Washington [539]
Adams had asked McHenry to sound out Washington on his preferred officers without realizing that Washington would regard his advice as binding. The ex-president voiced all the familiar fears that had accompanied his return to politics in 1787 and 1789—that people would whisper scornfully that he was breaking his public pledges to retire, that he was power-hungry, and so on. Washington himself marveled at his own willingness to return to service, telling John Trumbull that “this is an age of wonders, and I have once more consented to become an actor in the great drama.”58 Before long, applications for army appointments tumbled in upon him.
In taking the position, Washington reiterated his view that it would be unwise for him “to come forward before the emergency becomes evident.”59 For this reason, he thought it all-important to select his own general officers, who would shape up the army before he assumed direct command. He also decided to repeat his wartime precedent of waiving a salary and being reimbursed only for any expenses incurred.
Both McHenry and Secretary of State Pickering favored Hamilton as second in command. Unfortunately, as Pickering warned Washington in confidence, this choice was anathema to the president: “From the conversation that I and others have had with the president, there appears to us to be a disinclination to place Colo. Hamilton in what we think is his proper station, and that alone in which we suppose he will serve—the second to you—and the chief in your absence.”60 Here lay the dilemma in a nutshell: neither Hamilton nor Washington would serve without Hamilton being the main deputy, while Adams found this intolerable. It would prove excruciatingly difficult to break this impasse between the former and current presidents.
When McHenry returned to Philadelphia, he bore a slip of paper on which Washington had scrawled the names of the three men he wanted as his major generals: Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Henry Knox. He wanted them ranked in that order, even though Pinckney and Knox had outranked Hamilton in the war. In Washington’s view, the old hierarchy of the Continental Army had vanished with its demise. In the meantime, while Pickering sang Hamilton’s virtues to Adams, the president had others in mind for the number-two spot. When Adams rattled off his three favorite generals, Pickering pointedly caviled at each one: Daniel Morgan, for having “one foot in the grave”; Horatio Gates, for being “an old woman”; and Benjamin Lincoln, for being “always asleep.”61 Despite his avowed ignorance of military matters, John Adams stoutly maintained that these men were superior to his longtime nemesis, Hamilton. “Hamilton had great disadvantages,” Adams later mused. “His origin was infamous; his place of birth and education were foreign countries; his fortune was poverty itself; the profligacy of his life—his fornications, adulteries, and his incests—were propagated far and wide.”62
Washington made clear to Adams that his acceptance of the post had been premised on the condition that “I shall not be called into the field until the army is in a situation to require my presence.”63 Adams seemed flummoxed by the matter of Washington’s deputy. On July 18 he sent to the Senate the three names Washington had submitted, hoping their order of priority would be reversed. “General Knox is legally entitled to rank next to General Washington,” Adams told McHenry, “and no other arrangement will give satisfaction.”64 To worsen matters, Adams also insisted that