the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt sixteen)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Old men are naturally suspicious, see plots. And it would require almost more than the fortitude of a saint not to be affected by the type of attacks which were made on Washington and his administration. Not only had his behavior been condemned because of entirely unfounded distrust of his motives, but what he did had been distorted; and not only had his acts been distorted, but he had been assailed by lies which the perpetrators often knew were total likes. And the vilification appeared in newspapers of national circulation that were semi-official organs of the Republican party.

As long as he had been in office he had tried, although towards the end with sometimes stumbling feet, to walk the path he had charted for himself, the path of complete neutrality between factions at home and belligerents abroad. Once he was out of office and intended to remain so for the rest of his earthly career, moderation ceased to be a matter of state. He permitted himself to espouse extremes. He became at last what he had for so long been accused of being: devotedly pro-Federalist. Since he doubted the intentions of all others, he communicated exclusively with Federalists. He could no longer palliate the efforts of the French government to interfere in American politics; he had become angrily anti-French. In his denunciations of French attacks on American commerce, he no longer pointed out that Britain was also guilty. He came to believe that the leaders of the opposition, patriots who had been his coadjutors and friends, were eager to make the United States a vassal of France: might indeed cooperate with a French invasion.

A French invasion! In 1798, that seemed possible.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt fifteen)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

During May, 1796, Madison wrote Monroe in cipher, “It is now generally understood that the President will retire, and Jefferson is the object on one side, Adams apparently on the other.” Although the Federalists were worried—“If a storm gather,” Hamilton asked Washington, “how can you retreat?”—Washington wrote firmly that he would “close my public life on March 4 [1797], after which no consideration under heaven that I can foresee shall again draw me from the walks of private life.”

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt thirteen)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

In another way, which Washington could not foresee, his image was much more grievously damaged. A painful physical disability was being grafted onto his legend so that in the minds of future Americans his attribute—like Saint Catherine’s wheel or Saint Sebastian’s arrows—became ill-fitting false teeth.

Washington did wear clumsy dentures. Only one of his own teeth was in his mouth in 1789 when he presided over the capital in New York. That tooth soon vanished. Washington wore terrifying-looking contraptions, made of substances like hippopotamus ivory. The upper and lower jaws, that were hinged together at the back of the mouth, opened and closed with the assistance of springs. He himself complained that they distorted his lips. However, as he could command the best dentists, he was probably no more disfigured than was then common among the elderly and prosperous.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt thirteen)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

No one then understood how yellow fever was transmitted. Unsuspected by science, mosquitoes took over Philadelphia. In August, 1793, the disease moved on insect wings down the streets from the waterfront, creating the most murderous epidemic in all American history. Hamilton was soon believed to be dying. Those still-living inhabitants who had not fled the city, cowered indoors, the principal movement on the streets being of open carts driven by blacks (Negroes were considered immune) on which sprawled corpses being hurried to the pits which had taken over from the glutted graveyards.

The presidential office, Washington wrote, was “in a manner blockaded by the disorder,” yet word came to him that his presence in the city was one of the few things that gave inhabitants hope. Although he had announced a date for his departure for a Mount Vernon holiday, he decided to remain. However, Martha could not be persuaded to leave without him. Unwilling to expose her and the children to the contagion, he agreed to leave, but not one day sooner than he had previously intended.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt twelve)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Morris was brilliant: the actual wording of the Constitution came from his pen. But Morris was sarcastic to those he considered more stupid than he, and possessed of such a reputation for licentiousness that the leg he had lost in a carriage accident was generally considered to have come off as a result of his jumping out of a lady’s window as her husband came in at the door. He was an inveterate prankster. Those who believed Washington was always proper and grave could not understand why he was intimate with such a man. They did know that Washington relished scapegraces who kept him amused.

As a financier intimately associated with the Hamiltonian circle, Morris belonged to the pro-British faction. Yet, as Washington’s unofficial representative in London, he had followed without deviation the interests of the United States, making reports Washington had used in his efforts to persuade Congress into commercial retaliation. Now, although Washington’s prestige carried the confirmation through, Morris was strongly opposed in the Senate.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt eleven)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Oceans of ink have been spilled in describing the mounting conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton—and, in the process, the fundamentals have tended to become drowned.

Most confusing to the record has been the Marxist interpretation that arose in the 1930’s, which envisions the controversy as an example of “class warfare” waged between Hamilton as a champion of privilege, and Jefferson, who desired laws that would help the underprivileged. This attributes twentieth-century issues to the eighteenth. Those who wished through government action to support the poor in opposition to the rich were in those days known as “levelers.” Far from being a leveler, Jefferson boasted that the nation’s “mass of weight and wealth” supported his ideas. Had a welfare state been thought of during Washington’s Presidency, it would surely have been less sympathetic to Jefferson than Hamilton, since it involved so great an increase in governmental power. The controversy which embroiled the two champions was not basically concerned with the haves and the have-nots. It was between rival economic systems, each of which was aimed at generating its own men of property.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt ten)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

When Congress acted to establish the great departments, it was argued that the provision that the senators must approve the appointments implied that they should also insist on the power to veto dismissal. Such a provision would, by allowing the senators to keep in office cabinet ministers with whom they agreed but who opposed the policies of the President, reduce the President to a figurehead similar to a constitutional monarch. Thus the issue became a rallying ground for all who distrusted a strong executive.

Washington remained silent, but his intimate collaborator, Madison, persuaded the House to vote against empowering the Senate to veto dismissals. The Senate was not so easily persuaded. There was a tie vote there, which the presiding officer, Vice President Adams, broke to preserve the authority of the executive. Who can doubt that, had the President been less popular and trusted than Washington, the decision would have gone the other way, changing the whole direction of the American government.