Washington [470]
Back in Philadelphia in mid-October, Washington again tried to negotiate a truce between Hamilton and Jefferson. At moments he seemed genuinely baffled by their intransigence, as if he could not believe that men of goodwill could not work out their differences. Perhaps the decisive stroke in convincing Washington to run for a second term came after a meeting with Eliza Powel that November, in which Washington said he might resign. In a masterly seven-page follow-up letter, Powel, a confirmed Federalist, gave Washington the high-toned reasons he needed to stay in office, shrewdly playing on his anxious concern for his historic reputation. If he stepped down now, she wrote, his enemies would say that “ambition had been the moving spring of all your actions—that the enthusiasm of your country had gratified your darling passion to the extent of its ability and that, as they had nothing more to give, you would run no farther risk for them.” She warned that the Jeffersonians would dissolve the Union: “I will venture to assert that, at this time, you are the only man in America that dares to do right on all public occasions.”76 Evidently she managed to convince Washington, who decided to stand for a second term.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Citizen Genet
ONCE HE DECIDED to serve a second term, George Washington was reelected by a unanimous 132 votes in the Electoral College. If one counted his selection as commander in chief, president of the Constitutional Convention, and president in his first term, he had compiled a string of four straight unanimous victories. Again inaction had been his most potent form of action, silence his most effective form of expression. Still, it was a subdued triumph for the overburdened president, who confessed to Henry Lee that he “would have experienced chagrin if my re-election had not been by a pretty respectable vote. But to say I feel pleasure from the prospect of commencing another tour of duty would be a departure from truth.”1
On December 13, 1792, Washington conversed with Jefferson about buying porcelain in Germany to dress up the presidential table. He had inquired whether Samuel Shaw, the U.S. consul at Canton, could acquire china there, but Shaw told him that it would take at least two years to arrive. Washington emphasized to Jefferson that he would be gone from office by then, and Jefferson recognized the heavy-handed hint. “I think he asked the question about the manufactories in Germany,” Jefferson concluded, “merely to have an indirect opportunity of telling me he meant to retire, and within the limits of two years.”2 Once again, if he thought he could cut short his captivity to public service, Washington was fooling himself, and people kept reminding him how much the Union needed him. “There is a prevailing idea in G[reat] B[ritain],” wrote one correspondent, “if not in other parts of Europe, that whenever you are removed, the federal union will be dissolved, the states will separate, and disorder succeed.”3
With a presidential victory assured for Washington, the Jeffersonians tried to register their disaffection and covertly chip away at his power by ousting John Adams as vice president. Purely as a matter of propriety, Washington never openly endorsed Adams, who retained office with 77 votes against a stiff challenge from Governor George Clinton of New York, a firm Jeffersonian, who garnered 50 votes. Washington likewise worried that, if he got involved in congressional races, he might trespass on the separation of powers. This same reasoning made him reluctant to veto legislation, and he did not overrule a bill until April 1792. As their populist rhetoric led to significant inroads among farmers, shopkeepers, and artisans, Republican adherents gained a clear majority in the