CHAPTER X

The members of the new Congress were so laggard in coming together that

it was the 6th of April, 1789, before both Houses could count a quorum,

though the 4th of March had been appointed the day for their convening.

Their first business was the opening and counting of the electoral

votes; and on the 7th Charles Thomson, the faithful and sedulous

gentleman who had been clerk of every congress since that first one in

the old colonial days fifteen years ago, got away on his long ride to

Mount Vernon to notify Washington of his election. Affairs waited upon

the issue of his errand. Washington had for long known what was coming,

and was ready and resolute, as of old. There had been no formal

nominations for the presidency, and the votes of the electors had lain

under seal till the new Congress met and found a quorum; but it was an

open secret who had been chosen President, and Washington had made up

his mind what to do. Mr. Thomson reached Mount Vernon on the 14th, and

found Washington ready to obey his summons at once. He waited only for a

hasty ride to Fredericksburg to bid his aged mother farewell. She was

not tender in the parting. Her last days had come, and she had set

herself to bear with grim resolution the fatal disease that had long

been upon her. She had never been tender, and these latter days had

added their touch of hardness. But it was a tonic to her son to take her

farewell, none the less; to hear her once more bid him God-speed, and

once more command him, as she did, to his duty. On the morning of the

16th he took the northern road again, as so often before, and pressed

forward on the way for New York.

The setting out was made with a very heavy heart; for duty had never

seemed to him so unattractive as it seemed now, and his diffidence had

never been so distressing. “For myself the delay may be compared to a

reprieve,” he had written to Knox, when he learned how slow Congress was

in coming together, “for in confidence I tell you that my movements to

the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those

of a culprit who is going to the place of execution.” When the day for

his departure came, his diary spoke the same heaviness of heart. “About

ten o’clock,” he wrote, “I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life,

and to domestic felicity; and, with a mind oppressed with more anxious

and painful sensations than I have words to express, set out for New

York.” He did not doubt that he was doing right; he doubted his capacity

in civil affairs, and loved the sweet retirement and the free life he

was leaving behind him. Grief and foreboding did not in the least relax

his proud energy and promptness in action. He was not a whit the less

resolute to attempt this new rôle, and stretch his powers to the

uttermost to play it in masterful fashion. He was only wistful and full

of a sort of manly sadness; lacking not resolution, but only alacrity.

He had hoped to the last that he would be suffered

[Illustration: THOMSON, THE CLERK OF CONGRESS, ANNOUNCING TO WASHINGTON,

AT MOUNT VERNON, HIS ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY]

to spend the rest of his days at Mount Vernon; he knew the place must

lack efficient keeping, and fall once more out of repair under hired

overseers; he feared his strength would be spent and his last years come

ere he could return to look to it and enjoy it himself again. He had but

just now been obliged to borrow a round sum of money to meet pressing

obligations; and the expenses of this very journey had made it necessary

to add a full hundred pounds to the new debt. If the estate brought

money so slowly in while he farmed it, he must count upon its doing even

less while he was away; and yet he had determined to accept no salary as

President, but only his necessary expenses while in the discharge of his

official duties, as in the old days of the war. It had brought

distressing perplexities upon him to be thus drawn from his private

business to serve the nation. Private cares passed off, no doubt, and

were forgotten as the journey lengthened. But the other anxiety, how he

should succeed in this large business of statesmanship to which he had

been called, did not pass off; the incidents of that memorable ride only

served to heighten it. When he had ridden to Cambridge that anxious

summer of 1775, he had been hailed by cheering crowds upon the way, who

admired the fine figure he made, and shouted for the cause he was

destined to lead; but he knew himself a soldier then, was but

forty-three, and did not fear to find his duty uncongenial. The people

had loved him and had thronged about him with looks and words it had

quickened his heart to see and hear as he made his way from New York to

Annapolis to resign his commission but six years ago; but that was upon

the morrow of a task accomplished, and the plaudits he heard upon the

way were but greetings to speed him the more happily homeward. Things

stood very differently now. Though he felt himself grown old, he had

come out to meet a hope he could not share, and it struck a subtle pain

to his heart that the people should so trust him--should give him so

royal a progress as he fared on his way to attempt an untried task.

No king in days of kings’ divinity could have looked for so heartfelt a

welcome to his throne as this modest gentleman got to the office he

feared to take. Not only were there civil fête and military parade at

every stage of the journey; there was everywhere, besides, a running

together from all the country roundabout of people who bore themselves

not as mere sight-seers, but as if they had come out of love for the man

they were to see pass by. It was not their numbers but their manner that

struck their hero with a new sense of responsibility: their earnest

gaze, their unpremeditated cries of welcome, their simple joy to see the

new government put into the hands of a man they perfectly trusted. He

was to be their guarantee of its good faith, of its respect for law and

its devotion to liberty; and they made him know their hope and their

confidence in the very tone of their greeting. There was the manifest

touch of love in the reception everywhere prepared for him. Refined

women broke their reserve to greet him in the open road; put their young

daughters forward, in their enthusiasm, to strew roses before him in the

way; brought tears to his eyes by the very artlessness of their

affection. When at last the triumphal journey was ended, the display of

every previous stage capped and outdone by the fine pageant of his

escort of boats from Newark and of his reception at the ferry stairs in

New York, the demonstration seemed almost more than he could bear. “The

display of boats which attended and joined us,” he confessed to his

diary, “the decorations of the ships, the roar of the cannon, and the

loud acclamations of the people which rent the skies as I walked along

the streets, filled my mind with sensations as painful as they are

pleasant”; for his fears foreboded scenes the opposite of these, when he

should have shown himself unable to fulfil the hopes which were the

burden of all the present joy.

It was the 27th of April when he reached New York. Notwithstanding his

executive fashion of making haste, the rising of the country to bid him

God-speed had kept him four days longer on the way than Mr. Thomson had

taken to carry the summons to Mount Vernon. Three days more elapsed

before Congress had completed its preparations for his inauguration. On

the 30th of April, in the presence of a great concourse of people, who

first broke into wild cheers at sight of him, and then fell silent again

upon the instant to see him so moved, Washington stood face to face with

the Chancellor of the State upon the open balcony of the Federal Hall in

Wall Street, and took the oath of office. “Do you solemnly swear,” asked

Livingston, “that you will faithfully execute the office of President of

the United States, and will, to the best of your ability, preserve,

protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States?” “I do

solemnly swear,” replied Washington, “that I will faithfully execute the

office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my

ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United

States,” and then, bending to kiss the Bible held before him, bowed his

head and said “So help me God!” in tones no man could mistake, so deep

was their thrill of feeling. “Long live George Washington, President of

the United States!” cried Livingston to the people; and a great shout

went up with the booming of the cannon in the narrow streets.

Washington was profoundly moved, and, with all his extraordinary mastery

of himself, could not hide his agitation. It was a company of friends,

the Senators and Representatives who stood about him within the Senate

chamber as he read his address, after the taking of the oath. Some very

old friends were there--men who had been with him in the first

continental congress, men who had been his intimate correspondents the

long years through, men who were now his close confidants and sworn

supporters. Not many strangers could crowd into the narrow hall; and it

was not mere love of ceremony, but genuine and heartfelt respect, that

made the whole company stand while he read. He visibly trembled,

nevertheless, as he stood in their presence, strong and steadfast man

though he was, “and several times could scarce make out to read”;

shifted his manuscript uneasily from hand to hand; gestured with awkward

effort; let his voice fall almost inaudible; was every way unlike

himself, except for the simple majesty and sincerity that shone in him

through it all. His manner but gave emphasis, after all, to the words he

was reading. “The magnitude and difficulty of the trust,” he declared,

“could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior

endowments from nature, and unpractised in the duties of civil

administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own

deficiencies”; and no one there could look at him and deem him insincere

when he added, “All I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study

to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by

which it might be affected. All I dare hope is that, if in executing

this task I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of

former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent

proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too

little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty

and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives

which misled me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some

share of the partiality with which they originated.” His hearers knew

how near the truth he struck when he said, “The smiles of Heaven can

never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order

and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and the preservation of the

sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of

government, are justly considered as _deeply_, perhaps as _finally_,

staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people.”

It was, no doubt, “a novelty in the history of society to see a great

people turn a calm and scrutinizing eye upon itself,” as the people of

America had done; “to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil”

into which disunion and disorder had brought it; “patiently wait for two

years until a remedy was discovered”; and at last voluntarily adopt a

new order and government “without having wrung a tear or a drop of blood

from mankind.” But Washington knew that the praise deserved for such

mastery and self-possession would be short-lived enough if the new

government should fail or be discredited. It was the overpowering

thought that he himself would be chiefly responsible for its success or

failure that shook his nerves as he stood there at the beginning of his

task; and no man of right sensibility in that audience failed to like

him the better and trust him the more implicitly for his emotion. “It

was a very touching scene,” wrote Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts. “It

seemed to me an allegory in which virtue was personified as addressing

those whom she would make her votaries. Her power over the heart was

never greater, and the illustration of her doctrine by her own example

was never more perfect.” “I feel how much I shall stand in need of the

countenance and aid of every friend to myself, of every friend to the

Revolution, and of every lover of good government,” were Washington’s

words of appeal to Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina; and he never

seemed to his friends more attractive or more noble than now.

The inauguration over, the streets fallen quiet again, the legislative

business of the Houses resumed, Washington regained his old

self-possession, and turned to master his new duties with a calm

thoroughness of purpose which seemed at once to pass into the action of

the government itself. Perhaps it was true, as he thought, that he had

been no statesman hitherto; though those who had known him would have

declared themselves of another mind. He had carried the affairs of the

Confederation upon his own shoulders, while the war lasted, after a

fashion the men of that time were not likely to forget, so full of

energy had he been, so provident and capable upon every point of policy.

His letters, too, since the war ended, had shown his correspondents the

country over such an appreciation of the present, so sure a forecast of

the future, so masculine an understanding

[Illustration: THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, AT PEARL AND CHERRY

STREETS, NEW YORK]

[Illustration: WASHINGTON MANSION, 190 MARKET STREET, PHILADELPHIA]

of what waited to be done and of the means at hand to do it, that they,

at least, accounted him their leader in peace no less than in war. But

statesmanship hitherto had been only incidental to his duties as a

soldier and a citizen. It had been only an accident of the Revolution

that he had had himself, oftentimes, to supply the foresight and the

capacity in action which the halting congress lacked. He had had no

experience at all in actual civil administration. He did not know his

own abilities, or realize how rich his experience in affairs had, in

fact, been. He went about his new tasks with diffidence, therefore, but

with the full-pulsed heartiness, too, of the man who thoroughly trusts

himself, for the capacity at any rate of taking pains. Statesmanship was

now his duty--his whole duty--and it was his purpose to understand and

execute the office of President as he had understood and administered

the office of General.

He knew what need there was for caution. This was to be, “in the first

instance, in a considerable degree, a government of accommodation as

well as a government of laws. Much was to be done by prudence, much by

conciliation, much by firmness.” “I walk,” he said, “on untrodden

ground. There is scarcely an action the motive of which may not be

subjected to a double interpretation. There is scarcely any part of my

conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.” But, though he

sought a prudent course, he had no mind to be timid; though he asked

advice, he meant to be his own master.

Washington had, no doubt, a more precise understanding of what the new

government must be made to mean than any other man living, except,

perhaps, Hamilton and Madison, the men whom he most consulted. The

Confederation had died in contempt, despised for its want of dignity and

power. The new government must deserve and get pre-eminent standing from

the first. Its policy must make the States a nation, must stir the

people out of their pettiness as colonists and provincials, and give

them a national character and spirit. It was not a government only that

was to be created, but the definite body of opinion also which should

sustain and perfect it. It must be made worth believing in, and the best

spirits of the country must be rallied to its support. It was not the

question simply of how strong the government should be. Its action must,

as Washington said, be mixed of firmness, prudence, and conciliation, if

it would win liking and loyalty as well as respect. It must cultivate

tact as well as eschew weakness; must win as well as compel obedience.

It was of the first consequence to the country, therefore, that the man

it had chosen to preside in this delicate business of establishing a

government which should be vigorous without being overbearing was a

thoroughbred gentleman, whose instincts would carry him a great way

towards the solution of many a nice question of conduct. While he waited

to be made President he called upon every Senator and Representative

then in attendance upon Congress, with the purpose to show them upon how

cordial and natural a basis of personal acquaintance he wished, for his

part, to see the government conducted; but, the oath of office once

taken, he was no longer a simple citizen, as he had been during those

two days of waiting; the dignity of the government had come into his

keeping with the office. Henceforth he would pay no more calls, accept

no invitations. On a day fixed he would receive calls; and he would

show himself once a week at Mrs. Washington’s general receptions. He

would invite persons of official rank or marked distinction to his table

at suitable intervals. There should be no pretence of seclusion, no

parade of inaccessibility. The President should be a republican officer,

the servant of the people. But he would not be common. It should be

known that his office and authority were the first in the land. Every

proper outward form of dignity, ceremony, and self-respect should be

observed that might tell wholesomely upon the imagination of the people;

that might be made to serve as a visible sign, which no man could miss,

that there was here no vestige of the old federal authority, at which it

had been the fashion to laugh, but a real government, and that the

greatest in the land.

It was not that the President was not to be seen by anybody who had the

curiosity to wish to see him. Many a fine afternoon he was to be seen

walking, an unmistakable figure, upon the Battery, whither all persons

of fashion in the town resorted for their daily promenade, his

secretaries walking behind him, but otherwise unattended. Better still,

he could be seen almost any day on horseback, riding in his noble way

through the streets. People drew always aside to give him passage

wherever he went, whether he walked or rode; no doubt there was

something in his air and bearing which seemed to expect them to do so;

but their respect had the alacrity of affection, and he would have borne

himself with a like proud figure in his own Virginia. Some thought him

stiff, but only the churlish could deem him unrepublican, so evident was

it to every candid man that it was not himself but his office he was

exalting. His old passion for success was upon him, and he meant that

this government of which he had been made the head should have prestige

from the first. Count de Moustier, the French Minister to the United

States, deeming America, no doubt, a protégé of France, claimed the

right to deal directly with the President in person, as if upon terms of

familiar privilege, when conducting his diplomatic business; but was

checked very promptly. It was not likely a man bred in the proud school

of Virginian country gentlemen would miss so obvious a point of

etiquette as this. To demand intimacy was to intimate superiority, and

Washington’s reply drew from the Count an instant apology. That the

United States had every reason to hold France in loyal affection

Washington gladly admitted with all stately courtesy; but affection

became servility when it lost self-respect, and France must approach the

President of the United States as every other country did, through the

properly constituted department. “If there are rules of proceeding,” he

said, quietly, “which have originated from the wisdom of statesmen, and

are sanctioned by the common assent of nations, it would not be prudent

for a young state to dispense with them altogether,”--particularly a

young state (his thought added) which foreign states had despised and

might now try to patronize. These small matters would carry an infinite

weight of suggestion with them, as he knew, and every suggestion that

proceeded from the President should speak of dignity and independence.

For the first few months of the new government’s life these small

matters that marked its temper and its self-respect were of as much

consequence as its laws or its efficient organization for the tasks of

actual administration.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON

(After a painting by Edward Savage)]

The country evidently looked to Washington to set the tone and show what

manner of government it was to have. Congress, though diligent and

purposeful enough, could linger, meanwhile, the whole summer through

upon its task of framing the laws necessary for the erection and

organization of Departments of State, for Foreign Affairs, of the

Treasury, and of War, and the creation of the office of

Attorney-General--a simple administrative structure to suffice for the

present. In the interval the treasury board of the Confederation and its

secretaries of war and foreign affairs were continued in service, and

the President found time to digest the business of the several

departments preparatory to their reorganization. He sent for all the

papers concerning their transactions since the treaty of peace of 1783,

and mastered their contents after his own thorough fashion, making

copious notes and abstracts as he read.

He had been scarcely six weeks in office when he was stricken with a

sharp illness. A malignant tumor in his thigh seemed to his physicians

for a time to threaten mortification. It was three weeks before he could

take the air again, stretched painfully at length in his coach; even his

stalwart strength was slow to rally from the draught made upon it by the

disease, and its cure with the knife. There was deep anxiety for a

little among those who knew, so likely did it seem that the life of the

government was staked upon his life. He himself had looked very calmly

into the doctor’s troubled face, and had bidden him tell him the worst

with that placid firmness that always came to him in moments of danger.

“I am not afraid to die,” he said. “Whether to-night or twenty years

hence makes no difference. I know that I am in the hands of a good

Providence.” A chain had been stretched across the street in front of

the house where he lay, to check the noisy traffic that might have

disturbed him more deeply in his fever. But the government had not stood

still the while. He had steadily attended to important matters as he

could. ’Twas scarcely necessary he should be out of bed and abroad again

to make all who handled affairs feel his mastery; and by the time the

summer was ended that mastery was founded upon knowledge. He understood

the affairs of the new government, as of the old, better than any other

man; knew the tasks that waited to be attempted, the questions that

waited to be answered, the difficulties that awaited solution, and the

means at hand for solving them, with a grasp and thoroughness such as

made it impossible henceforth that any man who might be called to serve

with him in executive business, of whatever capacity in affairs, should

be more than his counsellor. He had made himself once for all head and

master of the government.

By the end of September (1789) Congress had completed its work of

organization and Washington had drawn his permanent advisers about him.

The federal courts, too, had been erected and given definitive

jurisdiction. The new government had taken distinct shape, and was ready

to digest its business in detail. Washington chose Alexander Hamilton to

be Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Knox to be Secretary of War,

Thomas Jefferson Secretary of State, and Edmund Randolph

Attorney-General--young men all, except Jefferson, and he was but

forty-six.

The fate of the government was certain to turn, first of all, upon

questions of finance. It was hopeless poverty that had brought the

Confederation into deep disgrace; the new government had inherited from

it nothing but a great debt; and the first test of character to which

the new plan in affairs would be put, whether at home or abroad, was the

test of its ability to sustain its financial credit with businesslike

thoroughness and statesmanlike wisdom. Alexander Hamilton was only

thirty-two years old. He had been a spirited and capable soldier and an

astute and eloquent advocate; but he had not had a day’s experience in

the administration of a great governmental department, and had never

handled--so far as men knew, had never studied--questions of public

finance. “Washington chose him, nevertheless, without hesitation, for

what must certainly turn out to be the most critical post in his

administration. No man saw more clearly than Washington did how large a

capacity for statesmanship Hamilton had shown in his masterly papers in

advocacy of the Constitution. He had known Hamilton, moreover, through

all the quick years that had brought him from precocious youth to wise

maturity; had read his letters and felt the singular power that moved in

them; and was ready to trust him with whatever task he would consent to

assume.

Henry Knox, that gallant officer of the Revolution, had been already

four years Secretary of War for the Confederation. In appointing him to

the same office under the new Constitution, “Washington was but

retaining a man whom he loved and to whom he had for long been

accustomed to look for friendship and counsel. He chose Thomas Jefferson

to handle the delicate questions of foreign affairs which must press

upon the young state because, John Adams being Vice-President, there was

no other man of equal gifts available who had had so large an

experience in the field of diplomacy. Again and again Jefferson had been

chosen for foreign missions under the Confederation; he was American

Minister to France when Washington’s summons called him to the

Secretaryship of State; and he came of that race of Virginian statesmen

from whom Washington might reasonably count upon receiving a support

touched with personal loyalty. Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and

George Mason were home-keeping spirits, and doubted of the success of

the new government; but Jefferson, though he had looked upon its making

from across the sea, approved, and was ready to lend his aid to its

successful establishment. In appointing Edmund Randolph to be

Attorney-General, Washington was but choosing a brilliant young man whom

he loved out of a great family of lawyers who had held a sort of primacy

at the bar in Virginia ever since he could remember--almost ever since

she had been called the Old Dominion. Knox was thirty-nine, Edmund

Randolph thirty-six; but if Washington chose young men to be his

comrades and guides in counsel, it was but another capital proof of his

own mastery in affairs. Himself a natural leader, he recognized the like

gift and capacity in others, even when fortune had not yet disclosed or

brought them to the test.

It was hard, in filling even the greater offices, to find men of

eminence who were willing to leave the service of their States or the

security and ease of private life to try the untrodden paths of federal

government. The States were old and secure--so men thought--the federal

government was new and an experiment. The stronger sort of men,

particularly amongst those bred to the law, showed, many of them, a

great reluctance to identity themselves with new institutions set up

but five or six months ago; and Washington, though he meant to make

every liberal allowance for differences of opinion, would invite no man

to stand with him in the new service who did not thoroughly believe in

it. He was careful to seek out six of the best lawyers to be had in the

country when he made up the Supreme Court, and to choose them from as

many States--John Jay, of New York, to be chief justice; John Rutledge,

of South Carolina; William Cushing, of Massachusetts; John Blair, of

Virginia; James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, and R. H. Harrison, of

Maryland--for he knew that the government must draw its strength from

the men who administered it, and that the common run of people must

learn to respect it in the persons of its officers. But he was equally

careful to find out in advance of every appointment what the man whom he

wished to ask thought of the new government and wished its future to be.

Many to whom he offered appointment declined; minor offices seemed

almost to go a-begging amongst men of assured position such as it was

his object to secure. It needed all the tact and patience he could

command to draw about him a body of men such as the county must look up

to and revere. His letters again went abroad by the hundred, as so often

before, to persuade men to their duty, build a bulwark of right opinion

round about the government, make his purposes clear and his plans

effective. He would spare no pains to make the government both great and

permanent.

In October, 1789, his principal appointments all made, the government in

full operation, and affairs standing still till Congress should meet

again, he went upon a four weeks’ tour through the eastern States, to

put the people in mind there, by his own presence, of the existence and

dignity of the federal government, and to make trial of their feeling

towards it. They received him with cordial enthusiasm, for he was secure

of their love and admiration; and he had once more a royal progress from

place to place all the way to far New Hampshire and back again. He

studiously contrived to make it everywhere felt, nevertheless, by every

turn of ceremonial and behavior, that he had come, not as the hero of

the Revolution, but as the President of the United States. At Boston

Governor Hancock sought by cordial notes and pleas of illness to force

Washington to waive the courtesy of a first call from him, and so give

the executive of Massachusetts precedence, if only for old friendship’s

sake. But Washington would not be so defeated of his errand; forced the

perturbed old patriot to come to him, swathed as he was in flannels and

borne upon men’s shoulders up the stairs, received him with grim

courtesy, and satisfied the gossips of the town once and for all that

precedence belonged to the federal government--at any rate, so long as

George Washington was President. Having seen him and fêted him, the

eastern towns had seen and done homage to the new authority set over

them. Washington was satisfied, and returned with a noticeable accession

of spirits to the serious work of federal administration.

No man stood closer to him in his purpose to strengthen and give

prestige to the government than Hamilton; and no man was able to

discover the means with a surer genius. Hamilton knew who the

well-wishers of the new government were, whence its strength was to be

drawn, what it must do to approve

[Illustration: CONGRESS HALL, 1700-1800]

itself great and permanent, with an insight and thoroughness Washington

himself could not match: for Hamilton knew Washington and the seats of

his strength in the country as that self-forgetful man himself could

not. He knew that it was the commercial classes of the country--such men

as he had himself dwelt amongst at the great port at New York--who were

bound by self-interest to the new government, which promised them a

single policy in trade, in the stead of policies a half-score; and that

the men who were standing to its support out of a reasoned prudence, out

of a high-minded desire to secure good government and a place of

consideration for their country amongst the nations of the world, were

individuals merely, to be found only in small groups here and there,

where a special light shone in some minds. He knew that Washington was

loved most for his national character and purpose amongst the observant

middle classes of substantial people in the richer counties of

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England, while his neighbors

in the South loved him with an individual affection only, and rather as

their hero than as their leader in affairs. He saw that the surest way

to get both popular support and international respect was to give to the

government at once and in the outset a place of command in the business

and material interests of the country. Such a policy every man could

comprehend, and a great body of energetic and influential men would

certainly support; that alone could make the government seem real from

the first--a veritable power, not an influence and a shadow merely.

Here was a man, unquestionably, who had a quick genius in affairs; and

Washington gave him leave and initiative with such sympathy and

comprehension and support as only a nature equally bold and equally

originative could have given. Hamilton’s measures jumped with

Washington’s purpose, ran with Washington’s perception of national

interests; and they were with Washington’s aid put into execution with a

promptness and decision which must have surprised the friends of the new

government no less than it chagrined and alarmed its enemies.

Having done its work of organization during its first summer session,

the Congress came together again, January 4th, 1790, to attempt the

formulation of a policy of government, and Hamilton at once laid before

it a “plan for the settlement of the public debt” which he had drawn and

Washington had sanctioned. He proposed that provision should be made for

the payment of the foreign debt in full--that of course; that the

domestic debt, the despised promises and paper of the Confederation,

should be funded and paid; and that the debts contracted by the several

States in the prosecution of the war for independence should be assumed

by the general government as the debt of the nation. No one could doubt

that the foreign debt must be paid in full: to that Congress agreed

heartily and without hesitation. But there was much in the rest of the

plan to give prudent men pause. To pay off the paper of the

Confederation would be to give to the speculators, who had bought it up

in the hope of just such a measure, a gratuity of many times what they

had paid for it. To assume the State debts would be taken to mean that

the States were bankrupt or delinquent, that the federal government was

to be their guardian and financial providence, and that the capital of

the country must look only to the government of the nation, not to the

government of the States, for security and profitable employment. This

was nationalizing the government with a vengeance, and was a plain bid,

besides, to win the moneyed class to its support. Members whose

constituencies lay away from the centres of trade looked askance at such

measures, and deemed them no better than handing the government over to

the money lenders of the towns. But boldness and energy prevailed, as

they had prevailed in the adoption of the Constitution itself, and both

measures were carried through the Houses--the first at once, the second

after a close and doubtful struggle--by stratagem and barter.

Jefferson had been in France when Washington called him to assume the

headship of foreign affairs at home; had not reached New York on his

return voyage until December 23d, 1789; and did not take his place in

Washington’s council till March 21st, 1790. All of Hamilton’s great plan

had by that time passed Congress, except the assumption of the State

debts. Upon that question a crisis had been reached. It had wrought

Congress to a dangerous heat of feeling. Members from the South, where

trade was not much astir and financial interests told for less than

local pride and sharp jealousy of a too great central power, were set

hotly against the measure; most of the Northern members were as hotly

resolved upon its adoption. Mr. Jefferson must have caught echoes and

rumors of the great debate as he lingered at Monticello in order to

adjust his private affairs before entering upon his duties in the

cabinet. The measure had been lost at last in the House by the narrow

margin of two votes. But the minority were in no humor to submit. They

declined to transact any business at all till they should be yielded to

in this matter. There were even ugly threats to be heard that some would

withdraw from Congress and force a dissolution of the Union rather than

make concessions upon the one side or the other.

It was to this pass that things had come when Mr. Jefferson reached the

seat of government; and his arrival gave Hamilton an opportunity to show

how consummate a politician he could be in support of his statesmanship.

The Southern members wanted the seat of the federal government

established within their reach, upon the Potomac, where Congress might

at least be rid of importunate merchants and money lenders clamoring at

its doors, and of impracticable Quakers with their petitions for the

abolition of slavery; and were almost as hot at their failure to get

their will in that matter as the Northern men were to find themselves

defeated upon the question of the State debts. Mr. Jefferson was fresh

upon the field, was strong among the Southern members, was not embroiled

or committed in the quarrel. Hamilton besought him to intervene. The

success of the government was at stake, he said, and Mr. Jefferson could

pluck it out of peril. Might it not be that the Southern men would

consent to vote for the assumption of the State debts if the Northern

members would vote for a capital on the Potomac? The suggestion came as

if upon the thought of the moment, at a chance meeting on the street, as

the two men walked and talked of matters of the day; but it was very

eloquently urged. Mr. Jefferson declared he was “really a stranger to

the whole subject,” but would be glad to lend what aid he could. Would

not Mr. Hamilton dine with him the next day, to meet

[Illustration: ELEANOR PARKE CUSTIS

(From the painting in possession of General Custis Lee)]

and confer with a few of the Southern members? In the genial air of the

dinner-table the whole difficulty was talked away. Two of the diners

agreed to vote for the assumption of the State debts if Mr. Hamilton

could secure a majority for a capital on the Potomac; and Congress

presently ratified the bargain. There was not a little astonishment at

the sudden clearing of the skies. The waters did not go down at once;

hints of a scandal and of the shipwreck of a fair name or two went about

the town and spread to the country. But Congress had come out of its

angry tangle of factions, calm had returned to the government, and

Hamilton’s plan stood finished and complete. He had nationalized the

government as he wished.

It was this fact that most struck the eye of Jefferson when he had

settled to his work and had come to see affairs steadily and as a whole

at the seat of government. He saw Hamilton supreme in the cabinet and in

legislation--not because either the President or Congress was weak, but

because Hamilton was a master in his new field, and both Congress and

the President had accepted his leadership. It chagrined Jefferson deeply

to see that he had himself assisted at Hamilton’s triumph, had himself

made it complete, indeed. He could not easily brook successful rivalry

in leadership; must have expected to find himself, not Hamilton,

preferred in the counsels of a Virginian President; was beyond measure

dismayed to see the administration already in the hands, as it seemed,

of a man just two months turned of thirty-three. He began ere long to

declare that he had been “most ignorantly and innocently made to hold

the candle” to the sharp work of the Secretary of the Treasury, having

been “a stranger to the circumstances.” But it was not the

circumstances of which he had been ignorant; it was the effect of what

he had done upon his own wish to play the chief rôle in the new

government. When he came to a calm scrutiny of the matter, he did not

like the assumption of the State debts, and, what was more serious for a

man of political ambition, it was bitterly distasteful to the very men

from whom he must look to draw a following when parties should form. He

felt that he had been tricked; he knew that he had been outrun in the

race for leadership.

What he did not understand or know how to reckon with was the place and

purpose of Washington in the government. Hamilton had been Washington’s

aide and confidant when a lad of twenty, and knew in what way those must

rule who served under such a chief. He knew that Washington must first

be convinced and won; did not for a moment doubt that the President held

the reins and was master; was aware that his own plans had prospered

both in the making and in the adoption because the purpose they spoke

was the purpose Washington most cherished. Washington had adopted the

fiscal measures as his own; Hamilton’s strength consisted in having his

confidence and support. Jefferson had slowly to discover that leadership

in the cabinet was to be had, not by winning a majority of the

counsellors who sat in it, but by winning Washington. That masterful man

asked counsel upon every question of consequence, but took none his own

judgment did not approve. He had chosen Hamilton because he knew his

views, Jefferson only because he knew his influence, ability, and

experience in affairs. When he did test Jefferson’s views he found them

less to his liking than he had expected.

He had taken Jefferson direct from France, where for five years he had

been watching a revolution come on apace, hurried from stage to stage,

not by statesmen who were masters in the art and practice of freedom,

like those who had presided in the counsels of America, but by

demagogues and philosophers rather; and the subtle air of that age of

change had crept into the man’s thought. He had come back a

philosophical radical rather than a statesman. He had yet to learn, in

the practical air of America, what plain and steady policy must serve

him to win hard-headed men to his following; and Washington found him a

guide who needed watching. Foreign affairs, over which it was

Jefferson’s duty to preside, began of a sudden to turn upon the politics

of France, where Jefferson’s thought was so much engaged. The year 1789,

in which America gained self-possession and set up a government soberly

planned to last, was the year in which France lost self-possession and

set out upon a wild quest for liberty which was to cost her both her

traditional polity and all the hopes she had of a new one. In that year

broke the storm of the French revolution.

It was a dangerous infection that went abroad from France in those first

days of her ardor, and nowhere was it more likely to spread than in

America.

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven! O times

In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways

Of custom, law, and statute took at once

The attraction of a country in romance!

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights

When most intent on making of herself

A prime Enchantress, to assist the work

Which then was going forward in her name!

Not favored spots alone, but the whole earth,

The beauty wore of promise, that which sets

(As at some moments might not be unfelt

Among the bowers of paradise itself)

The budding rose above the rose full blown.”

Was not this spirit that had sprung to such sudden might in France the

very spirit that had made America free, her people sovereign, her

government liberal as men could dream of? Was not France now more than

ever America’s friend and close ally against the world? ’Twould be

niggardly to grudge her aid and love to the full in this day of her

emulation of America’s great example. The Bastile was down, tyranny at

an end, Lafayette the people’s leader. The gallant Frenchman himself

could think of nothing more appropriate than to send the great key of

the fallen fortress to Washington.

But Washington’s vision in affairs was not obscured. He had not led

revolutionary armies without learning what revolution meant. “The

revolution which has been effected in France,” he said, “is of so

wonderful a nature that the mind can hardly realize the fact”--his calm

tones ringing strangely amidst the enthusiastic cries of the time. “I

fear, though it has gone triumphantly through the first paroxysm, it is

not the last it has to encounter before matters are finally settled. The

revolution is of too great a magnitude to be effected in so short a

space and with the loss of so little blood.” He hoped, but did not

believe, that it would run its course without fatal disorders; and he

meant, in any case, to keep America from the infection. She was herself

but “in a convalescent state,” as he said, after her own great struggle.

She was too observant still, moreover, of European politics and

opinion, like a province rather than like a nation--inclined to take

sides as if she were still a child of the European family, who had flung

away from her mother England to cling in pique to an ancient foe.

Washington’s first and almost single object, at every point of policy,

was to make of the provincial States of the Union a veritable nation,

independent, at any rate, and ready to be great when its growth should

come, and its self-knowledge. “Every true friend to this country,” he

said, at last, “must _see_ and _feel_ that the policy of it is not to

embroil ourselves with any nation whatever, but to avoid their disputes

and their politics, and, if they will harass one another, to avail

ourselves of the neutral conduct we have adopted. Twenty years’ peace,

with such an increase of population and resources as we have a right to

expect, added to our remote situation from the jarring powers, will in

all probability enable us, in a just cause, to bid defiance to any power

on earth”; and such were his thought and purpose from the first. “I want

an _American_ character,” he cried, “that the powers of Europe may be

convinced we act for _ourselves_, and not for _others_.” He had been

given charge of a nation in the making, and he meant it should form,

under his care, an independent character.

It was thus he proved himself no sentimentalist, but a statesman. It was

stuff of his character, this purpose of independence. He would have

played a like part of self-respect for himself among his neighbors on

the Virginian plantations; and he could neither understand nor tolerate

the sentiment which made men like Jefferson eager to fling themselves

into European broils. Truly this man was the first American, the men

about him provincials merely, dependent still for their life and

thought upon the breath of the Old World, unless, like Hamilton, they

had been born and had stood aloof, or, like Gouverneur Morris, had

divined Europe in her own capitals with clear, unenamoured eyes.

Fortunately affairs could be held steadily enough to a course of wise

neutrality and moderation at first, while France’s revolution wrought

only its work of internal overthrow and destruction; and while things

went thus opinion began slowly to cool. ’Twas plain to be seen, as the

months went by, that the work being done in France bore no real likeness

at all to the revolution in America; and wise men began to see

it for what it was, a social distemper, not a reformation of

government--effective enough as a purge, no doubt; inevitable, perhaps;

a cure of nature’s own devising; but by no means to be taken part in by

a people not likewise stricken, still free to choose. At first

Washington and a few men of like insight stood almost alone in their

cool self-possession. Every man of generous spirit deemed it his mere

duty to extol the French, to join clubs after their manner, in the name

of the rights of man, to speak everywhere in praise of the revolution.

But by the time it became necessary to act--to declare the position and

policy of the nation’s government towards France--a sober second thought

had come, and Washington’s task was a little simplified.

The crisis came with the year 1793. In 1792 France took arms against her

European neighbors, let her mobs sack the King’s palace, declared

herself a republic, and put her monarch on trial for his life. The

opening days of 1793 saw Louis dead upon the scaffold; England, Holland,

Spain, and the Empire joined with the alliance against the fevered

nation; and war as it were spread suddenly to all the world. Would not

America succor her old ally? Was there no compulsion in the name of

liberty? Would she stand selfishly off to save herself from danger?

There was much in such a posture of affairs to give pause even to

imperative men like Washington. Those who favored France seemed the

spokesmen of the country. The thoughtful men, to whom the real character

of the great revolution over sea was beginning to be made plain, were

silent. It would have required a veritable art of divination to

distinguish the real sentiment of the country, upon which, after all,

the general government must depend. “It is on great occasions only, and

after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection,”

Washington held, “that the real voice of the people can be known”; but a

great risk must be run in waiting to know it.

The measures already adopted by the government, though well enough

calculated to render it strong, had not been equally well planned to

make it popular. The power to tax, so jealously withheld but the other

day from the Confederation, the new Congress had begun promptly and

confidently to exercise upon a great scale, not only laying duties upon

imports, the natural resource of the general government, but also

imposing taxes upon distilled spirits, and so entering the fiscal field

of the States. Not only had the war debts of the States been assumed,

but a national bank had been set up (1791), as if still further to make

the general government sure of a complete mastery in the field of

finance. Jefferson and Randolph had fought the measure in the cabinet,

as many a moderate man had fought it in Congress, and Washington had

withheld his signature from it till he should hear what they had to

urge. But he had sent their arguments to Hamilton for criticism, and had

accepted his answer in favor of the bank. Jefferson and Randolph had

challenged the measure on the ground that it was without warrant in the

Constitution, which nowhere gave Congress the right to create

corporations, fiscal or other. Hamilton replied that, besides the powers

explicitly enumerated, the Constitution gave to Congress the power to

pass any measure “necessary and proper” for executing those set forth;

that Congress was itself left to determine what might thus seem

necessary; and that if it deemed the erection of a bank a proper means

of executing the undoubted financial powers of the government, the

constitutional question was answered. By accepting such a view

Washington sanctioned the whole doctrine of “implied powers,” which

Jefferson deemed the very annulment of a written and explicit

constitution. No bounds, Jefferson believed, could be set to the

aggressive sweep of congressional pretension if the two Houses were to

be given leave to do whatever they thought expedient in exercising their

in any case great and commanding powers. No man could doubt, in the face

of such measures, what the spirit and purpose of Hamilton were, or of

the President whom Hamilton so strangely dominated.

Strong measures bred strong opposition. When the first Congress came

together there seemed to be no parties in the country. All men seemed

agreed upon a fair and spirited trial of the new Constitution. But an

opposition had begun to gather form before its two years’ term was out;

and in the second Congress party lines began to grow definite--not for

and against the Constitution, but for and against an extravagant use of

constitutional powers. There was still a majority for the principal

measures of the administration; but the minority had clearly begun to

gather force both in the votes and in the debates. The reaction was

unmistakable. Even Madison, Washington’s stanch friend and intimate

counsellor, who had at first been his spokesman in the House, began to

draw back--first doubted and then opposed the policy of the Treasury. He

had led the opposition to the bank, and grew more and more uneasy to

note the course affairs were taking. It looked as if the administration

were determined of set purpose to increase the expenses of the

government, in order that they might add to the loans, which were so

acceptable to influential men of wealth, and double the taxes which made

the power of the government so real in the eyes of the people. Steps

were urged to create a navy; to develop an army with permanent

organization and equipment; and the President insisted upon vigorous

action at the frontiers against the western Indians. This was part of

his cherished policy. It was his way of fulfilling the vision that had

long ago come to him, of a nation spreading itself down the western

slopes of the mountains and over all the broad reaches of fertile land

that looked towards the Mississippi; but to many a member of Congress

from the quiet settlements in the east it looked like nothing better

than a waste of men and of treasure. The President seemed even a little

too imperious in the business: would sometimes come into the Senate in

no temper to brook delay in the consideration and adoption of what he

proposed in such matters. When things went wrong through the fault of

the commanders he had sent to the frontier, he stormed in a sudden

fury, as sometimes in the old days of the war, scorning soldiers who

must needs blunder and fail. The compulsion of his will grew often a

little irksome to the minority in Congress; and the opposition slowly

pulled itself together as the months went by to concert a definite

policy of action.

Washington saw as plainly as any man what was taking place. He was

sensitive to the movements of opinion; wished above all things to have

the government supported by the people’s approval; was never weary of

writing to those who were in a position to know, to ask them what they

and their neighbors soberly thought about the questions and policies

under debate; was never so impatient as to run recklessly ahead of

manifest public opinion. He knew how many men had been repelled by the

measures he had supported Hamilton in proposing; knew that a reaction

had set in; that even to seem to repulse France and to refuse her aid or

sympathy would surely strengthen it. The men who were opposed to his

financial policy were also the men who most loved France, now she was

mad with revolution. They were the men who dreaded a strong government

as a direct menace to the rights alike of individuals and of the

separate States; the men who held a very imperative philosophy of

separation and of revolt against any too great authority. If he showed

himself cold towards France, he would certainly strengthen them in their

charge that the new government craved power and was indifferent to the

guarantees of freedom.

But Washington’s spirit was of the majestic sort that keeps a great and

hopeful confidence that the right view will prevail; that the “standard

to which the wise and honest will repair” is also the standard to which

the whole people will rally at last, if it be but held long and

steadily enough on high to be seen of all. When the moment for action

came he acted promptly, unhesitatingly, as if in indifference to

opinion. The outbreak of war between France and England made it

necessary he should let the country know what he meant to do. “War

having actually commenced between France and Great Britain,” he wrote to

Jefferson in April, 1793, “it behooves the government of this country to

use every means in its power to prevent the citizens thereof from

embroiling us with either of those powers, by endeavoring to maintain a

strict neutrality. I therefore require that you will give the subject

mature consideration, that such measures as shall be deemed most likely

to effect this desirable purpose may be adopted without delay.... Such

other measures as may be necessary for us to pursue against events which

it may not be in our power to avoid or control, you will also think of,

and lay them before me at my arrival in Philadelphia; for which place I

shall set out to-morrow.” He was at Mount Vernon when he despatched

these instructions; but it did not take him long to reach the seat of

government, to consult his cabinet, and to issue a proclamation of

neutrality whose terms no man could mistake. It contained explicit

threat of exemplary action against any who should presume to disregard

it.

That very month (April, 1793) Edmond Charles Genet, a youth still in his

twenties whom the new republic over sea had commissioned Minister to the

United States, landed at Charleston. It pleased him to take possession

of the country, as if it were of course an appanage of France. He was

hardly ashore before he had begun to arrange for the fitting out of

privateers, to issue letters of marque to American citizens, and to

authorize French consuls at American ports to act as judges of admiralty

in the condemnation of prizes. As he journeyed northward to Philadelphia

he was joyfully confirmed in his views and purposes by his reception at

the hands of the people. He was everywhere dined and toasted and fêted,

as if he had been a favorite prince returned to his subjects. His

speeches by the way rang in a tone of authority and patronage. He

reached Philadelphia fairly mad with the sense of power, and had no

conception of his real situation till he stood face to face with the

President. Of that grim countenance and cold greeting there could be but

one interpretation; and the fellow winced to feel that at last he had

come to a grapple with the country’s government. It was, no doubt, in

the eyes of the sobering man, a strange and startling thing that then

took place. The country itself had not fully known Washington till

then--or its own dignity either. It had deemed the proclamation of

neutrality a party measure, into which the President had been led by the

enemies of France, the partisans of England. But the summer undeceived

everybody, even Genet. Not content with the lawless mischief he had set

afoot on the coasts by the commissioning of privateersmen, that mad

youth had hastened to send agents into the south and west to enlist men

for armed expeditions against the Floridas and against New Orleans, on

the coveted Mississippi; but his work was everywhere steadily undone.

Washington acted slowly, deliberately even, with that majesty of

self-control, that awful courtesy and stillness in wrath, that had ever

made him a master to be feared in moments of sharp trial. One by one the

unlawful prizes were seized; justice was done upon their captors; the

false admiralty courts were shut up. The army of the United States was

made ready to check the risings in the south and west, should there be

need; the complaints of the British Minister were silenced by deeds as

well as by words; the clamor of those who had welcomed the Frenchman so

like provincials was ignored, though for a season it seemed the voice of

the country itself; and the humiliating work, which ought never to have

been necessary, was at last made effective and complete.

Towards the close of June, Washington ventured to go for a little while

to Mount Vernon for rest. At once there was trouble. A privateer was

found taking arms and stores aboard in the very river at Philadelphia;

Jefferson allowed her to drop down to Chester, believing Genet instead

of the agents of the government; and she was upon the point of getting

to sea before Washington could reach the seat of government. Jefferson

was not in town when the President arrived. “What is to be done in the

case of the _Little Sarah_, now at Chester?” came Washington’s hot

questions after him. “Is the Minister of the French Republic to set the

acts of this government at defiance _with impunity_? And then threaten

the executive with an appeal to the people? What must the world think of

such conduct, and of the United States in submitting to it?

Circumstances press for decision; and as you have had time to consider

them, I wish to know your opinion upon them, even before to-morrow, for

the vessel may then be gone.” It was indeed too late to stop her: a

gross violation of neutrality had been permitted under the very eyes of

the Secretary of State. Washington stayed henceforth in Philadelphia, in

personal control of affairs. It was an appeal to the people that

finally delivered Genet into his hands. Washington revoked the

_exequatur_ of one Duplaine, French consul at Boston, for continuing to

ignore the laws of neutrality; Genet declared he would appeal from the

President to the sovereign State of Massachusetts; rumors of the silly

threat got abroad, and Genet demanded of the President that he deny

them. Washington answered with a chilling rebuke; the correspondence was

given to the public prints; and at last the country saw the French

Minister for what he was. A demand for his recall had been resolved upon

in the cabinet in August; by February, 1794, the slow processes of

diplomatic action were complete, and a successor had arrived. Genet did

not venture to return to his distracted country; but he was as promptly

and as readily forgotten in America. Some might find it possible to love

France still; but no one could any longer stomach Genet.

Washington had divined French affairs much too clearly to be for a

moment tempted to think with anything but contempt of the French party

who had truckled to Genet. “The affairs of France,” he said to Lee, in

the midst of Genet’s heyday, “seem to me to be in the highest paroxysm

of disorder; not so much from the presence of foreign enemies, but

because those in whose hands the government is intrusted are ready to

tear each other to pieces, and will more than probably prove the worst

foes the country has.” It was his clear perception what the danger would

be should America be drawn into the gathering European wars that had led

him to accept a second term as President. It had been his wish to remain

only four years in the arduous office: but he had no thought to leave a

task unfinished;

[Illustration: WASHINGTON AND NELLY CUSTIS]

knew that he was in the very midst of the critical business of holding

the country to the course which should make it a self-respecting nation;

and consented to submit himself once more to the vote of the electors.

Parties were organizing, but there was no opposition to Washington. He

received again a unanimous vote; and John Adams was again chosen

Vice-President. The second inauguration (March, 1793) seemed but a

routine confirmation of the first. But the elections to Congress showed

a change setting in. In the Senate the avowed supporters of the

administration had still a narrow majority; but in the House they fell

ten votes short of control; and Washington had to put his policy of

neutrality into execution against the mad Genet with nothing but doubts

how he should be supported. The insane folly of Genet saved the

President serious embarrassment, after all; made the evidence that

Washington was right too plain to be missed by anybody; and gave the

country at last vision enough to see what was in fact the course of

affairs abroad, within and without unhappy France. Before that trying

year 1793 was out, an attack upon Hamilton in the House, though led by

Madison, had failed; Jefferson had left the cabinet; and the hands of

those who definitely and heartily supported the President were not a

little strengthened. There was sharp bitterness between parties--a

bitterness sharper as yet, indeed, than their differences of view; but

the “federalists,” who stood to the support of Washington and Hamilton,

were able, none the less, to carry their more indispensable

measures--even an act of neutrality which made the President’s policy

the explicit law of the land. The sober second thought of the country

was slowly coming about to their aid.

The air might have cleared altogether had the right method of dealing

with France been the only question that pressed; but the ill fortune of

the time forced the President to seem not only the recreant friend of

France, but also the too complacent partisan of England. Great Britain

seemed as mischievously bent upon forcing the United States to war as

Genet himself had been. She would not withdraw her garrisons from the

border posts; it was believed that she was inciting the Indians to their

savage inroads upon the border, as the French had done in the old days;

she set herself to destroy neutral trade by seizing all vessels that

carried the products of the French islands or were laden with provisions

for their ports; she would admit American vessels to her own West Indian

harbors only upon sufferance, and within the limits of a most jealous

restriction. It gave a touch of added bitterness to the country’s

feeling against her that she should thus levy as it were covert war upon

the Union while affecting to be at peace with it, as if she counted on

its weakness, especially on the seas; and Congress would have taken

measures of retaliation, which must certainly have led to open

hostilities, had not Washington intervened, despatching John Jay, the

trusted Chief Justice, across sea as minister extraordinary, to

negotiate terms of accommodation; and so giving pause to the trouble.

While the country waited upon the negotiation, it witnessed a wholesome

object-lesson in the power of its new government. In March, 1791,

Congress had passed an act laying taxes on distilled spirits: ’twas part

of Hamilton’s plan to show that the federal government could and would

use its great authority. The act bore nowhere so hard upon the people as

in the vast far counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia, beyond the

mountains--and there the very allegiance of the people had been but the

other day doubtful, as Washington very well knew. How were they to get

their corn to market over the long roads if they were not to be

permitted to reduce its bulk and increase its value by turning it into

whiskey? The tax seemed to them intolerable, and the remedy plain. They

would not pay it. They had not been punctilious to obey the laws of the

States; they would not begin obedience now by submitting to the worst

laws of the United States. At first they only amused themselves by

tarring and feathering an exciseman here and there; but resistance could

not stop with that in the face of a government bent upon having its own

way. Opposition organized itself and spread, till the writs of federal

courts had been defied by violent mobs and the western counties of

Pennsylvania were fairly quick with incipient insurrection.

For two years Washington watched the slow gathering of the storm,

warning those who resisted, keeping Congress abreast of him in

preparation for action when the right time should come, letting all the

country know what was afoot and prepare its mind for what was to come.

It must have won him to a stern humor to learn that seven thousand armed

men had gathered in mass-meeting on Braddock’s field to defy him. At

last he summoned an army of militia out of the States, sent it straight

to the lawless counties, going with it himself till he learned there

would be no serious resistance--and taught the country what was back of

federal law. Hamilton had had his way, the country its lesson. “The

servile copyist of Mr. Pitt thought he must have his alarms, his

insurrections and plots against the Constitution,” sneered Jefferson.

“It aroused the favorite purposes of strengthening government and

increasing the public debt; and therefore an insurrection was announced

and proclaimed and armed against and marched against, but could never be

found. And all this under the sanction of a name which has done too much

good not to be sufficient to cover harm also.” “The powers of the

executive of this country are more definite and better understood,

perhaps, than those of any other country,” Washington had said, “and my

aim has been, and will continue to be, neither to stretch nor to relax

from them in any instance whatever, unless compelled to it by imperious

circumstances,” and that was what he meant the country to know, whether

the law’s purpose was good or bad.

The next year the people knew what Mr. Jay had done. He reached New York

May 28th, 1796; and the treaty he brought with him was laid before the

Senate on the 8th of June. On the 2d of July the country knew what he

had agreed to and the Senate had ratified. There was an instant outburst

of wrath. It swept from one end of the country to the other. The treaty

yielded so much, gained so little, that to accept it seemed a veritable

humiliation. The northwestern posts were, indeed, to be given up at

last; the boundaries between English and American territory were to be

determined by commissioners; unrestricted commerce with England herself,

and a free direct trade with her East Indian possessions, were conceded;

but not a word was said about the impressment of American seamen;

American claims for damages for unjust seizures in the West Indies were

referred to a commission, along with American debts to Englishmen; the

coveted trade with

[Illustration: DEATH OF WASHINGTON]

the West Indian islands was secured only to vessels of seventy tons and

under, and at the cost of renouncing the right to export sugar,

molasses, coffee, cocoa, or cotton to Europe. Washington agreed with the

Senate that ratifications of the treaty ought not to be exchanged

without a modification of the clauses respecting the West Indian trade,

and October had come before new and better terms could be agreed upon;

but he had no doubt that the treaty as a whole ought to be accepted. The

opposition party in Congress had refused to vote money for an efficient

navy, and so had made it impossible to check British aggressions: they

must now accept this unpalatable treaty as better at any rate than war.

It was hard to stand steady in the storm. The country took fire as it

had done at the passage of the Stamp Act. Harder things had never been

said of king and parliament than were now said of Washington and his

advisers. Many stout champions stood to his defence--none stouter or

more formidable than Hamilton, no longer a member of the cabinet, for

imperative private interests had withdrawn him these six months and

more, but none the less redoubtable in the field of controversy. For

long, nevertheless, the battle went heavily against the treaty. Even

Washington, for once, stood a little while perplexed, not doubting his

own purpose, indeed, but very anxious what the outcome should be.

Protests against his signing the treaty poured in upon him from every

quarter of the country: many of them earnest almost to the point of

entreaty, some hot with angry comment. His reply, when he vouchsafed

any, was always that his very gratitude for the approbation of the

country in the past fixed him but the more firmly in his resolution to

deserve it now by obeying his own conscience. “It is very desirable,” he

wrote to Hamilton, “to ascertain, if possible, after the paroxysm of the

fever is a little abated, what the real temper of the people is

concerning it; for at present the cry against the Treaty is like that

against a mad dog;” but he showed himself very calm to the general eye,

making his uneasiness known only to his intimates. The cruel abuse

heaped upon him cut him to the quick. “Such exaggerated and indecent

terms,” he cried, “could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious

defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket.” But the men who sneered and

stormed, talked of usurpation and impeachment, called him base,

incompetent, traitorous even, were permitted to see not so much as the

quiver of an eyelid as they watched him go steadily from step to step in

the course he had chosen.

At last the storm cleared; the bitter months were over; men at the ports

saw at length how much more freely trade ran under the terms of the

treaty, and remembered that, while they had been abusing Jay and

maligning the President, Thomas Pinckney had obtained a treaty from

Spain which settled the Florida boundary, opened the Mississippi without

restriction, secured a place of deposit at New Orleans, and made

commerce with the Spaniards as free as commerce with the French. The

whole country felt a new impulse of prosperity. The “paroxysm of the

fever” was over, and shame came upon the men who had so vilely abused

the great President and had made him wish, in his bitterness, that he

were in his grave rather than in the Presidency; who had even said that

he had played false in the Revolution, and had squandered public

moneys;

New-York, December 21.

[Illustration: Columbia Mourns.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

It is with the deepest grief that we announce to the public the

death of our _most distinguished_ fellow-citizen _Lieut. General

George Washington_. He died at Mount Vernon on Saturday evening,

the 13th inst. of an inflammatory affection of the throat, which

put a period to his existence in 23 hours.

The grief which we suffer on this truly mournful occasion, would be

in some degree aleviated, if we possessed abilities to do justice

to the merits of this _illustrious benefactor of mankind_; but,

conscious of our inferiority, we shrink from the sublimity of the

subject. To the impartial and eloquent historian, therefore, we

consign the high and grateful office of exhibiting the life of

_George Washington_ to the present age, and to generations yet

unborn, as a perfect model of all that is _virtuous_, _noble_,

_great_, and _dignified_ in man. Our feelings, however, will, not

permit us to forbear observing, that the very disinterested and

important services tendered by _George Washington_ to these United

States, both in the Field and in the Cabinet, have erected in the

hearts of his countrymen, monuments of sincere and unbounded

gratitude, which the mouldering hand of Time cannot deface; and

that in every quarter of the Globe, where a free Government is

ranked amongst the choicest blessings of Providence, and _virtue_,

_morality_, _religion_, and _patriotism_ are respected, THE NAME of

WASHINGTON WILL BE HELD IN _veneration_.

And as along the stream of TIME, his name

Expanded flies, and gathers all his fame.

NOTE.--The announcement of the death of Washington reproduced here

was printed originally as the leading editorial in the _New York

Gazette and General Advertiser_ of Saturday, December 21, 1799.

This daily newspaper was published by John Lang, Franklin Head, No.

16 Pearl Street.

who had gone beyond threats of impeachment and dared to hint at

assassination! They saw the end of his term approach, and would have

recalled their insults. But they had alienated his great spirit forever.

When he had seen parties forming in his cabinet in the quiet days of his

first term as President, he had sought to placate differences; had tried

to bring Hamilton and Jefferson to a cordial understanding which should

be purged of partisan bias, as he meant his own judgments to be; had

deemed parties unnecessary and loyalty to the new Constitution the only

standard of preferment to office. But he had come to another mind in the

hard years that followed. “I shall not, whilst I have the honor to

administer the government, bring a man into any office of consequence

knowingly,” he declared in the closing days of 1795, “whose political

tenets are adverse to the tenets which the general government are

pursuing; for this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political

suicide;” and he left the Presidency ready to call himself very flatly a

“Federalist”--of the party that stood for the Constitution and abated

nothing of its powers. “You could as soon scrub a blackamore white,” he

cried, “as to change the principle of a profest Democrat”--“he will

leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this Country.”

Affairs fell very quiet again as the last year of his Presidency drew

towards its close. Brisk trade under the new treaties heartened the

country more and more; the turbulent democratic clubs that had so

noisily affected French principles and French modes of agitation were

sobered and discredited, now the Reign of Terror had come and wrought

its bloody work in France; the country turned once more to Washington

with its old confidence and affection, and would have had him take the

Presidency a third time, to keep the government steady in its new ways.

But he would not have the hard office again. On the 19th of September,

1796, he published to the people a farewell address, quick with the

solemn eloquence men had come to expect from him. He wrote to Hamilton

and to Madison for advice as to what he should say, as in the old days

of his diffident beginnings in the great office--though Hamilton was the

arch-Federalist and Madison was turning Democrat--took their phrases for

his thought where they seemed better than his own; put the address forth

as his mature and last counsel to the little nation he loved. “It was

designed,” he said, “in a more especial manner for the yeomanry of the

country,” and spoke the advice he hoped they might take to heart. The

circumstances which had given his services a temporary value, he told

them, were passed; they had now a unified and national government, which

might serve them for great ends. He exhorted them to preserve it intact,

and not to degrade it in the using; to put down party spirit, make

religion, education, and good faith the guides and safeguards of their

government, and keep it national and their own by excluding foreign

influences and entanglements. ’Twas a noble document. No thoughtful man

could read it without emotion, knowing how it spoke in all its solemn

sentences the great character of the man whose career was ended.

When the day came on which he should resign his office to John Adams,

the great civilian who was to succeed him, there was a scene which left

no one in doubt--not even Washington himself--what the people thought

of the leader they had trusted these twenty years. A great crowd was

assembled to see the simple ceremonies of the inauguration, as on that

April day in New York eight years ago; but very few in the throng

watched Adams. All eyes were bent upon that great figure in black

velvet, with a light sword slung at his side. No one stirred till he had

left the room, to follow and pay his respects to the new President. Then

they and all the crowd in the streets moved after him, an immense

company, going as one man, “in total silence,” his escort all the way.

He turned upon the threshold of the President’s lodgings and looked, as

if for the last time, upon this multitude of nameless friends. “No man

ever saw him so moved.” The tears rolled unchecked down his cheeks; and

when at last he went within, a great smothered common voice went through

the stirred throng, as if they sobbed to see their hero go from their

sight forever.

It had been noted how cheerful he looked, at thought of his release, as

he entered the hall of the Representatives, where Mr. Adams was to take

the oath. As soon as possible he was at his beloved Mount Vernon once

more, to pick up such threads as he might of the old life again. “I

begin my diurnal course with the sun,” he wrote, in grave playfulness,

to a friend; “if my hirelings are not in their places by that time, I

send them messages of sorrow for their indisposition; having put these

wheels in motion, I examine the state of things further; the more they

are probed the deeper I find the wounds which my buildings have

sustained by an absence and neglect of eight years; by the time I have

accomplished these matters breakfast (a little after seven o’clock,

about the time, I presume, that you are taking leave of Mrs. McHenry)

is ready; this being over, I mount my horse and ride round my farms,

which employs me until it is time to dress for dinner.... The usual time

of sitting at the table, a walk, and tea bring me within the dawn of

candlelight; previous to which, if not prevented by company, I resolve

that as soon as the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great

luminary I will retire to my writing-table and acknowledge the letters I

have received; when the lights are brought I feel tired and disinclined

to engage in this work, conceiving that the next night will do as well.

The next night comes, and with it the same causes for postponement, and

so on. Having given you the history of a day, it will serve for a year,

and I am persuaded that you will not require a second edition of it.” He

had kept his overseers under his hand all the time he was President; had

not forgotten to write to Dr. Young upon methods of cultivation; had

shown the same passion as ever for speeding and regulating at its best

every detail of his private business; but matters had gone ill for lack

of his personal supervision. He was obliged to sell no less than fifty

thousand dollars’ worth of his lands in the course of four or five years

to defray the great expenses he was put to in the Presidency and the

cost of bringing his estate into solvent shape again. He did not try to

begin anew; he only set things in order, and kept his days serene.

A spark of war was kindled by the new administration’s dealings with

France, and Washington was called once more to prepare for command,

should the fighting leave the sea and come ashore. But formal war did

not come. The flurry only kept him a little nearer the movements of

politics than he cared to be. He was the

[Illustration: HANOVER COURT-HOUSE]

[Illustration: THE OLD TOMB, MOUNT VERNON]

more uneasy to see how the Democrats bore themselves in the presence of

the moment’s peril; doubted the expediency of assigning men of that

party to places of command in the army; approved the laws passed against

aliens and against those who should utter seditious libel against the

government; showed again, and without reserve, how deeply his affections

were engaged on the side of the institutions he had so labored to set up

and protect; was intolerant towards any who sought to touch or question

at any point their new authority--imperious as of old in question of

action.

But it was his home that chiefly held his thought now. He had not

changed towards his friends through all the long years of public care

and engrossing business. An old comrade, who had come in his rough

frontier dress all the way from far Kentucky to Philadelphia to see the

President, had been told “that Washington had become puffed up with the

importance of his station, and was too much of an aristocrat to welcome

him in that garb.” But the old soldier was not daunted, pressed on to

make his call, and came back to tell his friends how the President and

his lady had both seen him and recognized him from the window, and had

hurried to the door to draw him cordially in. “I never was better

treated,” he said. “I had not believed a word against him; and I found

that he was ‘Old Hoss’ still.” ’Twas the same with his neighbors, and

with strangers too. He was the simple gentleman of the old days. A

strolling actor, riding Mount Vernon way on a day in July, stopped to

help a man and woman who had been thrown from their chaise, and did not

recognize the stalwart horseman who galloped up to his assistance till

the overturned vehicle had been set up again, they had dusted each the

other’s coat, and the stately stranger, saying he had had the pleasure

of seeing him play in Philadelphia, had bidden him come to the house

yonder and be refreshed. “Have I the honor of addressing General

Washington?” exclaimed the astonished player. “An odd sort of

introduction, Mr. Bernard,” smiled the heated soldier; “but I am pleased

to find you can play so active a part in private, and without a

prompter.”

Those who saw him now at Mount Vernon thought him gentler with little

children than Mrs. Washington even, and remembered how he had always

shown a like love and tenderness for them, going oftentimes out of his

way to warn them of danger, with a kindly pat on the head, when he saw

them watching the soldiers in the war days. Now all at Mount Vernon

looked forward to the evening. That “was the children’s hour.” He had

written sweet Nelly Custis a careful letter of advice upon love matters,

half grave, half playful, in the midst of his Presidency, when the

troubles with England were beginning to darken; she had always found him

a comrade, and had loved him with an intimacy very few could know. Now

she was to be married, to his own sister’s son, and upon his birthday,

February 22d, 1799. She begged him to wear the “grand embroidered

uniform,” just made for the French war, at her wedding; but he shook his

head and donned instead the worn buff and blue that had seen real

campaigns. Then the delighted girl told him, with her arm about his

neck, that she loved him better in that.

The quiet days went by without incident. He served upon a petty jury of

the county when summoned; and was more than content to be the simple

citizen again, great duties put by, small ones diligently resumed. Once

and again his anger flamed at perverse neglects and tasks ill done. Even

while he was President, he had stormed to find his horses put to the

chariot with unpolished hoofs upon a day of ceremony. But old age, and

the consciousness of a lifework done, had added serenity now to his

self-control; and at last the end came, when he was ready. On the 12th

of December, 1799, he was chilled through by the keen winds and cold

rain and sleet that beat upon him as he went his round about the farms.

He spent the evening cheerfully, listening to his secretary read; but

went to bed with a gathering hoarseness and cold, and woke in the night

sharply stricken in his throat. Physicians came almost at dawn, but the

disease was already beyond their control. Nothing that they tried could

stay it; and by evening the end had come. He was calm the day through,

as in a time of battle; knowing what betided, but not fearing it;

steady, noble, a warrior figure to the last; and he died as those who

loved him might have wished to see him die.

The country knew him when he was dead: knew the majesty, the nobility,

the unsullied greatness of the man who was gone, and knew not whether to

mourn or give praise. He could not serve them any more; but they saw his

light shine already upon the future as upon the past, and were glad.

They knew him now the Happy Warrior,

“Whose powers shed round him, in the common strife

Or mild concerns of ordinary life,

A constant influence, a peculiar grace;

But who, if he be called upon to face

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined

Great issues, good or bad, for humankind,

Is happy as a Lover; and attired

With sudden brightness, like a man inspired;

And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.

* * * * *

A soul whose master-bias leans

To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;

* * * * *

More brave for this, that he hath much to love:--

* * * the man, who, lifted high,

Conspicuous object in a nation’s eye,

Or left unthought of in obscurity,--

Who, with a toward or untoward lot,

Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,

Plays, in the many games of life, that one

Where what he most doth value must be won.”

INDEX

Acts of Trade, 121.

Adams, John, represents Massachusetts in Congress at Philadelphia, 154;

character of, 156-157;

opinion of, concerning Maryland and Virginia delegates to Congress

at Philadelphia, 158;

accused as rebel at Congress, 161-162;

proposes Washington as commander of Continental army, 173;

mentioned, 174, 188, 198;

Vice-President with Washington, 279;

elected Vice-President the second time, 301;

inaugurated as President, 309.

Adams, Samuel, represents Massachusetts in Congress at Philadelphia, 154;

character of, 155, 156;

accused as rebel at Congress, 161-162.

Ajax, Washington’s horse, mentioned, 110.

Alexandria, recruiting at, for western expedition, 71, 77;

Washington rejoins regiment at, 78;

Braddock’s regiment at, 82;

Braddock calls council of governors at, 83;

Potomac commissioners adjourn from, to Mount Vernon, 252.

Allen, Ethan, takes possession of Ticonderoga, 171.

Ames, Fisher, comment of, on inauguration of Washington, 272.

Amherst, General, takes Louisbourg, 93.

Annapolis, Washington resigns commission at, 226;

conference of States at, 254.

Army, Continental, created by Congress, 173;

Washington takes command of, 180;

unsatisfactory condition of, 182;

desertions from, 191;

hardships of, at Valley Forge, 199;

trained by Steuben, 200;

difficulty in maintaining, 206;

treatment of, after the war, 218;

efforts of Washington in behalf of, 221;

Washington’s loss of popularity with, 222;

disaffection in, 222-223;

resolution passed by officers of, 223.

Army and navy, steps for formation of, 295.

Arnold, Benedict, attempt of, to capture Quebec, 183;

Carleton checked by, 194, 198;

at Saratoga, 195;

treason of, 207.

Articles of Confederation, adopted by states, 213;

effect of, 214.

Asgill, Captain Charles, incident of, 225;

Washington’s gratification at release of, 225.

Attorney-General, creation of office of, by Congress, 277.

Barter, Philip, Washington’s gardener, makes agreement with

Washington, 240.

Beaujeu leads attack on Braddock and is killed, 88.

Beauséjour, expedition planned against, 84;

taken, 90.

Belvoir, seat of William Fairfax, 51;

life at, 53;

referred to, 107.

Bennington, Vermont, attack on, 195.

Berkeley, Sir William, resigns Virginia to the Commonwealth, 13.

Bernard, an actor, meeting of, with Washington, 312.

Betty, Parson, description of, by Colonel Byrd, 35.

Beverley, Robert, writings and character of, 31-32;

characterization of Virginia by, 32;

on Virginian hospitality, 50.

Bishop, servant of Washington, at Mrs. Custis’s, 100;

pensioned by Washington, 241.

Blair, James, “commissary” to the Bishop of London in Virginia,

character, influence, and breeding of, 36-37.

Blair, John, President of Virginia Council, 139;

appointed delegate to Philadelphia conference, 257;

appointed to Supreme Court, 281.

Bland, Richard, referred to, in connection with debate of Stamp Act, 130;

referred to, 135;

pamphlet of, on colonial rights, 138;

chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148;

votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 161;

opposes Henry in convention, 170;

mentioned, 172;

death of, 234.

Blueskin, Washington’s horse, mentioned, 110.

Board of Trade, search-warrants issued by, 122.

Boston, Washington visits, in 1756, 92;

troops sent to, 140;

massacre in, 145;

“Tea Party,” 148;

port of, closed, 148;

fresh troops sent to, 168;

Continental troops in front of, 171;

reinforced by General Howe, 179;

evacuation of, by British, 185;

Washington occupies, 185;

D’Estaing’s fleet at, 204.

Boston _News Letter_, referred to, 121.

Botetourt, Lord, appointed Governor-General of Virginia, 139;

attempts to dissolve House of Burgesses, 140;

attitude of, towards colonists, 141;

death of, 141.

Bowdoin, Governor, of Massachusetts, urges convention of states, 253.

Braddock, Major-General Edward, made commander-in-chief in America, 81;

“a very Iroquois in disposition,” 81;

invites Washington to his staff, 83;

plan of, for attacking Fort Duquesne, 84;

force of, against Fort Duquesne, 85;

advance of, upon Duquesne, 85-86;

unreasonable temper of, on the advance, 86;

defeat of, 86 ff.;

stupid tactics of, 87;

bravery of, 88;

death of, 89;

buried in the road, 89;

losses in force of, 89;

papers of, taken at Duquesne, 90;

former master of Washington’s servant, 100;

referred to, 161.

Brandywine, the, Washington defeated at, 196.

Brest, French fleet blockaded at, 207.

Bridges’ Creek, homestead of Augustine Washington,

birthplace of George, 40-41;

Washington with his brother Augustine at, 51.

Broglie, Prince de, 216.

Bunker Hill, battle of, 179-180.