Washington had taken up residence in a newly furnished house on the East Side, a privately owned dwelling that had been a home to the last several presidents of Congress. Built on the eve of the Revolution by a prosperous merchant, it was large and comfortable, and situated just a block from the East River, so that on warm summer evenings its occupants delighted in the pleasingly cool breezes that swept in from the waters. The New York City of this era still was rebuilding from the war years, during which two disastrous fires and a seven-year occupation by the British army had beset this metropolis. Yet the place bore the earmarks of prosperity. Its inhabitants now numbered between twenty-five and thirty thousand. New streets were being laid out to handle the population surge (up about 20 percent in fifteen years), and new street lamps were being installed everywhere.2
For a time Washington had toyed with the notion of holding the presidency only briefly, perhaps for a year or two. Once the new government was established, once it had a revenue and was functioning in an orderly manner, he would step aside. John Adams and others then could have the task of continuing what he had begun.3 The thought was not an idle pipe dream. Such a step would have been fully in keeping with Washington’s psychological pattern, for he once again would have acted out the Cincinnatus role that he cherished. Having laid aside his plow in order to save the public from chaos, he would return to his farm, although not before he had endured what seemed to be great personal sacrifice. It was, as Garry Wills has observed, a notion that amounted to a secular variation of the concept of divine intervention.4
His first weeks in office must have convinced him of the wisdom of an early resignation. He soon seemed to harbor doubts about his ability to perform his job. “I greatly apprehend that my Countrymen will expect too much from me,” he confided. “I feel an insuperable diffidence in my own abilities,” he added, and he admitted his fear that the public’s “extravagent . . . praises” would be turned into “extravagent. . . censures.” Suddenly he had been seized by the same anxiety that had accompanied him on the ride from Philadelphia to the siege lines at Cambridge in 1775. He feared that from the day of his inauguration he had begun to court “my fall, and the ruin of my reputation.”5
Washington’s concern in part was triggered by the sudden onslaught of office seekers that hammered at his front door. This was a new experience for him. Congress had appointed the general officers beneath him at the outset of the war, and, in turn, the states had named the lesser field officers. Now Washington bore the responsibility of filling the important offices. Facing the supplicants was a “delicate,” “unpleasing,” even an embarrassing task, he thought. It also was a losing proposition. Even though he acted without partiality in most instances, yet those who were rebuffed were certain to be angry.6
The president also was troubled over the proper style required by his new office. He had had sufficient military experience before 1775 so that the manner of his conduct as commander had not vexed him. But how should he comport himself as president? What suited the office? What did a republican people desire? Aware that his actions would become a model for those who followed, and wishing to be certain that “these precedents may be fixed on true principles,” he sought the advice of those about him, in particular the vice president, but especially Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, the triumvirate responsible for the Federalist essays in defense of the new Constitution.
Washington bombarded them with questions. Should he seclude himself from the public? How often should he meet the public? Should he open his office for business at 8:00 A.M. each day? Should he periodically dine with members of the Congress? Should he host state dinners? Would it be improper for him to call upon private acquaintances? Should he make a tour of the United States? In short, was he to shape the presidency in the image of a monarchical court, or should this become a more popular office? Or should the office be sculpted into something in between those two poles?7
Not surprisingly, considering that he regarded the British government as the world’s best, Hamilton recommended that the office be shrouded at once with a royal “dignity,” a feat to be accomplished by distancing the president from his subjects. Only department chiefs, diplomats, and members of the Senate, he counseled, should be privileged to have free access to the chief executive. Otherwise, “Your Excellency,” as he now referred to Washington, might conduct a “levee” no more than once each week, and then he should admit only invited guests; the president, moreover, should appear at these sessions for exactly thirty minutes, no more and no less, and he should be careful to speak in the most concise manner. Up to four annual state dinners would be acceptable, Hamilton went on, but the president must never call on anyone, nor should he submit to being entertained by anyone.8
Vice President Adams wished for a “dignified and respectable government.” Shortly he would campaign in the Senate to impose a pompous, officious title upon the presidency, yet his recommendations were less stiff than those of Hamilton. Despite the suspicions of many contemporaries that he longed to establish aristocratic institutions in America, including rule by a monarch, Adams envisioned a genuinely republican presidency, one that the people could esteem because they would realize that the office holder was, like themselves, a citizen. He thought two levees per week would be acceptable, and, more importantly, he proposed that these gatherings should be more or less open to the general public; he evidently thought it too republican for the president to give large and formal dinners, and he told Washington that he should feel free to entertain and to call upon whomever he pleased.9 Whatever Madison and Jay advised—their suggestions have been lost—it is clear that President Washington blended the proposals of Hamilton and Adams.
Already Washington had decided that he would accept what he quaintly called “visits of compliment” on only two afternoons each week, and then for just an hour at a time. And he had decided not to venture from his abode to be a dinner guest at any private residence. Otherwise, he would hold a levee for suitably dressed males during one hour every Tuesday afternoon, a public tea party for both sexes each Friday night, and a small dinner—by invitation only—at 4:00 P.M. each Wednesday. A creature of habit, President Washington hardly altered this ritual during the next eight years. If his taste was starchy and sober, and if his levees soon were seen by some as unrepublican, aristocratic affairs, Congress at least stripped away some of the marble veneer that seemed about to encase the presidency. While Washington fretted over style, the legislators, as if they had nothing better to do, squandered several days in a debate over the best title for the occupant of the office. They kicked around everything from “Honourable” to “His Elective Highness” (or “Majesty”) to the unctuous-sounding mouthful that John Adams fancied, “His Highness the President of the United States and Protector of the Rights of the Same.” Finally, thanks in large measure to the obstinancy of a few former Anti-Federalists such as Patrick Henry, the legislators decided on the exquisitely simple denomination: “The President of the United States.” 10
The truth of the matter was that Washington had more time on his hands during the first several weeks of his tenure than has any subsequent chief executive. Congress was busy—it is equally doubtful that any of its successors ever was confronted by so many major decisions in such a brief time—but Washington largely chose not to become involved. As he was neither a lawyer nor a political philosopher, he was unsure of his relationship with Congress. The Constitution gave him a veto and administrative responsibilities; otherwise its provisions were murky. He could draw on his recollection of how a succession of Virginia’s governors had acted toward the Burgesses, or his own relationship with Congress during the war might serve him as a model. Yet no previous relation really offered much guidance. Washington knew that he clearly possessed the constitutional power to initiate United States foreign policy, but there was no one with whom to work, no foreign minister, no ministers abroad. (Thomas Jefferson, minister to France since 1784, had been granted leave to return to America; ot
herwise, the United States had only a chargé d’affairs in Madrid.) Nor had the federal departments or the national judiciary been created. So he simply waited, in the interim gradually meeting with office seekers and piecing together his clerical staff, naming about one-third as many secretaries as he had utilized a year or two into the war. David Humphreys, who had been one of those military aides, returned to Washington’s side, and Tobias Lear was summoned from Mount Vernon; Thomas Nelson, scion of Virginia’s wartime governor, and Robert Lewis, Betty Washington Lewis’s son, joined William Jackson, recently the official secretary of the Constitutional Convention, to round out the team. With so little to do, the president must have been delighted when Lewis arrived, for alighting from the carriage with him, garbed in homespun as Washington himself had been when he had taken office, was the First Lady. After six weeks alone, and forced to entertain both officials and curiosity seekers by himself, Washington must have found Martha’s presence especially welcome.11
It was late summer before Congress created the federal departments and the court system, at last giving the new chief executive something with which to work. Actually Congress’s delay probably was fortuitous, inasmuch as Washington was ill and unable to work for several weeks during that summer. He fell sick in mid-June, stricken with an ailment that many feared might be fatal. A couple of weeks after his wife’s arrival, Washington began to run a high fever and feel indisposed; within two or three days a slight pain developed in his thigh, and in another day or two a growth was discernable at the site of the discomfort. A leading New York physician was called in, but he only watched the tumor grow, until Washington refered to it as “very large.” Unable to move without considerable distress, he was forced to bed and compelled by the pain to spend each day lying only on his right side; his sickness exacerbated by anxiety, Washington seemed to be dangerously ill. Suspicions grew that he was a victim of cancer; rumor also coursed through the capital that he had an anthrax infection, what contemporaries called the “wool sorters disease.” While his doctors debated what steps to take, Cherry Street was blocked to traffic to spare the president its distressing noise. Then, suddenly, the growth abscessed and the doctor lanced and drained the lesion. Ever so gradually Washington’s strength returned. Two weeks following the surgery Washington complained that “a feebleness still hangs upon me,” and for a month much of his correspondence was handled by his secretaries. Almost seven weeks elapsed from the moment of the onset of the earliest symptoms until he finally, fully, resumed his duties, although even then he still was compelled to spend much of his time reclining on soft pillows as he worked. Three months later the still-recumbent chief executive wrote his old friend Dr. Craik that the “wound given by the incision is not yet closed.” Even then the tumescent growth remained the size of a barley corn.12
While Washington languished on his sickbed, Congress painstakingly created three executive departments—state, war, and treasury—and two federal agencies with less exalted status, the offices of attorney general and postmaster general. And by early autumn a national court system was established, as Congress fashioned thirteen district courts as the “inferior tribunals” beneath the six-member Supreme Court. At last Washington had some places to put a few of the horde of office seekers that had been inveigling appointments from him since even before he left Mount Vernon. Indeed, he had more than one thousand posts to fill.13
The tough part was turning down men with whom he had long been close. Financially pressed Benjamin Lincoln sought to head a department, but, instead, Washington sent him to Georgia to help negotiate a treaty normalizing relations with the Creek Indians. The president’s nephew, Bushrod Washington, longed to be appointed United States district attorney for Virginia; Washington refused, telling him bluntly that his “standing at the bar” would not justify his nomination. By contrast, picking the key men was easy. He intended to go with men whom he knew and trusted, and for the most part he planned to chose only from among those who had been demonstrable advocates of the new Constitution.14
The war department was easiest. Henry Knox had been the last director of this jurisdiction under the Articles of Confederation, and though the department technically ceased to exist with the ratification of the new Constitution, Washington had asked him to continue in the interim. To no one’s great surprise the president designated his loyal general as the initial director of military matters.
Nor was it particularly startling when Hamilton was offered the post of secretary of the treasury. That brilliant young New Yorker had been busy since the day at Yorktown when he had persuaded his leader to permit him to lead an assault on the redcoats’ lines. Shortly after Cornwallis’s surrender he had left the army, returning to New York and gaining admittance to the bar—after but three months’ study. Soon thereafter he was elected to Congress. He served only eight months, just long enough to become embroiled in the Newburgh Conspiracy. Hamilton, who at the age of fourteen had wished for a war in order to extricate himself from the miasma of his West Indian childhood, had made the most of the War of Independence. When peace returned he was a lawyer with a Wall Street address, a well-known public figure, a man of wealth with connections both to the Schuyler family and to George Washington. And he still was ten years younger than Washington had been when he had taken command of the Continental army.
Immediately after the war Hamilton no longer seemed to have time for Washington, as if the old general at Mount Vernon was unlikely ever again to serve as his “aegis” to bigger and better things. For three years the two men had almost no contact. Hamilton did not even visit Mount Vernon when he attended the Annapolis Convention in 1786, and he wrote to Washington only twice in those years, once to transmit some data from a New York business that might have been relevant to the general’s wartime expense account and once to discuss the Order of the Cincinnati. The campaign to strengthen the national government, as well as his leading role in the creation of the Bank of New York, thrust Hamilton back into public affairs, leading first to his election to the New York legislature in 1786 and subsequently to his important role in drafting and ratifying the Constitution. His latter activities made him the indispensable leader of his state’s Federalist faction. He also spent some of his time after early 1787 cozying up to Washington again. In the year that followed the Constitutional Convention he wrote three times as many letters to his former benefactor as he had in the three years preceding the Philadelphia meeting. One missive was dispatched for the purpose of requesting that Washington assist him in refuting public charges that he had “palmed myself upon you.” Washington obliged him.15
In Washington’s mind the treasury department was the key post, at least until the new government was secured. The nation’s revenue problems had served as the catalyst that had activated many bystanders to think of a new constitution; moreover, the president knew that the new government’s very ability to survive hinged on the success of this department. The secretary must be a wily politician, for money matters were certain to divide men; shepherding revenue bills through Congress might be as difficult as pushing that proverbial camel through the eye of a needle. Although Washington never divulged his reasons for selecting Hamilton, that young man obviously seemed to fit every requirement for the job. Not only was he experienced in the boggy landscape of finance, but Washington explicitly trusted his acumen, having already turned to him for advice concerning accepting the presidency and the style he should set for the office. Furthermore, there could be no doubt that the New Yorker was unrivaled in guile and political dexterity. Thus, less than a week after the department was created, and without bothering to seek any advice, Washington nominated Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton, from an original miniature by Archibald Robertson, engraved by John F.E. Prud’homme (c. 1790). Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society.
The state department was the next most important office. In fact, if Hamilton quickly resolved the national government’s financial ills, state in the long run would
be the principal office. Washington initially leaned toward John Jay, the last head of foreign affairs under the Articles, but Jay longed for the Supreme Court and the president acceded to his wishes. The next offer was extended to Thomas Jefferson. It was a logical move. Not only did Washington know him and feel that he could work with him, but few men had as much diplomatic experience. In fact, Jefferson was unaware of his nomination until he disembarked in Norfolk in November 1789 at the completion of a four-year stretch as the United States minister to France. Obviously he was well versed in the affairs of that important nation, a country that Washington now knew was experiencing the “first paroxysm”—and probably not the last—of a great revolution.16
Washington named Samuel Osgood of Massachusetts (the owner of his Cherry Street residence) as his postmaster general. Edmund Randolph, who had introduced the Virginia Plan at the Constitutional Convention, was nominated to be attorney general. After Jay was nominated as chief justice of the United States, Washington sent the Senate the names of five men to be considered for the remaining seats on the High Court. He was close to three of the five: James Wilson, an old loyal supporter from Pennsylvania; fellow Virginian John Blair; and his former wartime aide Robert Harrison. John Rutledge of South Carolina and William Cushing of Massachusetts also were named, and a few weeks later when Harrison declined the post—he was ill and died early in 1790—Washington nominated James Iredell of North Carolina.
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