Washington [431]
Washington’s back-to-back illnesses in 1789 and 1790 contributed to the sudden aging of a man who had long been associated with graceful virility. The two episodes would have greatly deepened his sense that he was sacrificing his life for his country and that he would likely have little or no retirement beyond the presidency. Washington had grown more haggard during these medical emergencies. Fanny Bassett Washington wrote the following year, “The president looks better than I expected to see him, but still there be traces in his countenance of his two last severe illnesses, which I fear will never wear off.”48 The crises also left Martha Washington in a reflective, despondent mood. She told Mercy Otis Warren, “But for the ties of affection which attract me so strongly to my near connection and worthy friends, I should feel myself indeed much weaned from all enjoyments of this transitory life.”49
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Capital Matters
AFTER MOST OF THE STATES had ratified the Constitution by the summer of 1788, James Madison had broached to George Washington a topic that engaged both their emotional loyalties and their financial interests: the location of the future capital. Aware that New York and Philadelphia would emerge as serious candidates, Madison hoped the banks of the Potomac River might ultimately house the federal government. As flourishing population growth on the western frontier enhanced the prospects for a southern capital, Madison believed that time was on the South’s side. Washington’s red-hot enthusiasm for the Potomac had scarcely cooled, and he still embraced the river as the ideal portal to the interior and hence the optimal site for the capital. The Potomac was the natural “center of the union,” he had explained to Arthur Young. “It is between the extremes of heat and cold . . . and must from its extensive course through a rich and populous country become in time the grand emporium of North America.”1
Since it would exert far-reaching influence, the choice of venue for the capital was fraught with controversy. Most obviously, it would mean a commercial windfall for nearby property owners; Madison and Henry Lee scooped up land along the Potomac to profit from any future capital. The political leanings of the surrounding region would affect legislators isolated from constituents back home. Jefferson and other agrarians also wanted a capital remote from the noxious impact of large cities and northern manufacturing. Finally, many southern legislators preferred a southern city where they could transport their slaves without being harassed by abolitionists. So vexed was the capital question that Madison almost despaired of a satisfactory solution. “The business of the seat of government is become a labyrinth for which the votes printed furnish no clue,” he lamented in June 1790.2
The deadlock over the issue coincided with a stalemate over Hamilton’s plan to have the federal government assume state debts. Washington noted that the two debates had ensnared Congress in ceaseless rancor, telling David Stuart that June that “the questions of assumption, residence, and other matters have been agitated with warmth and intemperance, with prolixity and threats.”3 Washington’s fantasy of nonpartisan civility in politics was being rapidly eroded by growing polarization along north-south lines. Still recuperating from illness, he found it easy to stay aloof from the debates on assumption and the capital, but he clearly supported Hamilton’s objectives, echoing his treasury secretary’s belief that the “cause in which the expenses of the war was incurred was a common cause” and should be borne by the federal