than he might have expected; there was sympathy, rather than obloquy, for St. Clair. Chiefly, the fault was laid at the doors of army contractors. The most vigorous discussion had to do with methods of Indian warfare and with the ethics of occupying Indian territory. Feeling was moderated gradually by the successful outcome of negotiations with the Senecas and the Cherokees and by the resignation of St. Clair. Sharpened zeal was manifested for peace with the Indians. Such dealings would be enforceable by an adequate army, the command of which stirred the ambition of soldiers and the partisanship of politicians. The officers finally continued were Anthony Wayne as Major General and Rufus Putnam and Otho Williams as Brigadiers. To strengthen further the national defence, Congress passed the previously contested bill for uniform militia. All in all, St. Clair’s defeat did not impair Washington’s reputation and indirectly gave the Federal government the means of making its will more effective in a day of danger.
When it was intimated to Jefferson that Spain was willing to discuss free navigation of the Mississippi, Washington nominated William Carmichael, Chargé at Madrid, and William Short, who held a similar post at Paris, to undertake negotiations to extend to commercial relations with Spain and perhaps even with those of her colonial possessions. This proposal became snarled with a recommendation to send Gouverneur Morris to France with the rank of Minister, and Short to The Hague with like status, but in the end all the nominations were confirmed.
Differences of opinio
n concerning the policy in dealing with Spain were mild compared with the struggle in Congress over the reapportionment of representation to conform to the census of 1790. Now that reasonably accurate figures on the inhabitants of the States were available, changes from the provisional representation adopted in 1787 were required. The first Congress had sixty-five members of the House; Vermont added two more, and Kentucky, when admitted, would bring the total to sixty-nine. Those figures would be increased by any apportionment Congress was apt to endorse, because the census gave a population of 3,893,000. If the country’s 697,000 slaves were reckoned at three-fifths of their actual number for purposes of representation, the net population entitled to spokesmen in Congress would be approximately 3,614,000. With one Representative for every 30,000 of these, the membership permitted in the House would be 121. Many States would gain; none would lose representation. Members of Congress went back to their school exercises in long division to determine on what basis their States would have the largest possible number of Representatives in the lower House and the lowest “remainder” of “unrepresented” population. In nearly all their calculations, these mathematicians found that gains for their own constituencies involved concessions to other States they did not wish to strengthen. Final legislation proposed a House of 120 members and seemed to some opponents a trick to enlarge the delegations from New England by bribing those from a sufficient number of other States to assure a majority for the measure.
The bill was presented to Washington on March 26, 1792. For about a week he kept his own counsel, and then, April 3, he called on Randolph for an opinion and directed the Attorney General to get the views of the heads of departments for his consideration the next day. When the opinions were summarized Washington found his counsellors equally divided: Jefferson and Randolph held the bill unconstitutional, primarily because it did not apply the same fixed ratio to each of the States separately; Hamilton and Knox did not affirm the measure constitutional beyond all dispute, but they argued that the President would do well to accept the judgment of the legislative branch.
This conflict of opinion disturbed Washington, who had until April 6 to make up his mind. If he did not return the bill by the close of proceedings that Friday, it would become law without his signature. On the morning of the fifth the President called on Jefferson before breakfast and, after a few preliminaries, described his dilemma: The principle applied in determining representation certainly was not the one the Delegates to the Philadelphia Convention had in mind, but it might be defensible. Besides, the final vote for and against the measure had been geographical: if he disapproved the bill, it might be thought that he was taking sides with a Southern party. Jefferson admitted this embarrassment but said he did not think it justified action that would be fundamentally wrong. After he left the Secretary’s quarters, Washington sent a messenger for the Attorney General. Randolph was instructed to find Madison and go with the Congressman to the Secretary of State. If they united in advising that he should disapprove the bill, they were to draw up a statement for him to send to Congress. Randolph returned ere long with the draft of a brief message not favoring the bill.
The proposed message was dispatched to the House, the first “negative” of any legislation passed by Congress. The paper was received with protests by certain of Washington’s Northern supporters in Congress, while most Southern members, Jefferson’s followers in particular, expressed satisfaction. Resulting action of Congress vindicated Washington’s veto. A motion to pass the bill in spite of him failed in the lower chamber; a revised bill that provided a House of 103 members was passed after discussion on two days only. The Senate concurred the day this bill was laid before it; Washington had the satisfaction on the fourteenth of signing a measure which increased House membership by thirty-six.
In this long contest it had seemed natural, unhappily, that South should be arrayed against East, and that Jefferson’s opinion had been the reverse of Hamilton’s. This was becoming the daily order of politics. In November 1791 Federalist Fisher Ames wrote that “tranquility has soothed the surface” but “faction glows within like a coalpit”; before the end of January 1792 he was saying, “I do not believe that the hatred of the Jacobites toward the House of Hanover was ever more deadly than that which is borne by many of the partisans of State power towards the government of the United States.” In the larger strategy of government—funding, assumption, excise and protection of American manufactures by high duties—Hamilton still had the better of the struggle for power; but in the tactics of contest, he carelessly remained on the defensive while Jefferson enjoyed the rewards of a vigorous offensive. The fiscal policy of the government was alleged by the Republicans to be responsible for the speculative mania that ruined hundreds of men in the spring and summer of 1791. A second charge against Hamilton, and a most effective one in appealing to voters, was that he lacked sympathy with republican ideals and was at heart an enemy of the institutions established by the war for independence. Jefferson’s adherents directed their third attack against the excise, which they regarded as Hamilton’s creation. The Federalists had their journalistic gladiator in John Fenno, editor of the Gazette of the United States, and the Republicans their champion in Philip Freneau and his National Gazette. Although Fenno could hit hard on occasion, he did not possess the resourcefulness and skill of Freneau in finding quickly and exploiting boldly a new line of attack on the opposition.
Before the end of the session of Congress Washington had achieved the state of mind in which he paid little heed to newspaper debate that was not offensively personal to him, but he observed the widening rift between his two principal officers of administration. He listened when they talked of their differences of political opinion but, as yet, made no answer to them and contented himself with setting an example of equal regard for all honest elements in politics. There was, he believed, no personal ill will between Jefferson and Hamilton; their clashes were those of principle. He would do what he could to confine divergent opinion and would employ his most resolute endeavor to prevent a disintegration of the Union because of the antagonisms between North and South. On occasion he found himself less active and business in consequence more irksome. The prospect of retiring in March 1793 was increasingly sweet.
He passed without visible impatience through the final weeks of a session that produced better legislation than had been expected of it. Washington had made or renewed seven major recommendations. Those relating to the excise, reapportionment of representation, creation of a uniform militia, improvement of the postal service, and establishment of a mint had been enacted into law. Nothing positive had been done with respect to the introduction of a system of standard weights and measures or the disposal of vacant land. On its own initiative Congress had arranged for the succession to the Presidency, revised the system of invalid pensions and indemnified Nathanael Greene’s estate for a bond he had given to supply his troops with provisions. An extension to March 1, 1793, had been granted for the tender of notes to be assumed by the Federal government; an effort to have the United States Treasury pay for a further assumption of state debts was beaten in the face of much maneuver. By the terms of a most important measure, the President was authorized to call out the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions. Not a bill was passed that seemed to Washington imprudent, nor had Congress voted adversely on any measure he was known to favor. Some actions he had recommended had been postponed but none had been denied outright.
Washington had confided to Madison and the heads of Departments his growing inclination to retire at the end of his term. Hamilton and Knox had done their utmost to dissuade him. Randolph had felt that Washington should accept reelection. Madison had said that the President’s retirement would be a shock to the people. Jefferson had spoken against such a step but not as if he thought the President was to be shaken from his decision. The judgment of the Secretary of State seemed to be warranted. Washington found his duties more bu
rdensome and the rising resentments of party more unreasonable. Newspaper criticism, he reflected, undoubtedly was aimed at him though ostensibly it was directed at subordinates. He believed “his return to private life was consistent with every public consideration,” as surely as it accorded with his own inclination—and wished to settle as quickly as he could the question of how he should announce his intention in a manner to make it plain that he was not presuming he would be elected if willing to serve. On this he decided to ask the counsel of Madison, who also could be of help in preparing the text of a farewell address. Washington found Madison convinced that he should not retire. Madison’s strongest argument, perhaps, was that the rise of party spirit was a reason for continuing as President rather than a reason for declining reelection. Madison had more to say that was logical but not convincing or persuasive. The two men separated with the understanding that Madison was to reflect on the question of when and how Washington’s proposed retirement was to be announced, though the younger man repeated the hope that no decision would be necessary.
Washington left Philadelphia May 10 with Lear in attendance, for a hurried journey to Mount Vernon, where he found the crops flourishing. George Augustine, however, had declined sadly since the last visit of his uncle. The one available man to relieve “The Major” was Whiting, who already had taken over many of George Augustine’s duties. Washington decided to give him a trial, though this would call for closer supervision from Philadelphia.
Perhaps this circumstance increased Washington’s desire to return home on conclusion of his term. The more he reflected on the question of a second administration, the more firmly did he find himself disposed to decline if it were offered him. In anticipatory quiet he let his mind dwell on the valedictory statement he might make to fellow citizens about their government and themselves. On the way back to Philadelphia, he met Madison on the road and delivered a letter in which he sketched his valedictory and described his dilemma: he still could not decide in what manner he could decline reelection without posing the assumption that a second term would be his if he desired it. In his eyes, arrogance was worse than ignorance, and bad manners second only to bad morals.
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