Mr. President (24 page)

First and foremost, the American public demanded a republican form of government with no vestiges of monarchical or aristocratic prerogatives. Anti-Federalists played on this often, while even Federalists like Hamilton, John Adams, and John Dickinson, who admired Britain’s mixed monarchy, had to toe the line. In the notes to his June 18 speech at the Federal Convention, Hamilton had written, “It is said a republican government does not admit a vigorous execution. It [republican government] is therefore bad; for the goodness of a government consists in a vigorous execution.” Now, in the opening to
The Federalist
70, he proclaimed boldly that the idea that “a vigorous executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government” was “destitute of foundation.” That false notion was “not without its advocates,” he noted disdainfully, even though he had been one of them. Hamilton would have been immediately rejected by his potential audience had he
not
proclaimed his support for republican principles and argued that the proposed Constitution implemented them.

At first glance, it would appear the nation’s embrace of republican principles favored Anti-Federalists. Republican government meant limited government, and this played into the hands of Patrick Henry and others who warned that the new form would be too large, too strong, and potentially too intrusive. “Liberty and property,” the rallying cry of the prewar protest movement, was deeply ingrained in America’s political culture. If citizens were to make a new contract with their government, they wanted to prevent that government from taking what they already had. So when Federalists argued for a stronger government, and in particular for a strong and independent executive arm, they needed to reassure the public that the government could still be held close by and accountable. The people would control the president, they had to declare. Hence Hamilton’s dramatic change of tone from the convention to the ratification debates and his deliberate misrepresentation of the electoral process.

Federalists, too, used republican principles to their advantage. One way to limit the abuse of governmental power was to separate the branches of government and allow them to check each other. Both sides cited Montesquieu on this. While Anti-Federalists argued that the separation of powers was blurred in the proposed Constitution, Federalists
claimed that the newly created office of the president could counteract “legislative tyranny.” Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress
was
the government, and even at the state level legislatures dominated other branches. With a weak or nonexistent executive, there was no parity. People had therefore grown accustomed to blaming Congress or state legislatures for any complaints about government, and Federalists found these bodies were easy targets. “Legislative authority” tended to “absorb every other,” Hamilton wrote in
The Federalist
71. State assemblies “seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves, and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter.” Worse yet, legislative bodies were prone to “the spirit of faction,” as Hamilton observed in
The Federalist
73. When a faction took over the legislature, and then the legislature ruled unchecked, the few could control the many—but not under the new plan, Hamilton declared. An independent president would be “a salutary check upon the legislative body, calculated to guard the community against the effects of faction.”

Anti-Federalists, like Federalists, railed against “faction.” The Senate was dangerous because it was so small, insular, and enduring. Senators, who were not elected by the people, would serve long terms with no accountability. Isolated within their chamber, they could scheme and connive; in the end, a tiny group would prevail and wield immense power. The House, too, was prone to faction. As we have seen, William Grayson revealed how a few congressmen from small states could manipulate the elector system to choose the president and create “a government of a faction.” Today, we decry partisanship and Washington insiders; in the founding era, people likewise derided the spirit of faction or the spirit of party. Congress bashing, a favorite political sport today, has deep roots dating from the founding era. Then, as now, it was practiced across the political spectrum, uniting Americans in an odd assault on their own government.

Here at last was a point of agreement. If the Constitution did in fact become the law of the land, the president, who was responsible to the nation as a whole, might be able to counterbalance the tendency for factions to rule. Federalists promised this, and Anti-Federalists could at least take solace in it. If a president could avoid becoming the tool of Congress, he might just be able to keep factions at bay. That was certainly the thinking of the two men who pushed hardest at the Federal
Convention to establish the executive’s independence from the legislature. Gouverneur Morris insisted the president should be “the general guardian of the National interests,” while James Wilson wanted him “to stand the mediator” between factions. Citizens of all persuasions could unite around that ideal.
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In the end, not enough Americans feared the presidency with sufficient zeal to prevent ratification. Some tried to place limits on a president’s time in office, and a few tried to guard against his military muscle, but no changes were made. The presidency survived intact, exactly as it emerged from the Federal Convention. Yet for the Constitution’s opponents, all was not lost. During the ratification debates, Anti-Federalists complained that George Washington, above reproach and therefore unchallengeable, had lined up against them; after ratification, though, Washington suddenly turned into an ally of sorts. He appeared fair, honorable, and not vindictive. Their problems with the presidential office had stemmed not from its likely first occupant but from powers that might be abused later. So when Washington agreed to serve, Anti-Federalists believed they might receive at least a temporary reprieve. The first president would line up squarely against party and faction. He would not let one group, in this case his Federalist friends, dominate another, even if they had been his opponents.

This was the hope, at any rate. It was not an unreasonable one. Washington did have the good of the nation at heart, no doubt about that. He understood that the American people, currently divided, needed to be healed and united, and he even threw his support behind a Bill of Rights, which many of his fellow Federalists staunchly resisted. That was certainly a start, but overcoming differences would not come easily. Issues would inevitably emerge, and with them factions and parties. The notion that one man, exercising transcendent leadership, could somehow put the brakes on divisiveness would soon be put to the test.

On the first day of 1789, George Washington wrote to William Pierce, a fellow delegate to the Federal Convention, who was soliciting an appointment as collector for the port of Savannah. Washington “sincerely & fervently” hoped not “to have any agency in the disposal of federal appointments”—meaning, of course, he did not wish to be chosen for the office of president. “Should it (contrary to my wishes) fall upon me, I shall certainly be disposed to decline the acceptance, if it may, by any means, be done consistently with the dictates of duty.” Yet the very next day, Washington informed James Madison he had something private he wished to send him, so private that he could not entrust it to “an uncertain conveyance.” This turned out to be a seventy-three-page rambling draft of an inaugural address he would deliver to Congress, should he become president. At first glance, the two letters seem contradictory and perhaps even hypocritical, but in fact they were both honest and heartfelt, if not exactly forthright. Washington did not seek the job and seemed genuinely to wish that “some other person” be elected who could “fully execute all the duties full as satisfactory as myself”; on the other hand, he knew very well that nobody else would be able to unite a divided nation, and uniting the nation was first and foremost among a president’s responsibilities. This was a momentous and pivotal moment. If he shirked his duty now, “some very disagreeable
consequences” might ensue. “For the good of my country,” and to receive the respect of his countrymen, which he had always desired and some say craved, he really had no choice.
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Washington never did deliver that particular address, which in the next century was torn to pieces by Jared Sparks, the noted collector and editor of Washington’s writings, and handed out bit by bit to autograph seekers. Enough shreds have been recovered to give a sense of the work, in which the first president endeavored to exculpate himself from the apparent sin of assuming the office. It would undoubtedly have been the most apologetic inaugural address in history (“From the bottom of my soul, I know, that my motives on no former moment were more innocent than in the present instance”) and perhaps the most philosophical (“If a promised good should terminate in an unexpected evil, it would not be a solitary example of disappointment in this mutable state of existence”).

The actual speech Washington delivered to Congress on April 30, after his inevitable election and reluctant acquiescence, was much shorter but no less unassuming. He professed his own “deficiencies” in “civil administration,” appealed to “that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe,” and renounced “every pecuniary consideration” for his service. After reminding congressmen that the president was empowered by the Constitution to recommend “such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient,” he offered a few words of avuncular advice: embrace “no local prejudices, or attachments; no separate views, or party animosities,” and act according to “the pure and immutable principles of private morality.” That was the extent of the direction offered by the first president of the United States—almost. Cleverly, he declined to weigh in explicitly on the most disputed topic of the hour—whether to amend the Constitution—but his manner of doing so left no doubt where he stood. While he assumed Congress would “carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective Government,” he likewise assumed it would display “a reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen, and a regard for the public harmony” and figure out how such rights and harmony should be “safely and advantageously promoted.” No representative or senator in Federal Hall, the newly renovated home for Congress, could mistake the message: protect the structure of the Constitution, but avoid further discord by ceding to Anti-Federalist demands for a Bill of Rights.
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This is how Washington hoped to lead, gently and by example. He would take the government and the people by the hand and show them the high moral ground. Together, under his tutelage, the people and their representatives would eschew selfish interests and work toward the good of the whole. “Party animosities” and “local prejudices” constituted the greatest impediment to effective governance, and the overarching goal of the president must be to keep these at bay.

After Washington delivered his address, the new president and members of Congress repaired to St. Paul’s Chapel to attend “divine service.” The Senate then returned to its chamber and appointed a three-man committee to draft a response to “his most gracious speech,” as Vice President John Adams, presiding over the Senate, called it. Pennsylvania’s prickly Anti-Federalist William Maclay, though, took offense at the honorary words “his most gracious.” They were “the same that are usually placed before the speech of his Britannic Majesty,” he noted; their use by the Senate would “give offense” to the people, who had just endured “a hard struggle for our liberty against kingly authority.” In his journal, which contains the most detailed extant account of the first Senate, Maclay recounted the sharp debate that ensued between himself and Adams, who saw no reason to object to a practice simply because it had been used by “that Government under which we had lived so long and happily formerly.” Herein lay the source of much tension, which the Federal Convention and the ratification debates had not finally resolved. Would the office of the presidency be entirely removed from monarchical connotations, or was there some merit in the pomp and circumstance that commanded elevated respect and anchored and unified the people of Great Britain?
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Maclay won that initial symbolic skirmish, and “his most gracious” was stricken from the record, but another such battle, larger and more significant, soon followed. Several senators, supported with zest by the body’s president, John Adams, reasoned that granting the president some lofty title would “add greatly to the weight and authority of the Government both at home and abroad.” Various suggestions were offered: “Excellency” (a title already applied to state governors and to General Washington, when he was commander in chief during the war), “Elective Highness,” and finally “His Highness the President of the United States of America, and Protector of Their Liberties,” a convoluted title embracing both monarchical and republican connotations.
Maclay, of course, adamantly rejected any such “high-sounding, pompous appellation,” while Adams argued that calling the chief executive officer simply “President” was demeaning because “there were presidents of fire companies and of a cricket club.” For the better part of several days, May 8 and 9 and again on May 14 and 15, senators sparred, with Adams emerging victorious this time around. Yet “His Highness” was exactly the sort of haughty tone that Anti-Federalists had feared from the upper house of Congress, and with an early application of the Constitution’s checks and balances the House refused to go along with any title beyond “President of the United States of America.” Although the lofty title failed to make it all the way through Congress, the very idea of it exacerbated unhealed wounds. David Stuart, who regularly kept Washington apprised of the political mood in Virginia, informed the president, “Nothing could equal the ferment and disquietude, occasioned by the proposition respecting titles. As it is believed to have originated from Mr. Adams & [Richard Henry] Lee, they are not only unpopular to an extreme, but highly odious. Neither I am convinced, will ever get a vote from this State again.” Further, Senate approval of “His Highness” was construed by Virginia Anti-Federalists as “verification of their prophecies about the tendency of government. Mr. Henry’s description of it, that it squinted toward monarchy, is in every mouth, and has established him in the general opinion, as a true Prophet.”
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