Washington: A Life

On December 18 Randolph published a 103-page pamphlet called A Vindication that presented a fairly credible defense against the bribery charge but made offensive remarks about Washington, who was stung to the quick. As soon as he saw the pamphlet, Washington exclaimed in disgust, “He has written and published this,” flinging it to the floor.27 Washington felt deeply betrayed by Randolph. Out of friendship for his uncle, Peyton Randolph, Washington had aided the young man and pushed him forward, and this was his reward. In trying to figure out how to minimize political damage, Washington consulted Hamilton. Although Hamilton found it hard to muzzle his opinions in political disputes, he knew that silence was Washington’s preferred method and that presidential dignity reinforced that need. “It appears to me that by you no notice can be or ought to be taken of the publication,” he wrote back. “It contains its own antidote.”28 Indeed, even Republicans found the Vindication’s tone misguided; Jefferson confessed to Madison that while it exonerated Randolph of the bribery charges, “it does not give . . . high ideas of his wisdom or steadiness.”29 Washington thereafter referred to Randolph as a rascal or a villain.

Bereft of trustworthy advisers that summer, Washington turned to John Adams more than before and praised the diplomatic acumen of his son, John Quincy, the precocious young minister to Holland. Washington held the young man’s talents in such high regard that he predicted that, before too long, John Quincy would be “found at the head of the Diplomatic Corps.”30 With Edmund Randolph’s resignation, Washington began a long and dispiriting search for a successor. As with all appointments, he handled the correspondence himself without any apparent assistance from aides. A disillusioned Washington capitulated to the reality that he could no longer tolerate appointees “whose political tenets are adverse” to his own policies. 31 He had had enough with gross disloyalty from his cabinet. But he then suffered the indignity of having five candidates in succession turn down the secretary of state job—William Paterson, Thomas Johnson, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Patrick Henry, and Rufus King. Honorable in his dealings, Washington informed each candidate of the previous refusals. By the time he approached Patrick Henry, fourth on the list, he experienced mounting frustration: “I persuade myself, Sir, it has not escaped your observation that a crisis is approaching that must, if it ca

To fill the vacancy, Washington finally shifted the prickly Timothy Pickering from war to state. Instead of warming to this plum assignment, Pickering accepted it to spare Washington any further embarrassment. Devoted to Hamilton, Pickering adhered to that true-blue wing of the Federalists known as High Federalists. To plug the resulting vacancy at the War Department, Washington was again reduced to the unseemly position of peddling a cabinet post and was stymied three times before James McHenry accepted. A doctor by training, McHenry had served as a wartime aide to Washington, a member of the Confederation Congress, and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. Fond of McHenry, Washington had sung his praises as a young man of “great integrity . . . an amiable temper, very obliging, and of polished ma

A few days after Washington’s confrontation with Randolph, Attorney General William Bradford died, saddling Washington with yet another appointment. Eager to restore a geographic mix to his cabinet, he turned to John Marshall, the tall, handsome Virginian destined to stand out as the foremost legal mind of the age. “When future generations pursue the history of America,” Washington once said, “they will find the name of Marshall on its sacred page as one of the brightest ornaments of the age in which he lived.”38 In approaching Marshall, Washington appealed to self-interest as well as loftier goals, noting that in Philadelphia Marshall could supplement his income with “a lucrative practice.”39 Marshall still declined. When Washington then considered Colonel Harry I

Even the choice of a new chief justice to replace John Jay became the source of endless wrangling. Neither busy nor prestigious, the Supreme Court did not yet attract top legal minds. Perhaps for that reason, Hamilton turned down Washington’s invitation to become the new chief justice. Washington then proposed John Rutledge of South Carolina, who served briefly as chief justice through a recess appointment but whose nomination was ultimately defeated by partisan sniping in the Senate. Washington then named William Cushing of Massachusetts, already an associate justice on the Court. Cushing was confirmed by the Senate but considered himself too old and infirm for the job and surrendered it a week later. In the end Washington selected Oliver Ellsworth of Co

IN SEPTEMBER 1795, at an inopportune moment, Lafayette’s adolescent son materialized in America, confronting Washington with an excruciating dilemma. Escorted by his tutor, Félix Frestel, George Washington Lafayette came armed with a letter to his godfather, hoping to involve the president more deeply in efforts to liberate his father. The once-dashing Lafayette père had grown gaunt and deathly pale from years in hellish dungeons, suffering from swollen limbs, oozing sores, and agonizing blisters. He was to remain persona non grata for the five-man Directory that governed France after the end of the Reign of Terror. However strongly he felt, Washington was reluctant to receive young Lafayette for fear of offending the French government, especially after the Jay Treaty furor. Beyond his official duty to safeguard American interests, Washington dreaded that any move might worsen the precarious plight of Lafayette’s wife in France, and he was openly stumped about what to do. “On one side, I may be charged with countenancing those who have been denounced the enemies of France,” Washington confided to Hamilton. “On the other, with not countenancing the son of a man who is dear to America.”42