Washington: A Life (118 page)

One wonders whether Jefferson’s hesitation reflected an equivocal attitude toward the new federal government itself, since he had been, at best, a lukewarm supporter of the Constitution. At first he had preferred tinkering with the Articles of Confederation and favored only “three or four new articles to be added to the good, old, and venerable fabric.”
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He was especially chagrined by the absence of a bill of rights and the “perpetual re-eligibility” of the president, which he feared would make the job “an office for life first and then hereditary.”
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Jefferson also retained a congenital distrust of politics, which he personally found a form of sweet torture, the source of both exquisite pain and deep satisfaction. He especially hated bureaucracy, whereas Hamilton had no such qualms.

On Sunday, March 21, 1790, Washington spent the morning in prayer at St. Paul’s Chapel before setting eyes on his new secretary of state at one P.M. The next day the two were locked in policy discussions for more than an hour. Jefferson was tall and lean, with reddish hair, hazel eyes, and a fair complexion. Jefferson, who was slightly taller than Washington but long-limbed and loose-jointed, and his new boss would have stared each other straight in the eye, both towering over Hamilton. A reserved man whose tight lips bespoke a secretive personality, Jefferson had calm eyes that seemed to comprehend everything. Shrinking from open confrontations, he often resorted to indirect, sometimes devious methods of dealing with disagreements. He could show a courtly charm in conversation and was especially seductive in small groups of like-minded listeners, where he became a captivating talker and natural leader. At the same time his mild manner belied his fierce convictions and relentless desire to have his views prevail. The idealism of his writings and his almost utopian faith in the people did not quite prepare his foes for his taste for political intrigue.

Washington relied upon younger men during his presidency, much as he had during the war. Jefferson was a decade and Hamilton more than two decades younger. Whatever their later differences, Jefferson started out by venerating Washington; he had once identified Washington, along with Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse, as one of three geniuses America had spawned. “In war we have produced a Washington, whose memory will be adored while liberty shall have votaries, whose name shall triumph over time.”
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He adorned Monticello with a painting of Washington and a plaster bust of him by Houdon. Jefferson always revered Washington’s prudence, integrity, patriotism, and determination. “He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man,” he stated in later years.
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Jefferson claimed that his dealings with President Washington were always amicable and productive. “In the four years of my continuance in the office of secretary of state,” he was to say, “our intercourse was daily, confidential, and cordial.”
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Nevertheless, as the years progressed, Jefferson’s judgment of Washington grew far more critical. He viewed the president as a tough, unbending man: “George Washington is a hard master, very severe, a hard husband, a hard father, a hard governor.”
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Nor did he see Washington as especially deep or learned: “His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history.”
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He also found Washington leery of other people: “He was naturally distrustful of men and inclined to gloomy apprehensions.”
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If profound foreign policy differences emerged between Washington and Jefferson, some of this can be ascribed to contrasting outlooks. At least on paper, Jefferson was quixotic and idealistic, even if he could be ruthless in practice. Washington was a hardheaded realist who took the world as it came. Jefferson would be far more hostile than Washington toward the British and far more sympathetic to the unfolding French Revolution. While Washington grew increasingly apprehensive about the violent events in Paris, Jefferson viewed them with philosophical serenity, lecturing Lafayette that one couldn’t travel “from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed.”
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Unlike Washington, Jefferson regarded the French Revolution as the proud and inevitable sequel to the American Revolution.

From the outset Jefferson was dismayed by the political atmosphere in New York. In his cultivated taste for fine wines, rare books, and costly furnishings, he was very much a Virginia aristocrat. One British diplomat noted his regal ways: “When he travels, it is in a very
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style … I am informed that his secretaries are not admitted into his carriage but stand with their horses’ bridles in their hands, till he is seated, and then mount and ride before his carriage.”
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Nonetheless Jefferson was extremely vigilant about the possible advent of a pseudo-aristocracy in America. His years spent witnessing the extravagant court of Versailles had only confirmed his detestation of monarchy. As he made the rounds of New York dinner parties, he was appalled to hear people voice their preference for “kingly over republican government.”
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Only Washington, he thought, could check this fatal drift toward royal government, although he finally harbored doubts as to whether he would do so. It also upset Jefferson that Hamilton seemed to be poaching on his turf, a problem partly of Washington’s own making. With departmental lines still blurry, Washington invited all department heads to submit opinions on matters concerning only one of them, producing sharp collisions and intramural rivalries. On the other hand, this method gave the president a full spectrum of opinion, saving his administration from monolithic uniformity.

The first attorney general, Edmund Randolph, thirty-six, was a handsome young man descended from one of Virginia’s blue-ribbon families and well known to Washington. The son of a Tory father who had fled to England, he had graduated from William and Mary and studied law. He had even handled legal matters for Washington, who had chosen him partly because of his “habits of intimacy with him.”
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As Virginia governor, Randolph had led the state delegation to the Constitutional Convention but balked at signing the resulting document, only to switch positions during the Virginia Ratifying Convention, where he proved “a very able and elegant speaker,” according to Bushrod Washington.
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As a cabinet member, Randolph chafed at his subordinate position. The attorney general oversaw no department, causing him to gripe about his “mongrel” status.
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So little was expected of the first attorney general that he was encouraged to take outside clients to supplement his modest $1,500 salary. Jefferson faulted Randolph as a weak, wavering man, calling him “the poorest chameleon I ever saw, having no color of his own and reflecting that nearest him.”
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The Constitution was especially vague about the judiciary, which left a good deal to congressional discretion. The document did not specify the number of Supreme Court justices, so the Judiciary Act of 1789 set them at six; it also established thirteen district courts and three circuit courts. To balance federal and state power, each circuit court blended two Supreme Court justices, riding the circuit, with a district court judge selected from the particular state in which the trial was held. For Supreme Court justices, the need to “ride circuit” twice yearly was the most onerous part of their job, a lonesome task that could consume weeks or months. In the absence of federal courthouses, circuit courts met in government buildings or roadside taverns. Having to travel backcountry roads and sleep in squalid inns further detracted from judicial prestige. Such was the misery of riding circuit that several of Washington’s judicial selections declined for that reason, prompting a high turnover in the Supreme Court’s early years. In early April 1790 Washington inquired whether the justices had any problems to report, and in September they returned a lengthy list of objections. They were especially upset with having to ride circuit, noting that it created an untenable legal situation, since they might have to rule as Supreme Court justices on appeals of cases they had tried in those very courts.

In no area did Washington exert more painstaking effort than in selecting judges, for he regarded the judicial branch as “that department which must be considered as the keystone of our political fabric,” as he told Jay in October 1789.
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Once the Judiciary Act passed in late September 1789, he nominated Jay as chief justice along with five associate judges from five different states, establishing regional diversity as an important criterion in such appointments. In stark contrast to the acrimonious hearings in later American history, the six justices breezed through the Senate confirmation process in forty-eight hours, their selection sparking little debate. Also without apparent protest, Washington named a large batch of district judges, U.S. attorneys, and marshals. In all, George Washington would appoint a record eleven justices to the Supreme Court.

As secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation, John Jay kept warm the seat at the State Department until Jefferson arrived in New York. Washington felt palpable affection for Jay, confiding to him late in the war, “I entertain the friendly sentiments toward you, which I have ever experienced since our first acquaintance.”
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In sending along his commission as chief justice, Washington appended an enthusiastic note: “It is with singular pleasure that I address you as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
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Prematurely balding, John Jay was a lean man with a pale, ascetic face, an aquiline nose, a melancholy air, and a wary look in his piercing, intelligent eyes. He had not handled a legal case in more than a decade and his skills had grown rusty, but Washington wanted a well-known national figure whose reputation transcended legal expertise. While Washington widened the distance between the presidency and the Senate, he at first narrowed it between the presidency and the Supreme Court, soliciting Jay’s viewpoint on an eclectic array of issues ranging from the national debt, Indian affairs, and the census to counterfeit coins, postal roads, and inspection of beef exports.

On February 1, 1790, the Supreme Court held its inaugural meeting in the Merchants Exchange on Broad Street, with four justices present; its first session lasted only ten days. When Associate Justice William Cushing arrived in a British-style judicial wig, he was jeered in the streets and had to return to his residence for a more pedestrian wig. In the beginning, the Court lacked the majesty it would later attain and often seemed like an institution in search of a mission. Because of the newness of the federal judiciary, appeals had yet to percolate up from lower courts, resulting in little work at first. The Court’s early procedures now seem quaintly antiquated. Instead of issuing written opinions, justices handed them down verbally from the bench without an official reporter to record decisions.

 

 

WASHINGTON’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS as president were no less groundbreaking than his deeds in the Continental Army. It is a grave error to think of George Washington as a noble figurehead presiding over a group of prima donnas who performed the real work of government. As a former commander in chief, he was accustomed to a chain of command and delegating important duties, but he was also accustomed to having the final say. As president, he enjoyed unparalleled power without being autocratic. He set out less to implement a revolutionary agenda than to construct a sturdy, well-run government, and in the process he performed many revolutionary acts.

Starting from scratch, Washington introduced procedures that made his government a model of smooth efficiency. Based on the fleeting mention in the Constitution that he could request written opinions from department heads, he created an impressive flow of paperwork. Jefferson noted that he would forward them letters he received that fell within their bailiwick, then asked to peruse their replies. They would gather up daily bundles of papers for his approval. Although this briefly delayed replies, Jefferson explained, “it produced [for] us in return the benefit of his sanction for every act we did.”
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This paper flow also meant that Washington was “always in accurate possession of all facts and proceedings in every part of the Union and … formed a central point for the different branches; preserved a unity of object and action among them,” and enabled him to assume personal responsibility for all decisions.
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Besides giving him a spacious view of the executive branch, this practice also kept his cabinet members on a tight leash. Jefferson noted that, however open-minded Washington was in asking for opinions, he took umbrage when offered unsolicited advice—the technique of someone who wanted to set the agenda and remain in control.

Among his department heads, Washington encouraged the free, creative interplay of ideas, setting a cordial tone of collegiality. He prized efficiency and close attention to detail and insisted that everybody make duplicate or even triplicate copies of letters, demanding clarity in everything. Once he upbraided an American diplomat in Europe by saying, “I will complain not only of your not writing, but of your writing so illegibly that I am half a day deciphering one page and then guess at much of it.”
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He wanted to be able to sit at leisure and compare conflicting arguments. Through his tolerant attitude, he created a protective canopy under which subordinates could argue freely, but once decisions were made, he wanted the administration to speak with one voice. Understanding the intellectual isolation of the presidency, he made sure that people didn’t simply flatter him. He told Henry Lee, “A frank communication of the truth … respecting the public mind would be ever received as the highest testimony of respect and attachment.”
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Washington grew as a leader because he engaged in searching self-criticism. “I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors,” he once wrote. “The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this, because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults or remove prejudices which are imbibed against him.”
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The one thing Washington could not abide was when people published criticisms of him without first giving him a chance to respond privately.