For some weeks after Washington returned to Mount Vernon as a private citizen it seemed unreal that his time was his own, to devote to private business in a world not only narrowed by retirement but dramatically imprisoned, as it chanced, by snow and ice that kept him housebound almost continuously from Christmas to the second week in February 1784. After a month and a little more Washington had convinced himself that he was a planter again. “The tranquil walks of domestic life are now beginning to unfold themselves,” he cheerfully confided to Rochambeau; and to Lafayette he wrote, “I am retiring within myself, . . . envious of none . . . determined to be pleased with all.”
He undertook to bring himself down to date on many subjects he had neglected. He hoped, even, for spare moments in which to enlarge his knowledge of history and, perhaps, of French, but he found quickly that legs accustomed to the saddle were not altogether at ease when stretched overlong by the fireside. His muscles made him restless; demanding duties began to devour his days, new duties as well as old, duties imposed by fame along with those exacted by ownership. Visitors arrived in large numbers, stayed at their leisure and, in some instances, returned with exacting frequency. He found that whenever he stirred from the vicinity of Mount Vernon it became a formal occasion with ceremonies, salutes and addresses. Pleasing as was the cordiality of the people to a man who found public approval the greatest of rewards, lengthy receptions and dinners were more to be avoided than enjoyed.
He did one thing that must have puzzled his friends; he wrote Capt. Daniel McCarty, vestryman of Truro Parish: “It is not convenient for me to be at Colchester tomorrow, and as I shall no longer act as vestryman, the sooner my place is filled with another, the better. This letter, or something more formal if required, may evidence my resignation, and authorize a new choice.” He said no word in explanation of his withdrawal from the vestry. Subsequently, although Washington’s recorded appearances at church were rare, he remained on friendly terms with his rector and probably attended Christ Church in Alexandria when weather and roads permitted.
Another experience of Washington’s after he adjusted himself to renewed home-life was one for which he was in some measure prepared. Eight years of service with the troops had been eight years of neglect at home. Ante-bellum debtors who had made any payment had done so, usually, in depreciated currency. During the British raid of 1781, eighteen slaves had run away; nine had been sold in the most difficult years to provide money for taxes; plantation industries and the ferry had done well on paper for service paid in paper; Lund Washington’s preoccupation on the estate and his aversion to travel and to bookkeeping had led to neglect of rent collection from western lands; current and capital accounts had been confused. The pinch of hard times had been felt everywhere except at the dining table. Yet, even when the war had been at its worst, the General had directed the continued improvement of the mansion house; and now he was ambitious to have a new room decorated in stucco. He undertook, besides, to pave the piazza with flagstones from England, built a greenhouse, made plans for a better way of keeping ice in summer, paid for and put into use French plate ordered for him by Lafayette, and replenished his stock of claret. Other drink and day-by-day food represented a continuing expense.
Within a short time the immediate household was to consist of Martha, two of her grandchildren, the General, Lund Washington for a good many of his meals, and subsequently George Augustine Washington and Fanny Bassett, a niece who served as mistress of the house. Seven or eight white persons had to be fed daily from the main kitchen, but they usually represented only a few more than half of those who sat down for dinner in mid-afternoon. On occasion as many as ten or even fifteen guests, invited or unexpected, joined the family at the meal. Several of these early guests were distinguished; most were welcome, and a few only were impostors, or persumptuous, uncouth persons who came to fill their stomachs or have an experience of which to boast; but in the aggregate they accounted for numerous young beeves, sheep and roasting pigs, to say nothing of flour and vegetables, milk and butter, fish from the river and game from the marshes. Claret, Madeira and spirits disappeared in large volume. The financial burden of this entertainment was apparent to friends and to Congress, whose members endlessly were asked by foreign travelers how arrangements might be made for interviews with the General, but a suggestion of the Pennsylvania Executive Council that Washington accept a gift from Congress was promptly and gratefully disapproved by him.
Washington had predicted that he would come home “with empty pockets” and he almost literally had done so—to find numerous, unexpected calls for money. Because of the shortage of revenue at Mount Vernon, Lund Washington had drawn no pay as steward after April 1778, but he had said nothing of this to the General. When the owner came home and found this obligation, he had no ready way of meeting it. Many unanticipated requirements for money had to be met. A hundred guineas were found somehow by the General for his nephew, George Augustine Washington, Lafayette’s former aide, who needed to go to the West Indies for his health. In explaining to his nephew, Fielding Lewis, Jr., why he could not make him a loan, Washington confessed one of the main reasons for his financial distress: “My living,” he said, “under the best economy I can use must unavoidably be expensive.” In spite of all this, he remained optimistic that after he got his neglected affairs in order and received from London the money due on Patsy Custis’s stock in the Bank of England his situation would be better.
Four months were spent in varied efforts to adjust himself to the position of a landed proprietor who had seen “the whirlwind pass.” Then, in May 1784, he had to answer the first call to renewed public service in a matter that alarmed him for weeks. The Society of the Cincinnati had become unpopular with a considerable element in America, for reasons none of the founders had anticipated. Benjamin Franklin had ridiculed it; Judge Ædanus Burke of South Carolina had written a furious “address” of warning that a “race of hereditary patricians” was being created; El-bridge Gerry had become suspicious; Delegate Samuel Osgood had pictured a conspiracy against the treasury; Henry Knox had reported that antagonism was widespread and vehement in New England, where the Society was alleged to be the creation of foreign influence, the first step towards a martial oligarchy that would overthrow American democratic institutions. Washington responded as he usually had to complaints in the Army: let the justice of the protests be determined; call on the most influential of the senior officers to attend the general meeting of the Society due to be held in Philadelphia; change promptly the rules in a manner to remove all reasonable objection to it. If antagonism could not be overcome, the men who established the Cincinnati should dissolve it for the country’s sake. As President-General, Washington reviewed the Society’s rules (or “Institution”) line by line and probably had his detailed recommendations in order on his departure for Philadelphia April 26, the first long journey he made after his home-coming.
Proceedings of the Cincinnati showed that his leadership was accepted as readily as if he still were at Field Headquarters. It was May 4 when a quorum of delegates appeared at City Tavern and the fifteenth when the debate-loving members completed their deliberations and approved a circular to be sent the State Societies. Washington’s prime insistence was that the delegates “strike out every word, sentence and clause which has a political tendency.” Hereditary membership was to be discontinued; no more honorary members were to be admitted; donations to the Society were not to be received except from citizens of the United States; funds were to be placed in such status that their misuse could not even be suspected. Washington urged, further, that all foreign officers meet in France as a self-governing body that would have authority to pass on applications, within the terms of the Institution. This, needless to say, was proposed to meet the charge that these officers—Frenchmen who had risked their lives in war against a common foe—were seeking to impose alien rule on America. Finally Washington advocated the abandonment of general meetings; members would assemble formally in their own States only.
The delegates adopted substantially all of Washington’s proposals except the one for the abandonment of general meetings. It was their decision to recommend the whole of the revised Institution to the State Societies for acceptance, rather than to declare it the governing law of the Society. Although elections were conducted and procedure authorized by the General Society as if the revised Institution was in operation, the intent of the Delegates undoubtedly was to make the changes contingent on the approval of the State Societies. The original Institution was silent concerning amendment and revision, but congressional usage and the inclination of most men was to defer to the States. Had Washington regarded this procedure as evasive, he would not have accepted, even with the reluctance he displayed, unanimous reelection as President-General for a term of three years.
As rapidly as he could, he hurried homeward to take up the burdens of entertainment and farm management and pay another of the prices of being a national hero, the price of correspondence that became more nearly intolerable with each post. He protested that in eight years of public service, he never had been compelled to write so much in person. He daily was hampered because he had not yet been able to find a secretary or do more than make a beginning in the rearrangement of his legal papers, frightfully disordered from having been thrown into chests and hurriedly hauled away each time the British had appeared on the Potomac.
Inquiries were being made about his western lands, inquiries he usually was able to answer after much searching; but it was manifest that part of his properties in the Ohio Valley were occupied by trespassers. Some of these men boldly were offering for sale tracts Washington had patented years previously. The mill and plantation which Gilbert Simpson had mismanaged must be leased, if possible, to someone else. Washington had planned to make an early visit to these possessions beyond the mountains, and he now had an added reason for doing so. Interest was being revived in the old project of linking the upper waters of the Ohio with the Virginia rivers. Thomas Jefferson appealed to him to take the lead in this before New York State captured the western trade by opening an easy route to the Hudson. Now that he was going west on his own business he resolved to ascertain, if he could, which was the best line for a road between the navigable waters of the Potomac and some deep flowing tributary of the Ohio. If he found the route, he believed Virginia and Maryland would find the money for it.
He set out September 1 with Dr. James Craik and made his way west with few experiences he had not met before the war. By the sixth, Washington reached Berkeley Springs, now named Bath. There he met a storekeeper and builder, James Rumsey, who demonstrated an invention he claimed would enable boats to ascend easily a swiftly flowing stream. Washington grew enthusiastic and, at Rumsey’s instance, wrote a testimonial in which he described what he had seen. Washington did not stop with this. He was in such good humor with Bath and so pleased with Rumsey that he authorized the inventor to build him near the springs a two-story dwelling, with a stable and a kitchen as separate buildings, the whole to be ready in July 1785.
From Bath the General and his party proceeded to the familiar settlement of Col. Thomas Cresap on the site known as Old Town. The Colonel was eighty years of age or more and of feeble eyesight, but with intellect scarcely impaired. The General then started for Simpson’s in order to arrive in time for the advertised sale of the mill. Washington tried to cover the twelve miles of difficult road between Gist’s and Simpson’s at what he termed his “usual traveling gait of five miles an hour,” but when he met travelers proceeding east with loads of ginseng, he could not resist the temptation to stop and make inquiry concerning the navigable streams. The men gave him some information on the streams up which the produce of the Ohio might be carried on batteaux, but they knew nothing about the country through which it would be necessary to open a portage. Something more personally unpleasant was told Washington by these wayfarers. Indians to the west were in ugly mood if not actually in arms. It might be dangerous for him to go down the Ohio, as he had planned, to his large holdings on the mouth of the Kanawha.
Washington reached Simpson’s in the late afternoon of September 12, and not with pleasant anticipations, because nearly all his relations with Simpson had been unpleasant and expensive. Simpson had beguiled Washington time after time. Now, fresh disappointments crowded his stay at Simpson’s. The mill was in disrepair; there was no reservoir; the dam had given way; it was futile to hope for any rent worth collecting from the property. Nor could a purchaser be found. The General had, in the end, to make a new and bad bargain with the wily Simpson. Ill luck continued to dog the General as he went from Simpson’s to his property on Miller’s Run, where numbers of families were occupying land to which he held title. After a long conference, they chose to stand suit for ejectment, alleging title of their own, rather than pay rent.
Visiting dignitaries and an officer of the Pittsburgh garrison by this time had confirmed the roadside report on Indian unrest down the Ohio. Washington’s common sense told him he must turn back. Still, however, the spirit of the adventurous surveyor asserted itself. He would ride southward to Cheat River, which then seemed the most accessible tributary of the Monongahela. After examining the Cheat, he would proceed eastward to the North Branch of the Potomac. It was an arduous enterprise but inconvenience and hard riding in an unknown country did not weigh against curiosity and a belief that discovery of an easy, safe route would unify and enrich America.
Washington concluded that the best passage to the west would be from the North Branch by portage to Dunkard’s Bottom and down the Cheat to the Ohio. Although he was worn by his ordeal to the extent that he had to allow himself a day’s rest after he reached Fort Pleasant September 27, he counted that as nothing. The puzzle had been solved, he thought. By way of the Cheat, batteaux from the Ohio could be brought within ten miles, as he computed the distance, of water that flowed into Chesapeake Bay. The last stage of his journey was over the Alleghenies to procure from Thomas Lewis, who resided near Staunton, documents to support action for ejectment of the men occupying his land on Miller’s Run.
Washington alighted at Mount Vernon October 4. If he had little to show in money for a journey of 680 miles and a month and four days of his time, he had a reward of enthusiastic interest he had not displayed in years. Peace brought a challenge to peaceful effort as absorbing as that of war. Said he: “The more the navigation of Potomac is investigated and duly considered, the greater the advantages arising from them appear.” Obstacles existed, the General admitted, but they must be overcome—and could be. If there still was doubt concerning the best route, let it be resolved by careful surveys made at the instance of the government of Virginia, or on order of Congress. Meantime, companies might be organized and made ready to develop the Potomac—and the James also, if this second enterprise was necessary to remove jealousies and was believed to be profitable. To enlarge that new empire of the Ohio Valley, Congress, in Washington’s opinion, should purchase from the Indians sufficient land for one or two States, “fully adequate to all our present purposes,” and should sell this land at figures low enough for settlers but too high for speculators. Severest penalties should be imposed on adventurers who surveyed or attempted to settle beyond the limits of the proposed States.
To marshal arguments for presentation to Congress and the affected States was long labor for a man who composed a good letter slowly. Time was scarce, too, because of the attention the host at Mount Vernon felt he should give his guests, but Washington unflinchingly paid the price in hours for the result he hoped to achieve. Circumstance favored him. Lafayette had visited Mount Vernon in August and had left at the time Washington set out for the West. An understanding had been reached then that the Marquis would return to the estate, whence they would proceed to Richmond, Virginia, which Lafayette desired to visit again. An invitation to Richmond had come also from Gov. Benjamin Harrison, for years a friend of the retired Commander-in-Chief. Washington decided to accept and reasoned that as the General Assembly was in session, he would have an excellent opportunity of discussing with public men the improvement of the Potomac and the James.
Lafayette decided to change his route to Richmond, but Washington set out on the designated date, reached the new capital of his Commonwealth November 15 and went through ceremonials of addresses and responses. He found the General Assembly divided in support of the James and Potomac routes but willing to approve either if the other was included. Washington soon had the promise of legislators that they would take action before they adjourned. Back at home with Lafayette by the afternoon of November 24, Washington had reasons for being satisfied with the start he had made but, at the moment, the host let other matters wait while he enjoyed his guest. When Lafayette started north on the twenty-eighth, to take ship from New York, Washington went with him to Annapolis and shared festivities there. He continued with the Marquis for some distance on the road to Baltimore before turning back. “I often asked myself,” he wrote later, “. . . whether that was the last sight I ever should have of you; and though I wished to say ’No,’ my fears answered ’Yes.’ ”
Washington pressed his plea for a survey by engineers Congress employed; he renewed his suggestion for a stock company, whose capital would supplement state appropriations; and, as the legislative sessions were approaching their end in both Maryland and the Old Dominion, he urged that committees be named to confer on the drafting of identical bills. On December 19 an express from Richmond brought him the resolutions the General Assembly had passed on the thirteenth. These set forth that acts passed by Virginia and Maryland without previous consultation might not be similar; wherefore Washington, Gen. Horatio Gates and Thomas Blackburn, or any two of them, be named to confer with Maryland authorities and report to the Assembly. Washington designated December 23 as the date of the meeting, sent the express on to Annapolis, and notified Blackburn what was contemplated. By the twenty-second he was in Annapolis with the responsibility of serving as Virginia’s sole active representative. It was impossible for Blackburn to attend, and Gates had fallen sick almost immediately on arrival.
The conference progressed without hitch or halt. Unanimous recommendation was made for the survey of the various suggested routes from the Potomac to the nearest navigable streams that flowed into the Ohio. Hope was expressed that the Potomac itself could be opened as far inland as the mouth of Stony Creek. It was suggested that Maryland and Virginia each purchase fifty shares of the stock of a private company organized to develop the river and that jointly they assume the responsibility of constructing the portage roads. An initial appropriation of $3333 was advocated for each State.
The result was better than fair. The Maryland Legislature promptly passed a bill that included almost verbatim the recommendations of the commissioners. This was hurried to Washington who forwarded it to Richmond, where Virginia lawmakers adopted a similar measure January 4, 1785. Washington’s popularity undoubtedly facilitated action, and his energy and his experience were almost as influential as his prestige; but the keen eye of James Madison saw something besides this in Washington’s exertions: “The earnestness with which he espouses the undertaking is hardly to be described, and shows that a mind like his, capable of grand views, and which has long been occupied with them, cannot bear a vacancy.”
The embarrassment of a great gift came to Washington early in January: Under an act of the General Assembly of Virginia, fifty shares of the stock of the Potomac Company and one hundred shares in the James River Company were to be purchased by the Treasurer and vested in Washington, “his heirs and assigns, forever, in as effectual a manner as if the subscriptions had been made by himself or by his attorney.” A graceful preamble expressed the hope that as the public improvements sponsored by Washington would be “durable monuments of his glory,” they should be made “monuments also of the gratitude of his country.” He no more was disposed in 1785 than in 1775 to have it said that he served America for monetary reward. His impulse was to decline the stock. After long hesitation, he wrote Gov. Patrick Henry a careful letter in which he asked that so far as the law “has for its object my personal emolument [it] may not have its effect; but if it should please the General Assembly to permit me to turn the destination of the fund vested in me, from my private emolument, to objects of a public nature, it will be my study in selecting these to prove the sincerity of my gratitude for the honor conferred on me, by preferring such as may appear most subservient to the enlightened and patriotic views of the Legislature”—an arrangement the General Assembly at once approved.
Where an auspicious prospect of Potomac development was opening through the efforts of Washington, it was natural for stockholders to look to him for continued leadership. He was named President of the Potomac Company and was one of the active directors who undertook to find a manager. In August the retired Commander-in-Chief began periodic inspection tours of the Potomac from Harpers Ferry to the Great Falls above Georgetown. He always encountered some disappointment but usually he found encouragement. He made it plain, all the while, that development of waterways was no substitute for the maintenance and improvement of Virginia roads.
Still another enterprise that demanded a place in Washington’s mind during 1785 was the Dismal Swamp Company which never had been developed with vigor. Management was feeble; records were lost, scattered or forgotten. A meeting proposed for May 1784 at Richmond had not been held until October. At a further meeting in May 1785, with Washington in attendance, a small loan for a term of seven years was authorized, but neither this nor a proposal for contructing a large canal through Dismal Swamp to Albemarle Sound yielded immediate result. Washington continued to believe that the lands of that region would “in time become the most valuable property in this country,” and he declined with regret to participate in a plan Henry had in hand for extensive development of the southern end of the swamp. The reason for abstaining, the General wrote in full candor, was that “it would be most advisable for me, in my situation, not to add to my present expenditures.”
Almost to be termed a calamity was hostile weather. The long, wet winter of 1784-85 was followed by what Washington described as “the most unfavorable” spring he ever knew, and an unpropitious planting season gave place to a drought that continued until August 27. The mill on Dogue Run had no water; a new insect pest sapped the corn and ruined much of the grass.
Between the backward spring and the beginning of the drought, a messenger arrived at Mount Vernon with the news that Martha’s brother, Bartholomew, and their mother, Mrs. Frances Jones Dandridge, had died within a few days of each other. Mrs. Dandridge was seventy-four and had finished her active life, but Judge Dandridge was forty-eight and had in his care the tangled estate of Jack Custis. The Judge, moreover, had served as guardian of some of Jack’s children and had a considerable debt to the General and Martha on his own account and because of a loan made in 1758 by Martha’s estate to William Dandridge. New financial distress would be involved in any arrangement of Judge Dandridge’s affairs.
The steady flow of guests to Mount Vernon was another reason for increasing financial distress. This imposition was becoming worse, not better. Some visitors came in reverence and departed in awe; an occasional guest felt disappointment because of the General’s reticence or weariness or both. Washington was especially cautious and ill at ease with men whose native speech he did not understand, but where he knew his words would not be passed on, he lost some of his military reserve. Of the succession of guests, some were interesting and distinguished, all expensive and time-consuming.
Elkanah Watson, merchant adventurer and enthusiastic advocate of canals, came to Mount Vernon in January to explain what he had seen of the waterways of the Low Countries. He was then twenty-seven and already had made a fortune that had been swept away in 1783. His impression of the General was:
He soon put me at ease, by unbending, in a free and affable conversation. The cautious reserve, which wisdom and policy dictated, whilst engaged in rearing the glorious fabric of our independence, was evidently the result of consummate prudence, and not characteristic of his nature. . . . I observed a peculiarity in his smile, which seemed to illuminate his eye: his whole countenance beamed with intelligence, while it commanded confidence and respect. . . . I found him kind and benignant in the domestic circle, revered and beloved by all around him; agreeably sociable, without ostentation; delighting in anecodote and adventures without assumption; his domestic arrangements harmonious and systematic.
The next conspicuous guest was Robert Edge Pine, whose sympathy with America had cost him a profitable business as a portraitist in England. An appealing letter of introduction by George William Fairfax was followed by one from Francis Hopkinson, a favorite of Washington’s. The Philadelphian wrote that he knew the General would rather fight a battle than sit for a portrait, but that Pine intended to make pictures of the Revolutionary War and could not do this without portraits of Washington. Washington replied, almost merrily:
In for a penny, in for a pound is an old adage. I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painters’ pencil that I am now altogether at their beck, and sit like patience on a monument while they are delineating the lines of my face. It is a proof among many others of what habit and custom can effect. At first I was as impatient at the request, and as restive under the operation as a colt is of the saddle. The next time I submitted very reluctantly, but with less flouncing. Now, no dray moves more readily to the thill than I to the painter’s chair. It may easily be conceived therefore that I yielded a ready obedience to your request and to the views of Mr. Pine.
The guest of 1785 who came on the most conspicuous mission was the French sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon. By a resolution of June 1784, the General Assembly of Virginia requested the Governor “to take measures for procuring a statue of General Washington.” Under this resolution, Thomas Jefferson, then in France, had been asked to engage an artist. Jefferson’s reply was: “There could be no question raised as to the sculptor who should be employed; the reputation of Monsieur Houdon of this city being unrivalled in Europe.” Negotiations were concluded readily, and Houdon, after a delay occasioned by illness, left for the United States in the company of Benjamin Franklin. In a letter Washington received about September 25, Doctor Franklin stated that Houdon was in Philadelphia. The General replied in a warm letter and sent a formal welcome to the sculptor.
On the night of October 2 Houdon arrived from Alexandria, with three assistants and with a French resident of the nearby town as interpreter. Several other guests already were occupying most of the spare beds, but room was made for the late comers. The next morning Houdon delivered letters from Lafayette, Jefferson and David Humphreys and began to prepare for modeling. The artist proceeded as if he did not intend to waste a day. Perhaps he saved time because he spoke no English and did not linger loquaciously over the Madeira or the tea. By the sixth, Houdon was ready to begin on the bust of Washington. That day and the next the General sat for him.
Houdon went with Washington and other guests to attend a funeral in the neighborhood on the ninth, and to the wedding of George Augustine Washington and Frances Bassett on the evening of October 15. The ceremony doubtless was sufficiently beautiful to have pleased an artist. Washington himself must have shared the romance of a union between Mrs. Washington’s niece and his nephew. After Houdon completed his work and left on October 17 the General wrote Humphreys, “I feel great obligations [to Mr. Houdon] for quitting France and the pressing calls of the Great Ones to make a bust of me from the life.” Doubtless he said as much to Houdon; doubtless the answer of the artist was urbane; but there was no au revoir, no letter of thanks from Philadelphia or from Paris, not even “I hope you like it” when the statue was finished and shipped. Houdon let the marble speak for itself. It did.
Houdon was exceptional. Other visitors were more exacting. Washington remained the generous host, and he was learning now to entrust to various persons at Mount Vernon part of the entertainment of his guests. Some relief came after July, when Washington employed William Shaw as his secretary. Even with this assistance, breakfast at seven o’clock, and the dedication of his mornings to work, Washington often left his guests for two hours between tea and supper and sometimes did not appear at the evening meal. Dinner was at 2 P.M.; nine remained his bedtime unless a visitor brought news in which he had special interest.
Washington made the best of his difficult role as national host and undoubtedly took pride in having his lands, house and table impress visitors. Improvements gave added beauty to the entire plantation. “It is impossible,” wrote Joseph Hadfield, a young Manchester merchant, “to do justice to the order and management of the General’s affairs.” The guest continued: “His large estates, cultivated in the best manner, furnish him with all the necessaries of life, and his revenues enabled him, as well as the presents he received from all parts, to have all the luxuries of every clime. His gardens and pleasure grounds . . . were very extensive. . . . He is allowed to be one of the best informed as well as successful planters in America.” More than one visitor got the same impression that Washington’s style of living represented great wealth. In reality, before the end of 1785 the General confessed, “to be plain, my coffers are not overflowing with money.” He never explained why it was that he scarcely ever curtailed any expenditures when income was reduced or cash depleted. His well-fed guests, drinking toasts in his champagne, would have been aghast had they known that the cash with which he was to begin 1786 was no more than £86.
Besides concern over money, Washington had in 1785 continuing and rising anxiety with respect to public affairs from which he could not divorce himself in his “retirement.” The Society of the Cincinnati remained one of these cares. Washington suspected that opposition to the Society was slumbering, not dead; the State Societies should promptly approve the revised Institution and remove all reasonable objection. He confided to Hamilton that only the involvement of foreign officers and the charitable features of the organization kept him from advocating that it be abolished. He had not a single degree of enthusiasm for the Society.
Washington’s deepest anxiety was for the Union of the States. The appeal of Congress in 1781 for the right to levy a 5 per cent tax on imports had been answered favorably by all the States except Rhode Island, but refusal of that State to say “Aye” and action of Virginia in repealing her statute of acquiescence had put an end to all hope of deriving from that measure money required for paying the interest on the Federal debt. In desperation, Congress in 1783 had submitted to the States the amendment of the Articles of Confederation to authorize the levy of specific taxes on certain imported luxuries and a 5 per cent ad valorem tax on all other goods brought into the United States. This was to be imposed for twenty-five years only and proceeds used exclusively for the payment on the war debt. A million and a half dollars for the support of government were to be supplied by the States annually, in specified amounts based on population. This measure was crowded with every sort of concession to pridefully asserted sovereignty, but Rhode Island, New York, Maryland and Georgia were in opposition. To persuade them to ratify the amendment was the task of those who believed the Union would perish unless it had assured revenue. Another measure presented to the States for approval authorized Congress for a period to prohibit imports from or exports to countries that had no commercial treaties with the United States—a plea for weapons with which to inflict reprisals on Britain for her discrimination against American ships and cargoes. Here again the compliance of the States was slow and hedged with so many provisos that Congress remained powerless in dealing with Britain. Other proposals were being made for amending the Articles, but the best of these, largely the work of James Monroe, were never passed and transmitted to the States.
Congress must have more power or the Union would cease to exist; “. . . it is unfortunate for us,” Washington wrote, “that evils which might have been averted, must be first felt, and our national character for wisdom, justice and temperance, suffer in the eyes of the world, before we can guide the political machine as it ought to be.” British commercial policy, he thought, in time would force the States to vest Congress with power necessary to protect common interests, but, at the moment, he maintained: “The Confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without the substance.” His correspondence resounded with arguments over a stronger union and the demand, from the other camp, that the States make no additional grant of power to build up New England tyranny over the South. Washington answered with fundamentals: “We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us in all matters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.” Common sense dictated union.
In that conviction, the General did not hesitate to express himself when he talked with his friends or wrote to them, though he remained the retired observer and no more than that, except as his prestige gave weight to his private remarks. While he continued to hope for the ratification of the impost and navigation acts, he saw no financial relief for Congress otherwise than through the sale of western lands ceded by the States. After tedious debate, Congress on May 20, 1785, had passed a measure that provided for surveying townships and “lots,” one-seventh of which were to be assigned “for the use of the late Continental Army.” Subject to various reservations, the six-sevenths were “to be drawn for, in the name of the thirteen States respectively, according to the quotas in the last preceding requisition on all the States.” These lands were to be sold for not less than one dollar, specie, per acre, and the proceeds were to be made available to the Board of Treasury through the Commissioners of the Loan Office in the various States. “I confess,” Washington wrote, “it does not strike me as a very eligible [mode for disposing of the western lands],” but he added with his usual caution: “however, mine is only an opinion, and I wish to be mistaken in it, as the fund would be very productive and afford great relief to the public creditors if the lands meet with a ready sale.”
As for his own way of living, Washington did not permit financial distress to dampen the delights of his plantation; nor did he complain because retirement had brought him less leisure than he had expected. He decided that he would be his own manager, with his nephew, George Augustine Washington, as his assistant. In acting as steward, Lund Washington had made large sacrifice for his kinsman during the war; his long-cherished desire to resign could not in decency be disregarded further.
Christmas 1785 found numerous guests at Mount Vernon, but as soon as they left and holidays were over, the retired General became a surveyor again on his Dogue Run plantation, “with a view,” as he said, “to new model the fields at that place.” He was determined to reorganize his estate and make it all it could be. For this task he now had more time because his guests included fewer celebrities whose entertainment ate up his hours. Another gain of 1786 was a decrease in correspondence. He was irked by his mail but was not as heavily burdened as he sometimes thought he was. Later in the year Washington changed private secretaries and procured in Tobias Lear exactly the man he wanted. Lear was twenty-four, a well-born native of New Hampshire and a graduate of Harvard. He had resided for a time in Europe and read French well enough to translate it easily. He was good-natured, sober, industrious and companionable, and he made an excellent impression from the first.
Another change by which Washington hoped to improve his management of Mount Vernon was the employment of a type of man he had long desired, “a thorough bred practical English farmer.” Through the efforts of George William Fairfax he made a one-year contract, at sixty guineas, with James Bloxham, “a plain, honest farmer” recently arrived in America, whose appearance and conversation were as “much in his favor” as were his recommendations. Bloxham began, unfortunately, in another adverse season. Both he and his employer had to make the best of this—the manager with lament and sighs for England, the proprietor with determination to re-divide his farms and “go into an entire new course of cropping.” For this purpose, he leased new land on Dogue Run, surveyed his acquisitions and made his holdings into six distinct but cooperating plantations—Mansion House, Dogue, Ferry, River, Muddy Hole and French. Unless company or absence prevented, he visited all of these every weekday—a round of about twenty miles—and wrote in his diary what was being done at each. An overseer had general charge of each property. Under each overseer were a suitable number of the two hundred and more slaves that Washington and his wife owned.
The “new course of cropping” that Washington instituted as rapidly as he could was substantially the same on all his plantations and designed to yield food or marketable crops without exhausting the land. Prevention of this ruin depended on three essentials—the return of plowland to grass, liberal use of manure, and prompt stoppage of all flow of ground water that might create gulleys. This became the basic pattern of farming at Mount Vernon, followed in good years and in bad, when the owner had money and when he had to borrow. Progress towards a crop system that would feed his poor land was not easy, but Washington persisted in tests and finally developed a six-year rotation. Although he was not entirely satisfied with this system, it probably represented the most useful experiment Washington conducted after he returned home. Next in practical value was his determination of the wheat that gave the most satisfactory yield on his plantations.
Invaluable as horses had been to him during the war, he did not believe them the most economical beast of burden on a farm. From what he had learned of mules he concluded that they would do more and consume less, and he decided that he would import a jackass to breed them. When this plan became known, the King of Spain presented him two of these animals. One died on the voyage but the other reached Mount Vernon in December 1785 and received the name “Royal Gift.” Lafayette sent from Malta a jack and two she-asses which arrived in November 1786. The master of Mount Vernon decided in February 1786 to test the qualities of South American asses and sent a consignment of flour to Surinam, Dutch Guiana, to be traded for a jenny, which in due time was delivered to him. Washington already was standing the young Arabian stallion, Magnolio, which he had taken over at £500 from the estate of Jack Custis. The General owned, also, a work-horse stallion and, with the accession of the two asses, he had a four-animal stud.
Most of his outlays had ultimate utility and in time would make Mount Vernon more valuable as well as more attractive, but throughout 1786 they drained a strongbox into which he seldom could put cash. He did a fair business at the mill and continued his fishery, but the main sources of income were notes and bonds of kinsfolk whom it was embarrassing to press. The estate of Martha’s first husband owed her—and therefore the General—£1119 balance and back payments for six years on the “rent or annuity” of £525 annually due from the yield of the properties on the Pamunkey and York; Bartholomew Dandridge on his own account and as Jack Custis’s executor had died with unsettled obligations of approximately £2500 due to Gen. and Mrs. Washington; the owner of Mount Vernon still had his claim to £500 sterling of Bank of England stock from Patsy’s estate, but he had not been able to compel his London agents to sell it; the General probably did not know precisely how his dead brother Samuel’s account with him stood. Where kinsmen were not involved, old friends were, and if the friends were not close, then business associations had been, and the debts sometimes had been in proportion.
Washington had a surprising number of obligations, some of them pressing, some embarrassing because, though small, they had not been settled long previously. When, for example, the General came to examine his accounts with his old friend and former neighbor, George William Fairfax, he found he was in Fairfax’s debt by £207, which he contrived to pay promptly. Washington still owed £800, and current interest at 7 per cent, on a tract near Fort Schuyler that he had purchased with the assistance of George Clinton. Settlement had not yet been made with Lund Washington for salary during the latter part of the war. The situation in its entirety was the worst Washington had known at any time after he became proprietor of Mount Vernon, and it was not improving. His corn crop of 1786 was 1018 barrels; his year’s supply of pork, weighed fresh, was 13,867 pounds, perhaps two thousand less than he had “for family consumption” in good years. Almost the sole gain of the year with respect to his estate was the judicial establishment of his title to lands in Washington County, Pennsylvania.
Along with the embarrassment of debt, Washington had on August 31 an attack of “ague and fever.” A fortnight passed before he was himself again, and then he had rheumatic pains that continued into the winter of 1786-87. He was uncomfortable, rather than alarmed, and insisted that he was reconciled to a general decline in his health, because he was “descending the hill” and, though “blessed,” as he said, “with a good constitution,” was “of a short-lived family.” In this spirit he began to make plans for the future of George Augustine, but he was far from expectation of early death.
Washington had new reminders of the ancestral truth that war does not terminate its toll when the bullets cease to whine. During September 1785 he had heard of the death of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull, patriot, prophet and politician, who had aided Washington valiantly during the war. In May 1786 he learned that Tench Tilghman had expired April 18; June and July brought tidings that Alexander McDougall and Nathanael Greene had received their last leave. Had any of these men died in the course of hostilities, Washington would have announced it in a few words with a composure so stern that critics might have called it callous. It was different now. He wrote a careful eulogy of Trumbull, praised McDougall as a “brave soldier and disinterested patriot,” and made no less than three attempts, all of them futile, to express his feeling at the death of Tilghman, the bearer of the “victory dispatch” to Congress, a man who “left as fair a reputation as ever belonged to a human character.” Gloomy restraint in speaking of Greene was followed by warmer praise, and, at length, by this clumsy confession to Lafayette: “General Greene’s death is an event which has given so much general concern and is so much regretted by his numerous friends that I can scarce persuade myself to touch upon it, even so far as to say that in him you lost a man who affectionately regarded and was a sincere admirer of you.” He showed in another way than by words the depth of his feeling over the loss of Greene, who died with his financial affairs wretchedly entangled. Washington wrote Jeremiah Wadsworth that if Mrs. Greene and the executors thought “proper to entrust my namesake G: Washington Greene to my care, I will give him as good an education as this Country (I mean the United States) will afford and will bring him up to either of the genteel professions that his friends may choose, or his own inclination shall lead him to pursue at my own cost and expense.” This offer was made in October 1786, when Washington’s distress for money was acute.
Wise use of his hours had been a rule of Washington’s early career; it now became so fixed a habit that interruption of his well-ordered day was painful. Duties as President of the Potomac Company during 1786 demanded attendance at six meetings of directors or committees. Because of adverse weather he had to get the consent of the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia to an extension of the authorized period during which the company was expected to improve navigation between Fort Cumberland and Great Falls; but he continued altogether optimistic that the great design could be executed.
Although narrowness of interest had been as bad after the war as during the course of hostilities and in several States perhaps had become worse, a few leaders had continued to plead for closer economic relations. There had been a promising development in the suggestion for an annual meeting of representatives of Virginia and Maryland. When this had been proposed nothing more had been contemplated than that the two States review questions of commercial relation from year to year, precisely as they had considered the joint use of the Chesapeake and the Potomac; but when the ratification of the united agreement was taken up in the Maryland Legislature, the lawmakers decided to invite Delaware and Pennsylvania to the conference. Some Virginians went further and asked, Why not invite all the States to be represented at such a meeting? The answer was not unanimous, but a resolution to this effect was passed January 21, 1786. Of course, this measure might mean much or little, but as Madison was quick to point out, there was a chance the conference might recommend an increase of the powers of Congress. This, said Madison, “may possibly lead to better consequences than at first occur.”
Washington was not hopeful the obstacles to better relations among the States could be removed quickly. His “sentiments” with respect to the Federal Union, he wrote Henry Lee, had “been communicated without reserve,” but, he went on, “I have little hope of amendment without another convulsion.” His deepest dread apparently was of the slow disintegration of a union held together by waning sentiment and a Congress so pauperized and powerless that the States did not even take the trouble to see that their Delegates attended.
By May 1786 he found encouragement in the response to Virginia’s invitation. He explained to Lafayette: “All the Legislatures which I have heard from have come into the proposition, and have made very judicious appointments: much good is expected from this measure, and it is regretted by many that more objects were not embraced by the meeting. A General Convention is talked of by many for the purpose of revising and correcting the defects of the federal government; but whilst this is the wish of some, it is the dread of others from an opinion that matters are not yet sufficiently ripe for such an event.” He told John Jay: “I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the State governments extends over the several States.”
In this attitude of mind and in the face of letters predominantly pessimistic, Washington looked forward with much eagerness to the meeting which had been set for Annapolis in September. When he learned that five States only had been represented, he was disappointed and was puzzled to know why the commercial States of the East had sent no one. He soon had assurance that failure had not been complete: The fourteen Delegates unanimously had agreed to a report prepared by Hamilton which recommended that the States send Delegates to a convention in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May 1787. This proposed assembly was to:
take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union; and to report such an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled, as, when agreed to by them, and afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State will effectually provide for the same.
Was this recommendation to be taken seriously by public men or was it to have the fate of Virginia’s call for the commercial convention of all the States at Annapolis?
Before Washington could form any judgment of this, he was alarmed by news from Massachusetts. Gazettes told of discontent that had begun to take form at the end of August. On September 11, at Concord, a crowd of two or three hundred men had cowed the justices into an announcement that they would not attempt to hold court. Washington did not understand what lay behind this angry challenge of the law. Aside from the newspaper reports, all he had at first concerning events in New England, was conveyed in a letter of Humphreys that read: “. . . Our friend [David] Cobb, who is both a General of militia and a Judge of the court in the county where he resides, is much celebrated for having said ’he would die as a General or sit as a Judge.’ This was indeed a patriotic sentiment. His firmness in principles and example in conduct effected a suppression of the mob—but the court was adjourned in consequence of the Governor’s order.” Washington wrote back: “. . . For God’s sake, tell me what is the cause of all these commotions: do they proceed from licentiousness, British influence disseminated by the Tories, or real grievances which admit of redress? If the latter, why were they delayed till the popular mind had become so much agitated? If the former, why are not the powers of government tried at once?”
The General did not have to wait for Humphreys’ answer. Other correspondents sent him information. Some of these reports discounted the seriousness of the outbreak, but the prevalent tone was one of alarm. The situation was going from bad to worse. There was talk of “the abolition of debts, the division of property, and reunion with Great Britain.” Affairs might become so critical, Harry Lee intimated, that Congress might call on Washington to go to the eastern States, because it was taken for granted that the disorders then would subside. Other Delegates were asking whether it was not the duty of Congress to raise troops with which to support the government of Massachusetts if the authorities of that State could not put down the followers of Daniel Shays, a former Captain in the Continental Army who had emerged as the leader of the trouble-makers. “I am mortified beyond expression,” Washington wrote Lee, “when I view the clouds that have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned upon any country.” As for remedy, “you talk,” he continued, “. . . of employing influence to appease the present tumults in Massachusetts. I know not where that influence is to be found and, if attainable, that it would be a proper remedy for our disorders.” Then he wrote solemnly: “Influence is no government.” If the insurgents had grievances, correct them or acknowledge them and say that cure had to wait for better days; but if the uprising represented no real complaint, “employ the force of government against [it] at once.” He insisted: “Precedents are dangerous things; let the reins of government then be braced and held with a steady hand, and every violation of the constitution be reprehended: if defective let it be amended, but not suffered to be trampled upon whilst it has an existence.”
Thus was Shays’s Rebellion linked in Washington’s reasoning with the appeal for a stronger Federal government. From Henry Knox, Secretary of War, who had gone to Massachusetts to see the situation for himself, Washington received a long, careful letter on the uprising. The creed of the insurgents, said Knox, “is that the property of the United States has been protected from confiscation of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice and ought to be swept from off the face of the earth.” The insurrectionists reckoned twelve or fifteen thousand “desperate and unprincipled men,” chiefly of “the young and active part of the community.”
Manifestly, the political machinery was too frail for the duty it was called upon to perform. It must be repaired or replaced. Virginia must begin that labor. Washington had observed with admiration the diligence, patriotism and high intelligence of Madison, former representative in Congress and now member of the House of Delegates. Madison was the man to take the lead. On November 5 Washington wrote Madison. With applause for the refusal of the House to approve the emission of paper money, he joined the hope that “the great and most important of all objects, the federal government” would be considered calmly and deliberately “at this critical moment.” Fervently he pleaded: “Let prejudices, unreasonable jealousies and local interest yield to reason and liberality. Let us look to our national character, and to things beyond the present period. . . . Wisdom and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm.”
The echo of Washington’s words rolled back quickly from Richmond. Dark as was the outlook described by Knox, said Madison, he himself was “leaning to the side of hope.” The Assembly had voted unanimously to comply with the recommendation of the Annapolis Convention in favor of a “general revision of the federal system.” A good bill was pending and soon would be passed—a bill that gave the proposal a “very solemn dress and all the weight that could be derived from a single State.” Next came the return challenge of leadership: Washington’s name had been placed at the head of the list of Delegates to the Convention. “How far this liberty may correspond,” said Madison, “with the ideas by which you ought to be governed will be best decided when it must ultimately be decided.”
That was not pleasant reading for a man whose love of retired detachment from controversies was second only to his love of country. Madison’s respectful call to renewed public service was followed soon by plainspoken, New England words from Humphreys: “The troubles in Massachusetts still continue. Government is prostrated in the dust. . . . Congress, I am told, are seriously alarmed and hardly know which way to turn, or what to expect. Indeed, my dear General, nothing but a good Providence can extricate us from our present difficulties and prevent some terrible convulsion.” The personal application followed: “In case of civil discord, I have already told you it was seriously my opinion that you could not remain neuter, and that you would be obliged, in self-defence to take part on one side or the other, or withdraw from the continent. Your friends are of the same opinion. . . .”
Washington had to admit the justice of at least part of this: In such a crisis he undeniably had his share of the duty he was invoking others to discharge; but he had an embarrassment of a sort on which his mind laid particular emphasis. As President of the Society of the Cincinnati, he had notified the State Societies that private affairs, the presidency of the Potomac Company, and rheumatism made it impossible for him to attend the triennial meeting of the General Society. This meeting was to be held in Philadelphia during May 1787—the town and month set for the convention Virginia was calling. “Under these circumstances,” he told Madison, “it will readily be perceived that I could not appear at the same time and place on any other occasion, without giving offence.”
Soon after the beginning of December a long period of freezing covered roads and river with ice and cut Mount Vernon off completely. When the post again was operating, Washington learned that the Virginia General Assembly had passed the bill for calling a Convention of the States; that he had been elected unanimously to head a distinguished delegation of seven, and that both Madison and Gov. Edmund Randolph were urging him not to refuse, because he could not be spared from attendance.
The General read and pondered and could not bring himself to say “Yes” or to decline with a “No” so positive that someone else would of necessity be chosen in his stead. In writing Randolph, he did not quite reach the finality of refusal: Because of circumstances from which there was little prospect of disengaging himself, he said, “it would be disingenuous not to express a wish that some other character, on whom greater reliance can be had, may be substituted in my place, the probability of my non-attendance being too great to continue my appointment.”
Wisely, Randolph and the Council decided not to act on Washington’s declination—if declination it might be styled. Conditions might shift; another nomination could be made later, if necessary. “Perhaps, too,” said the Governor, “(and indeed I fear the event), every other consideration may seem of little weight, when compared with the crisis which may then hang over the United States.” With superlative tact Madison made the same appeal. Washington referred the whole correspondence to Humphreys with the query, “Should the matter be further pressed (which I hope it will not, as I have no inclination to go), what had I best do?”; but in the same letter he argued earnestly for precisely such a stronger Union as Madison and the others hoped to assure at the Convention to which they knew the presence of Washington would give prestige.
Washington had troubles enough in the early months of 1787 to have led a man of mind less resolute and ordered to put aside public affairs completely. John Augustine Washington died at the beginning of the year, a loss the General sustained with heavy heart, because Jack of all his brothers had been next only to Lawrence in his affection. Frances Bassett Washington had her first baby and lost it. These sorrows came when Washington still was suffering, sometimes acutely, from his “rheumatism” and, in a different sense, from financial “hard times.” His spirits certainly were not improved by a demand from his mother for fifteen guineas. He sent the coin in February with the unabashed statement that it was literally all he had in hand. Other demands were heavy. Currently, Washington had pressing bills for more than £500. He found it exceedingly difficult to collect what was due him, even for flour, and from some of his tenants he could get nothing unless he took their horses. Lund Washington had special need of his past-due salary: the best the General could do was to tender him a bond he believed a borrower would pay on its maturity. “My estate for the last eleven years,” he confessed, “has not been able to make both ends meet.”
Every day public questions obtruded and overshadowed farm, family and all else. Continued alarm over the discontent and violence in Massachusetts was accompanied by a suggestion that it might be well for Washington to pay a “private visit” to that state, but in mid-February it was hoped that a vigorous march by Benjamin Lincoln on Petersham had broken the back of the rebellion. Washington breathed less anxiously and at the appropriate time urged leniency for the insurgents, though he shared Madison’s fear that discontent was spreading and the affairs of the nation approaching “some awful crisis.” The threat of another flood of paper money engulfing America was, in the opinion of Washington, almost as serious as that of mobs closing Massachusetts courts. He continued to assert that America was facing a final test as to whether she could survive “without the means of coercion in the sovereign”; but insofar as this might require his participation as a Delegate to the proposed Convention, he held to his argument for declining the appointment.
On February 21 Congress voted that it was “expedient” to hold a Convention of State Delegates in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.” Washington still doubted whether the Convention would be well attended by men of ability and courage. On the other hand, he began to ask himself whether his refusal to participate might not be considered a lack of sympathy with republican ideals. As late as March 15 he wrote as if he would not attend, but by that date, several developments were taking form: Congress’ action in endorsing the Convention was approved widely; most of the political leaders were agreed that a crisis was imminent; impressive appointments to the Convention were being made unhesitatingly by several States.
Washington reconsidered. Although he could not yet persuade himself that the Convention would be attended fully by unfettered Delegates, he found a certain sense of shame making him more and more well disposed to the Convention. His own State was holding back. Patrick Henry and Thomas Nelson, Jr., declined membership. Randolph proposed Richard Henry Lee in Nelson’s place, but Lee pled ill health and said he did not think members of Congress should sit in the Convention. Was the State that initiated the gathering to have all of her best known elder sons, Washington included, absent from that body?
Pressure was becoming heavy. Anxiously and painfully Washington reviewed the arguments for and against attendance. There was danger, he felt, that his reputation might suffer if a feeble Convention ended with proposals that would not give the Union needed strength. A desperate crisis appeared to lie ahead. A supreme effort seemed necessary to prevent disintegration of the Federation into a congeries of rival States which might choke themselves with paper money. The Convention presented perhaps the only means of making this effort. If Washington did not share in it, he might be accused of lack of sympathy with it. Abstention might be greater disservice to the nation than his presence would be affront to the Cincinnati. The risk of odium from refusal might be greater than loss of popularity by taking sides in a dispute that might not, after all, be furious or defamatory.
At last, on March 28, he wrote Governor Randolph an equivocal, overcautious and self-regarding letter: If the Governor had named nobody in his place and was not considering anyone, he would undertake to go to Philadelphia, provided his health made this practicable. He took superlative pains not to commit himself beyond easy withdrawal, but in spite of ifs and provisos, the letter brought him close to a favorable decision. Randolph and Madison became so confident of Washington’s participation that they began to discuss whether he should be present at the opening of the Convention or should appear later.
He had to make up his mind; this must not be a political Fort Washington, when everything might be lost by hesitation. On April 9, most unwillingly and in an egocentric strain, he wrote Randolph that he was about to act contrary to his judgment. He apprehended, moreover, that his action would be regarded as inconsistent with his statement in December 1783 that he never intended thereafter to “intermeddle in public matters.” Once more he reviewed the involvement of the Society of the Cincinnati and then proceeded:
Add to these, I very much fear that all the States will not appear in Convention, and that some of them will come fettered so as to impede rather than accelerate the great object of their convening which, under the peculiar circumstances of my case, would place me in a more disagreeable situation than any other member would stand in. As I have yielded, however, to what appeared to be the earnest wishes of my friends, I will hope for the best. . . .
He scarcely could have stated it more ungraciously or with more patent regard for himself, but he said it and, after that, did not turn back.
A report of the extreme illness of his mother and of his sister sent him in great haste to Fredericksburg on April 27 and threatened to delay his departure north. Fortunately, when he reached Fredericksburg, he found Mrs. Washington better and his sister’s condition the result of strain from waiting on her mother. He returned home on the thirtieth. Washington carefully gave full verbal instructions to George Augustine, whom he intended to leave in charge of Mount Vernon. Then, he set out in his carriage early May 9.
In the preliminaries of what may be regarded as a last effort to save the collapsing Union, he had been too zealously attentive to his prestige, reputation and popularity—too much the self-conscious national hero and too little the daring patriot. He had held off when he thought the Convention would be thinly attended by Delegates not of the first distinction and had accepted only when satisfied that most of the States would be represented by able men not unduly hampered by instructions. He never could have won the war in the spirit he displayed in this effort to secure the peace. But, had all the disparaging circumstances of Washington’s hesitation been known, they probably would not have shaken his popularity. The people, as well as his friends, saw only that he had emerged from his cherished retirement to serve them in a time of difficulty and confusion. Knox wrote Lafayette:
General Washington’s attendance at the convention adds, in my opinion, new lustre to his character. Secure as he was in his fame, he has again committed it to the mercy of events. Nothing but the critical situation of his country would have induced him to so hazardous a conduct. But its happiness being in danger, he disregards all personal considerations.
He arrived on the thirteenth and was given a welcome that lacked nothing the affection of the people could bestow. Robert Morris and Mrs. Morris, whose invitation Washington had declined before he left Mount Vernon, now urged him so warmly to lodge with them that he accepted. Before he ended the day, Washington paid his first call—an official visit to Franklin, now President of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania, whom Washington had not seen since 1776. The meeting of course was cordial, because each respected and admired the other, and it held out the promise of close relations in the weeks ahead: Franklin had accepted appointment as one of Pennsylvania’s Delegates to the Convention and, feeble though he admitted himself to be, he intended to take his seat. With this visit to crown it, Washington’s first day in Philadelphia could not be described with a lesser adjective than triumphant. Philadelphia had not welcomed him more eagerly when he arrived from Yorktown. The cordiality of the reception was all the more impressive because, in a sense, it was national. Five conventions had brought to the town representatives from nearly all the States.
To the chagrin of the General, the most important of these conventions, the one to revise the Articles of Confederation, was the slowest in assembling. On the fourteenth, the date set for the opening, Pennsylvania and Virginia alone were represented. The next day individual members from New Jersey, Delaware and North Carolina reported. While this was deplorable, James Madison cheerfully attributed members’ tardiness to a long spell of bad weather. Washington believed that sooner or later a sufficient number of representatives would arrive to organize the Convention. In this good hope he met daily with the other Virginians, who developed a “plan” of government, a paper based chiefly on proposals that Madison and Randolph had brought with them. Washington probably did not make any specific contribution to this plan, though his common sense and experience doubtless were employed in determining what was practicable. In addition Washington visited friends and changed his role of host for that of guest. His first dinner was en famille with the Morrises, his next was with the members of the Cincinnati, a thin platoon of not more than a score of former officers who understood readily why their President-General had come to Philadelphia when he had said he could not do so. They gave him their unhesitating vote of confidence by reelecting him their President, with the understanding that the duties of the office were to be discharged by the Vice President, Thomas Mifflin.
At last a qualified number of Delegates from seven States were counted on May 25, and as seven were a majority of the States, men who had been waiting almost two weeks proceeded to organize the Convention. Morris, a member from the hostess state, arose to perform a service Franklin would have discharged if he had not been detained at home that day by weakness and bad weather. The financier, on instructions from the Pennsylvania delegation and on its behalf, proposed Washington as President of the Convention. John Rutledge of South Carolina seconded and expressed the hope that the choice would be unanimous. It was. Morris and Rutledge conducted the General to the chair, from which he expressed his thanks for the honor done him and asked indulgence for the unintentional mistakes into which his ignorance of the requirements of the position might lead him. Details of organization were completed quickly, a committee on rules was named, adjournment was voted to Monday the twenty-eighth. Washington did not desire this new post; but designation as President of the Convention would take him off the floor for part of his time, away from the contention of rival advocates. He was committed to the work of the Convention by accepting membership in it; he was lifted above partisanship by the duty he had to discharge. At the same time, having no speeches to prepare or committee meetings to attend, he could lend both ears to all spokesmen and thereby learn much that he had not acquired previously in camp or on his plantation. Presidency of the Convention was education and preparation.
Monday and part of Tuesday, May 28 and 29, were spent in adopting rules of procedure. Later on the twenty-ninth, speaking for the Virginia delegation, Randolph, in the stiff language of the Journal, “laid before the House, for their consideration, sundry propositions, in writing, concerning the American confederation and the establishment of a national government.” These “propositions” embodied the “Virginia Plan” that had been developed in the daily meetings Washington had attended. A government of three branches, legislative, executive and judicial, was to be created. The Legislature was to consist of two chambers, one elected by the people of the several States, the other chosen by the elected branch from a list of nominees submitted by the individual state legislatures. This central bicameral body was to have all the relevant powers vested in Congress by the Articles of Confederation and, in addition, the power to pass laws where the States were unable to act or were not in harmony. All State laws that contravened the terms of union could be “negatived” by the “National Legislature” which likewise could “call forth the force of the Union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof.” A “National Executive” would have the powers suggested by the title, insofar as the Articles of Confederation conferred authority of this type on Congress. “A general authority to execute the national laws” was added. The “National Judiciary” was to have particular regard to “questions which may involve the national peace and harmony.”
These proposals and another plan of government prepared by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina were referred that afternoon to the Committee of the Whole. When the committee began its sittings on the thirtieth with Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts as its chairman, Washington could take a seat temporarily with the other members. Nine States now were represented by thirty-seven members. While a considerable part of the membership was unknown personally to Washington when the Convention assembled, he soon had ample proof that they represented high ability. It was pleasant to sit among these men during the day and in the evening meet them socially. Conversation then had to be casual because the Convention voted that “members only be permitted to inspect the journal” and that “nothing spoken in the house be printed, or otherwise published, or communicated without leave.” Although this rule occasionally was violated, most members were conscientious and close-mouthed. They would not talk of the one subject every guest at tea and every frequenter of taverns wished to discuss.
Washington would take the chair each morning and, after the usual preliminaries, turn over the gavel to Judge Gorham. For nearly the entire day’s sitting the members would debate the successive items of the Virginia Plan, which they approved in broad outline with alacrity. After one or another of the involved principles was discussed on a given day for three hours or more, the committee would rise, Washington would resume the chair, and Gorham would report progress, with a request for leave to sit again in committee. Adjournment usually followed at once. Among nearly all members the disposition was to find the largest basis of agreement and defer the issues on which there was wide disagreement. The spirit of accommodation seemed so pervasive that echoes of accord were audible in the newspapers, along with rumbling criticism of Rhode Island for ignoring the Convention.
Men of differing political background in dissimilar States could not hope to continue in accord. By the second week in June members were divided on the question, Should the first branch of the National Legislature be elected by the people or by the legislatures of the several States? Other issues were shaping themselves: Should the equality of State representation that had prevailed in the Continental Congress be continued? If the first branch of the lawmaking body was to be elected by the people, should slaves be counted in determining representation? To maintain the authority of the national government, must its Congress be vested with power to coerce the States or to “negative” their laws? Indeed, why should the new government be national? Could it not remain federal, with the largest freedom to the States, great and small?
After the Virginia Plan was reported, in substance, by the Committee of the Whole on June 13, these questions became spearheads of attack on the plan. Debate was as searching as if the Committee of the Whole had not discussed the “propositions” at all. Delegates from the smaller States found a rallying post in resolutions introduced by William Paterson, a New Jersey Delegate. He proposed the amendment of the Articles of Confederation in such a manner as to increase substantially the powers of Congress while preserving federal, as distinguished from national, government, except in two particulars: With the consent of an unspecified number of States a delinquent member of the Union might be forced to meet its obligations; second, acts of Congress and ratified treaties were to be “supreme law of the respective States”—a doctrine that probably made an instant appeal to some of the ablest intellects in the Convention. Powerful speeches by Randolph, James Wilson and Madison led to the rejection, June 19, of Paterson’s outline and put the Virginia Plan before the Convention again. This procedure returned Washington to duty as presiding officer.
Washington had been pleased, at the beginning of the Convention, to find members more in accord than he had expected, but the basic differences developed during the second week in June and debate became ill-tempered and tedious, particularly on the question of State representation in the legislative branch of government. By the twenty-eighth frowning factions were caparisoned for battle in a mood that made Franklin appeal unsuccessfully for prayers at the opening of each day’s session. On the twenty-ninth, fighting to the last, the spokesmen of the small States were outvoted, six to four, with Maryland divided, on a resolution that established an “equitable” instead of the “equal” basis of representation they sought in the first chamber. This meant that the House of Representatives of a new Congress would be elected, by methods yet undetermined, in proportion to population.
The men who spoke for the less populous areas mustered their forces anew to win in the second chamber what they had failed to procure in the first. Washington stood with the Delegates who favored representation on the basis of population for both houses, but he did not lose his sense of reality. His counsel was simple: “To please all is impossible, and to attempt it would be vain. The only way, therefore, is . . . to form such a government as will bear the scrutinizing eye of criticism, and trust it to the good sense and patriotism of the people to carry it into effect.” It looked the very next day, July 2, as if debate over representation had served only to array small States against large more stubbornly than ever. In the absence of several members, five state votes were mustered for a resolution to equalize representation in the second chamber. Defeat of the small States in the contest over the composition of the first chamber thus was offset, but at the price of a threatened impasse. When neither side would yield, Pinckney proposed and nearly all the delegations agreed that a “grand committee” of one member from each State be appointed to fashion a compromise. As the committee would require many hours for its deliberations, the Convention adjourned until July 5.
During the adjournment the General shared in patriotic services at the Reformed Calvinist Church and dined with the Pennsylvania Cincinnati at the State House, but good food and company had not relieved his apprehension when he returned to the Convention. Franklin with much difficulty had prevailed on the “grand committee” to recommend this compromise: representation in the first chamber was to be on the basis of one member for each forty thousand population of each state, with one member for any state that counted fewer than forty thousand heads; the chamber elected on this principle was to have exclusive authority to originate bills levying taxes, appropriating money and fixing salaries; the second chamber should not be empowered to amend these bills, but with respect to no other legislation was it to be subordinate; in this second branch each state was to have “an equal vote.”
These proposals were regarded by the small States as a victory and they forthwith were attacked by two of the most powerful debaters in the Convention, Madison and Gouverneur Morris. Some phases of the compromise were turned over on July 6 to a special committee for review; when this group reported, its findings were referred to another “grand committee.” Even the patient and innately optimistic Washington became gloomy. He wrote Hamilton: “I almost despair of seeing a favorable issue to the proceedings of our Convention, and do therefore repent having had any agency in the business.”
Most of the occurrences of the next week were of a sort to deepen Washington’s disgust with those he described as “narrow-minded politicians or under the influence of local views.” He witnessed a seesaw of advantage between spokesmen of the large States and champions of the small until, on July 16, there was a balance of five to five that apparently could not be shifted. Some of the members were for adjournment and immediate report to the country on the differences that had arisen; others still pleaded for compromise; a few stated frankly their belief that equality of representation in the second chamber had to be conceded if the Convention was to avoid failure. Discussion was renewed at an informal conference the next morning, but so much diversity of opinion was expressed that Madison thought members from the smaller States would conclude they had no reason to fear their opponents could agree on any plan of opposition to equality in the second chamber.
From that very day, as if in acceptance of the inevitable, a spirit of reconciliation began to show itself. From July 17 through 21 more progress was made in framing a constitution than in any previous period of five days. Final decision on representation in the second branch was deferred; the motion to give the new Congress power to “negative” state laws was abandoned in favor of the clause that the acts of the Federal Legislature should be the “supreme law of the respective States.” Fundamental agreement was reached on the form and function of the Judiciary, the admission of new States, the guarantee to the States of a republican form of government, a complicated scheme for the election of the Executive, and, unanimously, on the grant to the Executive of power to negative all laws of the National Legislature.
After a Sabbath in the country, Washington enjoyed on July 23 perhaps the most satisfying day he had spent, to that date, in the Convention. Members still had under consideration the powers and term of the National Executive and they wished to conclude this discussion and reach a meeting of minds. Everything else that had been decided on the floor was referred to a committee of five “for the purpose of reporting a constitution conformably to the proceedings aforesaid.” A constitution was to be put on paper! Three more days sufficed to effect agreement on the Executive; the accepted resolutions on that branch were given the new committee; and the Convention adjourned to August 6 to allow the committee ample time for its difficult work.
During this intermission Washington played many parts—guest, traveler, veteran, planter, fisherman, patron of industry. Two days were given to rest and correspondence. Then on July 30, in Gouverneur Morris’s phaeton, the General rode out to Mrs. Jane Moore’s property, a part of which had been within the Valley Forge encampment. On Trout Creek, which Mrs. Moore’s farm adjoined, Morris wished to try his hand at casting for the fish that gave their name to the creek. While his companion stumped along the bank of the stream, Washington rode over the whole of the cantonment of 1777-78, which he never had seen in summer’s green. From the vicinity of Valley Forge, he returned to Philadelphia and, on August 3, went up to Trenton with a party to see whether the perch in the Delaware were interested in bait. This time the General himself used a rod with little luck one day and more success the next. He was back in Philadelphia late August 5 to be certain he did not miss the proceedings of the sixth.
Printed copies of the draft constitution were ready for members when Rutledge rose to speak on behalf of the committee. Washington and all the other members listened and some followed the type across the page, line after line, as the Secretary read the entire text. With little argument, the Convention adjourned till the next day. Rejection on August 7 of a motion to go into Committee of the Whole gave Washington the hard assignment of presiding during a floor debate that might be more tangled and retarded than ever, because of endless motions to amend.
Members now began with vigor and some impatience a detailed scrutiny of the suggested text, though some of them realized that the completion of their task still would be a work of weeks. Progress was steady, if not swift. Washington presided with what was termed “his usual dignity,” and, as he had the respect and consideration of all members, he was saved from parliamentary pitfalls. From the seventh through the eleventh the Convention plodded towards agreement. The pace was slower the next week because members were of two minds over the admission of foreign-born citizens to the National Legislature and over the origin of appropriation bills.
On August 18 an armful of proposals to give specific powers to Congress was turned over to committee, and the involved question of Federal assumption of state debts was referred to a special committee. Then the Convention discussed the relation of the new government to the defence of America. On adjournment that afternoon to Monday the twentieth it was to the credit of Washington’s endurance that he still had energy for an excursion on Sunday. With his friend Samuel Powel, he rode out to White Marsh, went over his old encampment there, proceeded to Germantown and probably visited the Chew House. The analogy of the struggle for a better government prompted Washington to reflect “on the dangers which threatened the American Army” at White Marsh. That camp site and Germantown exemplified the tortured hours during the dreadful months between the landing of Howe at Head of Elk in August 1777 and the debouch of the lean American forces from Valley Forge when Howe evacuated Philadelphia in May 1778. Independence had been won in woe; the dark forces that had prolonged the contest still lived. “. . . there are seeds of discontent in every part of the Union,” Washington warned, “ready to produce other disorders if the wisdom of the present Convention should not be able to devise, and the good sense of the people be found ready to adopt a more vigorous and energetic government. . . .”
He returned from Germantown to Philadelphia on August 20 and began another hard week as presiding officer of the Convention. Members apparently had lost none of their positiveness and divided readily on the detail of the constitution, but few wasted the time of their colleagues in long orations. They would argue, object, defend, vote—and take up the next section of the draft constitution. On the twenty-second they paused to debate the ethics and economy of the slave trade and, in so doing, disclosed the differences between North and South, between commerical and plantation States, between those that found slave owning uneconomical and those that thought it profitable. The cleavage was as deep as that between large States and small and was vehemently outspoken. The Convention agreed to accept the proposal of Gouverneur Morris to refer the question of the slave trade and other disputed clauses to a committee. “These things,” said Morris, “may form a bargain among the Northern and Southern States.”
Then, on the twenty-third, the Convention reached the seventh article, that which made the legislative acts and existing and future treaties of the United States “the supreme law of the several States.” After scrutinizing and simplifying the language, the Convention adopted this article unanimously. Simultaneously the Delegates rejected the much discussed alternative, the amendment that would have empowered the National Legislature to negative any state law if two-thirds of the members of both branches so voted. An awkward obstacle was out of the way! The road was getting better. On the twenty-fifth the members accepted a compromise that forbade Congress to prohibit the importation of slaves prior to 1808. When Washington put this motion and not long afterward announced adjournment, the week’s labor had been as productive as any of the Convention’s life. He had much reason for satisfaction and for rekindled hope when he again rode out into the country on Sunday.
Briskly on August 27 the members began discussion of provisions regarding the Judiciary. Despite the presentation of a theme on which every one of the twenty-nine lawyers in the Convention had opinions, debate was mild and agreement not difficult. By the last day of the month it seemed desirable to name a committee to review all postponed questions and report them for final action. An even better augury of the early completion of the text was the drafting of clauses on the ratification of the constitution by the States. The Articles of Confederation provided that amendment had to be by the unanimous consent of the States, but few members, if any, favored adherence to this requirement. The Convention voted to require the assent of nine States.
The last major article of the draft constitution awaiting decision was that which set forth the method by which the Executive was to be elected and vested with power. Discussion of this had become so involved that final action had been deferred. Now the Convention resumed the debate and in four days reached agreement. On September 8 Washington and his companions had the satisfaction of referring the draft constitution to a committee of five “to revise the style of and arrange the articles agreed to by the House.” The Delegates selected for this task were admirably equipped for it—William Samuel Johnson, Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Madison and Rufus King, men of clear heads and precise pens. Monday September 10 was given to debate on amendment and ratification; on the eleventh the Committee on Style not being ready to report, the Convention merely assembled and adjourned. Waiting was rewarded: an admirable text was presented on the twelfth by the chairman, Judge Johnson, and, once read, was sent to the printer so that every member might familiarize himself with the precise letter of the text and with titles and terms. The “first branch of the Legislature” was, for example, to be styled the House of Representatives; the second was to be known as the Senate. “President” was the designation recommended for the Chief Executive; the court of last resort was to be called the Supreme Court of the United States. While the compositors set the type that recorded these changes the Convention debated issues concerning which there was no basic disagreement between North and South or between large States and small.
Several close votes followed on numerous sections, some of them long contested, but in no instance did the majority fall below the minimum of six. The balance had been stabilized and was not to be shaken. On his own copy of the printed text Washington inserted changes made through section 10 of Article I in the debate of September 14. The next day he noted various other verbal amendments and, as presiding officer, put no less than twenty-five motions. Before the last of these was reached, Randolph took the floor and announced he would not sign the constitution unless it included a provision, which he thereupon submitted, for another general convention to pass on amendments that might be proposed by the States. George Mason, made a similar statement; Elbridge Gerry gave a number of reasons why he would not subscribe. Nothing could be done to satisfy these men otherwise than by jeopardizing far more than was risked as a result of their opposition. All the States unflinchingly voted “No” on Randolph’s motion for a second convention.
It was now almost six o’clock, nearly two hours beyond the usual time of adjournment. The last proposal from the floor for change in the text had been made. Washington waited quietly and without visible emotion for the great moment. When it came, he arose: the motion is to agree to the constitution as amended; the Secretary will call the roll of the States. From every delegation the answer of the majority was “Aye.” Engrossment of the text was ordered; the gavel fell. The first stage of the battle for sound, strong American government had ended, more wisely and more easily than had seemed possible. From the Convention floor the issue must be carried to the thirteen States.
Washington was in the chair on the seventeenth for the final ceremonies of signing the engrossed Constitution. He found that a last-minute effort was to be made to persuade the three dissenters to join the majority in signing the Constitution. Franklin was present and, though too feeble to make a speech, he had written one. It was a wise and spirited appeal for the subordination of individual opinion to the nation’s good, and it contained both an admission of Franklin’s dislike of some articles and the cheerful declaration of his faith in the document as a whole. “It . . . astonished me, sir,” he said, “to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats.” The old philosopher ended with a motion which Gouverneur Morris had drafted, that the enacting clause be: “Done in Convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present the 17th of September, &c, in witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names.”
Before this motion was put Judge Gorham proposed that the basis of representation in the House be reduced from forty to thirty thousand. King and Daniel Carroll supported Gorham and urged the members to make the concession. This was what Washington had been waiting for. When he rose to put the motion he explained that his position as President had kept him from expressing his views and that perhaps it still should impose silence, but he could not forbear voicing his wish that Gorham’s motion prevail. Objections to the Constitution should be as few as possible. One was involved here. Many members believed the House so small it gave “insufficient security for the rights and interests of the people.” A basis as high as forty thousand had seemed to him among the most objectionable parts of the Constitution. Late as it was in the proceedings of the Convention, he thought amendment would give much satisfaction. With that he ended the only speech he had delivered during the session, and he had immediate reward. The change was made unanimously and without further discussion—not because all members agreed but because all of them wished to do what Washington desired.
The rest was appeal, explanation, expostulation, assent, then the adoption of Franklin’s motion. Although the dissenters and two of the South Carolina members were in opposition, the Constitution was accepted “by the unanimous consent of the States present.” A resolution was adopted for the transmission of the finished document to Congress, with the expressed opinion that it should be submitted to popular conventions in the States. Other sections of the same resolve set forth the views of the Delegates on the manner in which the Constitution should be put into effect after nine States had ratified it. The covering letter was a persuasive appeal for a Constitution that was “liable” to as few exceptions as could reasonably have been expected. This letter was signed “Your Excellency’s most obedient and humble Servants, George Washington, President. By unanimous Order of the Convention.”
The rule of secrecy was repealed, and the papers of the Convention were entrusted to Washington for disposition in accordance with the order of the new Congress “if ever formed under the Constitution.” Formal signing of the document followed. Continued refusal of Mason, Gerry and Randolph to attach their signatures did not dampen the satisfaction with which members completed their difficult labor, adjourned sine die, streamed to the City Tavern, had dinner together and said farewell to one another.
With Delegate John Blair as companion in his chariot, Washington set out September 18 for home. On the twenty-second he reached Mount Vernon “after an absence of four months and fourteen days,” precisely reckoned and set down in his diary. They had been days during which his largest contribution was not his counsel but his presence. His votes were often on the losing side. Although he favored bringing the new government into operation when seven States ratified, the Convention decided to make nine the number. It must have been known that he thought a three-fourths vote should be required to override a Presidential veto, but the majority insisted on two-thirds. Letters from members seldom mentioned him among those at the forge where the Constitution was hammered out, blow on blow. Madison, Gouverneur Morris, Wilson, King, Randolph—these were the men, not Washington, who shaped the Constitution. Oliver Ellsworth may not have been far in error when he said, late in life, that Washington’s influence in the Convention was not great.
Outside the Convention the reverse was true. In giving the body prestige and maintaining public confidence in it while deliberations dragged slowly, Washington had no peer and no second other than Franklin. Madison assured Jefferson that Washington’s attendance was “proof of the light in which” the General viewed the Constitution. A writer in the Independent Gazetteer of Philadelphia suggested that the States which approved a new plan of government or the amendment of the old should confederate under Washington’s leadership. “This,” he said, “would probably stimulate the refractory states to comply also.” Washington read some of this with satisfaction and some with dismay because it suggested that his retirement at Mount Vernon might again be interrupted. He did not flatter himself that he and his colleagues had devised a perfect form of government, but he knew the Convention had given the country the best Constitution on which a majority could agree.