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.”21 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.22 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.”23

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.”24 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.”25 He also found Washington leery of other people: “He was naturally distrustful of men and inclined to gloomy apprehensions.”26

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.” 27 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 kingly 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.”28 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.”29 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.”30 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.31 As a cabinet member, Randolph chafed at his subordinate position. The attorney general oversaw no department, causing him to gripe about his “mongrel” status.32 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.”33

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 1789.34 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.”35 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.”36 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.