Prologue

Slowly the ornate carriage lumbered on its long journey northeastward toward New York. At every stop along the way, outpourings of people crowded around the general, cheering him while church bells rang and cannon boomed. People sang and people wept. Crossing a bridge outside of Philadelphia, he passed under an elaborate arch erected in his honor and was crowned with a wreath of laurels. He rode into Philadelphia on a white horse as twenty thousand citizens struggled to catch a glimpse of their hero. In Trenton women and girls scattered blossoms on the ground before him, singing “Welcome, mighty Chief!”

The little procession—George Washington and two companions—that had left Mount Vernon without ceremony on the morning of April 16, 1789, had turned into a triumphal promenade of republican spirit. A people frustrated by years of war and uncertainty and hardship, a people starved for leadership and direction, citizens denied the power of directly choosing their leaders and often denied any vote at all—these persons were now voting with lungs and legs for their leader, a man on a white horse, a republican hero.1

Washington had hoped for a subdued arrival in New York City, where his inauguration would take place. “No reception can be so congenial to my feelings,” he had written in late March to the governor of New York, “as a quiet entry devoid of ceremony.” But there would be no quiet entry. On the afternoon of April 23, a flotilla of gaily festooned boats of all sizes, their flags waving in the wind, accompanied his barge across Newark Bay toward Manhattan. As one sloop approached the barge, the women on board sang an ode to the general, who lifted his hat in thanks. A Spanish warship fired a salute. Nearing the pier at the foot of Wall Street, Washington could make out masses of people crowded along the waterfront and stretching up the streets behind.2

He was emotionally exhausted. “The display of boats, the decorations of the ships, the roar of cannon, and the loud acclamations of the people,” he wrote in his diary that evening, “filled my mind with sensations as painful (considering the reverse of this scene, which may be the case after all my labors to do good) as they are pleasing.”

Indeed, gloomy thoughts crowded his mind. Neither the elated throngs nor the evidence of his staggering popularity could dissipate his apprehension. He had been the unanimous choice of the Electoral College, but his accession to the chair of government, he had written to a friend in early April, “will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.” Concerned that he possessed neither the skill nor the zeal to manage the helm, he worried that he was placing in jeopardy not only the fate of his countrymen but also his own good name. Still, he was ready to sacrifice his private life and answer the country’s call. “Integrity and firmness is all I can promise,” he wrote. “These never shall forsake me although I may be deserted by all men.”3

Was he truly reluctant to accept the nation’s highest office? He had made similar noises of diffidence and self-sacrifice when delegates to the Second Continental Congress unanimously chose him to be commander in chief of the revolutionary army in 1775 and again a dozen years later when he had hesitated to attend the Constitutional Convention. And yet Washington always happened to be in the right place at the right time. A happy set of coincidences? Or a consuming ambition to be at the center of events masked by a virtuoso performance of self-effacement, reserve, and disquiet?

The president-elect had perfected a brilliantly effective formula. By professing his distaste for high office, by reminding people of his yearning for retirement, and by admitting his uncertainty as to his abilities, he had learned to hedge all bets and come out ahead. Even so, there was a note of sincerity in his hesitation to occupy the president’s chair. “I have had my day,” he had written a few years earlier, painfully conscious of his mortality. And, though ambitious, he did not want to put at risk or injure the reputation he had nurtured for decades. But he also knew that his reputation was not yet fully realized.4

The general’s revolutionary glory had issued not only from his skill as a military strategist but also from his remarkable farewell in 1783. At the moment of victory, he stunned Americans with his resignation of military power and his even more unusual refusal to seize political power. Instead, he announced his decision to return to his farm. It had been an unprecedented gesture that electrified the world. But relinquishment of power—however unexpected, dramatic, and virtuous—was not enough. The logic and momentum of his career as a fighter for independence and as an advocate for a strong republic called for him to accept one final challenge.

His presidency—his shaping of that office and his consolidation of executive power—would be his ultimate achievement, for it would undergird every future president who would seek to offer strong and determined leadership.