Washington: A Life

During a Philadelphia winter so frigid that residents skated on an ice-encrusted Delaware River, Washington ended up pioneering in one last area: how to behave as a lame duck president. Like later presidents, he endured an excruciating round of farewell parties, balls, di

Washington’s last birthday in office, his sixty-fifth, was crammed with festivities, including an “elegant entertainment” at Ricketts’ Amphitheater, followed by a di

On March 2, in one of his last acts in office, Washington wrote a condolence note to Henry Knox for his loss of three children. Perhaps moved by his old friend’s pitiable plight, he sought to repair the unfortunate damage inflicted on their long friendship by the Whiskey Rebellion. When he returned to Mount Vernon, Washington pla

The next day, his last in office, Washington toiled under fierce pressure to sign legislation dumped on his desk at the last minute. The Constitution gave the president ten days to sign bills, and Washington resented that legislators had allowed him “scarcely an hour to revolve the most important” ones, as he protested to Jonathan Trumbull. “But as the scene is closing with me, it is of little avail now to let it be with murmurs.”14 At the end he struck a note of serenity, a faith that the American experiment, if sometimes threatened, would prevail. While fearful of machinations, he told Trumbull, “I trust . . . that the good sense of our countrymen will guard the public weal against this and every other i

On March 4, inauguration day, Washington did not even bother to mention the event in his diary, preferring to jot down the temperature. “Much such a day as yesterday in all respects. Mercury at 41,” says the entry in its entirety.16 Shortly before noon, dressed in a suit of solemn black, he marched alone to Congress Hall. As he approached the building and entered the House chamber, the cheers and applause of an immense multitude showered down on him. Jefferson next appeared in a blue frock coat and sauntered down the aisle in his loose-limbed style. President-elect Adams then disembarked from a splendid new coach operated by servants in livery. As he made his way into the chamber and up to the dais, he wore a pearl-colored suit with wrist ruffles and a powdered wig and toted a cockaded hat. Looking sleepless, harried, and a little overwhelmed, he glanced over at Washington, who seemed to be shedding his wordly cares. “A solemn scene it was indeed,” Adams wrote, “and it was made affecting to me by the presence of the General, whose countenance was as serene and unclouded as the day. He seemed to me to enjoy a triumph over me. Methought I heard him say, ‘Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be happiest!’”17 From the outset, Adams confronted a tough assignment: any president who followed Washington was doomed to seem illegitimate for a time, a mere pretender to the throne.

After introducing Adams, Washington read a short farewell message, filling the silent hall with an overwhelming sense of sadness. The country was losing someone who had been its constant patriarch from the begi

Afterward Washington walked from the executive mansion to the Francis Hotel, where President Adams was temporarily staying, and he became aware of a tremendous throng of people surging around him. “An immense company,” said one observer, had gone “as one man in total silence as escort all the way.”21 When Washington reached the hotel and turned around, the crowd saw that his face was again washed with tears. “No man ever saw him so moved,” said a second observer.22 In a very Washingtonian feat, he touched the crowd by simply staring at them in silence before disappearing into the hotel.

Like Washington, Adams viewed himself as an incorruptible figure rising above the bane of parties. And like Washington, his political enemies insisted on tagging him as a Federalist. In this rancorous atmosphere, he was denied the political honeymoon usually reserved for new presidents and felt stranded between two extremes. “All the Federalists seem to be afraid to approve anybody but Washington,” he complained to Abigail. “The Jacobin papers damn with faint praise and undermine with misrepresentation and insinuation.”23

There was no moratorium on criticism of the outgoing president; the Aurora unleashed a frontal attack on Washington, condemning him for having “cankered the principles of republicanism in an enlightened people.”24 In desperation, Benjamin Franklin Bache dredged up the earliest controversy that had shadowed Washington’s life: the 1754 Jumonville incident in which, Bache charged, Washington had “fired on a flag of truce; killed the officer in the act of reading a summons under the sanction of such a flag”; then “signed a capitulation in which the killing of that officer and his men was acknowledged as an act of assassination.”25 Responding to this abuse, the Gazette of the United States decried the “hellish pleasure” that Bache took in defaming Washington.26 “That a man who was born in America and is part of the great family of the United States should thus basely aim his poisoned dagger at the FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY,” scolded the Gazette, “is sorely to be lamented.”27