Planning to bring a full complement of servants to Philadelphia, Washington scribbled detailed notes about their distribution in their sleeping quarters. Before returning north in late November, he also wanted to ensure that his slaves were suitably attired. Capable of paying microscopic attention to their clothing—his account books brim with notations for shirts, stockings, hats, ruffles, and other fancy articles he bought for his slaves—he advised Lear on the fashionable hats he wanted for Giles and Paris, his coachman and postilion, and for Hercules, whom he was bringing along as the new household chef. “Upon examining the caps of Giles and Paris,” he wrote, “I find they (especially Paris’s) are much worn and will be unfit to appear in with decency after the journey from hence is performed. I therefore request that you will have two handsome ones made, with fuller and richer tassels at top than the old ones have.”22 There is something sad about George Washington’s decking out his slaves in this gaily elegant clothing as part of the presidential retinue.

The journey to Philadelphia left Washington in high dudgeon because of what he condemned as “the most infamous roads” and the chronic drunkenness of his coachman, Arthur Dunn, who was banished from the coach and consigned to the baggage wagon, which he twice overturned. When he arrived in Philadelphia, expecting to find a tidy residence, Washington was aghast at the incomplete state of the presidential mansion. Even the main dining room and his private study needed further work. The contrite Lear could only plead a dearth of workmen. As a presidential headquarters, the house left much to be desired, with Washington’s public office on the third floor obligating visitors to ascend two steep flights to reach him. The chaos and clutter in the house could only have exasperated Washington, who had to deliver his annual message to Congress in a week. Even though he had emerged as a vocal critic of Hamilton’s policies, Madison retained enough of the president’s ear that he assisted in drafting the speech.

The new Congress convened in the State House on Chestnut Street that had hosted the Continental Congress in 1775 and witnessed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. To provide comfortable seating, the House of Representatives had ordered sixty-five armchairs, upholstered in black leather, while the Senate, not to be outdone, had twenty-seven seats richly done up in “red Morocco,” all beautifully adorned with brass tacks.23 On December 8, dressed in black velvet, Washington delivered his speech to Congress in such a soft, breathy voice that Vice President Adams had to repeat it to legislators after he left. Aside from bitter wrangling over Hamilton’s program, this moment was a peaceful interlude in American politics. Commerce had flourished under Washington’s aegis, and he offered an optimistic assessment of the country. At the beginning of his talk, he pointed to the appreciation of American debt as a direct consequence of Hamilton’s program: “The progress of public credit is witnessed by a considerable rise of American stock abroad as well as at home.”24 Government paper had tripled in value since the new government started. At the same time, Washington reacted to charges that Hamilton favored perpetual government debt and invited opposing legislators to reduce it by selling western lands. The way Washington defended his controversial treasury secretary, while subtly leaving the door ajar to a modification of his programs, was a fine example of his finesse in managing to be both forceful and conciliatory at once.

When the House asked Hamilton that December for further measures to strengthen public credit, he proposed an excise tax on whiskey and other domestically distilled spirits. For many western communities, this was a radical and incendiary measure. Not only did many farmers have an unquenchable thirst for homemade brew, but they often found it economical to convert grain into whiskey and sell it in this portable form. As with his program to assume state debt, Hamilton admitted to Washington that the whiskey tax was a way to strengthen the federal government by laying “hold of so valuable a resource of revenue before it was generally preoccupied by the state governments.”25

The excise tax kindled fierce debate in Congress as well as widespread doubt that it could be enforced in western communities that had flouted previous efforts to tax their moonshine. Anticipating resistance, Hamilton drew up a plan for a small army of inspectors and tax collectors, breeding fears of a vast new bureaucracy applying draconian measures. Among the predictable skeptics was William Maclay. On the day the excise tax passed the Senate, he scoffed that it would be unenforceable in the rambunctious precincts of western Pennsylvania. “War and bloodshed is the most likely consequence of all this,” he predicted accurately. “Congress may go home. Mr. Hamilton is all powerful and fails in nothing which he attempts.”26 While bracing for a probable backlash against the tax, Hamilton maintained that the government needed more revenues and insisted that opponents would deem other possible taxes, such as one on land, still more odious. Washington and Hamilton had the thankless task of implementing the first tax systems in a country with a deeply ingrained suspicion of all taxes.

BEFORE THE CAPITAL MOVED to Philadelphia,Washington had no trouble incorporating his suite of seven slaves into the presidential household. Martha also traveled about in a coach with a personal escort of slaves, as Colonel Thomas Rodney observed when he went riding in Manhattan with her and Polly Lear: “Just before them [were] a mulatto girl behind the carriage and a Negro manservant on horseback behind.”27 Washington must have sensed that the government’s switch to Philadelphia would complicate matters with his slaves, for Pennsylvania had been the first state to undertake the gradual abolition of slavery, in 1780. Philadelphia, in particular, had a large community of free blacks and a robust abolitionist movement. In bringing his slaves north, Washington violated his long-standing policy of not breaking up slave families. In late October, when Tobias Lear described how the slaves would be housed in sleeping quarters in Philadelphia, he admitted as much: “None of the men will have their wives in the family.”28 It was decided to lodge some slaves, including Billy Lee, in the four garret rooms; some in the former smokehouse; and some in an outlying building called the Servants Hall. The composition of Washington’s team of slaves also underwent significant changes. In New York he had chafed at the tasteless cooking and unsanitary habits of his cook, Rachel Lewis. As he contemplated the move to Philadelphia, Washington decided to fire her, informing Lear that “the dirty figures of Mrs. Lewis and her daughter will not be a pleasant sight in view . . . of the principal entertaining rooms in our new habitation.”29

Instead, Washington brought his favorite chef from Mount Vernon, the able Hercules, also known as Uncle Harkless, who teamed up with Samuel Fraunces to keep an immaculately clean, bustling kitchen. Handsome and muscular, Hercules was a dandyish figure who moved about Philadelphia with considerable freedom, attending theater and other entertainments. By dint of talent and hard work, he forced Washington to treat him as more than just a slave and got permission to sell scraps from the presidential kitchen, pocketing the proceeds. He also got the president to bring his adolescent son Richmond to Philadelphia to serve as his scullion. Washington seemed miffed by the request, confiding sarcastically to Lear that the idle boy hadn’t gotten the appointment “from his appearance or merits,” but he obviously felt that he could not turn Hercules down.30 In much the same way, Washington sometimes obliged Billy Lee against his better judgment. Left behind at Mount Vernon was Richmond’s mother, a seamstress known as Lame Alice.