Washington [530]
In those days of poor transportation, farewells left an especially melancholy aftertaste, since many friendships were ended irrevocably by sheer distance. “How many friends I have left behind,” Martha Washington wrote wistfully to Lucy Knox. “They fill my memory with sweet thoughts. Shall I ever see them again? Not likely, unless they shall come to me here, for the twilight is gathering around our lives.”34 En route to Mount Vernon, Washington tried, as usual, to curtail the time devoted to townsfolk who wanted to smother him with adulation. Although enormous crowds received him in Baltimore, he contrived to skip festivities planned in Alexandria, expressing satisfaction that he “avoided in every instance, where [he] had any previous knowledge of the intention . . . all parades or escorts.”35 The one detour he surely savored was the ride by, to the thunderous welcome of a sixteen-gun salute, the new President’s House under construction in Washington, D.C.
The presidential legacy he left behind in Philadelphia was a towering one. As Gordon Wood has observed, “The presidency is the powerful office it is in large part because of Washington’s initial behavior.”36 Washington had forged the executive branch of the federal government, appointed outstanding department heads, and set a benchmark for fairness, efficiency, and integrity that future administrations would aspire to match. “A new government, constructed on free principles, is always weak and must stand in need of the props of a firm and good administration till time shall have rendered its authority venerable and fortified it by habits of obedience,” Hamilton wrote.37 Washington had endowed the country with exactly such a firm and good administration, guaranteeing the survival of the Constitution. He had taken the new national charter and converted it into a viable, elastic document. In a wide variety of areas, from inaugural addresses to presidential protocol to executive privilege, he had set a host of precedents that endured because of the high quality and honesty of his decisions.
Washington’s catalog of accomplishments was simply breathtaking. He had restored American credit and assumed state debt; created a bank, a mint, a coast guard, a customs service, and a diplomatic corps; introduced the first accounting, tax, and budgetary procedures; maintained peace at home and abroad; inaugurated a navy, bolstered the army, and shored up coastal defenses and infrastructure; proved that the country could regulate commerce and negotiate binding treaties; protected frontier settlers, subdued Indian uprisings, and established law and order amid rebellion, scrupulously adhering all the while to the letter of the Constitution. During his successful presidency, exports had soared, shipping had boomed, and state taxes had declined dramatically. Washington had also opened the Mississippi to commerce, negotiated treaties with the Barbary states, and forced the British to evacuate their northwestern forts. Most of all he had shown a disbelieving world that republican government could prosper without being spineless or disorderly or reverting to authoritarian rule. In surrendering the presidency after two terms and overseeing a smooth transition of power, Washington had demonstrated that the president was merely the servant of the people.
Whatever their mandarin style and elitist tendencies, the Federalists