Washington [509]
Washington smarted at what he deemed a dangerous threat to presidential prerogative. “From the first moment,” he confessed to Hamilton, “and from the fullest conviction in my own mind, I had resolved to resist the principle w[hi]ch was evidently intended to be established by the call of the House of Representatives.”1 Characteristically, despite fierce misgivings, he dispassionately polled his cabinet members, who unanimously advised resistance to the House resolution. To buttress his arguments, Washington requested a brief from Hamilton, who supplied an ample memorandum on the wisdom of withholding treaty papers. Now nearing the end of his second term, Washington thanked Hamilton tenderly, as if wishing to acknowledge his many years of loyal service, saying that he wanted to “express again my sincere thanks for the pains you have been at to investigate the subject and to assure you, over and over, of the warmth of my friendship and . . . affectionate regard.” He signed the letter “I am your affectionate . . .”2 Such emotional flourishes were highly unusual in the often straitlaced correspondence of George Washington.
In defying House Republicans, Washington delivered a stern lecture on the legal issues involved, reminding lawmakers that the Constitution restricted treaty-making powers to the president and the Senate, confining deliberations to a handful of people to ensure secrecy. He had already shared the relevant papers with the Senate. He lectured the legislators, “To admit then a right in the House of Representatives to demand . . . all the papers respecting a negotiation with a foreign power would be to establish a dangerous precedent.”3 Only in case of impeachment was the president duty-bound to disclose such papers to the House. In private, Washington insisted that House Republicans tried “at every hazard to render the treaty-making power a nullity without their consent; nay worse, to make it an absolute absurdity.”4 He even expounded the Constitution to its chief architect, James Madison, whom he saw as reversing views he had expressed at Philadelphia in 1787. The debate had evolved into a colossal clash of personalities over a mighty principle. So bloody was the clash and so ferocious its rhetoric that Washington believed the public mind agitated “in a higher degree than it has been at any period since the Revolution.”5
During this bruising dispute, House Republicans, for the first time, held a caucus, giving a new institutional reality to the party split between Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians. After Washington won the debate over the Jay Treaty papers, House Republicans launched a prolonged campaign to starve the treaty by refusing to appropriate money for it. For Republicans, the treaty controversy was a stalking horse for a deeper political aim, defined by John Beckley, clerk of the House and a key strategist, as opening the way for “a Republican president to succeed Mr. Washington.” 6 At first Madison imagined that the Jay Treaty would be the Achilles’ heel of the administration, but as the debate dragged on and it gained new adherents, an outflanked Madison admitted to Jefferson that “our majority has melted” thanks to the machinations of “Tories” and “monarchists.”7 Either from concern over the constitutional implications or because of a groundswell of treaty support from constituents, Republican congressmen slowly backed down and defected to Washington’s side. John Adams took comfort that Madison, having staked so much on the outcome, was being ground down by the