by Harry Truman
There were so-called “little wars” in America, which were not so little for the people involved in them, going as far back as 1689. This one was called King William’s War, when the French and British, both with Indian allies, fought each other for eight years, mostly in New England and Nova Scotia, and the next was Queen Anne’s War, which took place from 1701 to 1713, again mostly in New England and Canada. These wars were mostly skirmishes followed by periods of peace, but it was inevitable that the French and the British would eventually begin another war that would be even more bloody and continuous because both countries were determined to expand their territories in the New World (which is why some historians say the correct name of the French and Indian War is the Great War for Empire), and because they had conflicting claims on some of the territories.
The French, for example, felt that, based on the rights of discovery, they were the proper owners of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and a large part of New York, even though most of the settlers in these places were British. And they also felt they had military superiority, even though the British had more of their people living in America, because the French forces had more forts in key places than the British and because most of the Indian tribes who weren’t against both groups tended to side with the French. The whole thing burst into flame in 1754, as I’ve described earlier, when Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia sent George Washington to tell the French to leave the Ohio Valley, and they wouldn’t go, and the war continued intensely for seven long years.
The necessity to be ready to defend his property was doubly important for Washington, both because he was a landowner himself and because all of his closest friends were landowners. Furthermore, he was already beginning to be perceived as a leader, and in addition to supervising his plantation and working his own land, the people who were sent to Virginia to work out their passage began to look to him to help them become landowners themselves once they were free of their debts. Washington believed very strongly in the protection of property and the protection of man’s right to make as much as he possibly could in a financial way. Perhaps he was even a bit too strong on that subject because, later on, it was the main cause of the split between the Federalists, Washington’s group, and the Jeffersonians. I think Washington felt that an asset in property showed that a man knew how to earn a living and that therefore he was a better man to have in control of the government of his local community, and nationally, too, than a man who didn’t have any property. Whereas Jefferson believed that the people knew how to govern themselves if they had the facts before them, no matter whether they were rich or not. (Much as I admire Washington, I’m certain Jefferson was right on this point.) In any case, since each colony had its own militia trained to defend its own territory, it was certain that a man like Washington would join the Virginia militia, which he did, as mentioned previously, in 1754.
It was also certain that he would become an outstanding military man because he ran his plantation like the best kind of officer, meaning with an intelligent mixture of discipline and understanding. As a landowner and farmer, he understood the necessity of getting people to work as they should, but he also treated the people we now call hired hands as people. He was decent to them; he saw that they were properly taken care of, and after they had worked out their debt for their transportation here, he helped a great many of them obtain land grants. And in his military capacity, he understood that a well-disciplined organization was necessary if they were expected to achieve victory, but he also understood his soldiers’ feelings and rights.
He was the commanding general in the Revolutionary War and he acted like the commanding general; he believed in control of the army from the top, and when he gave an order that had to be carried out, he saw to it that it was carried out. And when it wasn’t carried out, somebody got into trouble. But because he was considered the most honorable man of the period, there was both respect and affection in the attitude toward him on the part of soldiers and civilians. Washington’s word was better than most men’s bonds, and when he told people what he thought and why he thought it, they believed him and went along with him. I’m as sure of that as I’m sure that I’m sitting here, and that was why he was able to persuade the Continental Congress to give him money, and persuade his troops to stay and fight when their terms were up and they wanted to go home. The things I’ve read make it clear that every person who served with him was exceedingly fond of him. He must have been a nice man as well as a tough one.
He served with distinction in the French and Indian War, starting as a major and ending as a colonel when he left to enter the Virginia House of Burgesses. He was a lot better soldier, for example, than that General Edward Braddock, who, as I’ve mentioned, tried to take Fort Duquesne and got himself and a lot of other men killed by ignoring Washington’s advice after Washington urged him not to go where he did, and in the way he did. Washington, you’ll recall, was also largely responsible for the rescue of that part of Braddock’s army that wasn’t slaughtered, bringing them back to a safe place after they were able to get away from the French and Indians. (Incidentally, I’ve been to Braddock’s tomb. They’ve got a monument dedicated to him over there in Pennsylvania, though I’m not sure why.) And it goes without saying that Washington did an extraordinary job in the Revolutionary War, knitting the various militia organizations together and with the help of von Steuben and Lafayette and others, training the colonial troops and instilling discipline into them - which made a wonderful army out of them or they could never have won the war. Together, these men went to work on the militiamen and other volunteers who came along, and when the war was over, the colonial army was as good as any army in the world.
But there were plenty of sacrifices and plenty of misery for a man who loved his home as much as Washington did, and I’m sure he was mighty glad to go back to Virginia and civilian life in 1758, and again when the Revolutionary War ended in 1783. And I’m equally sure he had every intention and expectation of living out his life quietly and in a settled way as a Virginia farmer each time he went back home. That’s another recurring theme in Washington’s life: his deep reluctance every time he was called upon for duty away from Virginia, followed immediately by his realization that he had to do what he was called upon to do. That was the case when he served in the French and Indian War, and when he was a member of the Continental Congresses, and when the Revolutionary War came along and he had to take command, and when he was asked to be the country’s first president, and especially when he was asked to serve a second term. He had planned to serve for only a single four-year term, as you know, and you can hear his groans over that second term right down through the ages. But I think he realized fairly early in life that he was slated for leadership chores, jobs he didn’t especially want, because he knew people in every colony and was associated with the men who were at the top of the government in every colony, and he undertook that second term just as he undertook everything else that he realized was necessary and needed.
He didn’t even take any pay as president; he just put in bills for expenses whenever he paid out anything in the interest of the government. That was a firm decision he made when he decided to accept the presidency, and it wasn’t easy at times because there was that big plantation of his back in Virginia - I believe he had something like 33,000 acres, and the cash crop was principally tobacco - and something like that doesn’t run without plenty of costs. So he had to go to the banks from time to time to borrow money, which was another sacrifice because nobody likes doing that.
But he also knew that he was the certain choice for the first president, and, in fact, he was the only president in our history who was elected unanimously. The states voted by way of men who were called electors, and Washington was picked by the electors of all ten voting states - in alphabetical order, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia, Washington’s home state. The three other states of the original thi
rteen, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island, didn’t get into the act because North Carolina and Rhode Island hadn’t yet ratified the Constitution, and New York was having some internal squabbles and never got around to deciding which electors to send. John Adams received the second-largest number of electoral votes and was elected vice president, but by the time he got around to running for president, there were two political parties of pretty nearly equal strength, and it became a close race with Adams getting seventy-one electoral votes and Jefferson getting sixty-eight. The two parties were Washington’s party, the Federalists, which favored giving most of the ruling power to the central government, the federal government, and Jefferson’s party, the Democratic-Republicans, which favored more power for the states. (More about that when I finish up with Washington and get on to Tom Jefferson. But isn’t it a good laugh that there was once a single party called the Democratic-Republicans?)
Since I’ve mentioned electors, incidentally, this seems to be as good a place as any to explain how the Electoral College works and why it exists. I’ll do that in the next chapter and come back to Washington in the following chapter.
YOU HAVE TO understand, of course, that there was no real precedent for the members of the Continental Congresses in the notion of electing a single individual to the job of running the country, since kings and emperors took over by birth or by capturing territory in a war. It was quite creative and inventive, therefore, when a thing called the Virginia Plan was introduced at the Constitutional Convention on May 29, 1787, by Edmund Jennings Randolph, Virginia’s governor, a document that contained these words: “Resolved, that a National Executive be instituted, to be chosen by the National Legislature . . .” The length of the term was left blank, with some men at the Convention favoring a single term of seven years and others favoring three years, and there were a lot of other arguments and debates on how the members of the National Legislature should go about picking their man. Washington was the president of the Convention, and when five states voted for the seven-year term and four states voted against it, and the remaining state, Massachusetts, split on the subject, Washington decided that the seven-year term had won. But the question of how to decide on the right man was a lot tougher.
It was a fellow from Pennsylvania, James Wilson, who later became one of the original justices of the Supreme Court, who first suggested the idea of an Electoral College, meaning a body of electors to be chosen by the people of each state. But this notion was defeated eight to two, and instead it was determined that Congress, the body of senators and representatives, would do the selecting of the man. Then Randolph spoke up and said that maybe the Virginia Plan wasn’t such a good idea after all, and perhaps there ought to be three executives working together rather than one, because a single leader might start thinking he was really a king and start acting like one. But Wilson argued that that was a lousy idea because the three men would be squabbling all the time and never get anything accomplished, and he pleaded again for his plan for a body of electors chosen by the general population. The first part of his argument made sense to the men at the convention, but not the second, so the Virginia Plan was revised to read as follows: “Resolved, that a National Executive be instituted, to consist of a single person, to be chosen by the National Legislature, for a term of seven years, with power to carry into execution the national laws . . .”
Nothing was really settled at this point. New Jersey came up with a rival plan that again suggested government by a group of men rather than a single individual, but it left blank the number of men in the group and also left blank the number of years the group should serve, but specified that all of the men in the group could be removed by application to the Congress of a majority of the chief executives of the states. Alexander Hamilton came out against both the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan, saying that neither really gave the federal government enough power, and suggested his own plan, which provided for “the supreme Executive authority of the United States to be vested in a Governor, to be elected to serve during good behaviour; the election to be made by Electors chosen by the people . . .” But there were violent arguments against the Hamilton Plan as well, with a Virginian named George Mason pointing out that a term of “good behaviour” could well mean a lifetime and a return to a monarchy.
It all went on for quite a while. James Madison of Virginia, a tiny fellow who was five feet four, weighed less than 100 pounds, and spoke so softly that people complained constantly that they couldn’t hear him, but who later became our fourth president because he had a darn good brain, argued that selection of a president by the National Legislature might tend to bring in men chosen less because they were great leaders than because they had a lot of buddies in Congress. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania said pretty much the same thing, arguing that “if the people should elect, they will never fail to prefer some man of distinguished character, or service . . . If the Legislature elect, it will be the work of intrigue, or cabal, and of faction . . .” Then Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut joined the argument in favor of electors and came up with a suggestion with specific numbers: states with population of under 200,000 should have one elector, states between 200,000 and 300,000 should have two electors, and states above 300,000 should have four electors. And Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts came up with even more specific suggestions: that Connecticut have two electors, Delaware three, Georgia one, Maryland two, Massachusetts three, New Hampshire one, New Jersey two, New York two, North Carolina two, Pennsylvania three, Rhode Island one, South Carolina two, and Virginia three. Some of the smaller states objected, of course, but Gerry’s suggestion was accepted by a vote of six to four.
The objections didn’t really matter because Gerry’s proposal didn’t hold up very long. On July 24, William C. Houston of New Jersey began to argue again against the use of electors, saying that the system would be too expensive and that really good men wouldn’t be interested in taking on the job. The delegates immediately reversed themselves and by a vote of seven to four decided again to let Congress pick the presidents. There were also further arguments on the length of presidential terms, on whether a president could serve for only a single term or for a number of terms, and various other things. And, finally, a committee of eleven men was set up to deal with the open questions, and the proposals of these eleven men were at last accepted.
The president and vice president were to be elected for four-year terms and could be reelected for an unlimited number of equal terms. They both had to be natural-born citizens of the United States, residents of the country for at least fourteen years, and thirty-five years of age or older. And they were to be chosen by electors in a system based on the numbers of senators and representatives from each state; each state would have a total of electors equal to the total of senators and representatives from that state.
As for that number of senators and representatives, it was decided that there would be two senators from each state, and that the number of representatives would depend upon population, with each state having at least one representative. That meant each state would have at least three electors.23 Population was defined as the number of “free persons” in each state, plus three-fifths of “all other persons,” meaning slaves, but excluding “Indians not taxed.” During Washington’s first term, there were twenty-six senators, since there were, of course, thirteen states, and a total of sixty-four representatives; in my two terms, there were forty-eight states and ninety-six senators, and the number of members of the House of Representatives had grown to 435. (Incidentally, senators were at first chosen by each state legislature and representatives by popular vote, the votes of the general public, but in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment changed that so that both senators and representatives are elected by general vote.)
This idea of an Electoral College seemed like a sensible one at the time because it was assumed that the man chosen for president would be the same man chosen by the people in the general voting, but the system has come in f
or a lot of criticism through the years, and frequent attempts have been made to change it or discard it, because it doesn’t always work out that way. The reason for this is that, though electors were originally also selected by each state legislature, so that electors came from different political parties and therefore didn’t necessarily vote in a bloc for the presidential candidate of a particular party, this was also later changed so that today you vote for and elect your electors the same way you pick the men and women, and therefore the political party, running your state. This means that, if your state has a majority of Democratic or Republican electors, the members of the Electoral College from your state vote, of course, for the Democratic or Republican candidate for president. But because of this the Electoral College vote sometimes doesn’t match the popular vote, since individual voters frequently cross political lines and vote for the man they prefer rather than the man given the electoral votes by their state’s electors. But it’s the Electoral College total that elects the president, not the popular vote total, so you can see where there are objections to the system.
The result of all this is that there have been nine instances where the man who got in received fewer popular votes than his chief opponent or fewer votes than his combined opponents, but more electoral votes. James Buchanan was the first; in 1856, he easily beat his two opponents, John C. Frémont and Millard Fillmore in the popular voting by getting 1,838,169 votes to Fremont’s 1,335,264 and Fillmore’s 874,534, but as you can see by doing a little quick arithmetic, Fremont and Fillmore together got 2,209,798 votes or a total of 55 percent of the votes to Buchanan’s 45 percent. In the Electoral College voting, however, he got 174 votes to a total of 122 for the other men (Fremont got 114 and Fillmore 8), and he was the new president. The same thing happened to Abe Lincoln in his first term. Lincoln, the Republican candidate, got 1,866,352, or 40 percent of the votes, while the other men got 60 percent: Stephen A. Douglas, the Democrat, got 1,375,157 votes, 29 percent, John C. Breckinridge, of the National Democrats, the splinter party composed of southerners, got 845,763 votes, and 18 percent, John Bell, of a short-lived party called the Constitutional Union, got 589,581 votes, which is 13 percent. But in the electoral voting, Lincoln got 180 votes to the other candidates’ combined 123. To give you an idea of how Electoral College votes can differ from popular votes, Douglas was second in the popular voting, as you can see, but last in the Electoral College. Breckinridge got 72 from eleven states, mostly in the south - Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas; Bell got 39 votes; and Douglas got only 12. (In his second election, though, Lincoln had only one opponent, General George B. McClellan, Democrat, and beat him both ways, getting 2,216,067 votes, 55 percent of the popular vote, to McClellan’s 1,808,725 votes, 45 percent, and 212 electoral votes to McClellan’s 21. The Confederate states, of course, didn’t vote in this election.) The first candidate to lose the popular vote but get the presidency because of the Electoral College was Rutherford B. Hayes, who received 4,033,950 votes to Samuel J. Tilden’s 4,284,757 votes, but squeaked past him in the Electoral College 185 to 184. Garfield was practically neck and neck with his opponent, Winfield S. Hancock, in the popular vote, beating Hancock by only 9,464 votes and picking up 48.3 percent of the votes to Hancock’s 48.2 percent, but got 214 electors’ votes to Hancock’s 155. Cleveland got 49 percent of the popular votes in his first election to James G. Blaine’s 48 percent, but beat Blaine 219 to 182 in the Electoral College; and he got only 46 percent in his second election victory against his combined opponents’ 54 percent, but took the Electoral College votes 277 to their combined 167. Cleveland, you’ll remember, was president for the first time in 1884, and then took a break and was elected again in 1892, and the reason he wasn’t president in 1888 is that old Benjamin Harrison beat him in that one. Not in the popular vote, though; Cleveland got 5,540,329 votes, 49 percent, to Harrison’s 5,439,853 votes, 48 percent, but the Electoral College gave Harrison 233 votes to Cleveland’s 168. Woodrow Wilson didn’t attain a majority against his opponents in either election, getting 42 percent the first time and 49 percent the second time, but he got 435 Electoral College votes the first time against his two principal opponents’ combined 96, and 277 electors’ votes the second time against Charles Evans Hughes’ 254. Then there was another fellow about whom I’ll say a word in a minute, and the most recent example is John F. Kennedy.24 Kennedy defeated Nixon in the popular vote only 49.7 percent to 49.5 percent, 34,227,096 votes to 34,108,546, but received 309 Electoral College votes to Nixon’s 219.