George Washington's Journey: The President Forges a New Nation - Softcover

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T.H. Breen is currently the James Marsh Professor at-large at the University of Vermont. He is the author of eleven books on U.S. History, many of them prizewinners.

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George Washington’s Journey

CHAPTER I

The Power of Public Opinion

George Washington’s departure for New England in 1789 introduces the people who accompanied him on his tours. The cast of characters included secretaries who attended to the details of travel and slaves who cared for the horses and wagons. The little cavalcade figured significantly in the creation of a new republican culture. Several months before setting out for New England, Washington had discovered firsthand the importance of public opinion, a powerful new force in the nation’s political life. As he traveled to his first inauguration, he witnessed crowds of noisy, self-confident, and demanding Americans, women as well as men, many of them unable to vote, who lined the country roads and city streets. It was a profoundly moving experience for Washington. He was the product of an earlier colonial society in which the ordinary people had not enjoyed a significant role in politics. The Revolution changed all that. Washington quickly accommodated to this new, challenging political environment. He learned that by pleasing the people, he could communicate to them his own expansive vision for the country’s future.

— I —

George Washington’s ambitious tour of the Eastern States, as people then called New England, began with little fanfare. The prospect of rain on the morning of October 15, 1789, would have discouraged many travelers just setting out on a long journey. Washington was not such a person. The overcast skies eventually produced showers, which began falling about ten o’clock, but the weather failed to diminish the president’s high spirits. He had been eagerly contemplating his departure from New York City, then the capital of the United States, for several months, and now that he had finally commenced his trip, his major concern was maintaining a tight schedule.1

The little procession followed the Post Road northeast toward the Connecticut line. No surviving record suggests that adoring citizens endured the rain to cheer their president, the result no doubt of the lack of public announcement that Washington was taking a significant trip. No soldiers were present, no special guards. No one mentioned that the travelers carried arms. Washington had no reason to fear the American people. He sat in an open carriage, not exactly an ideal situation for a rainy autumn day, but he did not complain. More than a year later, when he organized a much more arduous trip to the southern states, Washington insisted on traveling in a stunning new coach, rumored to be one of the most elegant vehicles in the nation, but for the present, he made do with an older carriage that he had owned since the end of the war. Four well-groomed bays pulled the vehicle.

Washington took exceptional pride in the appearance of his horses. He had a well-deserved reputation as a skilled rider. Before the Revolution, he had competed with Colonel William Byrd, a wealthy Virginia planter, for the honor of having the most impressive equipage in the colony. Contemporaries described the contest as a rivalry of “the grays against the bays.” After he became president, Washington continued to monitor the condition of his animals, perhaps a little obsessively. In New York City, people referred to them specifically as the “muslin horses.” Every morning at dawn, stable boys carefully brushed the horses, and when they had finished, a supervisor ran a clean muslin cloth over each horse looking for “the slightest stain.” There was hell to pay if he found an imperfection. One of the stable boys went by the name of Paris. Washington had recently brought this young slave to the capital from Virginia. He is of special interest for us, because Paris and a fellow slave, Giles, assisted the president on the major trips, first to New Hampshire and later to the southern states.

Washington’s favorite chargers, one of which accompanied him on the New England tour, received even more elaborate attention before public events. These were large horses of the kind that Washington had ridden during the Revolution, and many paintings from the period show the general standing next to a great white charger. According to Washington’s grandson, then a small child, in the evening the president ordered the show horses “covered entirely over with a paste, of which whiting was the principal component part.” The animals spent the night in this condition. It was reported that by “morning the composition had become hard, was well-rubbed in, and curried and brushed, which process gave to the coats a beautiful, flossy, and satin-like appearance.” Stable hands addressed the smallest details. Hooves were blackened, teeth “picked and cleaned.” Only then, as valued props in political theater, were the white chargers led out for service.2

The New England procession also included a baggage wagon driven by one of the six servants who traveled with Washington. The word servant was a euphemism. These men were actually slaves who had worked for the president at Mount Vernon. For this occasion, they wore special garments selected to impress the public. The coachmen and postilions, for example, sported blanket cloaks, new jockey caps, and fashionable boots. Like the horses, the slaves were part of the show. Their appearance reflected the taste and judgment of the president.

Behind the wagon, a slave, probably Paris, led a large charger, which Washington intended to ride as he entered communities along the way. A tall figure mounted on a spirited horse, of course, made a more powerful impression on the spectators than did a man waving from an aging carriage. At the start of the tour, Washington wore a business suit appropriate for a person of his social standing, but at some moment along the road, he elected to exchange it for a full uniform of the Continental Army. He discovered that although he described himself simply as a citizen of the new republic, the American people still regarded him as General Washington, the hero who won independence on the battlefield. And in the political theater of the new republic, what the people wanted or expected powerfully shaped the president’s performance.

Riding alongside the carriage, at least for the first few miles, were several members of Washington’s cabinet. Whether John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox—chief justice, secretary of the treasury, and secretary of war, respectively—wanted to be out in the rain is impossible to document. They probably chatted among themselves. No doubt, they regarded a proper send-off for the president as part of their official duties.

Before setting out for New England, Washington had solicited advice from these men. He valued their opinions, and since the tour was an unprecedented undertaking, he wanted to know specifically whether they thought it wise for the president to be absent from the nation’s capital for several weeks. If Congress still had been in session, he would never have proposed the trip. He took a keen interest in legislative debates. Now, however, during the recess, and with official business less pressing than usual, Washington wanted assurance from the cabinet that he was doing the right thing.

The response from these men was encouraging. James Madison could not be present for the departure, but the newly elected congressman from Virginia who had worked so closely with Washington during the...