Washington [384]
As Washington entered Philadelphia, he found himself, willy-nilly, at the head of a full-scale parade. Twenty thousand people lined the streets, their eyes fixed on him in wonder. “His Excellency rode in front of the procession, on horseback, politely bowing to the spectators who filled the doors and windows by which he passed,” reported the Federal Gazette, noting that church bells rang as Washington proceeded to his old haunt, the City Tavern.15 After the bare-knuckled fight over the Constitution, the newspaper editorialized, Washington had brought the country together: “What a pleasing reflection to every patriotic mind, thus to see our citizens again united in their reliance on this great man who is, a second time, called upon to be the savior of his country!”16 By the next morning Washington had grown tired of the jubilation. When the light horse cavalry showed up to accompany him to Trenton, they discovered he had sneaked out of the city an hour earlier “to avoid even the appearance of pomp or vain parade,” reported one newspaper.17
As Washington approached the bridge over Assunpink Creek in Trenton, the spot where he had stood off the British and Hessians, he saw that the townsfolk had erected a magnificent floral arch in his honor with the words “December 26, 1776” sewn from leaves and flowers. Another flowery sentence proclaimed, “The Defenders of the Mothers will also Defend the Daughters.”18 As he rode closer, thirteen young girls, robed in spotless white, walked forward with flower-filled baskets, scattering petals at his feet. Astride his horse, tears standing in his eyes, he returned a deep bow and noted the “astonishing contrast between his former and actual situation at the same spot,” declaring he would never forget the present occasion.19 With that, three rows of women—young girls, unmarried ladies, and married ones—burst into a fervent ode on how he had saved fair virgins and matrons alike. Beneath his public composure, the adulation only crystallized Washington’s self-doubt. “I greatly apprehend that my countrymen will expect too much from me,” he wrote to Rutledge. “I fear, if the issue of public measures should not correspond with their sanguine expectations, they will turn the extravagant . . . praises which they are heaping upon me at this moment into equally extravagant . . . censures.”20 There was no way, it seemed, that he could lower expectations or escape public reverence.
As Washington approached New York City, a parallel journey from Mount Vernon was in progress that, in many ways, was no less fascinating. Billy Lee, the slave and manservant with whom he had shared so many exploits, longed to join Washington for the inauguration. Once a physical specimen perhaps as imposing as his master, Lee had by now fractured both knees, but he still wanted to make the journey and serve in the presidential household, where he would have to climb three flights of stairs. Dubious that Lee could do it, Washington tried to dissuade him from coming. Nevertheless he always found it difficult to resist Lee’s pleas and finally consented that he should travel to the inauguration with Tobias Lear.
When Lear and Lee reached Philadelphia around April 19, Lee’s inflamed knees made it impossible for him to soldier on. Lear contacted Clement Biddle and asked if he could minister to Lee until the slave was ready to complete his journey. “Will appears to be in too bad a state to travel at present,” Lear wrote. “I shall therefore leave him and will be much obliged to you if you will send him on to New York as soon as he can bear the journey without injury, which I expect will be in two or three days. I shall pay his expenses . . . He dresses his knee himself and therefore will stand in no need of a doctor, unless it should grow worse.”21 In a remarkable act of faith in Lee’s fidelity as a slave, Lear left him in Philadelphia while he proceeded to New York. For