Washington [517]
Washington’s plans to lease the four farms and simplify his future life came to naught. Adding to his nagging economic uncertainty was the regretted departure of William Pearce due to an “increasing rheumatic affection.”65 For the demanding Washington, the seasoned Pearce had been a godsend, a man of reliable industry and integrity. In October 1796 Washington replaced him with James Anderson, a native of Scotland well trained in agriculture, who would take the operations at Mount Vernon in some unexpected directions. The switch, which came as the president contemplated retirement, could only have exacerbated his worries about the situation that awaited him at home.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
The Master of Farewells
IN 1796 GEORGE WASHINGTON was often in a somber, pessimistic mood. One visitor who encountered him on his sixty-fourth birthday that February said “he seemed considerably older. The innumerable vexations he has met with in his different public capacities have very sensibly impaired the vigor of his constitution and given him an aged appearance.”1 He had long fathomed the peculiar dynamics of fame, the way fickle crowds respond first with adulation and then scorn to any form of hero worship. From partisan quarters, he was experiencing the rude comeuppance he had long known hovered in the background. Patrick Henry was shocked at his slanderous treatment: “If he whose character as our leader during the whole war . . . is so roughly handled in his old age, what may be expected of men of the common standard?”2
Nothing required Washington to leave office—the Twenty-second Amendment, limiting a president to two terms, was not ratified until 1951—but he had always planned to remain as president only until the new Constitution had taken root, never dreaming it would take a full two terms to reach that point. Despondent over the Jay Treaty attacks, Washington had now firmly resolved to leave office. Most Federalists hoped he would stay in office indefinitely; John Jay exhorted him to “remain with us at least while the storm lasts and until you can retire like the sun in a calm, unclouded evening.”3 In reply, Washington alluded darkly to all the “trouble and perplexities” he had endured, aggravated by the infirmities of age, and said only a national emergency would postpone his retirement.4
Where Washington had asked Madison to draft a farewell address in 1792 and then stashed it in a drawer, he now turned to Hamilton as his preferred wordsmith for a valedictory message. On May 15 he sent the latter Madison’s address, along with additions he himself had recently made to reflect the “considerable changes” wrought by the intervening years.5 He dangled before Hamilton two options: either edit and update Madison’s version or start afresh and “throw the whole into a different form.”6 It was not in Hamilton’s headstrong nature to bow to another scribe, and while he would offer Washington a revised version of Madison’s 1792 address, he also forged a magisterial new version of his own.
As always, Washington fretted over possible misinterpretations of his motives, speculating that people might whisper he was leaving office because of his “fallen popularity and despair of being re-elected.” In his farewell statement, he wanted Hamilton to refer to the earlier farewell address as irrefutable proof that, far from hiding megalomaniacal ambitions, he had longed to return home. While the words of this second farewell belonged to Hamilton, Washington defined its overarching themes and lent it his distinctive sound. He wanted the message written in a plain, unadorned style, presenting a timeless quality and avoiding references to specific personalities and events that had given rise to many observations.