Washington: A Life (111 page)

Although Lee missed the inauguration, he still yearned for a job in the presidential household. A few days after Washington was inaugurated, Lear wrote to Biddle and tried again to discourage Lee from coming to New York, pointing out that “he cannot possibly be of any service here” and expressing the hope that he would catch the “first vessel that sails for Alex[andri]a” after he recuperated.
²³
Lee remained obdurate. Submitting to the slave’s wish, Lear instructed Biddle that, if Lee was “still anxious to come on here, the president would gratify him, altho[ugh] he will be troublesome. He has been an old and faithful serv[an]t. This is enough for the president to gratify him in every reasonable wish.”
²⁴
On June 22 Lear informed Biddle that “Billy arrived here safe and well.”
²⁵
Again, Lear spared no expense with Lee, who was brought by coach from the ferry stop to the presidential mansion. To dress him up for his new duties, Lear went out and got him suitable stockings. Unwilling to spurn Lee’s demand for a place in the executive residence, Washington allowed him to work there, probably as a butler, during his first term, even though Lee had, by some accounts, become difficult and temperamental.

 

BY NOW SATED WITH ADULATION, Washington preserved a faint hope that he would be allowed to make an inconspicuous entry into New York and pleaded with Governor George Clinton to spare him further hoopla: “I can assure you, with the utmost sincerity, that no reception can be so congenial to my feelings as a quiet entry devoid of ceremony.”
²⁶
But he was fooling himself if he imagined he might slip unobtrusively into the temporary capital. Never reconciled to the demands of his celebrity, Washington still fantasized that he could shuck that inescapable burden. When he arrived at Elizabethtown on April 23, an impressive phalanx of three senators, five congressmen, and three state officials awaited him. He must have intuited, with a sinking sensation, that this welcome would eclipse even the frenzied receptions in Philadelphia and Trenton. Moored to the wharf was a special presidential barge, glistening with fresh paint, constructed in his honor and equipped with an awning of red curtains in the rear to shelter him from the elements. To nobody’s surprise, the craft was steered by thirteen oarsmen in spanking white uniforms.

As the barge drifted into the Hudson River, Washington made out a Manhattan shoreline already “crowded with a vast concourse of citizens, waiting with exulting anxiety his arrival,” a local newspaper said.
²⁷
Many ships anchored in the harbor were garlanded with flags and banners. If Washington gazed back at the receding Jersey shore, he would have seen that his craft led a huge flotilla of boats, including one bearing the portly figure of Henry Knox. Some boats carried musicians and female vocalists on deck, serenading Washington across the waters. “The voices of the ladies were superior to the flutes that played with the stroke of the oars in Cleopatra’s silken-corded barge,” was the imaginative verdict of the
New York Packet
.
²⁸
These wafted melodies, enhanced by repeated cannon roar and thunderous acclaim from crowds onshore, again oppressed Washington with their implicit message of high expectations. As he confided to his diary, the intermingled sounds “filled my mind with sensations as painful (considering the reverse of this scene, which may be the case after all my labors to do good) as they are pleasing.”
²⁹
To guard himself against later disappointment, he seemed not to allow himself the smallest iota of pleasure.

When the presidential barge landed at the foot of Wall Street, Governor Clinton, Mayor James Duane, James Madison, and other luminaries welcomed him to the city. The officer of a special military escort stepped forward briskly and told Washington that he awaited his orders. Washington again labored to cool the celebratory mood. “As to the present arrangement,” he replied, “I shall proceed as is directed. But after this is over, I hope you will give yourself no further trouble, as the affection of my fellow-citizens is all the guard I want.”
³⁰
Nobody seemed to take the hint seriously.

The streets were solidly thronged with well-wishers, and it took Washington a full hour to arrive at his new residence at 3 Cherry Street, tucked away in the northeastern corner of the city, a block from the East River, near the present-day Brooklyn Bridge. One week earlier the building’s owner, Samuel Osgood, had agreed to lease it to Congress as the temporary presidential residence. The descriptions of Washington’s demeanor en route to the house confirm that he finally surrendered to the general high spirits, especially when he viewed the legions of adoring women. As Elias Boudinot told his wife, Washington “frequently bowed to the multitude and took off his hat to the ladies at the windows, who waved their handkerchiefs and threw flowers before him and shed tears of joy and congratulation. The whole city was one scene of triumphal rejoicing.”
³¹

America’s second-largest city, with a population of about thirty thousand, New York was a small, provincial town compared to European capitals. Lavishly appointed carriages sped through streets heaped with horse droppings and rubbish. Rich and robust, New York already had a raucous commercial spirit that grated on squeamish sensibilities. “New York is less citified than Philadelphia,” said a French visitor, “but the bustle of trade is far greater.”
³²
Before the war John Adams, passing through town, huffed that “with all the opulence and splendor of this city, there is very little good breeding to be found. There is no modesty. No attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast, and all together.”
³³
Although Vice President Adams had arrived before Washington, the town did not endear itself to him on this trip either. Congress had failed to locate a residence for the new vice president, who lodged with John Jay for several weeks.

New York had not yet recovered fully from the dislocations of the war. First Americans and then Britons had uprooted trees and fences for firewood, leaving weed-strewn lots in their path. In the aftermath of the British occupation, said Mayor Duane, New York resembled a place that “had been inhabited by savages or wild beasts.”
³⁴
The great conflagration that consumed a quarter of the city in 1776 had left behind blocks of rubble and skeletal houses, some of them yet to be razed. Like many ports, New York catered to a rough, brawling population of sailors and traders and boasted more than four hundred taverns. One French visitor in the 1790s expressed surprise that the city had “whole sections given over to streetwalkers for the plying of their profession” and that it was filled with “houses of debauchery.”
³⁵
With its wealthy merchants and brawny laborers, the city already presented a picture of vivid extremes.

 

 

THOUGH THE CONSTITUTION SAID NOTHING about an inaugural address, Washington, in an innovative spirit, contemplated such a speech as early as January 1789 and asked a “gentleman under his roof ”—David Humphreys—to draft one.
³⁶
Washington had always been economical with words, but the collaboration with Humphreys produced a wordy document, seventy-three pages long, which survives only in tantalizing snippets. In this curious speech, Washington spent a ridiculous amount of time defending his decision to become president, as if he stood accused of some heinous crime. He denied that he had accepted the presidency to enrich himself, even though nobody had accused him of greed: “In the first place, if I have formerly served the community without a wish for pecuniary compensation, it can hardly be suspected that I am at present influenced by avaricious schemes.”
³⁷
Addressing a topical concern, he disavowed any desire to found a dynasty, pleading his childless state. Closer in tone to future inaugural speeches was his ringing expression of faith in the American people. He devised a perfect formulation of popular sovereignty, writing that the Constitution had brought forth “a government of the people: that is to say, a government in which all power is derived from, and at stated periods reverts to, them—and that, in its operation … is purely a government of laws made and executed by the fair substitutes of the people alone.”
³⁸
Showing an Enlightenment spirit, he generalized the American Revolution into a movement blazing a path toward the universal triumph of freedom: “I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of inquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that
the many
were made for
the few;
and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.”
³⁹

This ponderous speech never saw the light of day. Washington sent a copy to James Madison, who wisely vetoed it on two counts: it was much too long, and its lengthy legislative proposals would be interpreted as executive meddling with the legislature. Instead, Madison drafted for Washington a far more compact speech that avoided tortured introspection. A whirlwind of energy, Madison would seem omnipresent in the early days of Washington’s administration. He drafted not only the inaugural address but also the official response by Congress and then Washington’s response to Congress, completing the circle. This service established Madison, despite his major role in the House, as a preeminent adviser and confidant to the new president. Oddly enough, he was not troubled that his advisory relationship to Washington might be construed as violating the separation of powers.

Washington knew that everything he did at the swearing-in would establish a tone for the future. “As the first of everything in
our situation
will serve to establish a precedent,” he reminded Madison, “it is devoutly wished on my part that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.”
⁴⁰
He would shape indelibly the institution of the presidency. Although he had earned his reputation in battle, he made a critical decision not to wear a uniform at the inauguration or beyond, banishing fears of a military coup. Instead, he would stand there aglitter with patriotic symbols. To spur American manufactures, he would wear a double-breasted brown suit made from broadcloth woven at the Woolen Manufactory of Hartford, Connecticut.
⁴¹
The suit had gilt buttons with an eagle insignia on them; to complete his outfit, he would wear white hosiery, silver shoe buckles, and yellow gloves. Washington already sensed that Americans would emulate their presidents. “I hope it will not be a great while before it will be unfashionable for a gentleman to appear in any other dress,” he told Lafayette, referring to his American attire. “Indeed, we have already been too long subject to British prejudices.”
⁴²
To burnish his image further on inauguration day, Washington powdered his hair and wore a dress sword on his hip, sheathed in a steel scabbard.

The inauguration took place at the building at Wall and Nassau streets that had long served as New York’s City Hall. It came richly laden with historical associations, having hosted John Peter Zenger’s trial in 1735, the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, and the Confederation Congress from 1785 to 1788. Starting in September 1788, the French engineer Pierre-Charles L’Enfant had remodeled it into Federal Hall, a suitable home for Congress. L’Enfant introduced a covered arcade at street level and a balcony surmounted by a triangular pediment on the second story. As the people’s chamber, the House of Representatives was accessible to the public, situated in a high-ceilinged octagonal room on the ground floor, while the Senate met in a second-floor room, buffering it from popular pressure. From this room Washington would emerge onto the balcony to take the oath of office. In many ways, the first inauguration was a hasty, slapdash affair. As with all theatrical spectacles, rushed preparations and frantic work on the new building continued until a few days before the event. Nervous anticipation spread through the city as to whether the two hundred workmen would complete the project on time. Only a few days before the inauguration, an eagle was hoisted onto the pediment, completing the building. The final effect was stately: a white building with a blue and white cupola topped by a weathervane.

A little after noon on April 30, 1789, following a morning filled with clanging church bells and prayers, a contingent of troops on horseback, accompanied by carriages loaded with legislators, stopped at Washington’s Cherry Street residence. Escorted by David Humphreys and Tobias Lear, the president-elect stepped into his carriage, which was trailed by foreign dignitaries and crowds of joyous citizens. The procession wound slowly through the narrow Manhattan streets, emerging two hundred yards from Federal Hall. After alighting from his carriage, Washington strode through a double line of soldiers to the building and mounted to the Senate chamber, where members of Congress awaited him expectantly. As he entered, Washington bowed to both houses of the legislature—his invariable mark of respect—then occupied an imposing chair up front. A profound hush settled on the room. Vice President Adams rose for an official greeting, then informed Washington that the epochal moment had arrived: “Sir, the Senate and House of Representatives are ready to attend you to take the oath required by the constitution.” “I am ready to proceed,” Washington replied.
⁴³

As he stepped through the door onto the balcony, a spontaneous roar surged from the multitude tightly squeezed into Wall and Broad streets and covering every roof in sight. This open-air ceremony would confirm the sovereignty of the citizens gathered below. Washington’s demeanor was stately, modest, and deeply affecting: he clapped one hand to his heart and bowed several times to the crowd. Surveying the serried ranks of people, one observer said they were jammed so closely together that “it seemed one might literally walk on the heads of the people.”
⁴⁴
Thanks to his simple dignity, integrity, and unrivaled sacrifices for his country, Washington’s conquest of the people was complete. A member of the crowd, the Count de Moustier, the French minister, noted the solemn trust between Washington and the citizens who stood packed below him with uplifted faces. As he reported to his government, never had “sovereign reigned more completely in the hearts of his subjects than did Washington in those of his fellow citizens … He has the soul, look, and figure of a hero united in him.”
⁴⁵
One young woman in the crowd echoed this when she remarked, “I never saw a human being that looked so great and noble as he does.”
⁴⁶
Only Congressman Fisher Ames of Massachusetts noted that “time has made havoc” upon Washington’s face, which already looked haggard and careworn.
⁴⁷