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created the prospect of the executive branch exercising a “mischievous and impolitic” influence over the judiciary.24 Washington was agile in making appointments, and to make the choice of Jay more palatable, he shrewdly juggled political forces. To mollify Republicans, he recalled Gouverneur Morris from France, sending in his stead the Francophile senator James Monroe. Hamilton’s influence had not been entirely neutralized, for when Jay sailed to England on May 12, 1794, applauded by a thousand bystanders on the New York docks, the instructions he carried bore Hamilton’s imprint. Among other things, Jay would enjoy the leeway to negotiate a full-fledged commercial treaty, should the English prove amenable—something that was anathema to the Republicans. In his own instructions to Jay, Washington breathed fire against English intransigence. Of the British surrender of the frontier posts, he said: “I will undertake, without the gift of prophecy, to predict that it will be impossible to keep this country in a state of amity with G[reat] Britain long if the posts are not surrendered.”25 No one who saw Washington’s correspondence could have imagined that he was a lackey of England or plotting to install a pro-British monarchy in America.

WASHINGTON’S LETTERS show that during his second term he was bruised and disillusioned by the scathing tone of the opposition. Increasingly deaf and embattled, he desperately needed rest at Mount Vernon, but the crush of public business allowed him only a brief stay there in June. While at home, as he was inspecting the canal and locks being built at the Little Falls of the Potomac, his horse lost its footing and nearly dashed him against the rocks. A masterful horseman, Washington nimbly pulled the animal away from danger with “violent exertions,” but the effort so badly strained his back that afterward he could not even mount a horse.26 Afraid his aching back could not withstand the long ride, he postponed his return to Philadelphia until July 3 and even then took the trip by easy stages. “I very much fear that it will be a troublesome complaint to him for some time,” Martha worried of his back condition, “or perhaps as long as he lives he will feel it at times.”27 That July and August, to escape the sweltering heat of a Philadelphia summer, he and Martha took a house in Germantown.

People noticed that Washington seemed worn down by his cares. When English manufacturer Henry Wansey breakfasted with him, he found the president affable, obliging, and fit for a man of his age, but he detected “a certain anxiety visible in his countenance, with marks of extreme sensibility.”28 Still, he thought the president looked much younger than Martha: “She appears something older than the president, though I understand they were both born in the same year. [She was] short in stature, rather robust, very plain in her dress, wearing a very plain cap, with her gray hair closely turned up under it.”29

Among the many burdens borne by Washington that summer was the fate of Anthony Wayne’s expedition against Indians on the northwestern frontier. In January Wayne had informed Knox of his belief that his well-drilled army, the Legion of the United States, was capable of avenging St. Clair’s ignominious defeat. The nation, in Wayne’s opinion, had a “golden opportunity . . . for advancing and striking . . . those haughty savages . . . with the bayonet . . . and fire of the American Legion.” 30 On August 20, in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, near present-day Toledo, Ohio, Wayne and a force of 3,500 soldiers delivered a stunning defeat to Indian tribes. The Americans went on an unbridled rampage, trampling Indian houses and crops over a vast territory. Nonetheless Washington sang Wayne’s praises for having “damped the ardor of the savages and weakened their obstinacy in waging war against the United States.”31 The victory broke the back of Indian power in the region and ended British influence with the dominant tribes.

While Washington dealt remorselessly with Indians who menaced white settlers, he never surrendered