Washington: A Life (107 page)

On Monday, September 17, 1787, the convention’s last day, the delegates adopted the Constitution “unanimously,” although there was poetic license in the use of the word. It had taken four long months to attain this historic agreement. After starting out with 55 delegates—all of them white and male, and many affluent—the convention had suffered a high rate of attrition, with only 42 present at the end; of those, 39 signed the document. Eleven states approved the Constitution; Alexander Hamilton signed individually as the sole remaining delegate from New York. Rhode Island had boycotted the convention altogether. To Madison, Washington explained how important “the appearance of unanimity” was in presenting the Constitution to Congress: “Not everyone has opportunities to peep behind the curtain, and as the multitude often judge from externals, the appearance of unanimity in that body, on this occas[io]n, will be of great importance.”
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It was a telling comment from a man who placed a premium on political stagecraft.

Of the three convention holdouts, two came from Virginia—Edmund Randolph and George Mason—and happened to be close friends of Washington; the third was Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. As heir apparent to the presidency, Washington undoubtedly took offense when Mason declared that the new government “would end either in monarchy or a tyrannical aristocracy” and complained that the Constitution “had been formed without the knowledge … of the people.”
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Their thirty-year friendship did not survive their heated split. “Col. Mason left Philad[elphi]a in an exceeding ill humor,” Madison afterward told Washington. “He returned to Virginia with a fixed disposition to prevent the adoption of the plan if possible. He considers the want of a Bill of Rights as a fatal objection.”
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The convention’s secrecy rule deplored by Mason had stimulated candor but was immediately blasted by critics and engendered a thousand conspiracy theories. “I am sorry they began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members,” Jefferson complained to John Adams.
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To guarantee confidentiality, William Jackson, the convention secretary, burned all loose scraps of paper and entrusted the official journals to George Washington’s care—another act of tremendous faith in his integrity.

On the final day, Benjamin Franklin mentioned to some delegates that during the previous months he had often stared at the presidential chair in which Washington sat with its image of the sun: “I have often and often in the course of the session … looked at that [sun] behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”
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After Franklin dispensed this famous aperçu, the delegates adjourned to the City Tavern for one last round of drinks. In sending the Constitution to Congress, Washington wisely made an understated case for approval, noting the conciliatory spirit that had led to its passage: “That it will meet the full and entire approbation of every state is not perhaps to be expected … That it is liable to as few exceptions as could reasonably have been expected, we hope and believe.”
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On September 18, accompanied by John Blair of Virginia, Washington boarded his newly varnished coach and set out for Mount Vernon. The two men traveled in high style, Washington having refurbished his vehicle in Philadelphia, outfitting it with glass panes, brass plates, stuffed cushions, and a new carpet. In his eagerness to return home, he was misled into an uncharacteristic error. Near the Head of Elk he had to ford a river swollen by torrential rains. Instead of waiting for the turbulent waters to subside, the overly eager Washington decided to take the carriage across an “old, rotten, and long disused” bridge, as he described it.
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One of the two harnessed horses suddenly slid off the bridge and nearly dragged the other horse, along with the baggage-laden carriage, into the foaming waters. Only the prompt intervention of some nearby millers, who managed to disengage the first horse from its harness, prevented the total destruction of the carriage and Washington’s belongings.

At sunset on September 22 Washington’s coach pulled up before the mansion house at Mount Vernon. That he was ready to resume his everyday life is evident in his diary, where he jotted down his absence of “four months and 14 days.”
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The precision of detail suggests how onerous Washington considered the lost time, and he bewailed to a correspondent having “sacrificed every private consideration and personal enjoyment” to attend the convention.
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What he discovered upon returning home confirmed his latent anxieties about his neglected business affairs. As he told Henry Knox, he “found Mrs. Washington and the family tolerably well, but the fruits of the earth almost entirely destroyed by one of the severest droughts (in this neighborhood) that ever was experienced. The crops generally below the mountains are injured, but not to the degree that mine and some of my neighbors’ are here.”
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For Washington, this dispiriting discovery reenacted a now-familiar tale of making huge private sacrifices whenever he was forced to be away from home for public service.

THE CONSTITUTION cherished by generations of Americans was fiercely controversial at first, producing heated polemics on both sides. So that its legitimacy would derive from the people, not the state governments, the framers required ratification by a special convention in each state; the document would be activated when nine states approved. By all accounts, Washington overflowed with enthusiasm for the new charter. When Richmond merchant Alexander Donald stayed at Mount Vernon in early October 1787, he was impressed by Washington’s ebullient advocacy. “I never saw him so keen for anything in my life as he is for the adoption of a new form of government,” Donald informed Jefferson.
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The months in Philadelphia, however trying, had given Washington a needed respite from business worries and revived his faltering health. “He is in perfect good health,” Donald wrote, “and looks almost as well as he did twenty years ago.”
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Everybody recognized the signal importance of Washington’s imprimatur on the new charter, reassuring a public skittish about such fundamental change. His cachet emboldened advocates (called federalists) even as it undermined critics (called antifederalists). “I have observed that your name [attached] to the new constitution has been of infinite service,” Gouverneur Morris wrote. “Indeed, I am convinced that, if you had not attended the convention and the same paper had been handed out to the world, it would have met with a colder reception … As it is, should the idea prevail that you would not accept of the presidency, it would prove fatal in many parts.”
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One Boston newspaper regretted that the combined prestige of Washington and Franklin in favor of the Constitution made “too strong an argument in the minds of many to suffer them to examine, like freemen, for themselves.”
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Some antifederalists took refuge in hyperbole, portraying the Constitutional Convention as a baleful nest of conspirators—a charge given some resonance by the secret nature of the proceedings. “The evil genius of darkness presided at its birth; it came forth under the veil of mystery,” wrote an opponent who styled himself “Centinel.”
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That Washington and Franklin had mingled among those conspirators made it more difficult to defame the enterprise. To bypass this problem, “Centinel” depicted Washington as an unwitting tool of “aspiring despots” who were “prostituting the name of a Washington to cloak their designs upon your liberties.”
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Washington dismissed such conspiracy theories as preposterous: “At my age and in my circumstances, what sinister object or personal emolument had I to seek after in this life?”
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After a pleasing October visit from Elizabeth and Samuel Powel, Washington had to cope with another frigid winter at Mount Vernon. Severed from the outside world by snow, he stayed in touch by mail with federalists in many states. Resigning himself to a common eighteenth-century practice, he assumed that his letters would be opened, telling Lafayette, “As to my sentiments with respect to the merits of the new constitution, I will disclose them without reserve (although by passing through the post offices they should become known to all the world) for, in truth, I have nothing to conceal on that subject.”
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While preserving an air of Olympian detachment, Washington moved stealthily in the background of the ratification process, one of his chief worries being that the Constitution’s detractors would prove more adept than its advocates. Although he admitted to defects in the charter, he tended to regard supporters as righteous and reasonable, opponents as wrongheaded and duplicitous. As a stalwart realist, he thought it dangerous to demand perfection from any human production and questioned “the propriety of preventing men from doing good, because there is a possibility of their doing evil.”
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When Lieutenant John Enys stopped by Mount Vernon in February, Washington explained that he had followed doggedly the constitutional debates, consuming all the pertinent literature. “He said he had read with attention every publication,” Enys wrote, “both for and against it, in order to see whether there could be any new objections, or that it could be placed in any other light than what it had been in the general convention, for which … he said he had sought in vain.”
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New York quickly emerged as a major locus of dissent, and Madison, based there as a delegate in the waning days of the Confederation Congress, warned Washington of a powerful backlash gathering force: “The newspapers here begin to teem with vehement and virulent calumniations of the proposed gov[ernmen]t.”
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After leaving the convention in July, Hamilton had fired anonymous salvos in the New York press against Governor George Clinton, who felt threatened by centralized power. On September 20 the Clinton forces retaliated with vicious glee, accusing Hamilton of insinuating himself into Washington’s good graces during the war. Said the nameless critic: “I have also known an upstart attorney palm himself upon a great and good man, for a youth of extraordinary genius and, under the shadow of such a patronage, make himself at once known and respected. But … he was at length found to be a superficial, self-conceited coxcomb and was of course turned off and disregarded by his patron.”
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This remark hatched an enduring mythology of a wily Hamilton tricking the dunderheaded Washington into supporting him.

Distraught over these accusations, the hypersensitive Hamilton appealed to Washington to rebut the notion that he had imposed himself upon the commander in chief and had then been dismissed by him: “This, I confess, hurts my feelings and, if it obtains credit, will require a contradiction.”
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By return mail, Washington laid both falsehoods to rest: “With respect to the first, I have no cause to believe that you took a single step to accomplish [it] or had the most distant [ide]a of receiving an appointment in my [fam]ily till you were invited thereto. And [with] respect to the second … your quitting [it was] altogether the effect of your own [choic]e.”
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To combat vocal foes of the Constitution in New York, Hamilton published in late October the first essay of
The Federalist
under the pen name “Publius” and rushed a copy to Washington. Washington had told David Humphreys that the Constitution’s acceptance would depend upon “the recommendation of it by good pens,” and
The Federalist
must have seemed a case of answered prayers.
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Indeed, the federalists possessed the preponderance of literary talent. “For the remaining numbers of Publius,” Washington informed Hamilton, “I shall acknowledge myself obliged, as I am persuaded the subject will be well handled by the author.”
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The perceptive Washington saw that
The Federalist
transcended journalism and would take on classic status, telling Hamilton that “when the transient circumstances and fugitive performances which attended this crisis shall have disappeared, that work will merit the notice of posterity.”
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In November, when Madison sent Washington the first seven installments of
The Federalist,
he admitted in confidence to being one of its unnamed authors and urged Washington to convey the essays to influential Virginians who might get them published. Without tipping his hand, Washington became a secret partner in the
Federalist
enterprise, transmitting the essays to David Stuart in Richmond. “Altho[ugh] I am acquainted with some of the writers who are concerned in this work,” wrote Washington, playing things close to the vest, “I am not at liberty to disclose their names, nor would I have it known that they are sent by
me
to
you
for promulgation.”
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To maintain the flow of reprints in Virginia, Madison sent Washington packets of new
Federalist
essays and bound editions as they appeared. Curiously, Washington had not figured out that John Jay was the third member of the
Federalist
triumvirate. When a letter appeared in a Baltimore paper announcing that Jay had denounced the Constitution as “a wicked conspiracy,” Madison had to reassure Washington that the letter was “an arrant forgery.”
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In March, Henry Knox finally let the cat out of the bag: “The publication signed
Publius
is attributed to the joint efforts of Mr. Jay, Mr. Madison and Colo. Hamilton.”
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By mid-January 1788 the Constitution had been adopted by decisive margins in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, and Connecticut. These early victories were deceptive, however, for closely contested state conventions lay ahead. The most formidable opposition, Washington surmised, would be marshaled in New York and Virginia. As the biggest, richest, and most populous state, Virginia had to be the linchpin of any union. While he believed that most Virginians stood four-square behind the Constitution, Washington conceded the influential nature of its opponents, especially George Mason, Edmund Randolph, and Patrick Henry, who he feared would stoop to demagoguery. With these dissenting delegates, Washington engaged in low-key lobbying, telling Randolph that the new charter was “the best constitution that can be contained at this epoch and that this or a dissolution of the union … are the only alternatives before us.”
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In a sign of subtle disenchantment with Virginia, Washington observed that it was “a little strange that the men of large property in the south should be more afraid that the constitution should produce an aristocracy or a monarchy than the genuine democratical people of the east.”
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It is hard not to see a veiled criticism of southern slavery behind this comment.