Founding Brothers (42 page)

37.
The Fairfax and Tucker plans are conveniently reprinted in Nash,
Race and Revolution,
146–165. The best analysis of the components contained in all gradual emancipation plans coming out of Virginia is Jordan,
White Over Black,
555–567.

38.
Robinson,
Slavery in the Structure of American Politics,
6–8, offers the most specific economic estimates and the clearest negative judgment, concluding that “slavery could not have been eliminated by political processes during the founding period.” Nash,
Race and Revolution,
5–6, 20, offers no economic evidence that emancipation was feasible, but it assumes the failure to take decisive action was moral and political, emphasizing the lack of leadership in the North, thereby implying the costs were not prohibitive. Freehling, “The Founding Fathers, Conditional Antislavery, and the Nonradicalism of the American Revolution,” 76–84, takes a more circumspect middle course, providing no systematic economic argument but suggesting that the combination of political, economic, and racial factors converged to limit the options and virtually assure that slavery would persist. For Jefferson’s backward evolution from the vanguard to the rear guard of the antislavery movement, see Ellis,
American Sphinx,
146–152.

39.
The Tucker plan, for example, would have freed only female slaves at twenty-eight years of age, then their children when they reached the same age. (The gradual emancipation plans adopted in New York and New Jersey had analogous provisions, designed to stagger the effect of liberation as well as the costs.) Tucker emphasized the time delay as a central feature of his plan, which was cost-free to the present generation. He did not provide specific estimates of the compensation levels, and my own estimate of the size of the sinking fund, about $50 million, is no more than an educated guess. Nevertheless, my estimate is designed to expose the realistic economic parameters implicit in the most practical of the available plans. Perhaps there should have been a sliding compensation scale that encouraged earlier emancipations by rewarding slave owners who acted before the legal deadline.

40.
Freehling, “The Founding Fathers, Conditional Antislavery, and the Nonradicalism of the American Revolution,” 83, makes the same point even more assertively: “no such color-blind, ethnically-blind, gender-blind social order had ever existed, not on these shores, not anywhere else.”

41.
P. J. Staudenraus,
The African Colonization Movement,
1816
–
1865
(New York, 1961), is the standard history. See also George M. Fredrickson,
The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny,
1817
–
1914
(New York, 1971). Of all the prominent statesmen at the time, Madison gave the African option the most thought. For an elegant summary of this thinking, see Drew McCoy,
The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy
(Cambridge, 1989), 279–283.

42.
The great Franklin biography remains Carl Van Doren,
Benjamin Franklin
(New York, 1938). The best recent biography is Esmond Wright,
Franklin of Philadelphia
(Cambridge, 1986). For Franklin’s contribution as a scientist, see I. Bernard Cohen,
Science and the Founding Fathers
(New York, 1995), 135–195. The classic effort to undermine Franklin’s historical reputation is D. H. Lawrence,
Studies in Classic American Literature
(New York, 1924), 15–27. On the changing images of Franklin, see Nian-Sheng Huang,
Benjamin Franklin in American Thought and Culture
(Philadelphia, 1994). A perceptive appraisal of Franklin’s character emerges in Robert Middlekauf,
Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies
(Berkeley, 1996). And these scholarly sources are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. For Jefferson’s ranking of Franklin as next to Washington, with all others “on the second line,” see Jefferson to William Carmichael, 12 August 1788, Boyd, vol. 13, 502.

43.
For Franklin’s early career in Pennsylvania politics, see William Hanna,
Benjamin Franklin and Pennsylvania Politics
(Stanford, 1964). For his English phase, see Verner W. Crane,
Benjamin Franklin’s Letters to the Press,
1758
–
1775
(Chapel Hill, 1950). For his Parisian phase, see Claude-Ann Lopez,
Mon Cher Papa: Franklin and the Ladies of Paris
(New Haven, 1990).

44.
Records,
vol. 3, 361, for Franklin’s antislavery petition at the Constitutional Convention. Tench Coxe was the member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society who urged him to withdraw the petition on the grounds that “it would be a very improper season & place to hazard the Application” (quoted in Davis,
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
321).

45.
Albert H. Smyth, ed.,
The Writings of Benjamin Franklin,
10 vols. (New York, 1907), vol. 10, 87–91.

46.
First Congress,
vol. 12, 809–810, 812–822, 825–827.

47.
Of all the prominent statesmen who chose to regard silence as the highest form of leadership at this moment, Washington is the most intriguing, in part because he was the largest slave owner (over three hundred slaves lived on his several plantations), and in part because he, perhaps alone, possessed the stature to have altered the political context if he had chosen to do so. The Washington quotation is from Washington to John Mercer, 9 September 1786, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed.,
The Writings of George Washington,
39 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1931–1944), vol. 29, 5. See also Fritz Hirschfeld,
George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal
(St. Louis, 1997). For a conversation with the editors of the modern edition of the Washington papers on this topic, see Sarah Booth Conroy,
Washington Post,
February 16, 1998. Of course, Washington was the supreme example in the founding generation of what John Adams called “the gift of silence.” In hindsight, this was one occasion when one could only have wished that the gift had failed him.

48.
Madison to Edmund Randolph, 21 March 1790; Madison to Benjamin Rush, 20 March 1790, Rutland, vol. 13, 109–110.

49.
Madison to Rush, 20 March 1790; Thomas Pleasants, Jr., to Madison, 10 July 1790; Madison to Robert Pleasants, 30 October 1791, Rutland, vol. 13, 109, 271, vol. 14, 117. See also McColley,
Slavery in Jeffersonian Virginia,
182.

50.
Madison to Rush, 20 March 1790, Rutland, vol. 13, 109. The shrewdest assessment of Madison’s inherently equivocal thinking about slavery is McCoy,
The Last of the Fathers,
217–322.

51.
Madison to Randolph, 21 March 1790, Rutland, vol. 13, 110.

52.
First Congress,
vol. 12, 832–844. John Pemberton to James Pemberton, 16 March 1790, quoted in Nash,
Race and Revolution,
41.

53.
First Congress,
vol. 3, 338–339, for the debate and vote on the committee report.

54.
Ibid., 340–341.

55.
Ibid., 341, for the final version of the resolution. Madison’s comment is from
First Congress,
vol. 12, 842. The Washington quotation is from Washington to David Stuart, 28 March 1790, Fitzpatrick, vol. 31, 28–30.

56.
In the petition of 1792, see
Annals of Congress,
2d Congress, 2d Session, 728–731. For the Webster comment, see Daniel Webster to John Bolton, 17 May 1833, Charles Wiltse, ed.,
The Papers of Daniel Webster,
7 vols. (Hanover, N.H., 1974–1986), vol. 3, 252–253.

57.
First Congress,
vol. 3, 375.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE FAREWELL

1.
On the Washington mythology, three books provide excellent surveys: Marcus Cunliffe,
George Washington, Man and Monument
(Boston, 1958); Paul Longmore,
The Invention of George Washington
(Berkeley, 1988); Barry Schwartz,
The Making of an American Symbol
(New York, 1987).

2.
Longmore,
The Invention,
24; Schwartz,
The Making of an American Symbol,
127; Richard Brookhiser,
Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington
(New York, 1996), 22–23.

3.
Albert H. Smyth, ed.,
The Writings of Benjamin Franklin,
10 vols. (New York, 1907), vol. 10, 111–112.

4.
Jefferson to Washington, 23 May 1792, Boyd, vol. 22, 123; Schwartz,
The Making of an American Symbol,
38–39; Gary Wills,
Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment
(New York, 1984).

5.
Victor H. Paltsits, ed.,
Washington’s Farewell Address
(New York, 1935), 2–3.

6.
Matthew Spalding and Patrick J. Garrity,
A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character
(Lanham, Md., 1996) is the most recent and comprehensive scholarly study. On the historiography, see Burton J. Kaufman,
Washington’s Farewell Address: The View from the Twentieth Century
(Chicago, 1969). The account in Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick,
The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic,
1787
–
1800
(New York, 1993), 489–528, provides the best incisive summary of the larger implications of Washington’s retirement within the political culture of the 1790s.

7.
Spalding and Garrity,
A Sacred Union,
45–48; Paltsits, ed.,
Washington’s Farewell Address,
308–309.

8.
Syrett, vol. 20, 169–173, for an excellent editorial note on Hamilton’s role; Paltsits, ed.,
Washington’s Farewell Address,
30–31; Smith, vol. 2, 940, for the Ames quotation; Madison to Monroe, 14 May 1796, Smith, vol. 2, 941. James Thomas Flexner,
George Washington: Anguish and Farewell,
1793
–
1799
(Boston, 1972), 292–307.

9.
John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 January 1797, quoted in Smith, vol. 2, 895. For Jefferson’s version of the Ciceronian posture, see Joseph J. Ellis,
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1997), 139–141.

10.
Schwartz,
The Making of an American Symbol,
18–19, for an excellent physical description of Washington, which also includes the quotation from Rush. Brookhiser,
Founding Father,
114–115, is also excellent on Washington’s physical presence. Mantle Fielding,
Gilbert Stuart’s Portraits of Washington
(Philadelphia, 1933), 77–80, offers the best contemporary description of Washington’s physical features as rendered by an artist whose eye was trained to notice such things. Washington to Robert Lewis, 26 June 1796, Fitzpatrick, vol. 35, 99, provides Washington’s own testimony on aging.

11.
Adams to Benjamin Rush, 22 April 1812, Alexander Biddle, ed.,
Old Family Letters
(Philadelphia, 1892), 161–173, 375–381, for Adams on Washington and “the gift of taciturnity.”

12.
The Jefferson quotation is from his “Anas” in Ford, vol. 1, 168. In the same vein, see Jefferson to Madison, 9 June 1793, Smith, vol. 2, 780–782. For the manifestations of physical decline, see Flexner,
George Washington,
156–157.

13.
Aurora,
17 October 1796.

14.
Ibid., 6 March 1796; Schwartz,
The Making of an American Symbol,
68, 99; John Keane,
Tom Paine: A Political Life
(Boston, 1995), 430–452.

15.
Washington to David Humphreys, 12 June 1796, Fitzpatrick, vol. 35, 91–92.

16.
The newspaper quotation is quoted in Douglas S. Freeman,
George Washington: A Biography,
7 vols. (New York, 1948–1957), vol. 7, 321. On Washington’s royal style, see especially Schwartz,
The Making of an American Symbol,
48–61.

17.
The most insightful contemporary commentator on Washington’s unique and highly paradoxical status was John Adams, who recognized the utter necessity of a singular leader to focus the national government, and who simultaneously recognized the dangers inherent in making Washington superhuman. The most explicit discussion of this dilemma occurs in the letters Adams wrote to Benjamin Rush soon after his own retirement. See
Spur,
185–186.

18.
The best synthesis of the different scholarly interpretations of the Farewell Address is Arthur A. Markowitz, “Washington’s Farewell and the Historians,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography,
94 (1970): 173–191. See especially, Felix Gilbert,
To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy
(Princeton, 1961).

19.
The most incisive account of Washington’s dramatic sense of departure is Wills,
Cincinnatus,
3–16.

20.
For his speech to the army, then his address to the Congress upon resigning, see
Writings,
542–545, 547–550. For the remark by George III, see Wills,
Cincinnatus,
13.

21.
The two outstanding scholarly books on the subject are Don Higginbotham,
George Washington and the American Military Tradition
(Athens, Ga., 1985), and Charles Royster,
A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character
(Chapel Hill, 1979).

22.
Washington to John Barrister, 21 April 1778, Fitzpatrick, vol. 6, 107–108.

23.
The decision to execute André was Washington’s most unpopular decision during the war and generated a spirited correspondence. See
Writings,
387–390.

24.
Washington to Henry Laurens, 14 November 1778, Fitzpatrick, vol. 13, 254–257. The significance of this observation was emphasized by Edmund S. Morgan in his biographical essay on Washington in
The Meaning of Independence
(New York, 1976), 47–48.