Washington [446]
Washington had ten days to sign or veto the bank bill and stalled in making up his mind. Perhaps by design, Hamilton delivered, and Washington accepted, the argument in favor of the bill right before that deadline expired, leaving no time for an appeal inside the cabinet. When Washington signed the bill on February 25, 1791, it was a courageous act, for he defied the legal acumen of Madison, Jefferson, and Randolph. Unlike his fellow planters, who tended to regard banks and stock exchanges as sinister devices, Washington grasped the need for these instruments of modern finance. It was also a decisive moment legally for Washington, who had felt more bound than Hamilton by the literal words of the Constitution. With this stroke, he endorsed an expansive view of the presidency and made the Constitution a living, open-ended document. The importance of his decision is hard to overstate, for had Washington rigidly adhered to the letter of the Constitution, the federal government might have been stillborn. Chief Justice John Marshall later seized upon the doctrine of “implied powers” and incorporated it into seminal Supreme Court cases that upheld the power of the federal government.
In approving the bank bill, Washington again championed Hamilton as an agent of modernity, a man who represented the thriving commerce of the seaport cities rather than the Virginia gentry from which he himself had emerged. Washington agreed with Hamilton’s defense of the bank, not simply from its superlative reasoning but because the two men subscribed to a common view of economic nationalism. Contrary to his critics, who thought him a credulous tool of Hamilton, Washington was a proud and knowing sponsor of the Hamiltonian program .29 That July he insisted to David Humphreys, “Our public credit stands on that ground which, three years ago, it would have been considered as a species of madness to have foretold.”30
THE UPROAR OVER THE HAMILTONIAN SYSTEM made it all the more imperative that Washington undertake a tour of the southern states, much as he had done with New England. At the time when the Quaker petitions to abolish the slave trade had awakened southern fears of northern interference, David Stuart had warned Washington, “It is represented that the northern phalanx is so firmly united as to bear down all opposition, while Virginia is unsupported.”31 The region also feared that the northeastern states would pay less heed to frontier communities, which were mostly peopled with settlers from the southern states. Faced with reported discontent, Washington wanted to see for himself whether the South was really so disenchanted with his programs. Also, as the country grew—by the spring of 1792, Congress had approved the admission of Kentucky and Vermont as new states—Washington wanted to maintain a sense of national cohesion amid pellmell expansion.
The southern tour was a hugely ambitious adventure. Washington would once again have to hazard nonstop socializing. As Tobias Lear noted, he found these occasions “fatiguing and often times painful,” sticking him with a dreadful conflict. “He wishes not to exclude himself from the sight or conversation of his fellow citizens, but their eagerness to show their affection frequently imposes a heavy tax upon him.”32 The projected itinerary of 1,816 miles was an enormous distance to traverse by horse and carriage. At a time of poor roads, Washington would have to withstand dust, mud, and assorted indignities. And in an era of primitive communications, he would be absent from Philadelphia for three months, making it hard to settle major policy disputes. Washington had never gone farther south than the northern part of North Carolina, and the Carolina and Georgia roads were terra incognita. Leaving nothing to chance, he consulted southern congressmen and