Lee also forecast with accuracy that the vote for vice president would be far more competitive. Under electoral rules then in force, each elector cast two ballots, the victor becoming president and the runner-up vice president. About the vice president, Washington remained studiously neutral, saying only that he would probably come from the powerful state of Massachusetts—which boiled down to a competition between John Adams and John Hancock. By early January Washington had heard that Adams was the likely choice, and he let it be known that he was “entirely satisfied with the arrangement for filling the second office,” especially since it would forestall the election of an antifederalist.58

In retrospect, it seems certain that Washington would have outstripped Adams, but some were concerned that Adams might be popular enough in the northern states to edge out Washington as president. An unscrupulous campaign by antifederalists might sabotage Washington’s candidacy by withholding votes for him. To prevent such a fiasco, Hamilton suggested privately to a few electors that they withhold votes from Adams to ensure Washington’s victory. As it turned out, Hamilton’s fears were grossly exaggerated: Washington’s 69 votes far outpaced the 34 cast for Adams and 9 for John Jay. Vain and thin-skinned, Adams felt demeaned by receiving only half as many votes as Washington. Hamilton had not attempted to undercut Adams so much as to protect the presidency for Washington. Nonetheless, when Adams later learned of this covert campaign, he was outraged and faulted Hamilton for unconscionable duplicity, poisoning relations between the two men.

Supposed to assemble on March 4, the new Congress could not put together a quorum for another month. The reason for the delay spoke poorly for the country: the delegates had been hampered by the “extreme badness of the roads,” Henry Knox informed Washington.59 Confronted by many problems, the country could ill afford this anxious interregnum. It was a discouraging start, making America look like the backward nation of rude bumpkins derided by British Tories. Washington’s election remained unofficial until the new Congress mustered a quorum in early April. Since a landslide victory for him was widely assumed, Washington would have been entitled to travel to New York for the opening of Congress. But detained by a punctilious regard for form, he refused to budge until Congress officially counted the votes on April 6. Things had proceeded much as Washington had wished: instead of seeming to clutch at power, he had let it descend slowly upon his shoulders, as if deposited there by the gentle hand of fate.

Just as Washington had renounced his salary as commander in chief of the Continental Army, so he tried to waive his presidential salary, but Congress insisted adamantly that he accept it. It proved a handsome $25,000 per annum compared to $5,000 for the vice president and $3,500 for the secretaries of state and treasury. Washington’s desire to forgo a salary blended his past and present selves: he wanted to display his customary noblesse oblige and advertise his freedom from financial care, while also acting as the ideal public servant, devoid of mercenary motives. It was his way of emphasizing that he was less a professional politician than a gentleman graciously donating his time. In truth, Washington could not afford such magnanimity, and as he prepared for the presidency, he struggled to straighten out his disordered finances. He breathed not a word of his financial troubles to his political associates, who never knew of the handicaps he overcame.

From an economic standpoint, the period after Washington’s return to Mount Vernon in December 1783 had been complicated by numerous setbacks. The persistent failure of his corn and wheat crops, thanks in part to a severe chinch bug infestation, had slashed his income drastically. The elements conspired against him again when the drought of the summer of 1787 gave way to the chilly winter of 1787-88. All the while Washington’s expenses ballooned from entertaining guests and renovating Mount Vernon’s buildings. In a painful comedown, he had been forced repeatedly to dun delinquent debtors. Short of cash, he suffered the indignity of having to press an indebted widow for money from her husband’s estate, a task so ghoulish he felt obliged to apologize: “I beg leave to add that it is from the real want of [money] I make such frequent and pressing applications.”60

On the eve of the Constitutional Convention, Washington had thrown up his hands in despair, confessing to Lund Washington that he could not balance his books: “My estate for the last 11 years have not been able to make both ends meet . . . I mention this for no other purpose than to show that, however willing, I am not able to pay debts unless I could sell land—which I have publicly advertised, without finding bidders.”61 As the convention proceeded, Washington, at his wit’s end, told George Augustine that he knew no more “than the man in the moon where I am to get money to pay my taxes”—a shocking admission for a man universally touted as the first president.62 The failure of his corn crop obligated him to buy eight hundred barrels of corn to feed his army of slaves. Preoccupied with money, Washington hoped the ratification of the Constitution would reverse the country’s real estate deflation and alleviate his plight. The day before the Constitution was signed, Washington notified his land agent in western Pennsylvania that he now expected higher prices for his property: “I cannot consent to take two dollars an acre for the land in Washington County. If the government of this country gets well toned and property perfectly secured, I have no doubt of obtaining the price I have fixed on the land, and that in a short time.”63 This turned out to be wishful thinking. Forced to eliminate debt by selling land, he put up for sale a staggering 32,373 acres in the Ohio Country.

As the ratifying conventions progressed, Washington felt a direct financial stake in their outcome, hoping the Constitution would restore American credit. He told one business colleague that the loss of his corn crop and his inability to recoup money from debtors had “caused more perplexity and given me more uneasiness than I ever experienced before from the want of money.”64 Trapped in this predicament, he looked for salvation to the government paper he owned. These promissory notes, used to finance the Revolution, had shed most of their value because of collapsing confidence in the Confederation Congress. Washington had kept these notes, he said, “without having an idea that they would depreciate as they were drawn for interest . . . The injustice of this measure is too obvious and too glaring to pass unobserved.”65 Washington understood firsthand the need for Alexander Hamilton’s fiscal program as treasury secretary.

In the spring of 1788 Washington’s contemporaries would have been shocked to know that his western taxes for 1785, 1786, and 1787 stood in arrears and that he had posted his lands there for sale to pay them off. Hardly wishing to be a scofflaw at this juncture, Washington tried to pay his taxes promptly with tobacco notes and IOUs that he had received early in the Revolution for supplying articles to the Fairfax County militia. When he learned that Greenbrier County, where the property was located, would not accept such forms of payment, he was enraged. The Father of His Country was being treated with barefaced contempt for financial stresses arising from his wartime sacrifice. “I have been called upon for taxes and threatened at the same time with a sale of the land after June, if the money is not paid before, by the sheriff of Greenbrier County,” he wrote. “As I have been suffering loss after loss for near[ly] ten years, while I was in the public service and have scarcely had time to breathe since . . . this procedure seems to me to be a little hasty.”66 In another sign of his eroding financial position, on three occasions he rebuffed the sheriff of Fairfax County when he came around to collect taxes due on Mount Vernon.