Washington: A Life (105 page)

Washington renewed an important friendship, formed during the First Continental Congress, with the wealthy, laconic Samuel Powel, a former mayor of Philadelphia, and his sophisticated, entrancing wife, Elizabeth (or Eliza). The Powels inhabited a three-story rococo mansion on Third Street that was so tastefully opulent that the Chevalier de Chastellux had praised this “handsome house … adorned with fine prints and some very good copies of the best Italian paintings.”
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But during the First Continental Congress, the puritanical John Adams had recoiled from the “sinful feast” he attended there, which had everything that “could delight the eye or allure the taste.”
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George Washington had no such trouble with the regal atmosphere at the Powels’ and was a frequent guest at their soirées.

An immensely charming, erudite, and witty woman, who wrote with literary flair and elegance, Elizabeth Willing Powel eclipsed her stolid husband and could have held her own in the spirited repartee of any European salon. The daughter as well as the wife of a mayor, this socially proficient and politically opinionated hostess loved to flirt with powerful men, and George Washington fell under her spell. A portrait by Matthew Pratt shows an extremely handsome older woman whose low-cut yellow dress and purple sash amply display her voluptuous figure. She looks calm and poised, with a penetrating eye and a slightly melancholy air after the death of her two sons. Elizabeth Powel provided virtually the only instance in his later years when Washington befriended a couple but was much closer with the wife. She revered Washington, whom she saw on a par with the loftiest heroes of antiquity. As with George William and Sally Fairfax, Washington was careful to stay on good terms with Samuel Powel and equally careful to include Martha Washington in the friendship. Nevertheless, his friendship with Elizabeth Powel was his only deep, direct one with a woman who qualified as an intellectual peer and treated him as such. In this relationship Washington escaped the narrow bounds of marriage, met Powel alone for teas, and corresponded with her. We have no evidence that their closeness ever progressed beyond that, but if George Washington ever contemplated romance with another woman, it surely must have been Elizabeth Powel.

One of Samuel Powel’s hobbies was making silhouettes, and he got Washington to sit for one. It was a measure of Washington’s regard for his image that he faulted the silhouette for a small wattle sagging from his chin and asked Powel to redo the portrait. The drooping chin was duly excised from the finished product.

For all his mixing in high society, Washington was an extremely hardworking delegate at the convention. At some point before it started, he took the ideas for constitutional reform presented to him by Jay, Knox, and Madison and boiled them down into a handy digest. Back in 1776 he had delivered a comment on Virginia’s new constitution that shows how studiously he approached such work: “To form a new government requires infinite care and unbounded attention, for if the foundation is badly laid, the superstructure must be bad.”
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Because the entire Virginia delegation arrived on time, its members developed a powerful early cohesion. Headed by Governor Edmund Randolph, the distinguished group included Madison and George Mason; the latter informed his son that the hardworking Virginians met “two or three hours every day in order to form a proper correspondence of sentiments.”
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Their deliberations yielded the so-called Virginia Plan, spearheaded by Madison, which proposed for a tripartite government and proportional representation in both houses of Congress. Madison and Washington, who favored a vigorous central government, carried the day against objections from Randolph and Mason, making their strongly nationalist views the official opening position of the Virginia delegation.

On a rainy Friday, May 25, the convention obtained its seven-state quorum and began to meet officially. It had been decided that Franklin would nominate Washington as president. When the ailing Franklin was grounded by heavy rain, he asked Robert Morris to nominate Washington in his stead. (When Franklin finally did arrive at the sessions, he had to be carried aloft in a sedan chair, hoisted by four convicts from the Walnut Street jail.) The delegates appreciated Franklin’s magnanimous gesture, and Madison wrote that “the nomination came with particular grace from Pennsylvania, as Dr. Franklin alone could have been thought of as a competitor.”
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After being seconded by John Rutledge, Washington was unanimously elected the convention president, while Major William Jackson, who had been on General Lincoln’s wartime staff, became its secretary.

After Washington was chosen, Morris and Rutledge accompanied him to a tall wooden chair in front, placed on an elevated platform and adorned with a rising sun on its carved back. Perhaps to conjure up the spirit of 1776 or remind delegates of his military garb at the Second Continental Congress, Washington appeared in his old uniform. He made a short acceptance speech, full of vintage touches, including confessions of inadequacy and a plea for understanding if he failed—pretty much the same speech he made after every major appointment in his life. As recorded by Madison, Washington “reminded them of the novelty of the scene of business in which he was to act, lamented his want of [better qualifications], and claimed the indulgence of the house towards the involuntary errors which his inexperience might occasion.”
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The post of president raised Washington to a nonpartisan, nonspeaking role—ideal for his discreet nature. The Constitutional Convention was yet another situation where the need for national unity imposed a congenial silence upon him. It spared him the need to voice opinions or make speeches, enabling him to bridge divisions and restricting his lobbying to the social hours. He followed the debates closely and later said he “attentively heard and read every oral and printed information on both sides of the question that could be procured.”
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Occasionally he cast a vote, descending briefly from his Olympian perch, then resumed his high place. Most of the time he stood forth as a neutral arbiter and honest broker.

Although highly intelligent, Washington lacked a philosophical mind that could originate constitutional ideas. John Adams once observed that the founding generation had “been sent into life at a time when the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live,” but this particular brand of greatness eluded George Washington.
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It is hard to picture him springing to his feet in debate or remonstrating over an issue. He was doubtless content to be consigned to the sidelines and contributed little during the debates. At the same time he lent the proceedings his tacit blessing, allowing others to act as architects of the new order. He embodied the public excluded from the secret proceedings, and his mere presence reassured Americans that the delegates were striving for the public good instead of hatching a secret cabal behind closed doors.

As convention president, Washington assumed a dignified and sometimes severe air. William Pierce of Georgia recounted how one day a delegate dropped a copy of some proposed resolutions. This paper was brought to Washington, who was appalled that someone had so carelessly threatened the secrecy of the deliberations. He promptly rose to chastise the delegates and, as always, had a knack for projecting suppressed wrath: “Gentlemen, I am sorry to find that some one member of this body has been so neglectful of the secrets of the convention as to drop in the State House a copy of their proceedings, which by accident was picked up and delivered to me this morning. I must entreat [the] gentlemen to be more careful, lest our transactions get into the newspapers and disturb the public repose by premature speculations.” He tossed the paper onto the table before him. “I do not know whose paper it is, but there it is—let him who owns it take it.”
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Washington donned his hat and strode angrily from the room. Momentarily unable to find his own copy, Pierce crept to the rostrum with some trepidation and was relieved to see someone else’s handwriting on the paper. In the end, nobody had the nerve to claim it and confront Washington. The vignette shows how Washington functioned as the conscience of the convention and could make this room full of dignitaries feel like guilty schoolboys, summoned to the headmaster’s office for a reprimand.

Washington paid such strict heed to the convention’s secrecy rule that, even in his diary, he refrained from recording developments, limiting himself to saying, “Attended convention as usual.” Otherwise he drew a discreet veil across the proceedings, dwelling on his social activities. In correspondence, however, he drummed up support for the convention’s work, telling Jefferson that the central government had virtually ceased to function and that “unless a remedy is soon applied, anarchy and confusion will inevitably ensue.”
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A story told of Washington at Philadelphia that may be apocryphal highlights several truths about his relations with his colleagues. One evening some Continental Army veterans were discussing the general’s aloofness and the way he communicated to people that he didn’t like to be touched or treated familiarly. Gouverneur Morris, dismissing this as nonsense, said he could be as familiar with Washington as with anyone else. Alexander Hamilton proposed a wager: he would buy dinner for a dozen delegates if Morris strode up to Washington, gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder, and said, “My dear General, how happy I am to see you look so well.”
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Morris tried the experiment—and Washington turned and fixed him with an icy glare that made Morris regret his error.

The convention sessions, which ran from ten A.M. to four P.M. daily, left considerable time for delegates to tour the city. Wherever Washington went, he was treated as a head of state, and people flocked after him. “In 1775, we beheld him at the head of the armies of America, arresting the progress of British tyranny,” intoned the
Pennsylvania Gazette
. “In the year 1787, we behold him at the head of a chosen band of patriots and heroes, arresting the progress of American anarchy.”
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When a local resident, Jacob Hiltzheimer, tried to sneak a peek at the hero at close range, he found him swallowed up in large crowds. “In the evening [of June 4],” he wrote, “my wife and I went to Market Street gate to see that great and good man, General Washington. We had a full view of him and Major [William] Jackson, who walked with him, but the number of people who followed him on all sides was astonishing.”
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Perhaps hoping to flee the crowds, Washington rose early in the morning and took brisk rides with his slave and coachman Giles. Spotted all over Philadelphia with his slaves, Washington made sure they were suitably dressed for the national stage, especially Billy Lee. Two days after arriving, Washington went on a special shopping expedition to get soap powder, a puff, and a black silk handkerchief for Lee; a month later he bought him two pairs of stockings and a pair of breeches. The chief consideration was surely that Lee should reflect credit on his master, but one wonders whether Washington felt any extra gratitude for the services Lee had rendered in the Continental Army. It would also be intriguing to know whether Lee, Paris, and Giles lingered outside the State House as Washington and the other delegates debated inside the meaning of freedom and the fate of slavery in America.

FOR MOST OF THE CONVENTION, Washington sat in splendid isolation at the front. On May 29, when Edmund Randolph presented the Virginia Plan, the convention reverted to a committee of the whole, and Nathaniel Gorham temporarily supplanted Washington in the presidential chair. After June 19 Washington resumed his place in the high seat that previewed his future status in the federal government. In the early days in Philadelphia he was heartened by the seeming harmony among the delegates, telling George Augustine that “the sentiments of the different members seem to accord more than I expected they would, as far as we have yet gone.”
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The general contours of the system that Jay and Madison had sketched out for him—a tripartite government, with a bicameral legislature—enlisted general support. Nonetheless, sharp clashes soon emerged, especially on the explosive issue of representation. On June 6 James Madison spoke in favor of direct election to the House of Representatives, based on proportional representation—a position supported by the populous states—and conjured up a vision of a broad, pluralistic republic. In mid-June William Paterson of New Jersey, champion of the smaller states, countered with a plan that foresaw states represented equally in Congress. Though mute on the podium, Washington supported Madison’s view.

Fueled by the apprehensions of smaller states, the amity celebrated by Washington in early June had crumbled by the end of the month. On June 30, the weather having grown sweltering, Gunning Bedford of Delaware delivered a hot-tempered tirade, aimed at the larger states, demonstrating just how bruising the discourse had become. “I do not, gentlemen, trust you,” he told them. He even hinted at secession, saying apropos of the smaller states that “sooner than be ruined, there are foreign powers who will take us by the hand.”
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Washington and Madison gazed in dismay as their worst fears of disunion threatened to materialize before their eyes. In early July a disappointed Alexander Hamilton returned temporarily to New York on business and dropped a pessimistic note to Washington, saying how “seriously and deeply distressed” he was by the convention’s divisive sniping: “I fear that we shall let slip the golden opportunity of rescuing the American empire from disunion, anarchy, and misery.”
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Hostile to new federal powers, the two other New York delegates, Robert Yates and John Lansing, Jr., left the convention by July 5, never to return.

Although he held his tongue during the debates, Washington was never a neutral party, and the interminable squabbling only reinforced his view that the country needed a potent central government to override the selfish ambitions of local politicians. The man associated with so many triumphs shuddered at the prospect of being associated with public failure. “I
almost
despair of seeing a favorable issue to … the convention and do therefore repent having had any agency in the business,” he informed Hamilton on July 10, chastising “narrow-minded politicians … under the influence of local views.”
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In a gentle, almost fatherly way, he begged Hamilton, the prodigal son, to return to the fold. “I am sorry you went away,” he said. “I wish you were back. The crisis is equally important and alarming and no opposition under such circumstances should discourage exertions till the signature is fixed.”
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