First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  Washington offered sparse counsel as to how best to avoid factionalism. He seemed to suggest that rulers emulate his sacrificial example. Govern in a selfless manner, he said. Otherwise, he spoke of religion and morality as the great contributors to human happiness, and he recommended a national commitment to education, for “as the structure of a government gives forces to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”

  Another danger to which Washington alluded was the presence of standing armies. He counseled that a strong Union meant a strong people, a fact that would deter foreign rivals and render it unnecessary to institute “those overgrown military establishments, which under any form of Government are inauspicious to liberty....” Thus, a nation’s relationship with other nations was crucial for the maintenance of liberty. “The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave.” Where there exists inveterate ill will toward another, he went on, an atmosphere of passion blinds reason, causing “collisions . . . and bloody contests” where peace might have prevailed. Yet to hang to the coattails of another country is to encourage the hostility of its adversaries, leading perhaps to war and certainly to domestic factionalism. Moreover, a nation could not expect “disinterested favors” from another. To be too close to another state was to ask to be harmed. In the best-remembered section of the address, he advocated commerce with Europe, but he counseled against political and military ties. Sounding like Thomas Paine in Common Sense, he reminded his readers that Europe “must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. . . .’Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any part of the foreign world.” At certain times—as during the War of Independence—a temporary alliance might be justified, he went on. But now the policy of neutrality laid down by his administration was best, for such a course would “gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress ... to that degree of strength . . . which is necessary to give it. . . the command of its fortunes.”37

  Although authored by Hamilton, the ideas broadcast in the address clearly were those of Washington. Some threads in the speech ran as far back as his farewell remarks to the army in 1783, an utterance that similarly resounded with an appeal to the nationalism of his countrymen. Indeed, the principal difference in the two valedictories was that his presidential remarks addressed the rise of political parties and the problems of foreign policy which had occurred only during his two terms in office.38

  As Washington must have expected, his Farewell Address elicited a partisan response. Acclaim blared forth from the Federalist press, faultfinding held sway in Republican organs. What would have surprised him in all likelihood was the transformation that occurred in the nineteenth century, for within a very few years of his death the valedictory almost universally was revered, and that at a time when the Federalist party had collapsed, leaving the Republicans in command of the nation’s cultural and ideological lockbox. Whatever Washington’s hopes about the timelessness of the document, contemporaries not unrealistically saw it for what it was—a defense of Federalist philosophy and Federalist governance comingled with an implicit plea that the policies of that faction be permitted to continue. Propounding a dim view of humanity—as greedy, grasping creatures actuated by a “love of power, and [a] proneness to abuse it”—the address was still another statement in the litany of Federalist pronouncements that sought to defend the Federalist counterrevolution. It represented a renewed repudiation of the localist faith of 1776, one that equated dissent and decentralization with chaos and tyranny, which depicted a symbiosis between centralized governance and true independence. In the new creed the government emerged as the great protector of humanity, while the people themselves were the great enemy of the people. That Washington’s Farewell Address came to be so universally accepted by subsequent generations was further proof that the real American Revolution of the late eighteenth century was the one that commenced in the constitution-making at the State House in Philadelphia during that hot, dusty summer of 1787.39

  Although Washington had said good-bye, six months of his term remained. A month of that time was spent amidst the luxurious autumn foliage at Mount Vernon, but from early November onward he remained at the presidential mansion in the capital, enjoying a comfortable, seasonal fall, and then, like the other denizens of the city, suffering though an exceptionally cold, wet winter. At least that winter’s miseries did not include extraordinary public woes.40

  The deterioration in relations with France continued to nag at Washington, and yet only one brief, troubling incident occurred in these months. In November Citizen Pierre Auguste Adet, Fauchet’s successor as minister to the United States, vented his displeasure with American foreign policy. That was not unusual, but when he chose to air his views in the press that was an entirely different matter.

  Adet’s action caught the Federalists by surprise, not least because they liked the envoy, regarding him as educated (he was a chemist by training), cosmopolitan, moderate, and, like themselves, a thoroughly bourgeois urbanite. But Adet found much in Washington’s policy toward Britain and France about which to complain. For instance, while the Washington government eagerly had negotiated the Jay Treaty, Adet had experienced no success in moving the administration into talks on a new commercial treaty with France. In truth, however, the French were deeply aggrieved by two more substantive matters. On the one hand, Paris alleged that the administration repeatedly had refused to execute the 1778 treaties of alliance and commerce. Under this heading France lodged two accusations. First, whereas the United States government had denied French cruisers and privateers access to American ports, it not only had admitted British vessels of war into its harbors but had permitted those ships to vend their catches. Second, Paris contended that the Jay Treaty was inimical to its interests, particularly in that the accord increased the items listed as contraband, thus reducing the number of commodities that the United States legally could sell to France. On that matter the French imputation was solidly grounded. As to the first charge, however, the Washington administration claimed correctly that its policy had been to seal its ports to French ships only when those vessels had taken prizes in America’s territorial waters, or when the French privateers had been outfitted in an American port; the latter conduct, the administration contended, had not been sanctioned by the 1778 accords with Paris.41

  By 1796 the French had come to view the Washington administration not merely as unneutral but as a puppet whose strings were pulled in London and in America’s pro-British mercantile centers. For more than a year before his last autumn in office, Washington had been fully aware of the displeasure emanating from Paris. Still, that fall he was rocked by two more Gallic announcements. First came news of a decree promulgated by the Directory, a step taken coincidentally on the twentieth anniversary of the day Congress had voted the United States independent of Britain. The French government, Washington learned in October, had announced its intention of dealing with neutral vessels in the same manner as London treated such vessels, meaning that the Directory henceforth would regard as contraband precisely what Great Britain treated as contraband. Thus, American goods that London sought to deny entry to France now would be denied entry to Britain as well. French logic was as impeccable as its action was drastic, for the move, as diplomatic historian Alexander De Conde has pointed out, amounted to a repudiation of the Franco-American commercial and military alliance.42

  The American people learned of the Directory’s action through Citizen Adet, who took the unconventional step of publishing a long note in defense of his government’s position, a statement that went on to openly—and undiplomatically—criticize the allegedly nonneutral conduct of the Washington administration. Washington, the envoy maintained, had from the beginning sought to sever the Franco-American alliance. Long ago, he added, Washington had “ceased to be neutral.” Turn
this government of Federalists out of office, Adet seemed to say on the very eve of the election of 1796, and “you will still find in Frenchmen faithful friends and generous allies.” Maintain the Federalist administration, he implied, and France will be your enemy. Adet’s intemperate remarks laid clear cold reality. To foil America’s rapprochement with Britain, Paris had begun to seize United States vessels, and it had intruded into the murky domestic politics of its once close friend.43

  President Washington huffed and puffed at these actions, and he solicited Hamilton’s advice as to how he should greet Adet upon their next meeting. (Receive the envoy with “a dignified reserve” somewhere between “offensive coldness and cordiality,” Hamilton rejoined. “[N]o one will know better how to do it,” he added with authority, often having seen Washington utilize that very approach.) The president also authorized Pickering to answer the French diplomat in the American press. But when Hamilton proved to be one of the sharpest critics of the administration’s reaction, Washington immediately restrained Pickering. The former secretary gently chided the president for stooping to engage in a newspaper war with Citizen Adet. It would have been more sound for Washington to have communicated his displeasure to Congress, he advised. Hamilton also counseled against the indignant tone of the government’s official response to Adet’s public letter, warning against the danger of provoking “further insult or injury.” Henceforth, he added, use the language of moderation, for the United States must seek to avoid a total rupture with France. When Adet published a second essay on November 21, the president did as Hamilton had advised: he turned the matter over to Congress. There, void of harm, things could spin themselves out until Charles Cotesworth Pinckney had an opportunity to assess the mood in France. By then, too, there would be a new president.44

  That fall Washington watched with interest as the first contested presidential election unfolded. The Federalists put up Vice President Adams, the Republicans supported Thomas Jefferson. If Adet sought to intrude in the election, the president endeavored to remain aloof, making no public announcements on behalf of either candidate. In the end, Adet had less impact on the race than did Alexander Hamilton, who, behind the scenes, plotted the undoing of Adams. Hamilton’s scheme was to induce just enough Federalist electors to withhold their votes from the vice president to permit the party’s choice for the second slot—Thomas Pinckney—to receive a majority of the electoral votes. His machination almost backfired, enabling Jefferson to win the contest. But Adams squeaked past his foe with just three votes to spare. In the eyes of the Directory the result was as if “old man Washington,” as some domestic foes had taken to calling him, was about to serve for four more years.45

  By 1797 Washington at last was truly thankful that his stay in office was about at an end. He looked forward to the “shades of retirement.” He knew that his allotted time was running short. So many old acquaintances and comrades now were gone. Only the previous year the president had learned that Lund Washington, his estate manager during his long wartime absence, had died at Hayfield at the age of fifty-nine. It was another reminder that the sixty-five-year-old president’s days were numbered. Back at Mount Vernon, Washington dreamed, he would study many of the tracts on scientific agriculture published in Britain in recent years. Mostly, though, he would be happy to escape the misrepresentation and reprobation of his conduct that had filled the Republican press. Nevertheless, he felt he would depart Philadelphia with the conviction that Adams’s election amounted to a popular vindication of his administration. His only regret upon leaving, he said, was that he likely would never again see those men who had served him so faithfully, those “few intimates whom I love.”46

  As he entered the final weeks of his presidency, it was clear that Washington had no doubts about the wisdom of his policies. He had agreed to serve, then to accept a second term, he said in announcing his intention of retiring, because of the “perplexed and critical posture of our Affairs.” But the great crisis now was over, he suggested. He believed he had helped solidify the Union, for the notion that it was wise to secure a bonding of “one people is also now dear to you.” In external affairs relations with France were strained, but in December 1796 he told Congress that his policies had overcome the “inconveniences and embarrassments” of 1789, an oblique reference to the gains procured by the Jay and Pinckney treaties. Still, he added, “nothing short of a general Peace in Europe” would calm the new nation’s beleaguered relations with the great powers.47

  Washington expressed disappointment on only two matters. Congress had failed to create a military academy for the preparation of the nation’s officers, and its earlier reform of the militia system, he believed had been ineffectual. While still commander of the Continental army he first had broached the idea of a military college, and on occasion during his presidency he reiterated his zest for such an institution. In his final message to Congress he returned to that idea. The “Art of War, is at once comprehensive and complicated,” he said, and to have an officer corps well-grounded in martial knowledge “is always of great moment to the security of a Nation.” While the nation hoped to avoid war, he went on, it never was wise to be without “an adequate stock of Military knowledge.”

  He also had urged reform of the nation’s trainband system since 1783, and he must have been pleased when the Constitution that he helped draft granted Congress power over the militia. He declared militia reform to be a priority item when he took office in 1789, and three years later, stung by the defeats inflicted on Harmar and St. Clair, Congress acted. But Washington did not get what he wanted. Instead of a nationalized system, Congress responded with the Uniform Militia Act of 1792, legislation that resulted in few changes, and which left the militia thoroughly in state hands. With two months remaining in his presidency, Washington issued a final plea for reform.48

  Curiously, Washington also waited until the eve of his retirement to recommend that Congress take several other important steps. He urged higher pay for the army’s officers, lest all be drawn from the most privileged class, an end that would “proportionally diminish the probability of a choice of Men, able, as well as upright.” He proposed that Congress study America’s coastal defenses. A United States navy must also be created, he advised, both for the ongoing protection of the nation’s commerce and so that “the requisite supply of Seamen” always would be on hand. In his initial State of the Union message Washington had hinted that Congress would be wise to create a national university, but he did not raise the subject of education again until his Farewell Address, then he merely exhorted his countrymen to make “the general diffusion of knowledge” a priority consideration. In 1790 he had spoken of the correlation between sound republican government and enlightened public opinion. In his final address to Congress, Washington once again took up the matter of a national university. It was a subject to which he had given much thought recently. Sometime before 1795 he had prepared a will which bequeathed his fifty shares in the Potomac Canal Company and his one hundred shares in the James River Canal Company toward the establishment of a national university within the new Federal District. But his gift was to be conditional. First a “well digested plan” would have to be approved by Congress before 1800. His remarks now to Congress must have been an attempt to kindle lagging interest. In fact, the legislators had remained so indifferent that he already had altered his will, stipulating that his James River Company shares go instead to the Liberty Hall Academy in Virginia, the precursor of today’s Washington and Lee College.49

  For some time before taking office Washington had spoken privately about the evils of slavery, yet he made no such public statements during his early presidential years, and he remained silent on the matter both in his valedictory and his final address to Congress. Political realities must have been partially responsible for his discretion. To raise the subject was to risk certain discredit in the South, while to let the abolitionist geni out of the bottle was to court the eradication of the Union. In 1790, in
fact, when Quaker activists, as well as the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, had petitioned for an immediate end to the foreign slave trade, some southern states had raised the threat of secession if their northern brethren dared vote to ban that ugly commerce. Washington had been put off by the Quaker campaign, calling it “an ill-judged piece of business” and expressing his pleasure at the ultimate defeat of their endeavor. Indeed, President Washington’s principal activity with regard to slavery was to sign into law the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, legislation that permitted slaveowners to cross state lines in order “to seize or arrest” runaway slaves.50

  If President Washington dared not touch slavery, citizen Washington seemed equally reluctant to tamper with the institution. During the war, as we have seen, Washington deplored his status as a slaveowner, although his lamentations stemmed less from moral reservations than from an awareness that his capital could be put to better use. Upon his retirement in 1783 he took no steps to manumit his bondsmen. The reason for his inaction is clear: “imperious necessity,” he acknowledged, compelled him to retain ownership of slave laborers. That is, manumission would not permit him to live in the manner to which he was accustomed.51

  His attitude seems to have undergone no change for ten years or more following the war. Twice in the 1780s Lafayette pleaded unsuccessfully with his famous friend to join with him in emancipation schemes. First, the young Frenchman urged Washington to liberate some of his slaves and post them as tenants on a western estate, where by their example of resourceful farming they might inspire other slaveowners to follow suit. Later, Lafayette proposed that the two celebrated warriors purchase slaves and manumit them to a French Guiana farm that might serve as a model for what a free black population could accomplish. Washington was cool to both suggestions, and nothing came of either plan. While still a Mount Vernon farmer in 1785, he displayed a similar disinclination to aid Methodist clergymen who wished the Maryland legislature to gradually abolish slavery. Washington would act only if the legislature formally considered such a move, he said, knowing full well that such an eventuality was unlikely. In private he equated manumission with the exercise of “humanity,” yet he denigrated immediate emancipation as certain to produce “much inconvenience and mischief,” and he refused to lend his magical name to the cause of gradual emancipation.52