For all his many admirable traits, Washington was never a warm, cozy, or folksy figure. As a man of moderation, he delivered praise sparingly and feared that excess familiarity with subordinates might weaken their performance. He kept people slightly off balance, guessing and vying for his favor. He managed relations with colleagues through subtle hints and gestures, and they learned to decipher his subliminal messages with accuracy. He had powerful ways of communicating his likes and dislikes, through subtle gradations of tone. With strangers or acquaintances, he addressed letters to “Sir.” As he warmed up, he wrote to them as “Dear Sir,” and when he grew very close, they were favored with “My Dear Sir.” He was no less artful in closing letters. If he went from signing “Humble Obedient Servant” to “Affectionate Obedient Servant,” the recipient had made a major leap forward in his emotions. Washington expressed displeasure with people less often with open rebukes than with the silent treatment, a sudden chill in the air, and a reversion to curt, businesslike communications.

Another politician would have been intoxicated by the idolatry Washington received. But through it all he maintained a striking personal stability and never let hero worship go to his head. The country was probably lucky that he was somewhat wearied by all the attention. There was cunning in Washington’s nature but no low scheming. He never reneged on promises and was seldom duplicitous or underhanded. He respected the public, did not provoke people needlessly, and vowed at the time of his inauguration “that no man shou[ld] ever charge me justly with deception,” as he told James McHenry.56 When asked for advice on how to navigate “the dark and thorny path of politics,” he said he could “only repeat what I have formerly told my countrymen in a very serious manner ‘that honesty will be found, on every experiment, the best policy.’”57 The charge of elitism against Washington can easily be overstated, for he immensely respected public opinion. When Madison later compared Washington and Adams as presidents, he contrasted their sensitivity to the public mood. Washington, he said, was always “scrutinizing into the public opinion and ready to follow where he could not lead it,” while Adams was “insulting it by the most adverse sentiments and pursuits.”58

Perhaps no president has tried so persistently to set an example of good conduct. He grew agitated whenever people gave him gifts, lest it be thought he was accepting bribes. When David Humphreys sent him elegant shoe buckles, he protested: “Presents . . . to me are of all things the most painful; but when I am so well satisfied of the motives which dictated yours, my scruples are removed.”59 It would have been easy for him to turn into a demagogue. Instead he tried hard to float high above all partisan considerations. In September 1792 he grew incensed at reports that he had supported the candidacy of John Francis Mercer for a Virginia congressional seat. Washington sent Mercer an indignant letter, pointing out that his interference in congressional elections would be “highly improper, as the people ought to be entirely at liberty to choose whom they pleased to represent them in Congress.”60 In such incidents Washington showed that he was forever on guard against the abuse of his presidential powers.

When Washington was sworn into office, North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet embraced the Constitution and stood apart from the new Union. A major stumbling block was the absence of a bill of rights attached to the Constitution. At the time of the Constitutional Convention, Washington deemed a bill of rights superfluous on the grounds that American citizens would retain all rights that they did not expressly renounce in the document. During the ratifying conventions, he worried that opponents would seek to subvert the new political system by “attempting premature amendments.”61 When David Humphreys drafted Washington’s original inaugural speech, Washington still worried that agitation for a bill of rights was a political ruse being exploited by antifederalist forces. One surviving fragment of the undelivered speech says: “I will barely suggest whether it would not be the part of prudent men to observe [the Constitution] fully in movement before they undertook to make such alterations as might prevent a fair experiment of its effects?”62

A critical convert to adopting a bill of rights was James Madison, who had initially opposed the idea. While running for Congress in a strongly antifederalist district in Virginia, he had been forced to emphasize his commitment to such amendments. As he informed Washington in January 1789, “It has been very industriously inculcated that I am dogmatically attached to the constitution in every clause, syllable, and letter, and therefore not a single amendment will be promoted by my vote, either from conviction or a spirit of accommodation.”63 In retrospect, it seems ironic that Madison should have been accused of irremediable hostility toward the amendments that came to be so gloriously associated with his name. He became convinced that a bill of rights was necessary to shore up support for the Constitution among hostile and wavering elements alike.

In defending the Constitution, Washington had often invoked its amendment powers to appease critics. After the inauguration, Madison showed him a dozen amendments he had drafted; after being whittled down to ten, they were to achieve renown as the Bill of Rights. Encountering heavy resistance in the new Congress, Madison asked Washington for a show of support for the amendments and elicited from him an all-important letter in late May 1789. While some of the proposed amendments, Washington wrote, “are importantly necessary,” others were needed “to quiet the fears of some respectable characters and well meaning men. Upon the whole, therefore . . . they have my wishes for a favorable reception in both houses.”64 This letter helped to break the logjam in Congress. “Without Washington’s help,” writes Stuart Leibiger, “Madison’s crusade for what has become a constitutional cornerstone would have been hopeless.”65 Washington’s involvement was all the more notable in that he normally hesitated to meddle in the legislative process.

By September 1789, under Madison’s guidance, Congress had approved the amendments and ordered Washington to send copies to the eleven state governors, as well as to the chief executives of North Carolina and Rhode Island. Even though the amendments were not approved by the states and formally adopted until December 15, 1791, North Carolina entered the Union in November 1789 and Rhode Island in May 1790, completing the reunification of the original thirteen states. In mid-October 1789 Washington wrote to Gouverneur Morris in a well-merited spirit of triumph, “It may not, however, be unpleasing to you to hear . . . that the national government is organized, and, as far as my information goes, to the satisfaction of all parties—that opposition to it is either no more, or hides its head.”66

CHAPTER FIFTY

The Traveling Presidency

IN THE EARLIEST DAYS OF HIS ADMINISTRATION, Washington decided to visit every state in the Union and permit people to view him firsthand. His impulse was profoundly republican: he wanted to monitor public opinion. As a southern president, he thought it politic to tour the northern states first. After consulting with Hamilton, Knox, and Jay, he mapped out a monthlong tour of New England, once Congress had recessed in late September 1789. He wanted to educate himself about the “principal character and internal circumstances” of each section of the country and meet “well-informed persons, who might give him useful informations and advices on political subjects.”1 He was especially eager to discover whether citizens had embraced their new experiment in republican government. This all formed part of his concerted effort to break out of the airtight bubble that can seal any fledgling president in a suffocating vacuum.