3

“Radical Cures”

“For God’s sake, tell me what is the cause of all these commotions,” wrote Washington to a friend in the fall of 1786. The alarming news of disturbances in western Massachusetts had come crashing in on the serene surroundings of Mount Vernon. The former commander in chief seemed to be living peacefully though busily in Virginia, hatching ways to improve and extend navigation on the Potomac and James Rivers, redesigning his manor house, importing exotic animals, supervising the sowing of seeds, the stacking of hay, and the laying out of roads and serpentine walks, riding around his property, exploring his outlying plantations and parcels of land. As he entertained a steady stream of invited and uninvited visitors, he luxuriated in the order and beauty of his estate, with its formal gardens, greenhouses, deer park, and graceful drives.

But the life of a wealthy planter was not carefree. “Most of my transplanted trees have a sickly look,” he wrote in his diary in May 1785. Not a single ash tree had unfolded its buds, the lime trees were withering, the hemlock was almost dead, the honeysuckle was only half alive.1

Nor was the life of a civic-minded American carefree. Washington was deeply concerned about the state of the confederation. “Retired as I am from the world,” he wrote to John Jay in the summer of 1786, “I frankly acknowledge I cannot feel myself an unconcerned spectator.” Indeed, he was spending much of his time commenting, with growing intensity and disquiet, on political affairs. His first reaction to events in the North was sheer incredulity.2

In the small villages of the Berkshires, hundreds of rough-hewn men, crushed by debt, had flocked to join Daniel Shays’s rebellion. They were protesting the confiscation of their property—their farms and their cattle—for unpaid debts, and the jailing of some debtors. Times were hard in Massachusetts after the Revolutionary War; the economy was in recession, and the state legislature had imposed heavy taxes to pay for war debts. “If you Dont lower the taxes we’ll pull down the town house about you ears,” wrote one man to the governor. “We country men will not be imposed on. We fought of our Liberty as well as you did.” Inflamed by the loss of the precious right to own property, the rebels’ tactic was to occupy the local courthouses and free prisoners. False rumors that Shays had an army of twelve thousand spread like wildfire. In Boston, panicked politicians overreacted, shouting treason and raising an army to crush the revolt. “We are now in a State of anarchy and confusion, bordering on a Civil War,” one Bostonian wrote.3

Washington cut to the heart of the matter. If the rebels had real grievances, they should be acknowledged and addressed, he wrote. Otherwise the full force of the government should be employed against them. He wanted fair government—but strong government.

While the insurgents felt cheated of their rights and property, men of Washington’s class feared for the survival of the nation. It was a question of order. “It is but the other day,” Washington remarked, “that we were shedding our blood to obtain the … Constitutions of our own choice and making; and now we are unsheathing the sword to overturn them.” If government could not check these disorders, he wondered, what security had Americans for life, liberty, or property?4

Up and down the Berkshire countryside ranged the Massachusetts state militia, routing the rebels. Hundreds escaped into New York and Vermont; thirty were killed or wounded. The victory of the forces of order was small consolation to Washington. Repression was not the answer. Nor was it the decision in Boston to disenfranchise the rebels and deprive them of their political rights. Not only might that backfire, he remarked to Madison, giving “birth to new instead of destroying the old leaven,” but the real underlying problem had not been addressed. “A thorough reform of the present system,” he wrote to his fellow Virginian, “is indispensable.”5

In his mind’s eye, Washington saw the young nation tottering at “the brink of a precipice.” Little was going right. Under the weak Articles of Confederation, the states had the power to regulate commerce and impose taxes. The confederation’s Congress—there was no executive, only committees with ever-changing membership—was charged with diplomatic relations and coining and borrowing money. And yet the government seemed incapable of conducting foreign and economic policy. England was restricting American commerce by closing her ports to American shipping, and she still had military posts inside America’s northern borders. While many businesses were failing, the states could not agree on how to regulate commerce and impose retaliatory measures. Worse, Spain had closed the Mississippi to American navigation as well. The dominance of local state interests and the rise of populist movements were adding to the fragility and instability of the national government.6

Already during the war Washington had been dismayed by the problems in chains of command no less than chains of supply. Indeed, the reason why the war had dragged on for so long and the cost of victory had been so great, he explained to a friend, was a “want of energy in the Federal Constitution.” State governments could not even be counted on to support the one overriding goal of winning the war. “How strange it is,” he had observed, “that Men, engaged in the same Important Service, should be eternally bickering, instead of giving mutual aid!” Preoccupied almost entirely with their own local concerns, the states had even taken it upon themselves, he wrote, to decide whether or not they would comply with orders of Congress, in what manner they would comply, and at what time! The multiplicity of state governments resembled “a many headed Monster” unable to keep on track. As for the members of Congress, when they were not lost in slumber, they were meandering through the states, migrating from Philadelphia to Princeton to Annapolis to Trenton and then to New York. How could independence be achieved, Washington asked in 1778, unless Americans believed that they constituted one people with one sense of purpose and one overriding goal?7

Upon resigning as commander in chief in 1783, Washington had spoken to his troops with utter confidence about the future. But to the state governors he was more candid. Fatal consequences would ensue unless the states agreed to a “Supreme Power to regulate and govern the general concerns” of the union. Short of that, he said bluntly, the nation was on “political probation.”8

Washington was a man of parts: not only a soldier, a general, a planter, an entrepreneur, a pragmatist, an idealist, he was also an astute political thinker who had made an accurate diagnosis of America’s political ills and would offer a potent prescription for the kind of government needed by the faltering confederation—if the country was to achieve the future greatness he foresaw. What kinds of institutions were required? It would be the climax of “absurdity and madness,” he judged in 1786, not to have a strong Congress, “with ample authorities for national purposes.” But even more important was an effective executive: the Articles of Confederation had allowed for only a feeble executive committee that was part of Congress. The reins of government, Washington emphasized, should be “braced and held with a steady hand.” Over and over he pounded home his message: the most critical ingredient in government was energy. Only by lodging somewhere a power that would pervade the whole union in an “energetic manner” could the nation survive.9

But he was not optimistic. Though after the war he had assured his friends in Europe that the foundation of a “great Empire” had been laid, he minced no words with his American friends. “Our federal Government is a name without substance,” he wrote late in 1784. Half-starved and limping, it appeared to be “moving upon crutches, and tottering at every step.” The following year he had given up on the idea of granting Congress more power, for congressmen, afraid to exert any authority, lost no opportunity to hand power back to the states. Why, even respectable citizens, hungry for strong government, he remarked in 1786, had begun “without horror” to entertain the idea of establishing a monarchy in America. By early 1787, he could not skirt the conclusion that the nation was heading toward “some awful crisis.”10

Tinkering with the Articles of Confederation no longer seemed a reasonable or realistic alternative. Several times, in the early 1780s, there had been attempts to modify them and strengthen the power of Congress. But many Americans remained mistrustful of centralized, national political authority, and all efforts at reform had come to naught. Perhaps the stalemate was fortunate, since the most realistic scenario on the horizon in 1787, for some American leaders like Benjamin Rush and James Madison who favored a strong central government, appeared to be a full-blown constitutional convention, a radical reconceptualization of the fundamental political contract.11

*   *   *

The convention was scheduled to take place in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. But would the general agree to attend? Probably not. Though he favored the convention and wished to see “any thing and every thing essayed,” he nevertheless worried that the experiment might fail, for the states were “not likely to agree” on any plan for a new national government. That failure would place “a person in my situation,” he confided to a friend in 1786, in a particularly “disagreeable predicament.” Indeed, his reputation had grown but so had his attention to its luster. Even Madison fretted that Washington’s great prestige might suffer if he were to participate in any “abortive undertaking.”12

Complicating matters, Washington had declared in 1783 his intention to retire from public life. Wouldn’t such backtracking harm his reputation? he asked. Or, on the contrary, would a refusal to go to the convention be viewed as “dereliction to republicanism,” diminishing his standing in the eyes of his peers?13

A few months before the meeting in Philadelphia was to begin, Washington informed a friend that his “first wish” was “to do for the best, and to act with propriety.” But what course should he follow? Would that friend inform him, confidentially, what the public expected of him, “that is, whether I will, or ought to be there?” The consensus of all those whose advice he sought was that he should go. Indeed, the indispensable man proved that he was an expert stage manager, having skillfully incited the pressure on himself to attend the convention. He anticipated that to get Cincinnatus to Philadelphia, others would have to drag him from his plow. Carefully weighing his obligations and his self-interest, the general finally decided to join the other delegates. “The pressure of the public voice was so loud,” he wrote to Lafayette, that he could not resist. In light of his own outspoken pronouncements about the importance of a strong executive, now no one could accuse him of trying to grab power in Philadelphia. But what would he have decided, we may wonder, had he not been so concerned with his reputation? And we may also wonder whether his decision to attend the convention and return to public life was as “utterly repugnant” to his feelings, interests, and wishes as he insisted time and again.14

Washington and his fellow delegates to the convention sensed that they were living in unusual times. John Adams was right in perceiving that they had “been sent into life at a time when the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live.” Few people in history, Adams wrote, had enjoyed the opportunity to create a new government for themselves and their posterity. There was a special bonus, too: fame. Participation in this world-historical experiment held out the promise of eternal glory. What surer way to build a lasting monument to oneself than to contribute to the founding and consolidation of the republic?15

And yet it would take courage as well as conviction to entrust one’s eternal reputation to a political experiment that, if history was any guide, might easily fail. If the American experiment failed, what then? Washington would have sacrificed the reputation that was most precious to him.

*   *   *

It was time for constitution making.

On May 13, 1787, bells chimed and exuberant crowds cheered as the Philadelphia Light Horse escorted George Washington into town. Robert Morris, the superintendent of finance during the Revolutionary War, invited the general to stay in his fine brick mansion, staffed with servants in livery and a French butler. For twelve fretful days Washington waited until a quorum was present, spending his leisure time dining with the Morrises, Benjamin Franklin, and other Philadelphia notables “in great Splendor.”16

When the meeting finally began in the high-windowed first-floor chamber of the State House on May 25, a rainy and gloomy Friday, Washington’s imposing appearance—in his striking general’s uniform—moved all the delegates present. Here was the American Revolution in flesh and blood. They unanimously elected him to the presidency of the convention. With his usual modesty, Washington thanked his colleagues, reminding them of the “novelty” of their collective enterprise and asking for their indulgence “towards the involuntary errors which his inexperience might occasion.”17

The convention was indeed a novel enterprise: it was the most audacious—and revolutionary—example of political planning in the Western world. No small dreams, no cautious methods for the delegates in Philadelphia. They wanted nothing less, Washington wrote, than “radical cures.”18

During the sultry Philadelphia summer, flies buzzing in the motionless air of the State House, a body of fifty-five men—“an assembly of demigods,” Jefferson commented from Paris—deliberated and self-consciously set about designing a national government in a grand manner and for all time. Together they brought vast experience, Enlightenment educations, common sense, optimism, and a willingness to experiment, to create, as Alexander Hamilton would say, “good government from reflection and choice.” They succeeded magnificently. For four months, six days a week, from ten o’clock in the morning until four in the afternoon, they would labor, pausing only once for a ten-day recess during which a committee on detail consolidated the convention’s work.19

The inviolable rule of the convention was secrecy. No news whatsoever was to filter out. Even the windows of the first-floor chamber in which the members met, it was reported, were nailed shut. Nothing could justify such concealment, Jefferson huffed, “but the innocence of their intentions, and ignorance of the value of public discussions.” On the contrary, secrecy made it possible for the Framers to debate and deliberate freely, oblivious to public opinion, free of pressures from onlookers, constituents, or newspapers. For his part, Washington was determined to enforce the policy. One day, finding a delegate’s notes on convention proceedings haphazardly left behind, he delivered a stern lecture. “I must entreat gentlemen to be more careful,” he scolded. “I do not know whose paper it is, but there it is, let him who owns it take it.” Washington bowed and left the room with a dignity so severe, commented William Pierce of Georgia, that every person seemed distressed. “For my part,” Pierce recalled, “I was extremely [alarmed], for putting my hand in my pocket I missed my copy of the same paper, but advancing up to the table my fears soon dissipated. I found it to be in the handwriting of another person.”20

*   *   *

The Framers had a clear understanding of the power that the new national government would need. Following the broad outlines of James Madison’s “Virginia Plan,” they agreed on expanded authority for the national government, to which the states would now be subordinate. They had no doubt that the new federal legislature would be the engine of law and policy. Still, they were unwilling to permit it to “absorb all power into its vortex,” as Madison said. They decided that there would be two legislative chambers, the lower one based on popular representation, the upper one based on equality between large and small states. Slaves would be accorded three-fifths representation. Slavery was implicitly sustained: union, order, and national strength were far more important to most of the Framers than were the rights and liberties of black men and women. Still, they tried to elide the brutal reality of slavery, never introducing into the Constitution the words “slave” or “slavery,” referring instead to “persons held to service or labor” and “all other persons.” They designed a federal judiciary that would hold at least enough power over the political branches to protect its own independence. And there would be a separation of powers, a system of checks and balances among the branches of government, blunting the power of any “oppressive” majority and ensuring stability if not inertia in government. But what about Washington’s formula for energy in the executive branch of government?21

The shape of the new national executive confounded the delegates. Colonial leaders had already had a bellyful of executive interference and bullying from royal governors and other minions of the Crown. Thus, during the Revolutionary War, most states had either executive councils (the twelve-member executive council in Pennsylvania was typical) or weak governors with no veto power. New York State was virtually alone in having a strong chief executive—in the person of the seven-term governor, George Clinton. Endlessly the delegates puzzled over the authority of the executive. Just a few months earlier Madison had admitted to Washington that although he knew that a national executive would have to be provided for, he had scarcely given any serious thought to how it should be constituted or with what powers “it ought to be cloathed.”22

The Framers debated at length the basic issue—a single or collective executive. The “New Jersey Plan” proposed a weak, plural executive chosen by Congress. Edmund Randolph, the governor of Virginia, strongly opposed a single individual in the executive magistracy, regarding that as the “foetus of monarchy.” Roger Sherman of Connecticut as well as Benjamin Franklin agreed, wanting nothing resembling an elective king. For his part, George Mason of Virginia suggested that an executive composed of three men—one from the North, one from the middle states, and one from the South—would “quiet the minds of the people.” In addition, he objected to an executive without an advisory council, for that, he contended, would be “an experiment on which the most despotic Governments had never ventured. The Grand Signor himself had his Divan,” he said, referring to Turkey.23

But others at the convention, like Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, Rufus King of Massachusetts, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania, yearned for a vigorous executive. “In order to control the Legislative authority, you must divide it,” said Wilson. “In order to control the Executive, you must unite it.” Wilson wanted to see a single executive directly elected by the people and not tied to any council—except a cabinet composed of men of his own choosing. Gouverneur Morris, a member of the Pennsylvania delegation, too, spoke up for a strong executive who, he said, echoing traditional paternalistic monarchical ideas, would be the “guardian of the people”—and, he added significantly, “even of the lower classes.” Some wanted the president to serve for a lengthy term in office, thereby hoisting him above the vicissitudes of popularity; others proposed a single seven-year term with no possibility of a second.24

On June 18, New York delegate Alexander Hamilton rose to give his ideas about the best form of government. He described an executive who would be elected indirectly by the people and hold his position for life, with an absolute veto on legislation. He would be able to pardon all offenders, traitors excepted. He would have the power to make war or peace, with the advice of the upper house, the Senate. He would make treaties with the Senate’s advice, but he would have the sole direction of all military operations; and he would send ambassadors and appoint all military officers. But Hamilton admitted some uncertainty. He was not convinced that a truly effective executive could ever be established on republican principles.25

The men of Philadelphia showed an even less firm grasp on the question of how to elect the executive. Knowing today the crucial differences between the parliamentary and presidential forms of government, we read the convention debates with suspense as the delegates teeter back and forth among the different options: selection of the executive by Congress, by the state legislatures, by state governors, or by the voters. But the delegates themselves were more impressed by the dilemma than by the drama. Edmund Randolph proposed that the national executive be chosen by the national legislature. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts objected, remarking that Congress and the presidential candidates would constantly “intrigue” and “bargain and play into one another’s hands.” James Madison, too, rejected any collaboration between the legislature and the executive. Gouverneur Morris suggested that if the executive was “to be the Guardian of the people let him be appointed by the people.” But others countered that most people were gullible and could be led astray by a “few active & designing men.” Some proposed that electors, chosen by the people, select the executive.26

No subject at the convention, admitted James Wilson, perplexed the delegates more than the mode of choosing the president. Three times in July delegates approved motions that the executive be chosen by the national legislature—the equivalent of a parliamentary system—but in late August they were back to square one. Delegates rejected every proposal for electing the executive. A Committee on Detail finally settled on the system of electors, and, by that time, the other fatigued and impatient delegates were in no mood to revisit the question again.

How many future presidents of the United States would have loved nothing more than to have been present at the Constitutional Convention, voting themselves all the power they craved. “Oh, if I could only be President and Congress too for just ten minutes!” Theodore Roosevelt would bellow in the Oval Office in frustration, overheard by the visiting Franklin D. Roosevelt. But because Washington presided over the convention, he could not—at least not in the convention itself—play an active part in shaping the executive office that he would soon occupy. In private, Washington did complain, in a letter to Hamilton, that the delegates who opposed strong and energetic government were “narrow minded politicians,” and he confessed that he regretted “having had any agency in the business.” Still, it was but a passing moment of discouragement. During the formal sessions, he broke his silence on two issues, neither concerning the executive branch. He was reported to have sarcastically proposed, in response to Gerry’s motion that no standing army exceed three thousand men, that “no foreign enemy should invade the United States at any time, with more than three thousand troops.”27

He also addressed the question of whether one congressional legislator should represent forty thousand persons, as the draft constitution had stipulated, or thirty thousand, as a delegate from Massachusetts suggested. Taking a stand in favor of democratic representation, Washington spoke briefly in favor of the proposed change, recommending more “security for the rights & interests of the people”—and his authority and prestige were such that the motion of the representative from Massachusetts was immediately and unanimously accepted.28

Though he did not take a position at the convention on the nature of the executive branch, he cast votes along with the other members of the Virginia delegation, and some of his votes are revealing. He voted in favor of James Wilson’s motion for a single executive. On the question of the executive’s veto power, the convention favored a strong negative that could be overridden only by a three-fourths congressional majority—a colossal obstacle for Congress to overcome, empowering a minority of representatives to block the will of the immense legislative majority and signifying only a slight diminution of the absolute executive veto Hamilton had proposed. When a motion was made to reduce that majority from three-fourths to two-thirds, Washington voted to keep the three-fourths rule, but the motion was passed.29

Still, the Hamiltonian conception of the executive—a single, strong, independent chief executive—ultimately carried the day. Such an executive could administer the national government with the energy and vigor that Hamilton had prescribed. Not even an executive council or a cabinet holding independent constitutional authority would saddle the president. Although he would have only a limited veto over congressional measures, the executive veto still represented an important prerogative. The president would exercise initiative and assume responsibility in the making of foreign policy; he would be given authority to conduct war as commander in chief, though not the unilateral power to declare war; he would have no general right to exercise emergency powers, but it was assumed he would act for the national self-defense. He would possess considerable control over his own executive branch through his authorization to make appointments. But the presidency would not be a lifetime position, as Hamilton had desired. Instead, the new president would serve only a four-year term, while being indefinitely eligible for reelection; he would be chosen by electors (elected either by the state legislatures or directly by the voters, depending on state preference) and not by Congress. The odd scheme of the Electoral College, said Madison, seemed to give “pretty general satisfaction” to the delegates.30

Perhaps the greatest concession the convention made to Hamilton in the final document was to leave executive power and organization rather undefined, as compared to the long list of fairly specific powers of Congress. Clearly, the executive office would take its shape largely from the men who first occupied it. “It squints toward monarchy,” Patrick Henry had cried out in Philadelphia against the proposed presidency, “your President may easily become King.” But the Framers did not heed him, partly because they fenced the office in with countervailing powers, partly because they had vast confidence in the man who would obviously be the first president. The powers of the president were great, “greater than I was disposed to make them,” admitted delegate Pierce Butler of South Carolina. “Nor, Entre Nous,” he continued, “do I believe they would have been so great had not many of the members cast their eyes towards General Washington as President; and shaped their Ideas of the Powers to be given to a President, by their opinions of his Virtue.” Of course, Hamilton, too, had assumed that Washington would be the first president. “I take it for granted, Sir,” he would soon write, “you have concluded to comply with what will no doubt be the general call of your country.” A Constitution had been introduced, he explained, but it would be up to Washington to establish it. Hamilton was confident that Washington would give the new government “more consistency than the proposed constitution seems to promise.” And indeed, the Virginian would turn out to be almost exactly the kind of president most of the Framers had envisaged.31

When the meeting was finally over and the Constitution signed, the delegates repaired, one final time, to the City Tavern in Philadelphia, where they “dined together,” Washington noted in his diary, “and took a cordial leave of each other.” Then, back in his room in the Morris mansion, Washington quietly, soberly, “meditate[d] on the momentous work which had been executed.”32

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“Be assured [Washington’s] influence carried this government,” James Monroe jubilantly wrote to Thomas Jefferson in July 1788 after nine states—the required number—ratified the Constitution. Indeed, his mere presence at the convention, as historian Glenn Phelps noted, was his greatest contribution to its success. Though he had rarely participated in the convention discussions, his prestige was sufficient to endow the Constitution with authority. The Constitution was not perfect, Washington admitted, and yet, on the whole, it was the “best Constitution that can be obtained at this Epocha.” But the real triumph, he explained to Lafayette, was that delegates from so many different states had all reached consensus. It was, he claimed, “little short of a miracle.” That unanimity also astonished James Madison, who, in The Federalist Number 37, perceived “a finger of that Almighty hand” at work in Philadelphia.33

Curiously, the Constitution that was produced by startling consensus incorporated and even enshrined principles of disharmony and conflict, for the new national government had been carefully structured so that branches of government, citizens, and interest groups would collide rather than concur. It was, in other words, an agreement to disagree. But how would the first president—who always stressed the crucial importance of American unity—deal with conflict and dissent in his own executive branch and with growing opposition in Congress?

In 1786, Washington had said that it was a “farce” to believe that Americans constituted a united nation. Now the Preamble to the Constitution announced that “We the People” were conferring legitimacy on a new unified nation. Would the dignified and reserved general be able to give life to the abstract idea of national unity? Would he be able to inspire Americans with feelings of belonging, a love of country, and a shared sense of national purpose? During the convention, he had spoken out for “security for the rights & interests of the people.” As president, would he, the wealthy planter and slave owner, speak up for those rights and interests?34

Unity, conflict, dissent, equality, nationhood, leadership: how would it all come together?