Washington [242]
On December 23 Washington took a brief respite from his incessant labors and traveled to Philadelphia to confer with Congress about the prospective Canadian invasion. Perhaps in preparation for this trip, he ordered new clothing for Billy Lee—two coats, two waistcoats, and a pair of breeches—that would do credit to both slave and master in the city’s tony salons. Washington had already asked Martha to meet him in Philadelphia and she had eagerly awaited him there since late November. They would celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary in the city that January. The Pennsylvania Packet noted with gratitude that this sojourn was “the only relief” Washington had “enjoyed from service since he first entered into it,” yet the trip would prove anything but a vacation. Staying at the Chestnut Street home of Henry Laurens, Washington got a view of civilian life that would revolt him with an indelible vision of private greed and profligacy. Like soldiers throughout history, he was jarred by the contrast between the austerity of the army and the riches being earned on the home front through lucrative war contracts.
Ever since Valley Forge, Washington had lamented the profiteering that deprived his men of critically needed supplies, and he remained contemptuous of those who rigged and monopolized markets, branding them “the pests of society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America,” as he erupted in one fire-breathing letter. “I would to God that one of the most atrocious of each state was hung in gibbets upon a gallows five times as high as the one prepared by Haman.”24 Because of hoarding and price manipulation, among other reasons, the mismanaged currency had lost 90 percent of its value in recent months. As he contemplated these problems, Washington was also distraught over popular disunity and wished that the nation could move beyond factional disputes, telling Joseph Reed that “happy, happy, thrice happy the country if such was the government of it, but, alas! we are not to expect that the path is to be strewed w[i]t[h] flowers.”25
Broadening his critique of the political situation, Washington traced the source of the nation’s problems to the very structure of the Articles of Confederation. Deprived of taxing power, Congress had to rely on requests to the states. Instead of dealing with such structural defects, the legislature had deteriorated into partisan backbiting. “Party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day,” he wrote, while the “great and accumulated debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit” were “postponed from day to day, from week to week, as if our affairs wore the most promising aspect.”26 One can see here the seeds of Washington’s later version of federalism, shaped by the fear that the public would become so wedded to local government that the national government would be left weak and ineffective in consequence.
Washington trod a fine line in dealing with Congress, finding himself in an inherently contradictory position. He had far more power than any congressman and felt it his duty to make his opinions known. On the other hand, ideology required the military leader to submit to the wishes of Congress and acknowledge civilian control. The situation demanded exquisite tact from Washington, who could exploit his fame only up to a certain point. This balancing act explains why