Washington's Circle: The Creation of the President - Softcover

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David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler have written numerous scholarly books and articles dealing with the history of the early American republic, the Antebellum period, and the Civil War. They are the authors of the acclaimed biography Henry Clay: The Essential American. David S. Heidler taught history for many years at the university level, and Jeanne T. Heidler is a professor of history at the United States Air Force Academy, where she is the senior civilian member of her department.

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1

“A Citizen of So Much Consequence”

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he presidency had “no enticing charms, and no fascinating allurements” for George Washington.1 By 1789 and in his fifty-seventh year, he had become proof of the Talmudic story of how a man comes into the world with his fists clenched wanting everything but leaves it with his hands open desiring nothing. For years ambition had been Washington’s master, driving him as a youth to seek glory for the fame and approval that came with it. Age hammered most of that out of him, but even on the eve of the Revolution, a residue of the deep-rooted impulse remained. He had worn his old Virginia militia uniform to the Continental Congress in 1775 just in case anyone needed a reminder of his military experience. During the Revolution he won the world’s applause and his countrymen’s admiration, and he enjoyed both without acting as if either mattered. He was a proud man taught by observation and experience the wages of arrogance and the perils of heedless certainty.

Washington’s country wanted him for its chief magistrate and thereby confronted him with another kind but equally troubling test of reputation. There is every reason to believe Washington did not want the post. He was tired. Nobody could know the toll levied by eight years fighting the British for American independence. Nobody could know how much the four years following the end of the Revolutionary War had made him happy. He grew things on the ground above the majestic river he loved, living in the house he loved with the woman he loved and surrounded by little ones and their friends, grandchildren, and giggling nieces and nephews growing up and making their way, often with his help, which made him happier still. He complained about the place called Mount Vernon becoming “a well-resorted tavern,” but the people who filled it as guests kept out of his way during the day and filled his evenings with bright conversation and quiet admiration. Leaving Mount Vernon was like being cast out of Eden and instantly led to Golgotha, the place of skulls. He had wanted everything when young with clenched fists. Now an old man, his hands were open, and he wanted nothing.

Out of Eden, this famous and admired man had reluctantly attended the convention in Philadelphia to frame a new government. That enterprise alone risked his reputation, and only entreaties from friends appealing to his sense of duty had persuaded him to go. He presided over the gathering during its four months of heated debates with the impassive detachment that had made him famous and admired, the American Cincinnatus who had set aside his sword to return to his plow. The delegates had been angry, stubborn in their opinions, suspicious of one another, and resolutely opposed to this and then that measure, but in the end they were collectively superb. Washington watched, pleased to see something grow, like a healthy stand of wheat or a blooded colt finding its legs. He almost never spoke at the convention but quietly voiced opinions at evening dinners with small groups of fellow delegates. He had been the first to sign the document called the Constitution, confident that it did what was best for the country. He pushed for its ratification with a fierce resolve of his own, a feeling that ran so deep that he could not brook opposition to it. One of his oldest friends could not agree. He was a friend no more.

Yet despite his confidence in having done right, a strange sense of inadequacy leavened his dread as the new government took shape in New York City. He had worried that merely by attending the convention he was violating his pledge that after the Revolution he would leave public life forever, but that had been the vanity of a man eager to preserve his repute for keeping promises. Now it wasn’t vanity that robbed him of sleep and clouded his days. For the first time in his life, George Washington was afraid that a challenge was beyond him. What his country wanted was too large, too demanding, too complex for a Virginia farmer who stumbled over his words in public and might just simply stumble under the weight of these new incalculable burdens. He was too old, too feeble, too ignorant. His eyes were failing, his memory sometimes was fogged, and people everyone else clearly heard seemed to be mumbling to him. He had nothing to prove. He had everything to lose. People already called him the “father of his country,” a pleasant tribute, a bauble of public acclaim, but it was a bauble, like a fading epaulet on a tunic stored in a forgotten trunk.

That September of 1788 George Washington had received a letter from Alexander Hamilton, his former military aide and a fellow delegate to the convention. Hamilton urged him to accept the presidency. The advice was familiar enough to be dreary. “The new government in its commencement may materially depend” on your acceptance. By “serving in the Constitutional Convention” and supporting its product, you in essence agreed to “filling the station in question.” Hamilton echoed other correspondents but with more presumption: Your country needs you, the new government needs you, only your reputation can give this experiment the chance it needs. And there was an admonition wrapped in adulation: “A citizen of so much consequence as yourself . . . has no option but to lend his services if called for.” With as much a command as a compliment, Hamilton went to the heart of the issue. If the new government failed, Washington’s place in history would be in jeopardy. Everyone who framed the new government would be blamed, including George Washington. Especially George Washington.2

Alexander Hamilton sent hard words despite their flattery. Could it be possible that Washington’s every sacrifice during the war would count for nothing if he did not drink from this last bitter cup? Would every indignity borne, every conspiracy thwarted, every battle lost and won become as nothing if he did not do this last thing? “A citizen of so much consequence as yourself . . . has no option but to lend his services if called for,” Hamilton intoned.3 The message had a presumptuous air, which was Hamilton’s habit, but the words “has no option but to lend his services” were like a hammer on Washington’s conscience.

This and other letters from Hamilton were part of a growing plea from a growing chorus that staggered George Washington. As the convention designed the office described in Article II of the Constitution, every power given it and even the vague reach of its responsibilities had been crafted with him in mind. What had he been thinking when he left for Philadelphia in May 1787 and in the months that followed? Was his expectation of his certain selection so high that the choice of someone else would have left him feeling discarded and downcast? George Washington acted the part of a leader so convincingly during the war that his headquarters became a stage, his movements a pageant, and the quiet humility of his resignation at Annapolis at the end of the war a grand finale. The suggestion that he was now being coy, that he wanted to be coaxed and appear as if answering a call rather than grabbing a prize, derives mainly from the seeming inevitability of his presidency. The truth of the matter was the actor was now old, the play not only untried but unwritten, and the supporting cast uncertain. He was not being coy. At the moment of inevitability, he could not quite believe it. His response to these many entreaties were tortured motifs of fatalism and quiet desperation over the bitter cup he would gladly pass to...