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One wonders whether Chateaubriand also noticed that a hairdressing shop stood next door to the presidential “palace.”
The president hobnobbed with the city’s commercial elite, especially the two wealthy couples he had befriended during earlier stays in Philadelphia: William and A
On Sundays the president attended church and afterward was enveloped by throngs of admirers. One observer recalled him leaving Old Christ Church, wrapped in his blue cloak, with organ music bellowing behind him. Instead of touching people, he nodded to the hushed crowd that instinctively parted before him, so that there was something vaguely ecclesiastical about his presence: “His noble height and commanding air . . . his patient demeanor in the crowd . . . his gentle bendings of the neck, to the right and to the left, parentally, and expressive of delighted feelings on his part; these, with the appearance of the awed and charmed and silent crowd of spectators, gently falling back on each side, as he approached, unequivocally a
Even as president, Washington’s interests were wider, his curiosity more far-ranging, than is commonly supposed. Confident in his own taste, he personally selected the paintings that adorned the presidential mansion—“fancy pieces of my own choosing,” he called them.21 He had an occasional sense of fun that belied his grave air. In April 1793 he led a party of eight to see the first American circus, staged by an English equestrian acrobat, John Bill Ricketts, who had set up a Philadelphia riding school. And he remained a keen theatergoer, absorbing a steady diet of history plays, farces, and satires. He patronized the South Street Theater so frequently that he had his own private box, complete with cushioned seats and plush red drapery. With a soldier stationed at each stage door and four distributed in the gallery, Washington probably enjoyed better security than did Lincoln the night of his assassination at Ford’s Theater.
However bowed down by presidential tasks, Washington always found time for family and for the many waifs and wards who sheltered under his roof. Harriot Washington, the daughter of his deceased brother Samuel, had lived at Mount Vernon since 1785. A wayward girl, slovenly and lazy, she clashed with Fa
In the fall of 1790 he brought to Philadelphia Harriot’s two unruly brothers, George Steptoe and Lawrence Augustine, who entered the College of Philadelphia (afterward the University of Pe
ON DECEMBER 14, 1790, Alexander Hamilton issued another electrifying state paper, this time on the need to charter the first central bank in American history. Capitalized at $10 million, the Bank of the United States would blend public and private ownership; the government would take a 20 percent stake and private investors the remaining 80 percent. This versatile institution would lend money to the government, issue notes that could serve as a national currency, and act as a repository for tax payments. The bank was patterned after the Bank of England—Hamilton kept its charter on his desk as he wrote—and coming on the heels of his report on public credit and excise taxes, it unsettled opponents with the insidious specter of a British-style executive branch.
Five weeks later the bank bill passed the Senate with deceptive ease, prompting Madison to marshal stiff opposition in the House. Once again the southern states feared that Hamilton’s system would consolidate northern financial hegemony over agrarian southern interests. Madison responded boldly to the views of his dismayed constituents. Where he had articulated a broad view of federal power as coauthor of The Federalist, he now balked at what he deemed a dangerous extension of that power. In the Constitution he could find no specific license for a central bank—in his evocative phrase, the bank bill “was condemned by the silence of the Constitution.” 23 In defiance of his determined efforts, the bill passed the House on February 8 by a margin of 39 to 20. In an omen of future strife, the vote again divided sharply along geographic lines: the northern states were almost solidly for the bank, and the southern states were largely lined up against it. To skittish southerners, the treasury secretary seemed triumphant and unstoppable in his quest for centralized power, rolling out programs in rapid succession, each one meshing with the next in a seamless system of interlocking parts.
Madison urged Washington, who was still undecided on the measure, to snuff out the bank with a veto. Washington’s slow, deliberate handling of this matter proved a model of the way he resolved complex disputes. First he impartially canvassed his cabinet officers to assemble the widest spectrum of opinion, making sure that, whatever he did, he could answer all critics. He kept his cabinet in suspense, forcing them to vie for his approval through the strength of their arguments. At the same time, one senses that he already tilted toward signing the bill, for he subtly stacked the deck in favor of approval by first asking Edmund Randolph and Thomas Jefferson for their views, which he then relayed to Hamilton. This gave Hamilton an edge, since he could see his predecessors’ objections and register the last word on the subject.