First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  Necessity, said Washington a few months after his return to Virginia, had compelled him to work “from the ‘rising of the sun to the setting of the same.’” As was his custom Washington exaggerated his plight, but the reference to a long workday did not stretch the truth. His business interests and his superintendency of Mount Vernon, as well as his commitment of providing hospitality to the neverending line of guests, demanded his time. So did his correspondence, both his current and his past communications. Upon leaving the presidency Washington dug out his letter books from thirty years or more before and proceeded to correct those missives he had written as a young man. He did not seek to alter the meaning of this correspondence, but concerned with history’s judgment and, as always, plagued by self-doubt, he sought to replace his earlier plain and occasionally ungrammatical letters with more elegant and proper epistles.26

  Washington also complained of the time required to “discharge all my [current] epistolary obligations,” as if his days were squandered by the task of responding to numerous unsolicited letters. He did write a great deal. During his first year at home he wrote nearly 175 letters, missives that from habit he carefully, painstakingly drafted, going over each word and every clause meticulously to assure that his style was in no way flawed. But he initiated much of the correspondence, especially the exchanges concerned with current political matters. Upon retiring he had proclaimed his intention of leaving politics to others. “To make, and sell a little flour . . . and to amuse myself in Agricultural and rural pursuits,” he had said, were his only aspirations. But Eliza Powel had predicted that a man of his temperament would find it difficult to adjust to private life, and she was correct. The general had hardly alighted from his carriage in Virginia before he implored Secretary McHenry to communicate to him “such matters as are interesting.” Soon he waxed eloquent about foreign policy concerns in letter after letter, and on more than one occasion he confessed that he waited for news with “no small degree of solicitude.”27

  During his first year at home only one episode verged on luring Washington back into the public arena. When James Monroe, whom Washington had recalled from Paris, arrived in Philadelphia in the summer of 1797, he wasted no time in launching a campaign to vindicate himself of the suspicion that he had betrayed his country’s interests through his diplomacy. He authored several spirited newspaper essays, and soon he published A View of the Conduct of the Executive of the United States, a very long pamphlet in which he blasted Washington’s policy as anti-French. The legacy of Washington’s bankrupt policy, he charged, was the Jay Treaty, a humiliating pact made necessary because the administration’s open anglophilia gradually had dissipated Paris’s friendship.28

  By early in the new year Washington had obtained a copy of the pamphlet. He read it closely, but he confined his comments to several notations in the margin of his copy. With his unerring feel for such things Washington realized that he had little to gain by engaging in an undignified public war with an insignificant little fellow like Monroe. Besides, he saw Monroe’s attack as just another skirmish in the raging party warfare, a fray from which he intended to remain aloof. His interests would be better served, he remarked, by remaining silent and watching as the former minister’s “Artillery . . . recoil[ed] upon himself.”29

  Soon the Monroe episode faded away, overshadowed by what seemed a national emergency. Early in Adams’s administration relations with France broke down completely. The crisis, it will be recalled, had really begun late in Washington’s presidency, and it was to arrest the deteriorating relationship that Hamilton had urged his chief to send a special envoy to Paris. Washington had refused, simply nominating CharlesCotes worth Pinckney to replace Monroe. The former treasury secretary did not surrender easily, however. On the eve of Adams’s inauguration he set to work on the incoming president, proposing that it would be wise to dispatch a special diplomatic commission to the French capital. Ostensibly, Hamilton wished to settle the differences between the two nations. Higher on his agenda, however, was his hope that the commission could negotiate the termination of the twenty-year-old Franco-American treaty of alliance. When the Republican leadership also took up the cry for a special mission, Adams was moved to seriously consider the notion. Before Washington left Philadelphia the two men conferred about the matter, and even discussed the names of a few likely candidates for such a mission.

  Before he could act, however, Adams learned that the French government not only had refused to receive Minister Pinckney, it had abrogated the Franco-American commercial accord of 1778. A bellicose spirit swept America, yet Adams sought a peaceful resolution of the differences that separated the onetime allies. He announced that he was dispatching a three-member commission to Paris, a trio that would include Pinckney, John Marshall of Virginia, and Elbridge Gerry. Washington watched these events closely, all along believing that conflict would be avoided. Events soon suggested that Washington’s optimism surely was misplaced.30

  On the first anniversary of his inauguration, Adams received dire tidings. France had refused to receive the three American envoys. In addition, it had announced a harsh stance concerning the right of neutral trade. Henceforth, it would seize all ships whose cargo included English goods.31

  Adams spoke of military action, and the Federalist Congress quickly passed nearly twenty laws designed to ready the country for war. One of those laws empowered Adams to appoint the general officers in a new American army.32

  When the news of the treatment of the American envoys made its way down to Mount Vernon, Washington’s outrage matched that of other Federalists. As his administration had sought “to Treat [France] upon fair, just and honorable ground,” he expressed shock at the behavior of Paris. For the first time he conceded that war with France was possible. Until now he had maintained that Paris was sufficiently pragmatic to realize that it could gain nothing from a conflict with the United States. The recent events, however, caused him to reconsider. French dupes in America, he now argued, had encouraged Paris to believe that the United States never would defend itself, and he now feared that French miscalculation could result in war. America must speak with one voice, he urged. For that reason, he added, he supported the Federalist campaign of readiness, including the Alien and Sedition laws limiting free speech.33 But Washington uttered these thoughts in private, and he played no role in the Federalist preparedness campaign. In fact, when Hamilton, who feared that southern Democratic-Republicans would never support a war with France, urged him to make a tour of the region to rally the populace for hostilities, the ex-president rejected the suggestion. He feared the “malicious insinuations” that such activity would elicit, he said. He added, too, that he doubted that a land war with France would occur. A naval war, perhaps, but he could not believe that France would invade America, though their government, he conceded, was “capable of any thing bad”34

  The thinking in Philadelphia was quite different, and by the 4th of July Washington not only knew of Congress’s decision to augment the army, he was aware of talk that he would be summoned from retirement to lead that force. He expressed his customary distaste toward such a notion, although his protests of disinclination were familiar and not terribly credible. Indeed, so that his alleged misgivings would not be misunderstood, Washington told the secretary of war that “principle . . . would not suffer me, in any great emergency, to withhold any services I could render, required by my country.” Later that day, garbed in his old buff and blue uniform, he reviewed a military parade in Alexandria. At that very moment one hundred miles to the north, Secretary McHenry was signing the form that made Washington the commander of the newly enlarged army.35

  The secretary personally brought the commission to Virginia. McHenry also brought along a letter from his real boss, Alexander Hamilton, a missive that urged Washington to accept the appointment as the nation’s first lieutenant general. This time Hamilton did not resort to the convoluted arguments he had used in 1788 when he had appealed to Washington t
o accept the presidency. Now he knew Washington better, and he seems not to have doubted that Washington would come out of retirement. Hamilton seldom misjudged Washington, and once again he correctly understood the master of Mount Vernon.36

  Washington greeted McHenry at his doorstep on July 11. The two men had much to talk about, and presumably the secretary paid close heed to what Washington said, for Adams had advised him that the general’s “opinion on all subjects must have great weight.” By the time McHenry set forth on the hot, dusty return trip to the capital, he had secured the general’s consent to serve, although Washington made it clear that he wished to remain at home until the “urgency of circumstances” made his presence in the field absolutely necessary. McHenry’s satchel also contained a list of the names of the general officers that Washington wished to have serve under him, an enumeration that he had prepared at Adams’s behest. The list contained only the names of Federalists. Hamilton headed the tally, followed by Charles C. Pinckney, Hamilton’s superior in the last war; Knox, who had outranked both Pinckney and Hamilton, was next. Henry Lee was to be added should any of those on the list decline to accept. All were to hold the rank of major general.37

  Many reasons could be advanced for placing Pinckney’s name, not Hamilton’s, at the top of the list. Washington even candidly told Hamilton as much. Pinckney was a more experienced officer and he had outranked Hamilton. Moreover, any French attack must occur in the South, said Washington, and as a southerner Pinckney would be better able than Hamilton to rally men to the colors. Why, then, did Washington name Hamilton? Hamilton had requested the position, and Pickering and McHenry had lobbied Washington on his behalf, even telling the general that the New Yorker would not serve if he was not elevated above everyone save Washington. For reasons that he did not chronicle, Washington believed that Hamilton’s participation was essential. His “Services ought to be secured at almost any price,” he said, adding only that the nation’s “entire confidence might be reposed” in the former secretary, and that Hamilton possessed the youth and stamina necessary for another grueling partisan war in the South. If Washington gave any thought to the relationship between the war and Hamilton’s or Federalism’s political future, he did not divulge it. But, then, why would he have aired such views?38

  Others, however, had given much thought to such matters. Some Federalists were desperate to get Hamilton back into the government, and to see him made second in command to an old, stay-at-home general was to see him made the real commander. Others may have seen a correlation between an army run by Hamilton and the fortunes of the party. Not only would the army be a rich resource for patronage, but, in the right hands it could, in the words of historian Richard Kohn, become the means for the establishment of “a subterranean Federalist military network to intimidate” domestic foes.39 One who had mulled over these possibilities was President Adams, and he did not enjoy such thoughts. He was aware of Hamilton’s almost unfettered ambition. To his way of thinking there was something unsettling about the former secretary, some dark, menacing side to his character that made him untrustworthy. He was a “Hypocrite,” the president charged, an intriguer—power-hungry, duplicitous, and even lascivious, “with as debauched Morals as old Franklin.” As it was Adams’s plan to “maintain the same conduct towards him I always did, that is to keep him at a distance,” the president nearly choked when he learned that General Washington had headed his list of officers with Hamilton’s name.40

  Not only could Adams not abide the thought of Hamilton as second in command, he was perturbed that Knox, a fellow Bay stater and an old friend, had been shoved into third place. Therefore, Adams chose to accept only half of Washington’s recommendation. He agreed to the three men that Washington had named, but he decreed that their ranking must be determined by the date of their original commissions. Thus, Knox topped his list, followed by Pinckney, then Hamilton.41

  If Washington blundered in the first instance by listing the three major generals, his subsequent actions not only compounded his error but stained the virtuous reputation he had labored so long and so hard to establish. Unwittingly, yet inescapably, Washington found himself at the head of a faction that sought to force the hand of the commander in chief. It was an intrigue that was far more real than the “Conway Cabal” which had caused him such anguish twenty years before.

  Washington barely had offered his list of officers before a despairing letter from Knox arrived at Mount Vernon, a communiqué in which his faithful old comrade expressed his sense of betrayal at learning that junior men had been recommended over him. The old artillery officer would not accept command under such circumstances. Shaken, Washington’s answer was filled with fine-sounding evasion and barely credible logic. Public opinion, as reflected by the sentiments of a majority in Congress, wished to see Hamilton at the top of the list, he replied lamely. He also denied that Hamilton or his friends had worked on him to secure the former secretary’s appointment. Sycophantic to the end, Knox accepted Washington’s inadequate explanation, even offering to serve as the general’s aide de camp should an invasion occur. However, he persisted in his refusal to take a general officer’s post.42

  Washington next turned to Adams. The general proceeded to lecture his commander. “I accepted and retained” command, he said, on the condition that “the three Major Generals stood, Hamilton, Pinckney, Knox; and in this order I expected their Commissions would have been dated.” He had wished no affront to the presidency, he went on; his object only had been to secure the most able lieutenants. He went on to contradict himself, however. He had selected Hamilton because public opinion supported his appointment, he said later in the letter. Appearing to read Adams’s mind, Washington hurriedly stated that he had ranked the three men without regard to their political fortunes, and in a passage that must have seemed equally preposterous to the president Washington denied that Hamilton’s ambition constituted any danger to the nation. Washington closed by alluding to the problems faced by the army’s commander, “be him whom he may,” a chilling reminder that he would not serve if Adams refused to consent to his wishes concerning Hamilton’s ranking. Adams conceded. He had little choice.43

  For four months following his appointment Washington remained at Mount Vernon, hardly distracted by his new post. He put Lear on the federal payroll by naming him to be his aide, although while he awaited taking the field the general seems to have used him principally to “overhaul, arrange, and separate” his huge collection of private papers. Meanwhile, there was little else to do. A month after taking command Washington complained to Secretary McHenry that he was being kept in the dark, that he was “ignorant of every step” that had been taken by the war department. Thirty days later, as he was recovering from the serious ailment that struck him toward the end of that summer, Washington again carped at McHenry’s failure to keep him abreast of the military’s preparations, this time even hinting that he suspected that “important and interesting” matters were being concealed from him. Three weeks later he demanded to “know at once and precisely” what was going on. By late October about all that Washington had learned was that Pinckney had accepted rank beneath Hamilton, and that McHenry had summoned him and the major generals to the capital for a planning session.44

  In the eighteen months since he had returned to Virginia, Washington had not strayed more than a few miles from Mount Vernon, only visiting Alexandria and once looking into business matters in the new Federal City. But on November 5 he and Lear, the latter garbed in his new uniform adorned with a colonel’s insignia, set off for Philadelphia. Washington must never have expected to make this journey again, much less to be hailed and honored in every little hamlet, much as he had been almost a decade before when en route to assume the presidency. Philadelphia arranged the greatest celebration, and as the general’s carriage rumbled into town early on the 10th he was greeted by pealing bells and gaily attired military units.45

  Washington was in the capital for about a month. Curiously, on
his first three nights in town the general was left to dine alone at his lodgings, the Widow White’s boardinghouse on 8th Street. Thereafter, however, he had a busy schedule. He dined out seventeen of the other twenty nights that he made diary entries, including one evening at the President’s House and another at the British embassy. Surely his most extraordinary meal was the one he took with his old friend Robert Morris, now serving time in the Prune Street Prison, a debtor’s jail. Morris was in the early stages of what eventually would be more than a three-year incarceration, the result of a staggering indebtedness that had occurred when the European war provoked the collapse of his financial empire. Eliza Powel did not entertain her friend on any of these evenings, although Washington must have seen her on the night that he dined at her brother’s residence. He did visit her home on two or three afternoons, and he breakfasted with her one morning. One of her letters, moreover, hints that she and the general may have taken long walks together, including a lengthy stroll one chilly, rainy Sunday.46