Washington [394]
Washington’s first days in office were dominated by seemingly trivial symbolic issues that spoke to larger questions about the character of the new government. “Many things which appear of little importance in themselves . . . at the beginning may have great and durable consequences, from their having been established at the commencement of a new general government,” Washington instructed Vice President Adams.4 Every action, he knew, would be subjected to exhaustive scrutiny: “My political conduct . . . must be exceedingly circumspect and proof against just criticism, for the eyes of Argus [the hundred-eyed monster in Greek mythology] are upon me and no slip will pass unnoticed.”5 Washington had long felt those searching eyes trained upon him and would try hard as president to be a paragon.
Of the various government posts, it was the presidency that had the potential to slip into monarchy and subvert republican government, so every decision made about it aroused a firestorm of controversy. For many Americans, presidential etiquette seemed like the back door through which aristocratic corruption might infiltrate the system. On April 23 the Senate appointed a committee to devise suitable titles for addressing the president. Vice President Adams favored highfalutin ones. “A royal, or at least a princely, title, will be found indispensably necessary to maintain the reputation, authority, and dignity of the president,” he insisted.6 The final Senate recommendation was absurdly pretentious: “His Highness, the President of the United States of America, and Protector of their Liberties.”7 Sensitive to criticism that high-flown titles were reminiscent of monarchy, Washington gladly accepted the simpler form adopted by the House: “The President of the United States.” An approving Madison later noted that Washington had been irritated by efforts to “bedizen him with a superb but spurious title.”8 The controversy served notice on Washington that such matters had powerful resonance as the new republic tried to find dignified forms that didn’t smack of European decadence. “Nothing could equal the ferment and disquietude occasioned by the proposition respecting titles,” David Stuart wrote from Virginia. “As it is believed to have originated from Mr. Adams and [Richard Henry] Lee, they are not only unpopular to an extreme, but highly odious.9
For Washington, the etiquette issue was also related to how he would preserve his privacy and sanity as president. From the time he occupied the Cherry Street mansion, he found himself hounded by legislators, office seekers, veterans, and well-wishers. Before long, he felt himself under siege, unable to accomplish any work. After making inquiries, he learned that presidents of the Confederation Congress had been “considered in no better light than as a maitre d’hotel . . . for their table was considered as a public one.”10 As in everything else, Washington operated in uncharted waters. “I was unable to attend to any business whatsoever,” he told Stuart, “for gentlemen, consulting their own convenience rather than mine, were calling from the time I rose from breakfast—often before—until I sat down to dinner.” 11 With his days cluttered with ceremonial visits, Washington complained, “I had no leisure to read or answer the dispatches which were pouring in from all quarters.”12 As he tried to barricade himself from strangers, he wondered how he could avoid the extremes of either rebuffing visitors in a “mimickry of royalty” or becoming so secluded that he would shut out important communications. In short, how to find the “discriminating medium”?13
As he had always done, Washington solicited written opinions from several advisers, including Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and Robert R. Livingston, from