Signing Their Rights Away (25 page)

On the very first day, Washington was elected the convention’s president. He took a seat at the head of the hall and apologized to those assembled.
I am not a politician
, he basically said, keeping a tight grip on his false teeth.
I lack experience, but I’ll do what is asked of me
.

The men were in awe. Some had never seen him up close and were tickled to be in his presence. He need not have worried. He had them at “huzzah.”

Washington didn’t say much during the debates and steered clear of the legal arguments. But he was there every day, sitting in his regal chair at the head of the room. A nationalist who favored a strong government, he could have thrown himself into the arguments, and he knew the men would have forgiven his lack
of legalese. But he refrained. He feared that doing so would have degraded his stature. Still, he no doubt worked miracles on reluctant members after hours, when he socialized his way through the ballrooms and taverns of Philadelphia. He also tried to convince delegates not to leave, or to return if they had. In a note to his former soldier and protégé Alexander Hamilton, he affectionately wrote, “I am sorry you went away—I wish you were back.”

Not all of his communications were as sweet. In one instance, Washington discovered that one of the delegates had dropped a critical document—a copy of the Virginia Plan, which was supposed to be top secret—on his way out of the state house. The next day, Washington stood and sternly lectured the delegates about their pledge to respect the confidentiality of the proceedings, lest rumors doom the convention. He flung the papers on the desk dramatically. “I don’t know whose paper it is, but here it is. Let him who owns it take it.” The delegates sucked air and stared, riveted to their places. In a huff, the former general grabbed his hat and stormed out of the chambers. The papers lay unclaimed.

It never happened again.

In September, after the delegates had signed the Constitution, Washington’s signature at the top of the document went a long way toward convincing Americans that they should ratify it. And no one was surprised when he was chosen to be the first president under the nation’s new government. Once again his desire to be left in peace at his home in Mount Vernon was not to be. Elected in 1788, he was forced to borrow £10,000 in spending money or he never would have been able to travel to his inauguration and properly set up a second household as the nation’s first chief executive.

Washington took his oath of office in 1789 and served two terms. He backed Alexander Hamilton in the establishment of a banking system, the assumption of state debts, and new tariffs to boost federal revenue; disagreements over these policies triggered the birth of political parties. Washington often had to play the peacemaker
between his secretary of state Thomas Jefferson and Treasury czar Alexander Hamilton. When the Whiskey Rebellion broke out, Washington took command of troops sent to quell the uprising against an unpopular tax on hooch. This is the only time in history that a U.S. president led an army while in office.

Throughout the world and the nation, Washington was still perceived as the great liberator. He traveled around the country so that people could get a look at him. When the French stormed the Bastille on the eve of their revolution, they presented Washington the key to that notorious jail, a symbol of liberation of the political prisoners long held inside. But the irony is that, throughout his life, Washington owned slaves and made efforts to keep them as long as possible. During the early years of the presidency, when the federal government was located in Philadelphia, nine slaves worked for the president and first lady in their home in that city. At the time, any enslaved person who had lived in Philadelphia for six months was granted freedom. The Washingtons purposely rotated their staff so that no one slave would reach that critical half-year mark. Today, the site of the Washingtons’ Philadelphia home, near the Liberty Bell, has been preserved as an African American heritage site.

In 1796, Washington finally got what he longed for: the chance to be an ordinary citizen once again and to return home for good. But his time at ease was brief. About three years after he left office, he fell ill with a bad cold and sore throat after working outside in snowy weather. The illness blossomed into a massive, suffocating infection that refused to abate. During his life, the grand general had beaten tuberculosis, smallpox, malaria, diphtheria, pneumonia, tonsil infections, dysentery, and bouts of dark depression. But this time he couldn’t seem to shake what ailed him. Using leeches, doctors bled him of eighty ounces of blood, or 35 percent of all the blood in the human body. What a shock: he got worse, not better. Sensing the end, Washington summoned his lawyers, tended to his affairs, and made his secretary promise that he would not be buried until he lay
dead three whole days. (George had once “miraculously” revived a slave who was presumed dead; he knew that people could sometimes look dead but, in fact, had not shuffled off this mortal coil.) On December 14, 1799, he died. The father of his country was sixty-six years old. He left behind a grief-stricken wife and nation as well as an estate worth more than a half million dollars. By the terms of his will, his slaves were to be freed when Martha died, which she did in 1806. Both tombs rest on the grounds of Mount Vernon.

The Underachieving Signer

BORN
: 1732

DIED
: August 31, 1800

AGE AT SIGNING
: About 55

PROFESSION
: Judge

BURIED
: Bruton Parish Churchyard, Williamsburg, Virginia

This book features plenty of stories about the men who shaped the Constitution—men who argued passionately, men with great ideas, men who worked tirelessly for the good of the nation, staying up until all hours to improve the future of the fledgling United States.

Sadly, John Blair was not one of those men. In fact, he may have been the only signer to (1) remain absolutely silent throughout the convention and (2) abstain from serving on a single committee. About the only thing he did do was to sign his name to the final document.

Blair was born in Williamsburg, Virginia, to a wealthy and connected family. His father, John Sr., was a successful merchant and a major political player in Williamsburg, then the state capital. John
Sr. also served as president of the governor’s council, or panel of advisors, and as acting governor as well. For a time, Blair’s father owned Raleigh Tavern, a legendary meeting place for Virginia patriots. Washington was a regular patron of the watering hole, and the nonimportation agreement against Britain was drafted on its tables. As nineteenth-century journalist Benjamin Lossing described it, “The Raleigh Tavern and the Apollo Room are to Virginia, relatively, what Faneuil Hall is to Massachusetts.”

The red-headed Blair’s political pedigree and advantages led him to study law at prestigious Middle Temple in London, then a popular choice for well-to-do colonists. While there, he met and married Jean Balfour, and the couple went on to have two daughters. When he returned home to Williamsburg, he joined the bar and started his own practice.

Blair’s introduction into politics came in 1766, via the House of Burgesses, where he held the seat designated for the College of William and Mary. He didn’t support every item on the revolutionary agenda and probably seemed mild compared to stauncher Virginia patriots, like Patrick Henry. In fact, Blair opposed Henry’s resolutions to denounce the notorious Stamp Act.

But it wasn’t long before Blair had changed his mind. When the royal governor, Lord Botetourt, dissolved the House of Burgesses in 1769 as punishment for their protest against acts of the British government, Blair’s opinions became more firmly aligned with those of his Virginia compatriots, Henry and Washington. However, the exiled burgesses would not be dissuaded. Despite their disbandment, they held their own meetings at Raleigh Tavern; it was during this time that they signed the agreement boycotting the importation of British goods until the taxes were repealed. Later in the year, they were called back into session by Botetourt. That same year the British repealed the Townshend Acts, which levied taxes on glass, lead, paints, and paper, but did not lift the most lucrative tax, on tea.

Though he never participated in the Continental Congress or fight during the Revolutionary War, Blair served on the Privy
Council, an advisory group, for his state’s first governor, Patrick Henry. In 1778, Blair advanced from lawyer to judge, serving first on the general court of Virginia and eventually rising to the post of chief justice. He then moved on to the Virginia High Court of Chancery, where he served alongside famed legal scholar (and Declaration of Independence signer) George Wythe. Blair was also a member of Virginia’s first court of appeals.

Despite a couple notable absences from Virginia’s delegation to the Constitutional Convention in 1787—Jefferson was busy in Paris; Patrick Henry declined to attend because he “smelt a rat”—the group was an impressive one. George Mason, George Wythe, then-governor Edmund Randolph, James Madison, George Washington—all were big names with equally large revolutionary reps. Yet, despite the enormity of the state, both in population and in revolutionary clout, only three men ultimately signed the Constitution for Virginia: Madison, Washington, and little-known Blair; the other four did not sign.

Despite his attendance at the convention, Blair was all but invisible. He made no speeches and served on no committees. About his only memorable moment came at the end, when he was traveling home with George Washington and one of the horses pulling their carriage fell through the bottom of an old bridge. Had the other horse gone through as well, Washington wrote, he “would have taken the carriage along with him.” Fortunately, the men escaped unharmed and headed back home, where the battle for ratification awaited.

As a member of the York County delegation, Blair attended Virginia’s ratifying convention in support of the Constitution. The state barely passed, thanks to strong anti-Federalist feelings, many embodied by the fiery Patrick Henry, who declared: