Washington [418]
Boston loomed as the first major city on the itinerary; plans for a full-dress military parade as he entered the city only stoked Washington’s anxiety. A committee of Boston dignitaries traveled to meet him in Spencer, west of Worcester, and, just as he feared, they presented their celebratory plans. Not for the last time during the trip, Washington fell on his sword: “Finding this ceremony was not to be avoided, though I had made every effort to do it, I named the hour of ten to pass the militia of the above county at Cambridge and the hour of 12 for my entrance into Boston.”6
Boston had never properly thanked Washington for its liberation from the British, and it now intended to seize the opportunity. Knowing this would be a tribute to his wartime prowess, Washington departed from his usual practice and decked himself out in his Continental Army uniform, topped by rich gold epaulettes. If he had been resistant at first to the adulation of the Boston populace, he entered wholly into the spirit of the occasion. The morning of his arrival was cold and overcast, and his cavalcade was halted at Cambridge by a dispute as to whether state or local authorities would receive him. The president grew irritated with the maddening delay. “Is there no other avenue into the town?” he demanded.7 The stern reproof had an immediate effect: he would be greeted by municipal officials.
As he entered Boston, church bells chimed, and a French fleet in the harbor erupted with bursts of artillery fire. In a symbolic gesture, cannon roared from Dorchester Heights, recalling the triumph Washington had engineered there during the Boston siege. People crammed the streets, bent on seeing him as he trotted by on his white steed. “He did not bow to the spectators as he passed,” said one observer, “but sat on his horse with a calm, dignified air.”8 At the State House he passed beneath an enormous arch emblazoned with the words “To the man who unites all hearts,” surmounted by a laurel wreath with the inscription “Boston relieved March 17th. 1776.”9 When Washington appeared on a balcony of the building and set eyes on the vast multitude below, there arose a tremendous roar. George Washington was always more emotional than people realized, and by the time he emerged from the State House and heard a choir crooning an ode to him, he could no longer contain himself, giving way to tears. One startled eyewitness described how “every muscle of his face appeared agitated, and he was frequently observed to pass . . . his handkerchief across his eyes.”10
Washington’s visit to Boston embroiled him in a delicate diplomatic impasse with Governor John Hancock, who invited him to stay in his richly decorated Beacon Hill home. Hancock was something of a strutting peacock, wearing fancy clothes and riding about in a radiant coach. In replying to this invitation, Washington explained his decision to stay in prearranged lodgings, although he accepted an invitation to dine informally with Hancock. Always scrupulously attentive to form, Washington assumed that Hancock would obey protocol and call on him at his lodgings before he went to this dinner. Pleading gout, Hancock failed to do so. To Hancock’s emissaries, Washington expressed his displeasure. He knew that Hancock was trying to establish that he outranked the president in Massachusetts. Behind the dispute over etiquette lay an unspoken struggle between state and federal power. “I informed them in explicit terms that I should not see the Gov[erno] r unless it was at my own lodgings,” Washington wrote in his diary.11 Perhaps he remembered Hancock’s peevish reaction