Excerpt
Chapter One George Washington 1st President 1789-1797 Gordon S. Wood Although Light-Horse Harry Lee famously eulogized George Washington as "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," it is most important that Washington was the first president of the United States. As the first president, he faced circumstances that no other American leader would ever face, and he was probably the only person in the country who could have met the challenge they posed. Reared in monarchy, the American people had never known a chief executive who was not a king, and Washington somehow had to satisfy their deeply rooted yearnings for patriarchal leadership while creating a new republican presidency. Because the United States had never had an elected chief executive like the one created by the Constitution of 1787, Washington had virtually no precedents to follow. Not only did he have to justify and flesh out the new office, he also had to bind the new nation together and prove to a skeptical world that America's grand experiment in self-government would succeed. That he accomplished all this in the midst of a world at war-and did it without sacrificing the country's republican character-is an astonishing achievement, one that the successes of no other president can match. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia in 1787 would never have created such a powerful executive office had they not been certain that Washington would become its firstholder. Not that he sought the office; no one could have expressed more reluctance. Yet he felt an obligation to serve because no one had been more responsible than he for getting the Constitution ratified. "Be assured," James Monroe, an opponent of the Constitution, told Thomas Jefferson, "his influence carried this government." In 1789, Washington received every electoral vote, the only president in history so honored. He was the only American in 1789 who possessed the dignity, patience, restraint, and reputation for republican virtue that the untried but potentially powerful office required. With his imposing tall figure, Roman nose, and thin-lipped stern face, the former general was already, at age fifty-seven, an internationally famous hero, less for his military exploits during the Revolutionary War than for his moral character. At times during the war, he could probably have become a dictator, as some wanted him to be, but he resisted these blandishments. Washington always respected civilian authority over the army, and at the moment of his victory in 1783, he had unconditionally surrendered his sword to Congress. He promised not to take "any share in public business hereafter" and returned to his farm at Mount Vernon. This self- conscious retirement from public life, a virtually unprecedented refusal to accept political rewards commensurate with his military achievements, had electrified the world and immediately established his international reputation. Having previously promised the nation that he would seek no political office, Washington entered the presidency with everything to lose and little to gain. Only his virtuous concern for the nation's welfare overcame his hesitation-a wariness appreciated by the American people, who were aware that he was risking his fame in taking on the presidency. In 1792, when his initial term in office was up, only the most earnest entreaties kept him from returning home. This sincere willingness to surrender power is what gave Washington his remarkable moral authority. Although some Americans in 1789 wanted to turn the presidency into an elective monarchy, Washington resisted these efforts and was relieved when senatorial attempts to give him a royal-sounding title failed. Nevertheless, like other high-toned Federalists, he believed in a social hierarchy and consequently often acted as though he were an elected king. He initially favored "His High Mightiness" as an appropriate title and in public pronouncements referred to himself in the third person. He accepted the presence of kingly iconography everywhere and made public appearances in an elaborately ornamented coach drawn by six horses and attended by four servants in livery. He established excruciatingly formal levees in emulation of European royal courts; and, like the English kings, he went on progresses throughout the country, welcomed by triumphal arches and ceremonies befitting royalty. In fact, Washington was the only part of the new government that really caught the imagination of the American people. No one did more than Washington to make the presidency the powerful national office it became. Having led an army, he well understood how to exercise authority. Indeed, he had more people working for him at Mount Vernon than initially in the new federal government. A systematic and energetic administrator, he kept careful records and communicated regularly with his department heads, to whom he delegated considerable authority. Yet he always made it clear that they were merely his assistants and responsible to him. Many of them, including Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, were brilliant men, yet Washington was always his own man and insisted that the government speak with a single voice. Lacking the genius and the intellectual confidence of his advisers, he consulted with them often, typically moving slowly and cautiously to judgment; but when ready to act, he acted decisively and, in the case of controversial decisions such as his acceptance of Hamilton's Bank of the United States and his 1793 Proclamation of Neutrality, never second-guessed himself. Washington especially knew that whatever he did would set precedents. "We are a young Nation," he said, "and have a character to establish. It behooves us therefore to set out right, for first impressions will be lasting." He was particularly concerned with the relationship between the president and the Senate, which he believed should advise and consent to appointments and treaties in the manner of a council. Expecting an arrangement similar to that he enjoyed as commander in chief, he assumed that much of the Senate's advice and consent, if not concerning appointments then at least with regard to treaty making, would be delivered orally. In August 1789, President Washington went to the Senate to obtain its advice and consent regarding a treaty he was negotiating with the Creeks. However, rather than offering their opinions as Washington's senior officers had during the Revolutionary War, the senators began debating each section of the treaty-despite the president's impatient glares. When one senator finally moved that the treaty be submitted to a committee for study, Washington jumped to his feet in exasperation and cried, "This defeats every purpose of my coming here!" He calmed down, but when he finally left the Senate chamber, he was overheard to say that he would "be damned" if he ever went there again. The advice part of the Senate's role in treaty making was thus more or less permanently forgotten. When the president issued his Proclamation of Neutrality regarding the war between England and revolutionary France, he didn't even bother to ask for the Senate's consent, thus establishing the executive's nearly sole authority over the conduct of foreign affairs. In the great struggle over Jay's Treaty with Great Britain (negotiated by John Jay in 1794 and ratified by the Senate a year later), Washington made a series of courageous decisions. With the United States and Britain on the verge of war because of British seizures of neutral American ships, sending Jay to England in the first place was one, signing the treaty amid an outcry of popular opposition was another, and standing up to a March 1796 attempt by the House of Representatives to scuttle the ratified treaty (by refusing to vote funds for its implementation) was a third. Washington thus refused to recognize for the House a role in the treaty process. To do so, he said, not only "would be to establish a dangerous precedent" but also would violate the Constitution, Which allowed only the president and the Senate to make treaties. Realizing only too keenly the fragility of the new nation, Washington devised a number of schemes to foster a stronger sense of nationhood. Because he understood the power of symbols, he was willing to sit for long hours having his portrait painted. With American nationalism not yet developed, popular celebrations of Washington during the 1790s often became a substitute for patriotism; indeed, commemorations of his birthday rivaled those of the Fourth of July. It's not too much to say that for many Americans he embodied the Union. As president, he was particularly sensitive to the diverse interests of the new country and fervent in his efforts to prevent its fragmentation. He undertook his two extended tours of the country, in 1789 and in 1791, so that he might personally bring the government to the farthest reaches of the land and reinforce the loyalty of people who had never seen him. He promoted roads, canals, the post office-anything and everything that would bind the different states and regions together. He spent an enormous amount of time considering appointments because he wanted not only to choose the best men available but also to build broad local support for the new federal government. He thought constantly about the future of the nation and those he called the "millions unborn." Never taking the unity of the country for granted, he remained preoccupied throughout his presidency with creating the sinews of nationhood. Even in the social life of the "republican court" in New York City and (after 1790) in Philadelphia, he and his wife, Martha, acted as matchmakers, consciously bringing together couples from different parts of the United States. In these and other ways, Washington, more than anyone, promoted the sense of Union that Lincoln and others would later uphold. The decade of the 1790s was not a time of ordinary politics. The parties that emerged during this period, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, were not modern parties. The Federalists never even considered themselves a party but rather the beleaguered legitimate government beset by those seeking to destroy the Union. Although the Jeffersonian Republicans did reluctantly describe themselves as a party, they believed that their own organization was a temporary one, designed to prevent the establishment of a Federalist-led monarchy. Because neither the Federalists nor the Democratic-Republicans accepted the legitimacy of the other, partisan feelings ran very high and made the period one of the most passionate and divisive in American history. With the leaders of these two hostile factions-Hamilton and Jefferson-both in his cabinet, Washington was able to use his immense prestige and good judgment to restrain fears, limit intrigues, and stymie opposition that otherwise might have escalated into violence. In 1794, he delicately combined coercion and conciliation and avoided bloodshed in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion, an antitax uprising of hundreds of farmers in western Pennsylvania. Despite the intensely partisan feelings, Washington never entirely lost the respect of the party leaders-a circumstance that enabled him to reconcile, resolve, and balance their clashing interests. Jefferson scarcely foresaw the half of it when he remarked as early as 1784 that "the moderation and virtue of a single character ... probably prevented this revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish." Although many thought that Washington could serve as president for life, he retired to Mount Vernon in 1797 at the conclusion of his second term, thus establishing a precedent unbroken until 1940. His hortatory Farewell Address became a sacred part of the American faith until well into the twentieth century. In it, he stressed above all the value of the Union, warning against extreme partisanship within the nation and passionate attachments or antagonisms to any foreign nation. In 1799, six months before his death, some frightened Federalists urged the former president to come out of retirement and stand once again for the presidency. He refused, declaring that new political conditions in the country made his candidacy irrelevant. Democracy and party politics had taken over, and personal influence and distinctions of character no longer mattered. The parties could now "set up a broomstick" and get it elected, he ruefully observed. Although Washington wrote this out of anger and despair, he was essentially correct. The political world had changed, and parties, not great men, would soon become the objects of contention. To be sure, the American people have continued to long for great heroes, and right up through Dwight Eisenhower they have periodically elected Washingtons manquto the presidency. But democracy has made great heroes no longer essential. Although Washington had aristocratic predilections and never meant to popularize politics, he nonetheless performed a crucial role in creating that democracy. He was an extraordinary man who made it possible for ordinary men to rule. From To the Best of My Ability, by Gordon S. Wood. (c) 2000 Gordon S. Wood used by permission.