With the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1790, Washington and his Cabinet could breathe a sigh of relief that they had secured “a republic”, as John Adams had wryly observed, “if you can keep it.”
Ironically, Rhode Island which many believe had instigated the separation from Great Britain with the conviction of Lt. William Dudingston of the HMS Gaspee in 1772, had been the last state to ratify the Constitution, and by a thin margin at that; believing the Federal government to be grabbing powers from the States that had run their affairs separately, before the war. The “Union” as state leaders had seen it, was to function mainly as it had before, though changes were necessary to improve upon the problem-plagued Continental Congress and its Articles of Confederation.
Had he been so inclined, General Washington was presented several occasions during the American Revolution when he could have seized absolute power. As Richard Lim has observed, after his stunning victories at the end of 1776, Congress gave Washington virtually dictatorial powers to prosecute the war effort.[i]
Rather than taking a crown and scepter from the Continental Congress, Washington wrote,
“Instead of thinking myself free’d from all civil Obligations. By this mark of their Confidence, I shall constantly bear in Mind, that as the Sword was the last Resort for the preservation of our Liberties, so it ought to be the first thing Lain aside, when those liberties are firmly established.”
Again in 1777, when Congress was forced to abandon Philadelphia Washington was granted virtually unlimited powers to preserve the war effort and the civil society, not unlike those powers given to roman emperors. Washington shouldered the responsibilities placed upon him, but gave the authority back as soon as possible.[ii]
Near the close of the war, many saw Washington as a rightful monarch should he place himself in that position. Philadelphian and physician Benjamin Rush gushed in correspondence that “There is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.” Moreover, some officers of the Continental Army felt the same. In 1782, Colonel Lewis Nicola wrote to Washington and suggested that if the young nation were to survive, the General had to assume the mantle of Monarch. This was more than hero worship or wishful thinking on a young officers part. Nicola had been a merchant in Philadelphia and then a public official. He had worked diligently to improve the city’s defenses and written a manual entitled A Treatise of Military Exercise Calculated for the Use of Americans. In 1777, Nicola had been given command of the Corps of Invalids for the Army. [iii]
Washington was mortified that he, in any part, had led the officer to this conclusion.
A return letter to Nicola on 22 May 1782 makes his position clear:
“Sir,
With a mixture of great surprise & astonishment I have read with attention the Sentiments you have submitted to my perusal. Be assured, Sir, no occurrence in the course of the War, has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the Army as you have expressed, & I must view with abhorrence, and reprehend with severity…
I am at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my Country…
Let me [conj]ure you then, if you have any regard for your Country, concern for yourself or posterity – or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your Mind, & never communicate, as from yourself, or anyone else, a sentiment of the like nature.”[iv]
In early 1783, Washington faced a greater challenge to a constitutional outcome when a band of Officers colluded to use the military to threaten Congress in order to ensure payment to those who had served.
Without the power to levy taxes under the Articles of Confederation, the Continental Congress was forced to needle and beg the States for revenue throughout the war. The resulting inability to meet financial obligations continued in its aftermath; the quagmire aptly described by newly appointed Congressman James Mitchell Varnum in a letter to his friend, Governor William Greene of Rhode Island in1780:
“…Without entering…into the infinity of circumstances which at present form the embarrassments of our system, it will be sufficient to observe, that the want of money and credit involve Congress in perplexities, which cannot be fully removed till the operations of new plans shall be equally felt throughout the Union. The want of a fixed consideration frustrates almost every measure, and the dull, inergetic mode of procedure resulting from the long habits of insipid formality, render our efforts too feeble and dilatory to effect the greatest objects.”[v]
That same year of 1780, Congress had approved half-pay for retired soldiers. Still waiting for State revenues due the following year, the Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris, along with his assistant Gouverneur Morris, and fellow New Yorker Alexander Hamilton supported and promoted an amendment to the Articles that would allow Congress to raise revenue through taxes in order to support the Army and pay its debt overseas.[vi]
The State legislatures overtly rejected the impost amendment, and as the threat from Great Britain decreased, became reluctant to fill quota’s, and increasingly bitter about the Congress’ increasing demands.
In 1782, most of the men in the encampment at Newburgh, Connecticut were uncertain if they would ever receive the pay and bonuses promised to them during the war. Officers were equally uncertain, as this inquiry from Washington to Morris concerning the pay of General Baron Von Steuben on 4 March, 1782:
“Well knowing the difficulties in which you are involved it ever gives me pain to make application to you on the score of Money.” Washington wrote, “But as I cannot give the Baron Steuben an answer without knowing whether it will be in your power to comply with the terms he asks, I am under the necessity of inclosing his letter to me on the subject of the arrearages of his Pay.I am with great Respect Sir Yr most obt and hbl servt.” [vii]
By early 1783, much of the Army had reached a boiling point. On 10 March, a meeting of officers was anonymously called for the next day at Newburgh , and an inflammatory address circulated to the troops, reportedly given by Major John Armstrong, the aide-de-camp to General Gates in Philadelphia.
The Nationalists, as they called themselves, intended to enflame the Army, as did some members of Congress who hoped such an action would bring about a stronger Federal government. Hamilton, among them, hoped that Washington would join them and lead the effort, but he was rebuked by his Commander-in-Chief, and scolded that “the Army is a dangerous instrument to play with…”[viii]
Armstrong’s circulated address called for the Army to abandon the moderate tone of Washington’s entreaties for pay, and give Congress an ultimatum; if the Continental Congress failed to promise payment to the veterans, they would either disband the Army, leaving it unprotected and lawless, or refuse to disband after a peace treaty had been signed. This last was a thinly veiled threat of a military takeover.
In his General Orders the following day, Washington declared the impropriety of the meeting, and implored the men to cool their “passions”. He asked them to meet again in four days at the Temple of Virtue, a large hall near his headquarters in New Windsor, Connecticut. At the given hour, Gen. Horatio Gates stepped forward to chair the meeting. Gates had been a critic of Washington, and some have suggested that the Newburgh Conspiracy, as it came to be known, was a foil for an attempted coup by Gates to take command.
Gates stepped aside however, when Washington entered the meeting room. His appearance reportedly surprised the troops as did his impassioned address to them that noon.
While submitting that the author of the address had made some excellent points, he knew as much as any man how much they had suffered, the sacrifices they had made in leaving their wives and children, and their property unprotected for months, if not years at a time. But would they now “sully the glory” they had won on the battlefield and march as a mob on Congress?
Washington denounced the plan as destructive to the very foundation of republican government and expressed his “utmost horror and detestation” of those men who would “open the flood Gates of Civil discord, and deluge our rising Empire in Blood.”[ix]
The move by the Officers was quietly quelled in the wake of the speech. In his General Orders on 18 April, he announced the Cessation of Hostilities between the United States and Great Britain, and praised the officers and men for their service, as well as offering his gratitude:
“The Commander-in-Chief far from Endeavoring to stifle the feelings of joy in his own bosom, offers his most cordial Congratulations on the occasion to all the officers of every denomination, to all the Troops of the United States in General, and in particular to those gallant and persevering men who had resolved to defend the rights of their invaded country so long as the war should continue. For these are the men who ought to be considered as the pride and boast of the American Army; And, who crowned with well-earned laurels, may soon withdraw from the field of Glory, to the more tranquil walks of civil life.”[x]
Laurels and praise for the soldiers however, could only carry a veteran so far. Even as Washington worked to bring a Constitutional Convention together, little was accomplished for the men who had won the war.
On December 23, 1783 General Washington appeared before the Continental Congress and in a highly symbolic, anti-monarchial act, surrendered his sword and resigned his commission as Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The moment was later portrayed in a painting by Jonathan Trumball, and would become an iconic symbol of American republicanism; indeed it hangs in the rotunda of our nation’s capital. As described by historian Matthew Moten:
“Washington stands before a chair, one a little larger than all the rest and draped with a cloak—the throne will go unoccupied. Returning his commission, Washington becomes not Caesar but Cincinnatus, forsaking command, the military life, and a potential claim on executive, perhaps dictatorial, power. Like Cincinnatus, Washington has sheathed his sword and will return to the plow at his Mount Vernon estate.”
While Washington could return to the relative comfort of his estate, “the veteran soldiery who had exposed themselves to tempests and battles through the whole contest, and whom peace had dismissed with laurels, returned to their families penniless and clamorous.”
Pressure on the States from Congress to collect individual taxes as well as on trades led to outright rebellion. When European merchants refused to extend credit to American merchants and demand payment for goods with hard currency after the war, the resulting domino effect meant that American merchants placed the same demand upon customers, even those in rural market towns, such as Springfield, Massachusetts.[xi]
Rural farmers found it increasingly difficult to meet the demands of the merchants, and by 1785, the increased efforts to prosecute those in debt, meant that farmers throughout the States began to lose their land to creditors and tax collectors who utilized the courts to gain seizure of properties.
This caused great resentment against the tax collectors and the courts and precipitated attacks against them in 1786 ,with what became known as “Shay’s Rebellion.”
Led by Daniel Shays and Luke Day, on 29 August a well-organized band of protestors successfully prevented the Northampton County Court from sitting in session.[xii] The Governor issued a proclamation denouncing the mob action, but by September, the active shutting down of court houses spread throughout mid to western Massachusetts. When the Court in Worchester was shut down on 5 September, the local militia refused to turn out against them, being sympathetic to their cause. Court houses in Concord, Great Barrington, and Taunton were shuttered by mobs of protestors in October.
James Warren wrote to John Adams, fearing the outbreak of civil war. Courts in the larger towns began to have militia present, and the protest divided some old Patriots, turning some into harsh caricatures of those whose laws from which they had fought to be free.
Samuel Adams joined others in condemning the protests. Under the misinformed notion that British emissaries were stirring up trouble among the citizens and leading them to participate in these treasonous acts, he helped draft a Riot Act, which suspended habeas corpus, allowing authorities to easily round up the instigators and throw them in prison without benefit of a trial. In time, Adams would also advocate for the death penalty for those who waged “a rebellion in public”.[xiii]
The legislature to which he belonged soon passed acts prohibiting speech that was critical of the government, and another offering pardons to those who surrendered and were willing to take an oath of allegiance.
The president of the Continental Congress wrote to Washington after the outbreak of courthouse closings, asking him to exert his influence over the troops and help to quell the rebellion. Washington returned his letter on 31 October from Mount Vernon:
“I am mortified beyond expression whenever I view the clouds which have spread over the greatest morn that ever dawned upon any Country… when I behold what intriegueing; the interested views of desperate characters; Jealousy; & ignorance of the Minor part, are capable of effecting as a scurge on the major part of our fellow citizens of the Union:for it is hardly to be imagined that the great body of the people tho’ they will not act can be so enveloped in darkness, or short sighted as not to see the rays of a distant sun through all this mist of intoxication & folly.
You talk, my good Sir, of employing influence to appease the tumults in Massachusetts—I know not where that influence is to be found; and if attainable, that it would be a proper remedy for the disorders. Influence is no government. Let us have one by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, or let us know the worst at once.”[xiv]
The rebellion was put down in early 1787 after the Governor of Massachusetts raised an Army of some three thousand men under command of former Continental General Benjamin Lincoln. The issues that caused the uprising continued to be debated.
Washington was clearly frustrated that his years long attempts at reform had yet to come to fruition. An attempt to gather in Annapolis in September 1786 received such a poor turnout that delegates could do little more than raise hopes for a national convention, and sent invitations to the States for the following spring.
The Constitutional Convention then, was held in the Philadelphia State House from 25 May through 17 September 1787 in a concerted effort to amend the Articles of Confederation, but within weeks, had determined that the Federal government itself, needed to be reformed.
The states had chosen some 74 delegates, but of those only 55 attended, Rhode Island, once again, refused to send any delegates. As the members worked out a framework for a Constitution, speculation was rife, and the debate spilled from the shuttered windows of the State House into the newspapers around the country.[xv]
Washington was elected unanimously as president of the Convention and throughout that stifling summer he presided, and shepherded the delegates through the debates and voting on measures. Some 85 essays on those debates would be written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison and published anonymously in New York papers between October 1787 and May 1788 to spur the legislature into ratifying the new Constitution.
Undoubtably for Washington, the most important article of the Constitution was the Guarantee Clause which provides for majority rule; creating a Republican government in which the people governed through elections. As Hamilton phrased it in the Federalist Papers, “the elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government.”[xvi]
The Guarantee Clause requires the United States to guarantee the states a republican form of government, and provide protection from foreign invasion and domestic violence. The clause also provides that the United States prevent any state from imposing rule either by aristocracy, monarchy, or a permanent military occupation. All states would be constitutionally required to govern by electoral processes.
As Hamilton and Madison wrote in an article that appeared in the New York Packet on 19 February 1788:
“The electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States. They are to be the same who exercise the right in every State of electing the corresponding branch of the legislature of the State. Who are to be the objects of popular choice? Every citizen whose merit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country. No qualification of wealth, of birth, of religious faith, or of civil profession is permitted to fetter the judgement or disappoint the inclination of the people.”
Delegate to the Convention James Monroe would credit Washington, whose “influence carried this government”, especially when it came to shaping the office of the Presidency, whose vast powers would not have been made so great, “had not many of the members cast their eyes toward General Washington as president, and shaped their ideas of the powers to be given to a president by their opinions of his virtue.”[xvii]
In the young nation’s first election, Washington would be unanimously elected president by the first Electoral College. His two terms as president would bring innumerable challenges, and at least on one occasion, he would be accused of exacting “monarchial” powers in using Federal troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion of 1797. As President, Washington set the precedent for future leaders, while setting a strong example of a robust presidency, he guarded the prerogatives of office while remaining acutely aware of his limits of authority.
When he stepped down after his second term as President with a peaceful transfer of power to the newly elected president John Adams, he legitimized the Constitution he had worked so hard to render the law of the land. His actions proved that a Republican government could hold sufficient power to function, but also limited that power, ensuring liberties and freedoms that we still enjoy today.
Washington’s relinquishment of power with dignity provided proof that such a government could not only be a noble idea, but could also be a reality. Such precedent remains the greatest of our democratic traditions.
[i] Lim, Richard Could George Washington Really have Become King if he Wanted To? This American President Podcast
[ii] Spaulding, Matthew The Man Who Would Not Be King The Heritage Foundation https://www.heritage.org/node/6513/print-display
[iii] Mount Vernon, Lewis Nicola https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/lewis-nicola/
[iv] Letter from George Washington to Lewis Nicola, 22 May 1782 Founders Online, National Archives
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-08501
[v] Bartlett, John Russell Records of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Providence, 1864 Vol. 9, p. 42
[vi] Mount Vernon, Newburgh Conspiracy https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/newburgh-conspiracy/
[vii] Letter to Robert Morris from George Washington 4 March 1782 https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-print-01-02-02-1915
[viii] Spaulding, p. 3
[ix] Ibid.
[x] General Orders of George Washington, April 18, 1783 https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/general orders-2/
[xi] Richards, Leonard (2003). Shay’s Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania 2002 p. 88
[xii] Szatmary, David, Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection. University of Massachusetts Press 1980 p. 56
[xiii] Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States New York, Harper Collins 2005 p. 91
[xiv] From George Washington to Henry Lee Jr. 31 October 1786 Founders Online, National Archives
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-04-02-0286.
[xv] Chin, Gabriel J. & Hawlet, Erin M Interpretation & Debate: The Guarantee Clause National Constitution Center, https://constitutioncenter.org
[xvi] Hamilton, Alexander & Madison, James, The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation, Federalist No. 57, The Federalist Papers
[xvii] Spaulding, p. 2