Back in Philadelphia May 28, Washington found foreign relations and Indian affairs at a stage that called for much consultation with Jefferson and Knox. Minister Hammond at last was ready to discuss with the Secretary of State the execution of the peace treaty. Washington was not optimistic. The negative outcome of the first meeting consequently did not disappoint Washington greatly, but he followed subsequent cautious exchanges with care. Doubtless, too, he kept himself informed on Jefferson’s instructions to Thomas Pinckney, the American Minister who was about to leave for London. The President did not look for an early settlement with Britain, but he intended to continue his efforts, especially as the activity of a Spanish agent in the Creek country was creating a suspicion that Madrid and London might be working together against America. Whether England and Spain were or were not responsible, Indian affairs had reached a distressful state. Knox was disturbed over the criticism and alarm that St. Clair’s defeat had evoked. Kentucky was demanding protection against the savages; Washington unhesitatingly pledged it and, in his old fighting spirit, awaited developments. For a time, to the surprise of many, the frontier was tranquil, though military preparation continued as if an Indian war had to be faced.
Washington’s prime concern remained the question of retirement. Jefferson wrote him a most earnest plea that he consent to reelection. The letter indicted the speculators and alleged monarchists and urged that Washington add “one or two more to the many years [he had] already sacrificed to the good of mankind.”
“Your being at the helm,” said the Secretary of State, “will be more than an answer to every argument which can be used to alarm and lead the people in any quarter into violence or secession.” Then Jefferson added in a fine turn of phrase: “North and South will hang together if they have you to hang on.”
When Washington left for Mount Vernon again July 11 he had a text to ponder in a carefully prepared draft by Madison of what a retiring President should say and when he should say it. As Washington approached his home he saw evidence of a drought so severe that the corn appeared to be ruined, but when he stopped at Georgetown he had the gratification of seeing much better designs for the public buildings than previously had been offered. “It was a pleasure indeed,” he said, “to find, in an infant country, such a display of architectural abilities.” Pleasure there was, also, in being free of the endless appointments and unrelaxed inquisition of the temporary capital, but there was no escaping the correspondence of the presidential office. It was brought in the mailbag from Alexandria as inexorably, if not as frequently, as it had been laid on his desk in Philadelphia. All this meant that Washington had much work to do with no clerical help, in a household made unhappy by the extreme illness of Major Washington, during a most unhealthy season and at a time when the General’s need of money was great.
If, improbably, he had thought that private affairs could have first attention and public business be left to aestivate the summer through, developments on the frontier soon would have aroused him. It was reported that officers sent to the western Indians to negotiate peace had been murdered and that Spanish agents had been inciting the Creeks to hostility. Reports told of the arrival in New Orleans of five regiments of Spanish troops who were to be followed by a like number from Havana. Simultaneously, negotiations were under way with friendly tribes, whose failure to be satisfied with American offers might lead them to look to the British or the Spanish. War then might be inevitable. Washington gave the largest discretion to the Secretary of War. Representation should be made to the Spanish commissioners that their government was not suspected of unfriendly action in the Creek country but that the evidence against certain Spanish officers was too strong and too important to ignore. Washington declared that if the Spanish were intriguing as Americans believed this would make the President suspicious “that there is a very clear understanding in all this business between the courts of London and Madrid and that it is calculated to check, as far as they can, the rapid increase, extension and consequence of this country.”
This state of affairs seemed to Washington all the more sinister because partisan division—and animosity between Hamilton and Jefferson—was deepening every hour. It was a situation that made inquiry proper. Hamilton must be given opportunity of explaining objections made by the Secretary of State. Nothing was withheld and nothing softened in a paper the President sent Hamilton with the simple statement that he sought only “to obtain light and to pursue truth.” Would Hamilton write out his “ideas upon the discontents here enumerated”?
When Washington wrote this at Mount Vernon, the advantage that Freneau had won in Philadelphia over the Gazette of the United States was being lost. Fenno’s sponsors had come to his support. While the tide of controversy was running strongly in Fenno’s favor, Hamilton replied on August 18 to Washington’s twenty-one inquiries. The Secretary of the Treasury said in a letter that accompanied his fourteen-thousand-word answer:
You will observe that here and there some severity appears. I have not fortitude enough always to hear with calmness calumnies which necessarily include me, as a principal agent in the measures censured, of the falsehood of which I have the most unqualified consciousness. I trust I shall always be able to bear, as I ought, imputations of error of judgment; but I acknowledge that I cannot be entirely patient under charges which impeach the integrity of my public motives or conduct. I feel that I merit them in no degree; and expressions of indignation sometimes escape me, in spite of every effort to suppress them. I rely on your goodness for the allowances.
The document was all denial or refutation, with the single exception that speculative dealings in government securities “had some bad effects among those engaged in it,” though this doubtless was unavoidable. Much of the paper echoed the keen reasoning of the earlier reports on public credit; allegations of stock-jobbing were met with the statement that Hamilton did not know a single member of Congress who could “properly be called a stock-jobber or a paper-dealer”; his reply to the favorite charge of Republicans that the way was being prepared for a change to a monarchy was a flat denial, with the added remark “that the project, from its absurdity, refutes itself.” Towards the end of his answer, Hamilton came to the objection, “The owners of the debt are in the Southern, and the holders of it in the Northern division.” Said Hamilton: “If this were literally true, it would be no argument for or against anything. It would be still politically and morally right for the debtors to pay their creditors.” From that he proceeded to a discussion of economic differences between North and South and the effect of the war in determining debtors and creditors—the sort of argument most certain to impress so stoutly bottomed a nationalist as the President was.
Washington took occasion, perhaps before this letter reached Mount Vernon, in writing Jefferson concerning the danger of an Indian war, to appeal for political moderation and compromise: “How unfortunate,” he exclaimed, “and how much is it to be regretted . . . that whilst we are encompassed on all sides with avowed enemies and insidious friends, that internal dissensions should be harrowing and tearing our vitals.” Without more charity towards opposing opinion, he went on, “I believe it will be difficult, if not impracticable, to manage the reins of government or to keep the parts of it together. . . .” If union were thrown away before its utility were justly tried, then, he said, “in my opinion, the fairest prospect of happiness and prosperity that ever was presented to man will be lost, perhaps forever.” He made his appeal simply and, as he explained, without applying the case to any individual: “My earnest wish and my fondest hope . . . is that instead of wounding suspicions and irritable charges, there may be liberal allowances, mutual forbearances and temporizing yieldings on all sides. Under the exercise of these, matters will go on smoothly and, if possible, more prosperously.” A letter of similar import and, in part, of almost identical language was sent Hamilton.
Both men answered on September 9. Hamilton wrote regretfully of Washington’s unhappiness and said
plainly that if the President did not succeed in producing harmony, “the period is not remote when the public good will require substitutes for the differing members of your administration.” He felt himself “the deeply injured party,” said Hamilton, from the time Jefferson took office: “I have been the frequent subject of the most unkind whispers and insinuations” by the Secretary of State. “I have long seen a formed party in the Legislature under his auspices, bent upon my subversion.”
Jefferson’s answer set forth his chief basis of opposition to Hamilton in a broad, inclusive statement the verity of which he apparently did not think he needed to prove: “[Hamilton’s] system flowed from principles adverse to liberty, and was calculated to undermine and demolish the Republic, by creating an influence of his department over the members of the Legislature.” Jefferson proceeded to denounce mildly Hamilton’s concept of the right of Congress to legislate for the general welfare, and then the Secretary of State dwelt on the restrain he had shown in not opposing Hamilton’s plan, though he disapproved of it. “Has abstinence from the department, committed to me, been equally observed by him?” asked Jefferson and, in answer to his own question, wrote of the manner in which Hamilton had undertaken to deal with the ministers of foreign countries. “. . . If the question be by whose fault is it that Colonel Hamilton and myself have not drawn together, the answer will depend on that to two other questions, whose principles of administration best justify, by their purity, conscientious adherence? and which of us has, notwithstanding, stepped farthest into the control of the department of the other?” The Secretary of State concluded with the statement that he intended to retire at the end of Washington’s term, but he maintained: “I will not suffer my retirement to be clouded by the slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at which history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country which has not only received and given him bread, but heaped honors on his head.”
These letters from his two principal officers were of doubtful comfort to Washington. They contained weak promises to seek an armistice, but they showed deep personal animosity between the two men. The prospect of party strife was increasing. That scarcely could be denied. Washington had, therefore, to wait for better opportunity of making truce and, meantime, had to consider to what extent the disputes in his official family would affect his retirement at the end of his term.
All his correspondence on the subject showed that his friends were convinced he should accept reelection, which they regarded as certainly his at the nod of his head. Lear wrote Washington that Robert Morris said he hoped the President “would not give up the government and the country to that fate which he clearly foresaw awaited them if you should determine to retire from the chair. He thought the reasons for your continuing were, if possible, more strong than those which first induced your acceptance of the office.” Substantially the same argument was advanced by Randolph. Hamilton rejoiced because “there was,” he thought, “some relaxation” in Washington’s previously unyielding stand against reelection.
Another involvement was presented by rising opposition to the excise on whiskey, particularly in Pennsylvania. Washington said in uncompromising terms that he had the duty of enforcing the law and proceeded to draft a proclamation in which all persons were admonished and exhorted to “refrain and desist from all unlawful combinations and proceedings” that might obstruct the operation of the excise laws. Courts and officials were charged and required to exert their respective powers in seeing that the object of the proclamation was executed. Use of Federal troops was to be avoided, but if force was necessary as a last resort, the Army must be used to restore order and uphold the will of the country, expressed through an act of Congress. Washington authorized a new effort for the ransom of the American seamen held by pirates of the Barbary States; the uncertain situation in France gave him daily concern; relations with Britain were slowly approaching a settlement.
Washington completed his arrangements at Mount Vernon, as far as this was possible, and made preparations for his own leave-taking. Already he had called on several of his subordinates to give him their suggestions for his annual “speech” to Congress, and he had had opportunity of talking with Jefferson, who stopped on the Potomac en route to Philadelphia from Monticello. Before breakfast on October 1 the two had a long, frank discussion of the desire each had to retire from public service. Washington explained his state of mind and confessed that he still was in doubt about a second term, though all his inclination was to return to Mount Vernon; only there was he happy.
Jefferson affirmed that the President was “the only man in the United States who possessed the confidence of the whole; that government was founded in opinion and confidence; and that the longer [Washington] remained, the stronger would become the habits of the people in submitting to the Government, and in thinking it a thing to be maintained; that there was no other person who would be thought anything more than the head of a party,” This brought the conversation to the deep division between Jefferson and Hamilton. The President had never been aware, he told Jefferson, of the magnitude of the rift. “He knew, indeed,” wrote Jefferson later, “that there was a marked difference in our political sentiments, but he had never suspected it had gone so far in producing a personal difference, and he wished he could be the mediator to put an end to it.” A call to breakfast ended the discussion.
The next move of Washington was to Georgetown, where on October 8 he attended a sale of lots in the new Federal City. From Georgetown, with Martha and the other members of the family, Washington went to Baltimore and Philadelphia. He arrived there on the thirteenth.
As soon as he reopened his office, Washington found that the routine of his daily life had to be changed somewhat. He had to devote much thought to Mount Vernon and write many long letters to Whiting. On them he spent a considerable part of each Sunday. His general direction of the Federal District was simplified by his insistence that a superintendent be chosen and that he deal with this official and with all others through the District commissioners only. Administrative practice in Philadelphia was modified also. Washington conferred more frequently with the heads of departments as a whole and increasingly turned over documents to these men for examination and report. He did not change his practice of seeking the advice of individuals when he needed it, even though the question at issue concerned the department of another.
Where foreign affairs were involved, relations with Spain scarcely were better, in spite of denials of any incitation of Creeks against Americans. The attitude of Spain in the probable event of war between Britain and France was the subject of earnest consideration, but, for weeks, the only result was anxiety. A new crisis was developing in France, and perhaps in that country’s relations with the United States. Nothing tangible seemed likely to come of discussion until the course of the French Revolution was less obscured by doubt. The one exception was the nature and measure of assistance that could be given the French in suppressing the insurrection in Santo Domingo. With Britain, as with France, it did not appear that negotiation would progress far until the issue of war or peace was determined.
Relations with Congress, on the other hand, had now been established firmly and, in most particulars, involved little more than a continuing deference, delivery of messages, and steady compliance with the lawmakers’ requests, when reasonable. The session opened November 5. Washington’s annual message on November 6 was a matter-of-fact document in which Indian affairs had first place. Next came brief reference to what appeared to be diminishing resistance to the excise on whiskey, followed by recommendation that Congress revise the judiciary system and enact laws to discourage aggression against the territory of other countries. The nearest approach to a political issue was the unqualified observation that “the state of the national finances” made possible an arrangement to begin paying off the Federal debt and the loan issued for the Bank of the United States, a course of action vigorously advocated by the Repub
licans. The next day, word was received that on September 27 Gen. Rufus Putnam had signed with the Wabash and Illinois Indians a treaty that removed one threat to the settlers on the Ohio and some of its tributaries. By chance, Knox had submitted to Congress that same November 7 a “General View” of negotiations with the Indians. The Federal government had done all that could be expected of it in trying to maintain peace, punish murderers, and protect peaceful settlers from raids. Reports sent Congress the next week on conditions in Florida and the Creek country were equally to the credit of the government.
Important as was the President’s message in what it said of Indian affairs that led to these developments, the address was most notable, to some observers, for one omission: not a word did it include concerning Washington’s intentions with respect to a second term. He was silent where it might have been supposed he would speak out if he held to his purpose to retire. Truth was, he had not brought himself to announce his wish to quit public life. He had told Madison as long previously as May that he intended to make his announcement at a time most convenient to the public for choosing his successor; that he had thought of the opening of Congress as a suitable occasion but that he had laid this aside because, for one thing, the session would be late in starting. Now the States were preparing to name electors, Congress had begun its session, and he still was silent.
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