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supposedly remarked drily that “no foreign enemy should invade the United States, at any time, with more than three thousand troops.”20 At the end of the convention, he also took a decidedly democratic stand on the question of how many people each congressman should represent, opting for thirty thousand instead of forty thousand to ensure “security for the rights and interests of the people.”21 Blessed by Washington, the convention adopted this change unanimously, in a striking instance of his irresistible appeal. That Washington was an exponent of an energetic presidency was also evident when he voted for requiring a three-fourths majority in Congress to override a presidential veto. Despite Washington’s backing, it was reduced to a two-thirds majority to forestall abuses of executive power.

Whatever pleasure he derived from being away from Mount Vernon had disappeared by September 9, when he wrote to George Augustine that the convention would likely wind up its deliberations within a week: “God grant I may not be disappointed in this expectation, as I am quite homesick.”22 The long hours and sedentary job must have proved an ordeal for him. A day earlier the convention had convened a committee on style, with Gouverneur Morris as its head, to give the Constitution its finished form. The foppish, peg-legged Morris was a delightful bon vivant with considerable verbal resources who relished Washington’s “cool, steady temper.”23 Washington, in turn, enjoyed Morris’s lively flow of quips, his “first-rate abilities,” and his “lively and brilliant imagination.”24 It was Morris who drafted the great preamble to the Constitution that began with the memorable flourish “We the People.” On September 12 delegates received printed copies of the final document, and as he led them through it, Washington personally inserted the changes that had been approved while the committee on style was hard at work.

Whatever his misgivings about individual provisions, Washington was no lukewarm supporter of the final document. As he later expressed it, the Constitution was “the result of a spirit of amity and mutual concession” and more coherent than anyone had a right to expect from so many discordant delegates with passionate opinions.25 It struck him as “little short of a miracle,” he told Lafayette, that “delegates from so many different states . . . should unite in forming a system of national government so little liable to well-founded objections.”26 In another letter he said, “It approached nearer to perfection than any government hitherto instituted among men.”27 Especially sensitive to allegations that the president was vested with excessive power, he stressed the numerous safeguards put in place, telling Lafayette that the new constitution “is provided with more checks and barriers against the introduction of tyranny . . . than any government” previously devised by mortals.28 As president, Washington went so far as to say that the “invisible hand” of providence had been manifest in the enactment of the Constitution.29

In correspondence Washington admitted to imperfections in the new charter but trusted to the amendment process to refine it. The Constitutional Convention was no conclave of sages in Roman togas, handing down eternal truths engraved in marble, and he wondered how long the document would last. He parted company with Edmund Randolph, who refused to sign the Constitution unless it provided for a second convention to enact necessary amendments. For Washington, the beauty of the document was that it charted a path for its own evolution. Its very brevity and generality—it contained fewer than eight thousand words—meant it would be a constantly changing document, susceptible to shifting interpretations. It would be left to Washington and other founders to convert this succinct, deliberately vague statement into a working reality. He also knew that the American public needed to contribute its share; the Constitution “can only lay the foundation—the community at large must raise the edifice.”30 Benjamin Franklin shared this view.