Washington [479]
By this point the vicious cabinet infighting was tearing Washington apart. No sooner had he agreed to serve a second term than he regretted it. He was staggered by the rabid abuse spewed out by the Republican press. During his presidency, many newspapers had gone from being staid and neutral to being organs of party politics and propaganda. In May he asked Jefferson to dismiss Freneau from his State Department job after the editor made the nonsensical statement that Washington had issued the neutrality statement only after “Anglomen” had threatened to chop off his head. Jefferson resisted the presidential request. Then at a memorable cabinet meeting on August 2, Henry Knox brought a copy of a Freneau squib entitled “The Funeral Dirge of George Washington and James Wilson, King and Judges.” Knox showed the president a savage satirical cartoon in which his head was being inserted in a guillotine, as if he were Louis XVI. It triggered a volcanic display of Washington’s temper. The graphic scene was recorded by Jefferson:
The President was much inflamed; got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself; ran on much on the personal abuse which has been bestowed on him; defied any man on earth to produce one single act of his since he had been in the government which was not done on the purest motives; [said] that he had never repented but once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office and that was every moment since; that by God he had rather be in his grave than in his present situation; that he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world; and yet they were charging him with wanting to be a king. That that rascal Freneau sent him three of his papers every day, as if he thought he would become the distributor of his paper; that he could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult him. He ended in this high tone.61
So concerned was Henry Knox about Washington’s nervous strain that he sat down three days later to compose a letter on the need for the president to pull himself together and project an aura of calm fortitude: “The prudent and sober part of the community regard, as in the case of a storm, the mind and countenance of the chief pilot. While he remains confident and composed, happiness is diffused around, but, when he doubts, then anxiety and fear have their full effect.”62 It was a measure of the trust between the two men that Knox could write such an unvarnished message to Washington.
For all the bitter strife in his cabinet, Washington valued the superior talents of Hamilton and Jefferson and was dismayed at the thought of losing them. On July 31 Jefferson submitted a letter announcing his intention to leave office at the end of September. A week later Washington stopped by Jefferson’s country house and made a personal appeal for him to postpone his departure. The president referred to his own regret at having stayed in office, commenting “how much it was increased by seeing that he was to be deserted by those on whose aid he had counted.”63 Few men were better versed in foreign affairs or the intrigues of foreign courts than Jefferson, he said. In response, Jefferson alluded to his “excessive repugnance to public life” and how hard he found it to serve when “merchants connected closely