It was the President’s intention to depart for Philadelphia early October 12 and confer that day with the commissioners at Georgetown, but Washington and his family did not arrive at Georgetown until the afternoon of the twelfth. Most of the following day was given to consultation with the commissioners. After that, wet weather so hampered the progress of his carriage that not until October 18, did it reach Elkton. Then a touch of sickness overtook young Washington Custis and one of the coachmen, and that night was spent in Wilmington. Late on the twentieth, eight days after he had taken leave of Mount Vernon, the President alighted at his house in Philadelphia.
“Pressing and important business . . . has accumulated in my absence,” Washington wrote soon after his return. A part of that business had to do with Randolph. Randolph released a paragraph of his letter to Washington of October 8 to the Philadelphia Gazette. The extract announced in belligerent tone that Randolph was preparing a public statement of his innocence, a “vindication” to be corroborated by his official correspondence while Secretary of State. In the full letter Randolph charged that Pickering had refused to surrender from the files of the Department of State the letter Washington had written Randolph on July 22. “I hold that letter,” Randolph asserted to Washington,
to be important to one of the views which the question will bear . . . and therefore request the inspection of it. . . . You must be sensible, Sir, that I am inevitably driven into discussion of many confidential and delicate points. I could with safety immediately appeal to the people of the United States, who can be of no party. But I shall wait for your answer . . . [and] shall also rely . . . that you will consent to the whole of this affair, howsoever confidential and delicate, being exhibited to the world.
Washington and Pickering composed an answer to Randolph which the President signed October 21:
It is not difficult from the tenor of [your] letter to perceive what your objects are. But that you may have no cause to complain of the withdrawing of any paper . . . I have directed that you should have the inspection of my letter of the 22nd of July, agreeably to your request; and that you are at full liberty to publish, without reserve, any and every word I have ever uttered, to or in your presence, from whence you can derive any advantage in your vindication. I grant this permission inasmuch as the extract manifestly tends to impress on the public mind that something has passed between us which you should disclose with reluctance from motives of delicacy which respect me. . . . I request that this letter may be inserted in the compilation you are now making, as well to show my disposition to furnish you with every means I possess toward your vindication, as that I have no wish to conceal any part of my conduct from the public. That public will judge, when it comes to see your vindication, how far and how proper it has been for you to publish private and confidential communications which oftentimes have been written in a hurry, and sometimes without even copies being taken. And it will, I hope, appreciate my motives, even if it should condemn my prudence in allowing you the unlimited license herein contained.
If Washington expected that his reply would quiet Randolph, he was mistaken. Within three days the President received another letter, this one bright with anger and bristling with sarcasm and implication. “Whatsoever my objects may be supposed to be,” Randolph flared, “I have but one, which is to defend myself. Your unlimited permission of publication is therefore, as you must be persuaded, given without hazard. For you never could believe that I intended to exhibit to public view all and every thing which was known to me. I have indeed the sensibility of an injured one; but I shall disclose even what I am compelled to disclose, under the necessity which you yourself have created. I have been the meditated victim of party spirit. . . .” Washington proceeded to compose a rejoinder. Then on considering his draft, he decided not to answer Randolph’s last letter at all. On October 25 he laid the entire correspondence aside and turned his thoughts elsewhere.
CHAPTER / 23
Wherever Washington fixed his concentration at the moment, there could be no shelter from the deluge of abuse which now poured upon him from Republican editors and contributors to their gazettes. Attacks immediately after his decision to ratify the treaty had been only the first drops in a great storm. Now, the tempest was here. A writer in the Independent Chronicle of Boston laughed at Federalists who attempted to defend the British treaty with the bland assertion that the wisdom of the President was behind it. How absurd it was, cried this correspondent, to think that Washington’s mind was superior to that of Jefferson, Madison, Clinton or other patriots who disapproved the treaty! “Pittachus” in the Aurora called the President “Saint Washington,” a man distinguished only by “the seclusion of a monk and the supercillious [sic] distance of a tyrant”; another mocked him with the offer of a crown.
Washington felt the cruelest blow on October 23 at the hands of “A Calm Observer” in Bache’s Aurora. This writer declared that the President was overdrawing his appropriation of $25,000 per annum! With or without Washington’s expressed sanction, Wolcott wrote at once to Bache. It was the common practice of his Department, the Secretary of the Treasury admitted, to advance monies to the President’s secretary for household expenses, and at times these disbursements may have exceeded the regular quarterly division of $6250; but, if this procedure was to be censured, the Department of the Treasury and Congress must be considered responsible for it—not the President. “Calm Observer” labelled the Secretary’s explanation “a complete acknowledgement of guilt” and demanded to know if Washington ever had received more than $25,000 in a year or $100,000 in four years. “One of the People” supplied specific answers: the President had overdrawn $5150 by April 30, 1791; he was still $4150 in arrears a year later and $1037 short on March 4, 1793, the day of his second inauguration; he received $11,200 instead of the authorized disbursement of $6250 in the first three months of the new term; and he remained heavily overdrawn at this moment.
This information was correct. The facts were indisputable, and Wolcott could make no refutation; but the President never received a dollar for which there was not explicit appropriation by Congress and at no time had he drawn in advance as much as a full quarter’s allotments. Wolcott insisted that John Beckley was the contriver of the articles and that the pertinent data had been furnished by Edmund Randolph! In the New-York Daily Advertiser of November 11 Hamilton published a defence of the disbursement policy of the Treasury and gave proof that the President had not requested the advances. Republican editors scoffed at this logic and baldly repeated the charge: President Washington was overdrawing his salary. Even the warmest admirers of the President were powerless to combat the evidence of advance payments which now made Washington’s reputation an easy and attractive target. The only rejoinder left to Federalists was the simple truth, typically voiced by a Connecticut newspaper, that the charges were “prompted more by ill nature than by any love for the good of the people.”
Welcome as was any diversion from politics at this moment, Washington found little comfort in the necessity of dealing again with the affairs of the Federal City. In the first week of November the President was visited by George Hadfield, an Englishman who had succeeded James Hoban as architect of the Capitol. Hadfield journeyed to Philadelphia to get Washington’s consent to proposed structural changes which the Federal commissioners would not approve. His professional reputation, he insisted, would suffer if a dome was not erected over the circular lobby. Washington secured the architect’s promise to “stick by the building until it was finished,” but he extended no pledge to support Hadfield’s ideas. While the President thought well of the plan for a dome, he considered himself too deficient in a knowledge of the related problems of the City to judge in this matter.
On another matter concerning the Federal City, Washington was quite ready to give counsel. The mansion which Robert Morris was building in Philadelphia proclaimed that the famous financier enjoyed greater wealth than ever; yet Morris and Nicholson still had not rendered a
single payment on their contract for lots in the Federal City. In desperate need of money to support construction schedules, the commissioners decided to apply for a loan either to Congress or the State of Maryland. They wished the President’s advice before proceeding. “If . . . upon more mature consideration and inquiry you concur in the opinion that it can be done,” he wrote on October 30, “I think you ought not hesitate to make the attempt.” Then, five days later, he sharply qualified this approval. If Maryland lawmakers rejected the application, Washington warned, Congress might follow this negative example.
Not many days of November had passed when Washington determined to wait no longer in the appointment of a Secretary of State. Since Randolph’s resignation, offers had gone to five men—William Paterson, Thomas Johnson, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Patrick Henry and Rufus King—and each had declined the position. Pickering exhibited little interest in permanent assignment to the vacancy. Washington was resolved to end the search and urged Pickering to transfer. He refused at first, then promised to consider. Wolcott’s prompting and a desire to save the Executive from the embarrassment of a conspicuous vacancy in the Cabinet when Congress convened in December at last brought Pickering to accept. This left the administration without a Secretary of War, but Pickering could continue to manage the business of this Department until a replacement was found. An invitation went to John Eager Howard, but the Marylander declined. An offer of the Attorney Generalship to Charles Lee was accepted, much to the President’s relief. By the end of the month only the portfolio of War remained unassigned.
On December 7 both the Senate and the House of Representatives easily assembled a quorum. When Washington came to the chamber of the House on December 8, the Chief Executive’s seventh Annual Address was markedly moderate in everything except his own exuberant ambitions for the future of the American Republic. Three days after his address to Congress, Washington was disturbed to learn that a rumor was circulating among legislators that the administration had no definite program for further conciliation of the Indians. He instructed Pickering to send without delay detailed recommendations of the War Department. On December 12 Adams and the members of the Senate called to present their formal reply to the annual message. Drafted by a committee of three Federalists, the declaration reflected the sympathies of the majority of the Senate, and Washington responded gratefully. The reply of the House five days later was scarcely less cordial. The spirit of the House augured well; Washington expressed warm thanks in answer.
The President had never found it more difficult to sustain enthusiasm for his own role than now. He experienced one of the unhappiest hours of his life as he sat down to read the pamphlet Randolph published December 18 and styled A Vindication. Randolph began with a recital of the circumstances of his resignation, wove into this extracts of his correspondence, then offered the English text of Fauchet’s Despatches No. 3 and No. 6 as well as that of the intercepted No. 10, and finally rested his case on the certificate he had obtained from Fauchet. All of this consumed not so much as half of the 103-page pamphlet; the balance was taken up by an open letter to the President, an analytical statement incisive and insulting.
Randolph offered no new argument, but his words pierced the President’s composure and hung like barbs in his mind. Many times in recent months Washington had seen his name grossly slandered and his character blasted in print, but this publication might go further than all others in damage to his reputation. Randolph’s pamphlet was self-suffering rather than scurrilous, plaintive rather than punitive, the more potent for its less aggressive tone. Washington took time to study it with the closest attention. On December 22 he wrote Hamilton: “Ere this, I presume you have seen the long promised vindication, or rather accusation. What do you think of it and what notice should be taken of it? . . . I shall leave you to judge of it, without any comments of mine.” Hamilton’s reply was as concise as the President’s question. The Vindication, he thought, was “a confession of guilt”; the author’s “attempts” against the Executive were “base” and “will certainly fail of their aim. . . .” The New Yorker did not equivocate: “By you, no notice can be or ought to be taken of the publication. It contains its own antidote.”
Randolph had established a case for himself with documents which could not be denied; Fauchet, his accuser, had disavowed the accusation. No publication by the President could alter the facts; the Vindication omitted no evidence, misquoted no document, and committed no error of narrative which could be exposed. Randolph had all the evidence on his side; his paper was irrefutable. Washington realized this; there was nothing for the President to say. Any effort to answer the Vindication would be received as an acknowledgment that the President’s reputation was in jeopardy and as a desperate defence of his conduct. Worse yet, it would open floodgates of controversy and engulf the administration in a new deluge of protest against the British treaty. Randolph’s pamphlet tied the circumstances of his resignation to the President’s decision to ratify the treaty; any debate over the justice of the Vindication would threaten the pact anew. At a moment when the treaty seemed safe and popular agitation was subsiding, no greater disaster than this could visit the nation.
Washington could hardly expect that his silence might silence others. Federalists were certain to castigate Randolph for what he had done to Washington’s name. “The feelings of good men,” wrote Fisher Ames, “are wrought up to revolutionary pitch by the abuse on the President.” William Plumer, a New Hampshire Federalist, expressed a reaction that was typical: “I do not believe President Washington . . . was ever influenced by any other motive than love of country and of fame.” Republicans were delighted with the Vindication, but more because the President’s reputation had been damaged than because Randolph had established his innocence. Jefferson wrote Monroe: “[Randolph’s] Vindication bears hard on the Executive . . . and though it clears him . . . of the charge of bribery, it does not give . . . high ideas of his wisdom or steadiness.” In the view of Madison, Randolph’s “greatest enemies will not easily persuade themselves that he was under a corrupt influence of France, and his best friends can’t save him for the self condemnation of his political career as explained by himself.” Influential Republicans did not, however, fly to Randolph’s side as he may have expected. What solace Randolph derived from the publication, he was destined to enjoy alone. Newspapers of neither party gave large notice to his pamphlet. Randolph’s career in politics manifestly was at an end. The President recognized no other course than to put the man altogether out of his thoughts. The asperities of the Vindication had destroyed the last cord of a relationship which once was Washington’s closest bond in public life.
Never, it seemed, would there be an end to the plague of vacancies in high station. Pickering’s transfer to the Department of State solved one difficulty, but the President continued in anxiety over empty offices elsewhere. Not until the middle of January was he sure that the new Attorney General would assume his duties. As yet he had no Secretary of War and now, unexpectedly, there were two vacant seats on the Supreme Court. Justice John Blair resigned and then, on December 15, the Senate refused to confirm Washington’s nomination of John Rutledge as Chief Justice. The President attempted unsuccessfully to secure Patrick Henry for the War Department and finally decided in favor of his Revolutionary aide, Dr. James McHenry of Baltimore. His invitation carried the request that McHenry ask another Maryland Federalist, Samuel Chase, to take Blair’s seat on the Court. McHenry wished time to consider, but on January 24 he replied affirmatively and added that Chase also would accept. Two days later the President appointed McHenry and Chase and nominated William Cushing, on the Court since 1789, for Chief Justice. The Senate concurred on January 27, but Cushing now upset the arrangement by declining promotion. After more exasperating delays, Senator Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut was nominated and confirmed as Chief Justice.
In accord with Pickering’s suggestion that he advise Congress of the urgent need for Federal action a
gainst ruthless men in the Southwest Territory who continued to persecute the Cherokee natives, Washington delivered a short, meaningful message on February 2. Both Houses were too engrossed in trifling argument to pay heed. Indeed, it seemed that Congress would be content merely to quibble until Jay’s treaty or Thomas Pinckney’s pact with Spain was presented for debate. Already it was known in Philadelphia that Pinckney’s special mission to Madrid had resulted in a sweeping agreement, but neither the compact made with the Spaniards nor the ratified British treaty had yet reached the United States.
Unaccustomed leisure early in February gave the President time to put on paper a plan which had been in his thoughts for two years. His holdings in land, Washington came to realize, were too extensive, the problems of proprietorship too worrisome for a man who had reached a period of life which, as he said, “requires tranquility and ease.” Determined to relieve himself of the greater burdens of land ownership, he now drafted an advertisement which set forth parallel objectives. He would accept offers on all of his western properties—thirteen tracts, some forty-one thousand acres—and would sell to the bidders who were high on September 1, 1796; and he would lease three of the farms at Mount Vernon to substantial tenants at a yearly rental of one and one-half bushels of wheat, or its market value in cash, for each acre of arable soil.
Two days before the sixty-fourth anniversary of Washington’s birth, editor Bache of the Aurora reminded his readers that previous celebrations of this occasion had been so extravagant that it was little wonder the President behaved “with all the insolence of an Emperor of Rome.” Bache’s pronouncement had no effect. February 22, 1796, was hailed in Philadelphia with what Wolcott called “unusual joy and festivity.” At one minute past midnight bells announced the day; another peal and a cannon salute welcomed the dawn. The President greeted crowds of well-wishers at his house with cake and punch. The evening included a supper at Oeller’s Hotel and a grand ball at Ricketts’ “amphitheatre” on Chestnut Street. Commemoration of the President’s birthday was so universal and enthusiastic as to elicit from one Republican newspaper a mocking reference to America’s “Political Christmas.”
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