Washington [358]
Complicating his attendance in Philadelphia was that he had already declined to attend the triennial meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati, which by an extraordinary coincidence was also slated for May 1787 in Philadelphia. He had just sent out a mailing to members, explaining that he would neither attend nor stand for reelection as president. It irked him that many state chapters had voted down his proposed reforms, especially the one banning the hereditary provision. He had wanted to remain with the organization long enough to dispel any speculation that he had repudiated its principles. Now that the dissent had died down, he thought it an opportune moment to extricate himself. In declining the invitation, he also cited the press of private business and “the present imbecility of my health, occasioned by a violent attack of the fever and ague, succeeded by rheumatic pains (to which till of late I have been an entire stranger).”2
If Washington used his health problems as an excuse, he didn’t conjure them from thin air. In late August 1786 he had contracted a “fever and ague” that lasted for two weeks. Since Dr. Craik prescribed the bark of the cinchona tree, a natural source of quinine, one suspects a recurrence of the malaria that had pestered him as a young soldier. Despite early illnesses, the younger Washington had been mostly a picture of ruddy health. Now as aches and pains invaded his body, he was losing his youthful grace, and he complained to Madison of feeling his rheumatic pains “very sensibly.”3 These pains became so debilitating that he couldn’t “raise my hand to my head or turn myself in bed.”4 By April 1787, to counter this sharp pain, he had to immobilize his arm in a sling. He went from having a boundless sense of health to feeling his age abruptly—what he called “descending the hill”—and may have wondered whether he possessed the necessary fund of energy for the momentous political challenges ahead.5 Washington may also have worried anew about his poor genetic endowment after his favorite brother, John Augustine, yet another short-lived Washington male, died suddenly in early January from what Washington called “a fit of gout in the head.” 6
On November 18 Washington explained to Madison that, having spurned the Cincinnati meeting, he couldn’t attend the Constitutional Convention without being caught in an embarrassing lie, “giving offense to a very respectable and deserving part of the community—the late officers of the American Army.”7 Were it not for this dilemma, he said, he would certainly attend an event so vital to the national welfare. He wanted to be true to the principles of the Revolution, but he also wanted to be faithful to his colleagues, a sacred trust for him. In his 1783 circular letter to the states, he had solemnly pledged that he would not reenter politics, a public vow that the honorable Washington took seriously. The mythology that he could not tell a lie had some basis in fact. He may also have hesitated to attend the Constitutional Convention from a premonition that it would initiate a sequence of events that would pull him away indefinitely from Mount Vernon. After all, the last time he heeded his country’s call in a crisis, it had embroiled him in more than eight years of war.
Refusing to let Washington off the hook, Madison argued that his presence in Philadelphia would enhance the convention’s credibility and attract “select characters” from every state.8 In reply, Washington laid out his deeply conflicted feelings about the Cincinnati. He reviewed the organization’s history, telling how it had started as a charitable fund for widows and saying that he never dreamed it would give birth to “jealousies” and “dangers” that threatened republican principles. 9 Washington stood in an acute bind: he didn’t wish to insult his fellow