• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 25945 0

in producing an explanation, leading Washington to speculate that his strategy was “to gain time, to puzzle, and to try if he cannot discover inconsistencies in the conduct of others relative to it.”23 In a move that Washington found unforgivable, Randolph published letters to him in the opposition press before sending them to him first. Characteristically, Washington worried that his own integrity might be impugned and gave Randolph permission to publish “any and every private and confidential letter I ever wrote you,” as well as every word he ever uttered to him.24 What most infuriated Washington was that Randolph upbraided him for being in league with the Federalist party. Washington reminded Randolph of the countless times he had heard him “lament from the bottom of my soul that differences of sentiments should have occasioned those heats which are disquieting a country otherwise the happiest in the world.”25 Randolph found Washington’s tone so abhorrent that a week later, writing to Madison, he faulted the president for “profound hypocrisy” and having practiced “the injustice of an assassin” against him.26

On December 18 Randolph published a 103-page pamphlet called A Vindication that presented a fairly credible defense against the bribery charge but made offensive remarks about Washington, who was stung to the quick. As soon as he saw the pamphlet, Washington exclaimed in disgust, “He has written and published this,” flinging it to the floor.27 Washington felt deeply betrayed by Randolph. Out of friendship for his uncle, Peyton Randolph, Washington had aided the young man and pushed him forward, and this was his reward. In trying to figure out how to minimize political damage, Washington consulted Hamilton. Although Hamilton found it hard to muzzle his opinions in political disputes, he knew that silence was Washington’s preferred method and that presidential dignity reinforced that need. “It appears to me that by you no notice can be or ought to be taken of the publication,” he wrote back. “It contains its own antidote.”28 Indeed, even Republicans found the Vindication’s tone misguided; Jefferson confessed to Madison that while it exonerated Randolph of the bribery charges, “it does not give . . . high ideas of his wisdom or steadiness.”29 Washington thereafter referred to Randolph as a rascal or a villain.

Bereft of trustworthy advisers that summer, Washington turned to John Adams more than before and praised the diplomatic acumen of his son, John Quincy, the precocious young minister to Holland. Washington held the young man’s talents in such high regard that he predicted that, before too long, John Quincy would be “found at the head of the Diplomatic Corps.”30 With Edmund Randolph’s resignation, Washington began a long and dispiriting search for a successor. As with all appointments, he handled the correspondence himself without any apparent assistance from aides. A disillusioned Washington capitulated to the reality that he could no longer tolerate appointees “whose political tenets are adverse” to his own policies. 31 He had had enough with gross disloyalty from his cabinet. But he then suffered the indignity of having five candidates in succession turn down the secretary of state job—William Paterson, Thomas Johnson, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Patrick Henry, and Rufus King. Honorable in his dealings, Washington informed each candidate of the previous refusals. By the time he approached Patrick Henry, fourth on the list, he experienced mounting frustration: “I persuade myself, Sir, it has not escaped your observation that a crisis is approaching that must, if it cannot be arrested, soon decide whether order and good government shall be preserved or anarchy and confusion ensue.”32 After the fourth rebuff, Washington spilled out his woes to Hamilton, asking plaintively, “What am I to do for a Secretary of State?”33 When Hamilton sounded out Rufus King for the post, the latter spurned the offer because of “the foul and venomous shafts of calumny” now directed at government officials.34

To fill the vacancy,