Washington: A Life

Perhaps most disturbing to Washington was the prospect that liberty would descend into anarchy. Some populist demagogue, he feared, might exploit the weakness of a feeble central government to establish a dictatorship. Where Jefferson and Madison dreaded a powerful national government as the primrose path to monarchy, Washington and Hamilton continued to view a strong central government as the best bulwark against that threat. “What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing!” Washington exclaimed to John Jay in 1786. “I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror.”22

George Washington trusted the long-term wisdom of the American people, but his deep, abiding faith was often qualified in the short run by a pessimistic view. In 1786 he expressed this ambivalence to Madison: “No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did—and no day was ever more clouded than the present!”23 Washington was amazingly sensitive to America’s unseen audience of European skeptics. Far from thumbing his nose at such doomsday prophets, he wanted to prove them wrong and earn their good opinion. In advocating enlarged powers for Congress, he said that it was “evident to me we never shall establish a national character, or be considered on a respectable footing by the powers of Europe,” unless this was accomplished.24 That Washington responded so keenly to European derision reveals, once again, residual traces of his old insularity. On some level he remained the country cousin, eager to vindicate his country’s worth in the metropolitan hubs of Europe.

As someone who thought people should look to the educated, well-to-do members of the community for leadership, Washington had an instinctive sense of public service. From the time he returned to Mount Vernon after the war, his mind dwelled actively on political problems. He must have sensed he would be allowed only a brief interval of repose before being plunged back into the hurly-burly of politics. As political power reverted back to state capitals, he might have guessed that the nucleus of any future federal government would come from the general staff of the Continental Army, which had experienced so dramatically the perils of an ineffective government. His comforting fantasy of a serene Mount Vernon retirement began to fade. “Retired as I am from the world,” he told Jay during the summer of 1786, “I frankly acknowledge I ca

At times Washington pretended that he was too remote from political affairs to know what Americans thought about key issues, telling Jefferson, “Indeed, I am too much secluded from the world to know with certainty what sensation the refusal of the British to deliver up the western posts has made on the public mind.”26 Such protestations of ignorance flew in the face of several factors: Washington entertained a large, heterogeneous group of visitors at Mount Vernon; he subscribed to many gazettes; and he conducted a rich correspondence with political intimates. As early as March 1786 he heard from Jay about a movement gathering force to revise the Articles of Confederation. While sympathetic, Washington told him that implementing those changes would require a crisis atmosphere: “That it is necessary to revise and amend the Articles of Confederation, I entertain no doubt. But what may be the consequences of such an attempt is doubtful. Yet, something must be done or the fabric must fall.”27 By that summer Washington sounded as if things had reached a critical impasse, and he described the country’s state as “shameful and disgusting.”28 In mid-August he believed that a great turning point was at hand. “Your sentiments, that our affairs are drawing rapidly to a crisis, accord with my own,” he assured Jay. 29

One man shaping Washington’s views was James Madison. On a Saturday evening in early September 1785, Madison had appeared at Mount Vernon and was quickly closeted in conversation with Washington, lingering through breakfast on Monday morning. A rigorous political theorist with a coolly skeptical intellect, the diminutive, bookish Madison was alarmed by the irresponsible behavior of the state legislatures. Though just thirty-four, he seemed prematurely aged, with thi

Appearances could be deceiving with James Madison. However professorial in ma

In September 1786, Madison attended a conference in A

As Washington considered his future role, an outbreak of violence in rural Massachusetts sharpened the reform debate. If ever American history had a useful crisis, it occurred in western Massachusetts in the autumn of 1786. To retire a heavy debt load, the state had boosted land taxes and thereby provoked the wrath of farmers, many of whom lost their land in foreclosures. Led by Daniel Shays, a militia captain during the war, thousands of rebels, heaving pitchforks, swarmed into rural courthouses to menace judges and block foreclosures. Invoking the Revolution’s militant spirit, many do