Washington [465]
Washington was expert at keeping his woes to himself and not showing the stress of office. While he now knew the extent of Jefferson’s antipathy toward Hamilton, he did not believe the wilder charges swirling around his secretary of state. When Eliza Powel sent him a pamphlet accusing Jefferson of pro-French policies, he replied that the writer should investigate the facts more closely. “Had he done this,” wrote Washington, quoting Shakespeare’s The Tempest, “he would . . . have found many of his charges as unsupported as the ‘baseless fabric of a vision.’”36
Starting in November 1791 and running for more than a year, James Madison published eighteen essays excoriating the administration in the National Gazette. Nevertheless, on May 5, 1792, apparently unaware of his authorship, Washington unburdened himself to Madison about his political plans. The recent financial panic in New York had added to the uproar over the administration’s policies. Washington said that he had already made known to Madison his intention to retire at the end of his first term and asked for Madison’s opinion “on the mode and time most proper for making known that intention.”37 He further said that he had apprised Hamilton, Knox, and Jefferson and that all had argued strenuously against his retirement. Washington had the modesty to state that he was not “arrogantly presuming on his re-election in case he should not withdraw himself,” though that was a foregone conclusion.38 Madison buttressed the consensus that it would be perilous for Washington to withdraw and that he alone could reconcile the warring parties. Another four years under Washington, Madison maintained, would “give such a tone and firmness to the government as would secure it against danger” from enemies on either side.39
At this point Washington discarded his impenetrable reserve and poured out his inmost thoughts, humbly confessing to feelings of inadequacy and saying that he could not conceive of himself as necessary to the “successful administration of the government; that, on the contrary, he had from the beginning found himself deficient in many of the essential qualifications . . . that others more conversant in such matters would be better able to execute the trust; that he found himself also in the decline of life, his health becoming sensibly more infirm and perhaps his faculties also; that the fatigues and disagreeableness of his situation were, in fact, scarcely tolerable to him.”40
That Washington dwelled on his inability to arbitrate constitutional disputes showed the heavy toll taken by the cabinet debate over the Bank of the United States. The president also complained of memory lapses, poor vision, and growing deafness—all socially confining conditions. Despite Washington’s fears, his letters show no evidence of his mental powers’ fading, and they were often amazingly vigorous. That Jefferson and Madison took such a decline seriously perhaps reflects their wish to portray Washington as softheaded and easily manipulated by Hamilton.
In chatting with Madison, Washington also deplored the press onslaught against his administration, little knowing that the man from whom he was seeking commiseration was a secret author of some of those assaults. The episode showed Madison’s capacity for duplicity—that he could act as Washington’s confidant even as he betrayed him. Although Jefferson and Madison wanted to elect a Republican vice president instead of John Adams, they had no desire to replace Washington, doubtless afraid that an unfettered Hamilton would succeed him.
As with all major decisions, Washington pondered