5

The Transformation

“Who is Mr. Rosecrantz?” an irritated Washington snapped at one of his officials. Without proper authority, this man had presumed to take on business of a public nature. As administrator in chief, Washington insisted on accountability, diligence, and speed. And attention to details, details, details. If the details were mastered, everything else—the big plans and ambitious projects—would follow. Only “systematic and solid arrangements,” he wrote, could protect the nation from the hazards of chance.1

Irritated that some critical mail had gone astray, he emphasized to his cabinet the necessity of always sending duplicates and sometimes triplicates of important letters. When Thomas Pinckney, the American minister in London, made the singular error of sending a message to Philadelphia in a code to which there was no key, Washington exploded, demanding that Mr. Pinckney’s “extraordinary inattention” be quickly corrected.2

Convinced that good governance was the result of forethought and method, the president instructed his cabinet officers “to deliberate maturely, but to execute promptly and vigorously. And not to put things off until the Morrow which can be done, and require to be done today.” In all situations, including emergencies, Washington demanded calm examination and “a deliberate plan.” No action, he repeated to the secretary of war, should be undertaken without absolutely reliable facts and information.3

In his first Inaugural Address, Washington had apologized for being “unpracticed in the duties of civil administration,” but no one in the United States was more accomplished in executive management than he. His work as commander in chief during the war, remarked historian Douglas Freeman, had been “one-tenth field commander and nine-tenths administrator.” Coordinating business with governors, working with political leaders, consulting foreign diplomats, procuring supplies, seeing to an infinite number of operational details, “he had in a certain sense been acting as President of the United States since 1775,” observed historians Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick.4

In orchestrating the affairs of the executive branch, President Washington was a transactional leader—managing, supervising, delegating, compromising, mastering the centrifugal forces in the government. But he was more than that, too, for he was leading in the creation of an entirely new political structure. Indeed, to provide strength, coherence, purpose, and personality to the executive branch, he became a transformational leader—for he was giving strong institutional shape to an enhanced philosophy of executive leadership as well as inspiring and cementing citizens’ commitment to the federal government.

Unlike future presidents who would necessarily have to react to previous presidencies, choosing either to follow the policies and practices of their predecessors or to set a different course, Washington’s position was unique. He was faced with few policies to contravene, no traditions to repudiate. In 1789, it was a rare task indeed to set up, almost from scratch, an entirely new government. Aided by the inventiveness, resourcefulness, and pragmatism of men such as Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison, he alone would set the precedents that future presidents would continue or disrupt. Whether his successors would be less forceful, less active, more majoritarian, or more populist, it was Washington who established the standard for presidential leadership. It is his construction of the office and his rock-solid commitment to the fundamental value of the national government itself that, more than any specific decisions he made or routine acts of management performed, marks his presidency as one of the most formative in American history.

“We are in a wilderness without a single footstep to guide us,” fretted Madison in July 1789. But Washington fully grasped the task at hand and felt steely determination more than anxiety. Since absolutely everything he did would establish a precedent, “it is devoutly wished on my part,” he wrote to Madison, “that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.”5

One of those principles, Washington noted, was that the Constitution “must mark the line of my official conduct.” He was resolved not to exceed the limits of his own executive powers. His aim was “neither to stretch, nor relax from them in any instance whatever, unless imperious circumstances should render the measure indispensable.” The reason? He firmly believed that a “spirit of encroachment” would tend to consolidate all the branches of government into one, thus creating a “real despotism.” Still, the definition of executive powers remained vague but expansive.6

Washington’s effort to follow the Constitution to the letter sometimes bogged him down. Did the Constitution give the president the power to change the meeting place for Congress in cases of emergency during a congressional recess, he asked his attorney general in the fall of 1793, when a calamitous outbreak of yellow fever shadowed over Philadelphia. Wary of assuming too much power and thus giving “food for scribblers,” Washington asked all his confidants for counsel. “What would you advise in this predicament?” he asked Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and others. For weeks he agonized about his constitutional authority in this relatively insignificant matter.7

Ever respectful of the separation of powers, he often deferred to the authority of Congress. He used his veto power rarely, not when he disagreed with congressional policy—unless that policy concerned military or foreign matters—but rather only when he believed that a constitutional issue was at stake. In this regard, he took on a responsibility that, decades later, the Supreme Court would appropriate for itself. For his part, Jefferson was relieved when Washington finally vetoed a bill in 1792, setting a precedent for future presidents.

Although Madison had designed a system of checks and balances that would place branches of government in adversarial relationships with one another, Washington sought to ensure harmony across the government. Even after senators rebuffed his attempt to consult with them in person, during the summer of 1789, about a treaty he was negotiating with the Creek Indians, he continued to keep the Congress informed about future treaty negotiations. When the Senate asked for background information concerning other treaties with Indians, Washington unreservedly provided all relevant material. When the Senate rejected one of his minor nominations, he suggested to senators that in the future they might communicate their doubts to him so that he could respond, but he did not question their right to reject his nominees. Another symbolic gesture of deference revealed a president who had no intention to act as a peremptory ruler. When he received a packet from the French National Assembly addressed to “The President and Members of the American Congress,” instead of opening it, he simply handed it over to the Senate, asking senators whether they would like to open it. After deliberating, the senators decided that Washington should open it and report back to them. Washington’s action may have helped him acquire, in the words of historian Glenn Phelps, “a reservoir of political trust that he could draw from in the future when matters more essential to establishing a strong presidency were at issue.”8

Still, the president did not always defer to Congress. In 1796, when the House of Representatives, objecting to the Jay Treaty with England, asked to review Jay’s diplomatic instructions, he would not compromise. He contended that only the Senate had the right to information relating to treaties. The House backed down.

Indeed, the most important principle on which Washington sought to buttress a stable political machine was executive authority. While deferring diplomatically to Congress on relatively small, symbolic matters and while not wishing to contravene the Constitution, Washington knew that central to efficient government was a forceful executive. “Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government,” Hamilton had written in The Federalist Number 70. “It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks: It is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws, to the protection of property … to the security of liberty.”

But how to establish a powerful executive branch? The Constitution was far more specific about the powers of Congress than about the powers of the president. It stipulated that the president would be commander in chief of the army and navy, that he could make treaties if two-thirds of the Senate concurred, that he could appoint judges and other federal officers and consult with his own executive department officers. But on other matters the responsibilities and prerogatives of the president were left vague. The Constitution, for example, granted the president no specific power to conduct foreign affairs, though it did grant him the right to receive ambassadors—and hence to recognize nations. This authority was crucial, given the turbulent European situation and the emergence of a revolutionary government in France, which Washington, unlike other European leaders, would recognize. The Framers of the Constitution had been wary of giving the president too much power in foreign relations. Even Hamilton, the advocate of a strong presidency, had noted in The Federalist Number 75 that a nation’s “intercourse with the rest of the world” should not be left “to the sole disposal” of a president. And yet, by making the president the master of the two key agencies of foreign policy, the diplomatic corps and the armed forces, the Framers had indeed made it possible for the president to seize control over foreign policy. The seeds of the future “imperial presidency” were sown.

The president’s power expanded in the summer of 1789, when Congress created the Departments of State, War, and Treasury, placing them not under its own jurisdiction, as they had been under the Articles of Confederation, but instead in the executive branch.

Significantly, one of the most crucial debates regarding the new executive departments concerned not the president’s authority to appoint department heads, but rather his power to remove them. The Constitution gave the Senate the power to approve the president’s nominations, but did that mean that it also had the right to approve or reject the president’s decision to sack a department head? In The Federalist Number 77, Hamilton, despite his insistence on a strong executive, had oddly favored giving the Senate the authority to “displace as well as to appoint” executive officers. But others insisted that the removal power had to be left solely in executive hands. “Vest this power in the Senate jointly with the President,” Madison warned, “and you abolish at once that great principle of unity and responsibility in the executive department.” Suppose the Senate rejected a president’s attempt to remove a department head, argued a representative from New Jersey; “what a situation is the President then in, surrounded by officers … in whom he can have no confidence?”9

The right of removal was a critical issue that undergirded the president’s ability to conduct executive business without congressional interference. The president’s right of removal passed in the House, but in the Senate it ended in a tie, broken by the vice president. It was a transformational moment. Instead of a presidency compromised by Congress, a tendency toward centralized control in the executive branch began to emerge, one that would pull the cabinet, the vice president, and other parts of the executive branch tightly into the orbit of presidential direction and influence. Despite some of the Framers’ fears of one-man rule and despite the numerous obstacles they placed in the path of strong presidential leadership, Washington would shape a powerful executive branch of government that would formulate most of the nation’s foreign and domestic policies.

To head the Treasury Department, Washington had the excellent sense to choose Alexander Hamilton, his aide during the Revolutionary War. In 1781, the brash New Yorker had admitted that he felt no friendship for the general, but since then the two men had come to trust each other. In another superb appointment, he invited Thomas Jefferson, still the nation’s ambassador in France, to accept the position of secretary of state, and he asked Henry Knox to be secretary of war. The attorney general would be Edmund Randolph, the former Virginia governor. The duties of Hamilton, Jefferson, and Knox were daunting, for they would be responsible for a multiplicity of government offices and services.

Hamilton’s department was the most complex. Appointed and confirmed on the same day, he got to work immediately. Not only was he charged with managing the nation’s finances—credit, banking, accounting, and the collection of taxes—he also had under his jurisdiction the customs department, the nascent coast guard, lighthouses, and the Post Office. The last, first headed by Samuel Osgood, was of critical importance in Washington’s mind, for most news and information, especially about the government, depended on the mail system. “I need not say how satisfactory it would be,” Washington wrote, “to gratify the useful curiosity of our citizens by the conveyance of News Papers.” As if all those responsibilities were not enough for him, Hamilton asked Congress for the authority to make all purchases for the entire government, though that job would prove so onerous that Congress would soon create a new office, purveyor of public supplies, under the direction of the secretary of the treasury. Congress also asked the treasury secretary to provide regular statements of receipts and expenditures of all public money as well as plans for improving federal revenues.10

Hamilton would play a pivotal role in almost all of the decisions made by Washington’s administration. “Most of the important measures of every government are connected with the treasury,” Hamilton self-assuredly remarked, while Jefferson darkly warned Washington that the Department of the Treasury appeared poised “to swallow up the whole executive powers.” Even after Hamilton left Washington’s cabinet early in 1795, replaced by Oliver Wolcott, he continued to influence government policy. “Will you favor me with your opinion?” Wolcott would typically write to his predecessor, eager to follow his lead.11

It was only after some hesitation that Jefferson accepted the position of secretary of state. “I know of no person, who, in my judgment, could better execute the Duties of it than yourself,” Washington wrote warmly to his fellow Virginian. “My chief comfort,” Jefferson replied, “will be to work under your eye, my only shelter the authority of your name.”12

Like Hamilton, Jefferson would enjoy considerable power in the new cabinet. Foreign ambassadors would have to conduct their business with him. When the French minister, the Count de Moustier, wanted to deal directly with the president, Washington explained diplomatically that the “great Departments” had been instituted because he alone could not perform all the business of the state.

In his department, Jefferson proved to be a master manager, asking his ministers abroad for reports twice a month and upbraiding them for inattention. “I will complain not only of your not writing,” he admonished William Short in the Netherlands, “but of your writing so illegibly, that I am half a day deciphering one page, and then guess at much of it.” Some of the communications problems seem laughable today. Especially egregious was the silence of the minister in Madrid. “Your letter of May 1789 is still the last we have received,” Jefferson wrote to him in 1791. Since there was no Department of Justice, the creation of the federal court system—a Supreme Court of six members, with John Jay as chief justice, and thirteen district courts—was also placed in Jefferson’s domain, along with supervision of marshals, who were the “handy men” of the federal administration, officers responsible for taking the census, collecting fines, enforcing jail terms, overseeing court procedures. Patents and copyrights also fell under the Department of State, as did an official library, a repository for documents and newspapers, and even the national mint—the head of which, scientist David Rittenhouse, accomplished almost nothing in three years while the country suffered from a shortage of coins.13

After the brilliant appointments of Hamilton and Jefferson, Washington’s appointment of Knox, who had served as secretary of war since 1785 under the Articles of Confederation, was less satisfactory. Charged with supervising an army of five thousand men, the navy, shipbuilding, the national arsenal, and Indian affairs, Knox was the least talented of Washington’s inner circle. Dismayed by Knox’s failure to consult and plan effectively, the president peppered him with a barrage of questions and directives that he would have imposed on no other secretary—“By what means…? By what authority…? What certainty is there…? What effect would it have…?”—virtually taking over as armchair commander himself. When Knox was asked his opinion on a matter, Jefferson sneered, he simply mouthed Hamilton’s line, admitting “at the same time, like a fool as he is, that he knew nothing about it.” The next secretary of war, James McHenry, who had been Washington’s aide during the War of Independence, fared no better. McHenry had an affinity for minutiae. Finding him buried under a mountain of details, Hamilton lectured him, but the advice was in vain. “McHenry is wholly insufficient for his place,” Hamilton railed, “with the additional misfortune, of not having the least suspicion of the fact!” “Your opinion,” Washington replied, “accords with mine.” The administrative and strategic ineptitude of Knox and McHenry gave a weak footing to the Department of War, but Washington doubtless had so much confidence in his own military experience that he was willing to tolerate old cronies in this position.14

As for the attorney general, though Randolph attended meetings with the cabinet, he had no department of his own: he accepted a retaining fee to give the president legal advice while carrying on his private practice, grumbling that he was a kind of “mongrel.” And yet, when he gave his opinion about a policy measure, as Jefferson discovered, he was always half in favor of it and half against it. Randolph, Jefferson wrote, was “the poorest chameleon I ever saw having no colour of his own, & reflecting that nearest him.”15

An unofficial presidential adviser and key liaison to Congress was Virginia representative James Madison, for Washington trusted no one’s judgment more than that of his fellow Virginian. It was Madison who ghostwrote Washington’s Inaugural Address, purposefully including the recommendation that Congress consider amendments to the Constitution—the “bill of rights” that Madison and Jefferson were energetically promoting. And it was Madison who composed the official reply to the president from the House of Representatives and then ghostwrote the president’s reply not only to the House of Representatives but also to the Senate! In the words of the editors of the Madison papers, Madison “was in dialogue with himself.”16

The president turned to Madison for advice (“What do you think I had best do?”) on a variety of subjects, from proclaiming a day of Thanksgiving to judicial nominations to sending ministers abroad. Once apologizing for being “troublesome” and abusing Madison’s time and generosity, Washington warmly wrote, “Ascribe it to friendship and confidence.” Not standing on ceremony with his friend, one Saturday he casually invited him and Jefferson “to take a family dinner with me today” to discuss plans for the new federal city. Only after Madison and Jefferson left Washington’s inner circle, in 1793, would Hamilton receive such words of affection from the president.17

Left somewhat out of the loop was Vice President John Adams. Perhaps the vice presidency might have evolved into a kind of prime ministership, argued historian Flexner, if Washington had been so disposed and had had more confidence in Adams. But during the Second Continental Congress, the Bostonian had opposed Washington’s wish to establish a professional, permanent army, and the two had not been close after that. The vice presidency, Adams sniffed, was “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”18

Alone at the top of the pyramid stood George Washington. Despite his famous diffidence about his abilities, he passionately believed that public happiness would issue from his “obeying the dictates of my conscience.” “No fear of encountering difficulties and no dread of losing popularity,” he self-confidently announced in 1789, “shall ever deter me from pursuing what I conceive to be the true interests of my Country.”19

Washington was a hands-on president, and yet his stunning success in establishing a firm and vigorous executive branch of government was not his achievement alone but rather the achievement of the collective leadership of a small, radiant galaxy of men of outstanding intelligence, creativity, and integrity—Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison.

All day long, documents and papers traveled back and forth among the president and the department secretaries. “By this means,” Jefferson commented, Washington “was always in accurate possession of all facts and proceedings in every part of the Union.” At his breakfast meetings with department heads, the papers he had sent them the day before were discussed, Washington listening to and weighing all arguments. Whereas his successor, John Adams, would conduct important negotiations with France without consulting his cabinet, Washington trusted his department secretaries to help him make policy, especially in the early years of his administration, when Hamilton and Jefferson were still on board. During his absences he authorized the three secretaries to hold “consultations” on any problems that might arise, assuring them that they could, without his approval, act on their unanimous opinions. On constitutional questions as well as on policy issues, he consulted with them and sought their advice. The president’s inner circle also helped him draft his annual messages to Congress as well as other important papers and addresses. Dissatisfied with his own draft of a certain paper, Washington wrote to Hamilton, “Be so good therefore as to new model, and let me have it (if convenient to you) this afternoon.”20

Part of Washington’s greatness, Gouverneur Morris would comment in 1799, lay in his understanding how to lead with others, “how best to use the rays” emitted by the dazzling geniuses of men like Hamilton and Jefferson. Such collective leadership would have reassured the Framers in Philadelphia who feared that a one-man executive would degenerate into monarchy. But did those Framers approve Washington’s sending the sitting chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, to London to negotiate an important treaty with Great Britain? Washington saw the presidency, historian Phelps remarked, “as a part of an integrated national government, not as an institution standing apart from the other branches.”21

There was only one domain in which Washington assumed sole responsibility: patronage. “I alone am responsible for a proper nomination,” he wrote. It was an unpleasant, onerous responsibility, as office seekers persisted in knocking on his door. Even Jefferson had to advise people not to importune the president. “To overdo a thing with him is to undo it,” Jefferson counseled. But Washington had set up strict guidelines for himself, underscoring his intention to act only with regard to the “public good,” dismissing considerations of “blood or friendship.” Indeed, when his nephew Bushrod Washington asked his uncle for the position of United States attorney for Virginia, Washington tactfully declined, explaining that the young man had neither the experience nor the standing “of some of the oldest and most esteemed General Court lawyers in your own State, who are desirous of this appointment.” Unlike the British prime minister Robert Walpole, who, when charged with corruption in the mid-eighteenth century, wailed, “Have I acted wrong in giving the place of auditor to my son, and in providing for my own family?” Washington was determined to be “exceedingly circumspect.” Alluding to the mythological Greek giant with a hundred eyes, he wrote that the “eyes of Argus are upon me.”22

To fill his government Washington sought men of knowledge, skill, and integrity who also had the respect of their communities, for that, he believed, was the best way to win over the affections and goodwill of the people for the federal government. Still, it was not easy to get qualified men. John Marshall was only one of many who declined positions in the government. “In short,” Washington wrote to Hamilton as he searched for a new secretary of state in 1795, “what with the non-acceptance of some; the known dereliction of those who are most fit; the exceptional drawbacks from others; and a wish … to make a geographical distribution of the great officers of the Administration, I find the selection of proper characters an arduous duty.” Hamilton could offer no cheer. “A first rate character is not attainable. A second rate must be taken with good dispositions & barely decent qualifications.”23

Washington weeded out the undesirables. The temperamental antics of Major L’Enfant “astonished me beyond measure!” he wrote to Jefferson about the architect of the new federal city, concluding that he had no choice but to dismiss the Frenchman in 1792.24

Little by little he anchored the government in the class of educated, established, influential men who prized public service and were well regarded by their communities. Over half of the members of the Constitutional Convention would serve as administrators, legislators, or judges. The result was government by the elite.

Was it also government for the elite? Washington believed that he could encourage citizens’ commitment to their national government by standing above politics, above faction, above geographical section. And yet he did not stand apart from the nation’s wealthiest citizens. On the contrary, in his appointments as well as in many of his policies, he embraced their interests. Was Washington’s administration, Jefferson, Madison, and others began to wonder, betraying the very principles that Americans had fought for in 1776—liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness? Indeed, it did not take long for ideological differences among the members of Washington’s cabinet team to deepen and for Washington’s ideology of unity to unravel.