As Washington wrestled with the problem of whether to remain as president, he was preoccupied by the fading health of his nephew George Augustine, who had grown so weak that summer that he was spitting up blood and could scarcely walk. By early August he was confined to his room at Mount Vernon, and Washington did not expect him to survive much longer. If he recovered his strength, he would probably require a quiet interlude in some milder climate. His illness returned Washington’s thoughts to the management of Mount Vernon and made him eager to reassert control of his neglected business affairs.

On October 1, 1792, Washington, still at Mount Vernon, met with Jefferson before breakfast in yet another attempt to thrash out their differences. Still wavering about a second term, Washington cited his dislike of “the ceremonies of his office” and said his nephew’s plight made his presence at Mount Vernon desirable.67 For the first time Washington seemed to lean toward a second term, however, remarking that “if his aid was thought necessary to save the cause to which he had devoted his life principally, he would make the sacrifice of a longer continuance.”68 Jefferson stated that only Washington could rise above partisan wrangling and fortify the government. Washington confessed that, while he had been aware of political differences between Jefferson and Hamilton, “he had never suspected it had gone so far in producing a personal difference and he wished he could be the mediator to put an end to it.”69 In spite of everything, Washington wanted to retain Jefferson in the cabinet and maintain an ideological balance.

Until this point the discussion had been cordial. But now an exasperated Washington, fed up with conspiracy theories, squarely told Jefferson that “as to the idea of transforming this government into a monarchy, he did not believe there were ten men in the U.S. whose opinions were worth attention who entertained such a thought,”70 as Jefferson noted his words. This was tough language, tantamount to branding Jefferson a crackpot, and unlike anything Washington ever said to Hamilton. The secretary of state replied with stiff dignity: “I told him there were many more than he imagined . . . I told him that tho[ugh] the people were sound, there was a numerous sect who had monarchy in contemplation, that the Sec[retar]y of the Treasury was one of these.”71 Here the two men encountered a fundamental difference that could not be bridged. When Jefferson again talked about Hamilton corrupting the legislature, with many in Congress owning government paper, Washington described the problem as unavoidable “unless we were to exclude particular descriptions of men, such as the holders of the funds, from all office.”72 The president saw the real test of the funding system as its effectiveness and “that for himself, he had seen our affairs desperate and our credit lost and that this was in a sudden and extraordinary degree raised to the highest pitch.”73

At this point Jefferson must have realized that he had irrevocably lost the battle for George Washington’s soul to Alexander Hamilton. In his memo on the talk, he simply wrote in defeat at this point, “I avoided going further into the subject.”74 After this meeting the obdurate Jefferson never unburdened himself so openly to Washington again, and a coolness entered their relationship. In his diary, Jefferson speculated that the president’s mind was weakened by age and said that he showed “a willingness to let others act and even think for him.”75

Back in Philadelphia in mid-October, Washington again tried to negotiate a truce between Hamilton and Jefferson. At moments he seemed genuinely baffled by their intransigence, as if he could not believe that men of goodwill could not work out their differences. Perhaps the decisive stroke in convincing Washington to run for a second term came after a meeting with Eliza Powel that November, in which Washington said he might resign. In a masterly seven-page follow-up letter, Powel, a confirmed Federalist, gave Washington the high-toned reasons he needed to stay in office, shrewdly playing on his anxious concern for his historic reputation. If he stepped down now, she wrote, his enemies would say that “ambition had been the moving spring of all your actions—that the enthusiasm of your country had gratified your darling passion to the extent of its ability and that, as they had nothing more to give, you would run no farther risk for them.” She warned that the Jeffersonians would dissolve the Union: “I will venture to assert that, at this time, you are the only man in America that dares to do right on all public occasions.”76 Evidently she managed to convince Washington, who decided to stand for a second term.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Citizen Genet

ONCE HE DECIDED to serve a second term, George Washington was reelected by a unanimous 132 votes in the Electoral College. If one counted his selection as commander in chief, president of the Constitutional Convention, and president in his first term, he had compiled a string of four straight unanimous victories. Again inaction had been his most potent form of action, silence his most effective form of expression. Still, it was a subdued triumph for the overburdened president, who confessed to Henry Lee that he “would have experienced chagrin if my re-election had not been by a pretty respectable vote. But to say I feel pleasure from the prospect of commencing another tour of duty would be a departure from truth.”1

On December 13, 1792, Washington conversed with Jefferson about buying porcelain in Germany to dress up the presidential table. He had inquired whether Samuel Shaw, the U.S. consul at Canton, could acquire china there, but Shaw told him that it would take at least two years to arrive. Washington emphasized to Jefferson that he would be gone from office by then, and Jefferson recognized the heavy-handed hint. “I think he asked the question about the manufactories in Germany,” Jefferson concluded, “merely to have an indirect opportunity of telling me he meant to retire, and within the limits of two years.”2 Once again, if he thought he could cut short his captivity to public service, Washington was fooling himself, and people kept reminding him how much the Union needed him. “There is a prevailing idea in G[reat] B[ritain],” wrote one correspondent, “if not in other parts of Europe, that whenever you are removed, the federal union will be dissolved, the states will separate, and disorder succeed.”3

With a presidential victory assured for Washington, the Jeffersonians tried to register their disaffection and covertly chip away at his power by ousting John Adams as vice president. Purely as a matter of propriety, Washington never openly endorsed Adams, who retained office with 77 votes against a stiff challenge from Governor George Clinton of New York, a firm Jeffersonian, who garnered 50 votes. Washington likewise worried that, if he got involved in congressional races, he might trespass on the separation of powers. This same reasoning made him reluctant to veto legislation, and he did not overrule a bill until April 1792. As their populist rhetoric led to significant inroads among farmers, shopkeepers, and artisans, Republican adherents gained a clear majority in the House of Representatives, guaranteeing a contentious second term for Washington.

A notable feature of that term would be an end to Washington’s special exemption from direct criticism. That winter the new landscape was previewed when Freneau took direct shots at Washington in the National Gazette, accusing him of aping royalty in his presidential etiquette. He published a mock advertisement for a fawning poet laureate who would write obsequious birthday odes to the president. Even Washington’s habit of not shaking hands received a sinister slant: “A certain monarchical prettiness must be highly extolled, such as levees, drawing rooms, stately nods instead of shaking hands, titles of office, seclusion from the people.”4 It would now be open season for sweeping attacks on Washington.