Both McHenry and Secretary of State Pickering favored Hamilton as second in command. Unfortunately, as Pickering warned Washington in confidence, this choice was anathema to the president: “From the conversation that I and others have had with the president, there appears to us to be a disinclination to place Colo. Hamilton in what we think is his proper station, and that alone in which we suppose he will serve—the second to you—and the chief in your absence.”60 Here lay the dilemma in a nutshell: neither Hamilton nor Washington would serve without Hamilton being the main deputy, while Adams found this intolerable. It would prove excruciatingly difficult to break this impasse between the former and current presidents.

When McHenry returned to Philadelphia, he bore a slip of paper on which Washington had scrawled the names of the three men he wanted as his major generals: Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Henry Knox. He wanted them ranked in that order, even though Pinckney and Knox had outranked Hamilton in the war. In Washington’s view, the old hierarchy of the Continental Army had vanished with its demise. In the meantime, while Pickering sang Hamilton’s virtues to Adams, the president had others in mind for the number-two spot. When Adams rattled off his three favorite generals, Pickering pointedly caviled at each one: Daniel Morgan, for having “one foot in the grave”; Horatio Gates, for being “an old woman”; and Benjamin Lincoln, for being “always asleep.”61 Despite his avowed ignorance of military matters, John Adams stoutly maintained that these men were superior to his longtime nemesis, Hamilton. “Hamilton had great disadvantages,” Adams later mused. “His origin was infamous; his place of birth and education were foreign countries; his fortune was poverty itself; the profligacy of his life—his fornications, adulteries, and his incests—were propagated far and wide.”62

Washington made clear to Adams that his acceptance of the post had been premised on the condition that “I shall not be called into the field until the army is in a situation to require my presence.”63 Adams seemed flummoxed by the matter of Washington’s deputy. On July 18 he sent to the Senate the three names Washington had submitted, hoping their order of priority would be reversed. “General Knox is legally entitled to rank next to General Washington,” Adams told McHenry, “and no other arrangement will give satisfaction.”64 To worsen matters, Adams also insisted that Charles Cotesworth Pinckney “must rank before Hamilton,” throwing everything into utter confusion.65

It may have been the stress of this situation that sent Washington into a medical tailspin. On August 18 he came down with an ague—chills and sweats—and succumbed a couple of days later to a fever so intense that he shed twenty pounds in short order. He was so weakened by illness that even writing letters proved a wearisome task. In late August McHenry warned Washington that Adams was hardening his stand about the ranking of the three generals.

Aside from Adams’s opposition to Hamilton, the touchiest matter for Washington was the likely wounded feelings of Henry Knox (a major general), who had far outranked both Hamilton (a colonel) and Pinckney (a brigadier general) during the war. Since Washington felt national security was at stake, he was not about to allow past friendships to overrule his military judgment. However close they had been during the war, Knox had gravely disappointed Washington during the Whiskey Rebellion. With all the diplomacy at his command, Washington wrote to Knox and explained that Pinckney had to precede him because the latter was a southerner and any war with France would likely unfold in the South. Washington also thought the French might try to foment a slave uprising to conquer the region. What he didn’t state openly was that he thought the Jeffersonians might form a fifth column in the South, aiding France and sowing dissension. Given the grave threat, he told Knox, “I would fain hope, as we are forming an army anew, which army . . . is to fight for everything that ought to be dear and sacred to free men, that former rank will be forgot.”66 Washington may have had sound military reasons for downgrading Knox, but if he thought Knox would accept this with good grace, he was a poor psychologist. When Knox received Washington’s letter, he was in the throes of yet another financial crisis. His life had also been blighted by family tragedy; the ninth of his twelve children had recently died—one room of his house was dubbed “the dead room” because so many dead children had been laid out there—and he must have been in a highly vulnerable state.67

Knox’s anguished reply made it manifestly clear how devastated he was by Washington’s letter. He had broken open the letter with delight, he said, only to absorb its contents with astonishment. He stated that “for more than twenty years, I must have been acting under a perfect delusion. Conscious myself of entertaining for you a sincere, active, and invariable friendship, I easily believed it was reciprocal. Nay more, I flattered myself with your esteem and respect in a military point of view. But I find that others greatly my juniors in rank have been . . . preferred before me.”68 By not consulting him first, he implied, Washington had exposed him to public humiliation.

In self-defense, Washington professed surprise that Knox had reacted so strongly in the matter and denied any intent “to see you in a degraded point of view.”69 He contended that the Federalists had chosen Hamilton as his second in command and presented the selection as a fait accompli—an atypical case of Washington shading the truth. In an emotional mistake, he pleaded that Hamilton had a large family to support and needed special inducements to accept the military post—which could only have bruised Knox after losing so many children. It was a sad denouement to the warm, fruitful relationship between Washington and Knox. Nevertheless, behind the scenes, Washington scrambled to see if he could give Knox seniority over Pinckney, “if it would satisfy Knox.”70 All the while Knox remained adamant that the rules should “decide in favor of [the] former rank” that prevailed at the end of the Revolution.71

Amid this impasse, John Marshall and Bushrod Washington appeared at Mount Vernon for a three-day visit. Washington entreated both men to run for Congress from their Virginia districts, stressing the need to oust Republican incumbents during a national emergency and lamenting the “violent and outrageous” mood prevalent in the state.72 In the past Washington had shied away from such blatantly partisan advice, but he was now almost bullheaded in supporting Federalist candidates, honestly believing that the Republicans were only pretending, for election reasons, to be ready to fight a French invasion.73 He thought it would be necessary to ban them as officers in the new army because they would “divide and contaminate the army by artful and seditious discourses.”74

Bending to his uncle’s inexorable request, Bushrod Washington, a young man with a small, pale face and large, brooding eyes, consented to run. The handsome, intelligent Marshall, a man of iron willpower, balked at the idea. At the end of his stay, he rose early in the morning, hoping to slip away unobtrusively before Washington could renew his pressure. No stranger to early-morning escapes, Washington anticipated Marshall’s flight and blocked his path on the piazza as Marshall moved toward the stables. In coaxing Marshall to stand for Congress, Washington pointed out that he himself had agreed “to surrender the sweets of retirement and again to enter the most arduous and perilous station which an individual could fill,” Marshall recalled.75 Unable to withstand such an appeal, Marshall agreed to become a candidate for Congress.