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immunity. He showed the same sangfroid as when bullets whizzed past him during the French and Indian War. He urged Martha to return with their grandchildren to Mount Vernon, but she refused to desert him. By early September yellow fever had taken a grim toll on government workers: six clerks died in the Treasury Department, seven in the customs service, and three in the Post Office. On September 6, upon learning that Hamilton had shown early symptoms of the fever, Washington rushed to him six bottles of wine, coupled with a sympathetic message. Treated by his childhood friend Dr. Edward Stevens, Hamilton survived the disease and then fled with his wife, Elizabeth, to the Schuyler mansion in Albany. Since Martha wouldn’t abandon him, Washington opted to leave for Mount Vernon on September 10, departing in sufficient haste that he left behind his official papers. He and Martha invited Eliza Powel to escape with them to Virginia. Though deeply touched by the gesture, Powel decided that she could not abandon her husband, then the speaker of the Pennsylvania Senate, lest he get sick and require help. “The conflict between duty and inclination is a severe trial of my feelings,” she told the Washingtons, “but, as I believe it is always best to adhere to the line of duty, I beg to decline the pleasure I proposed to myself in accompanying you to Virginia at this time.”5 Her caution was prophetic: three weeks later her husband joined the growing list of fatalities. Ironically, Eliza was off at her brother’s farm at the time and experienced “a lasting source of affliction” for not having been present at her husband’s bedside at the end.6

After urging him to safeguard the War Department clerks, Washington left Henry Knox in charge as acting president, with instructions to submit a weekly report on developments in the now-deserted capital. The doughty Knox was the last high-ranking official to depart. “All my efficient clerks have left me from apprehension,” Knox reported in mid-September, noting that fatalities in the capital had zoomed to one hundred per day. “The streets are lonely to a melancholy degree. The merchants generally have fled . . . In fine, the stroke is as heavy as if an army of enemies had possessed the city without plundering it.”7 After Jefferson found only a single clerk toiling at the State Department, he decided it was high time to head for Virginia. By mid-October 3,500 Philadelphians, or one-tenth of the population, had succumbed to yellow fever, leaving the city, in Washington’s words, “almost depopulated by removals and deaths.”8

Eager to resume government operations and show that the republic could function even under extreme duress, Washington wanted to convene emergency sessions of Congress outside the capital, but he was unsure of their constitutionality. To his credit, he did not automatically assume autocratic powers in a crisis but tried to conform faithfully to the letter of the law. As alternate sites, he considered several nearby cities, among them Germantown, Wilmington, Trenton, Annapolis, and Reading. When he stopped at Mount Vernon, Jefferson, a strict constructionist, gave Washington his opinion that the government could lawfully assemble only in Philadelphia, even if Congress had to meet in an open field. Reluctant to be ham-strung by this restrictive view, Washington turned to the one person guaranteed to serve up a more liberal view of federal powers: Alexander Hamilton. In tapping his treasury secretary, Washington hinted broadly at his preferred outcome, telling him that “as none can take a more comprehensive view and . . . a less partial one on the subject than yourself . . . I pray you to dilate fully upon the several points here brought to your consideration.”9 Engaging in fancy semantic footwork, Hamilton cracked open the legal logjam by saying that Washington could recommend that the government meet elsewhere, although he couldn’t order it. Hamilton favored Germantown, close to Philadelphia, as the optimal site, and it was duly chosen.

Washington decided to convene a cabinet meeting