By an Associate.

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Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter XIII.—Washington considers presidential protocol.—Secret “tape” system in his office.—Hamilton invents a new currency.—Choosing a site for the capital.—Mr. Banneker and Mr. L’Enfant.—Washington’s improvements to the plans.

The first decision Washington made was that the President would have to reside wherever the Congress was. He took a house in New-York and removed the second floor to give him a more comfortable ceiling height (for he was now just under sixteen feet tall). The Constitution had made provision for a new capital, but where it would be had not yet been decided. Each state had its reasons why it ought to possess the new capital, and there were many debates to be had before a site could be chosen. Meanwhile, the Congress was still peripatetic; but it had settled in New-York for a while, which suited Washington, as he was hoping to take in a few more puppet-shows.

At Washington’s earnest request, Susanna and I came to New-York as well, along with the children. He also induced Parson Weems to join us; and the evening Weems arrived, we spent two or three hours after supper discussing the protocol for the new office of the presidency.

“I thought perhaps,” said Washington, “we ought to come up with a kind of manual of forms of address. When the President is spoken of, for example, in what way is he styled? I had thought it might be something like “His Gracious and Exalted Majesty the President of the United States, by the Grace of God Defender of the Rights of the American People, Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy and of the Militias of the Several States, Appointer to Offices, Filler of Vacancies, Informer of the Congress as Regards the State of the Union, Arbiter of Opinions, Granter of Pardons, Maker of—”

“Do you think that might be somewhat cumbersome?” Susanna asked.

“Well, of course, the full title would be used only the first time the President was mentioned; after that, the title ‘His Gracious and Exalted Majesty’ would suffice.”

“I was thinking perhaps ‘Mr. President’ would do,” said Susanna.

“Is that not somewhat…common?” asked Washington.

“Not at all. Quite the reverse. In all the states of Europe, you will find gracious and exalted majesties, defenders of the faith, high and mighty autocrats, and so on. A man may rule a strip of land the size of a pocket-handkerchief, but his majesty is still gracious and exalted. Gracious and exalted majesties are a shilling a cartload. What no other country has is a President, a ruler whose power depends not on the number of titles he piles on top of his name, but on the genuine love of his people, whereof his very position is the proof and sign. When one has said ‘President,’ one has spoken a name whose luster eclipses all lesser titles, to which any addition must be a diminution.”

“Do you really think so?” Washington asked, obviously impressed.

“So firmly do I believe it, that in the future, I will venture to say, other countries will have Presidents rather than kings, and the most powerful rulers in the world will affect the title we Americans have given to our executive.”

“My word, Phillips!” cried Washington. “I had not thought of the thing in those terms, but ‘Mr. President’ it shall be!”

Some time later, after Washington had retired and we were walking back home to our lodgings, Parson Weems said, “That was very clever, Susanna—puncturing his bubble by pretending to inflate it.”

“I had to do something,” she replied, “and he’s grown too big to be conveniently punched in the face.”

A few days later, Washington was showing me the presidential office he had set up in his New-York residence, which would also serve as a kind of audience chamber. The best cabinetmakers in the city had been commissioned to make an immense desk and chair in Washington’s own size. “Here,” said Washington, “in the back of the house, I may meet privately with such men as I have business with, and we shall not be overheard or disturbed.”

“But is it wise for the President to conduct business with no witnesses?” I asked. “I will not say that there are dishonest men in our government, but misunderstandings may arise, which, without a witness on record, may be difficult to settle.”

“Ah,” Washington said with a sly nod, “in fact I have considered that eventuality;—or Hamilton has, which comes to the same thing.” He pointed to his desk. “In this office I have installed a system that silently records every conversation.”

“Every conversation?” I repeated incredulously. “But how is that possible?”

“You will, of course, keep this a secret as long as I am President,” said Washington; and he led me over to his desk. Lifting the top of it entirely away, he pointed down. I stood on my toes and peered into the desk. There, inside the Washington-sized desk, was a man sitting at an ordinary desk with a quill, a big pot of ink, and a narrow roll of paper, which proceeded from under the right side of the desk, passed across the writing surface, and was wound on a big spool under the left side of the desk.

“Mr. Shelton here,” Washington explained (and the man immediately started scribbling), “is a remarkably quick man with a quill. With a continuous roll of narrow paper, or ‘tape,’ as Hamilton calls it, he has no need to lose time changing sheets, and his shorthand can keep up with the fastest talker. Every conversation that takes place in this office is recorded on one of these ‘tapes,’ and I can retrieve the exact words that were spoken any time I like.”

He set the top back down, and Mr. Shelton was completely hidden.

“But isn’t it dark under there?” I asked. “How does he see?”

“I have no idea,” Washington replied. He lifted the top of the desk again. “It seems light enough under there now.” He set the top back down. “And the important thing is that all my presidential conversations are recorded on ‘tape,’ so that the chance of my being embarrassed in any way is virtually eliminated.”

“And you don’t worry that someone might use the very existence of such a record to embarrass you?”

“Gist, I hope I can say with confidence that I never say anything in this room of which I have cause to be ashamed. Indeed I find it difficult to imagine that the states would ever elect a man to the presidency who would be embarrassed by anything that might be recorded by such a system. The electoral mechanism is designed to select honorable men, and I have faith that it will continue to do so.”

Meanwhile the business of creating a government occupied most of the meetings of Congress; and as Congress created the positions, the President was required to nominate men to fill them. Of course Washington could think of only one man to be the Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Hamilton was hardly able to contain his joy at being able to found his own currency.

“We shall base it on tens,” he explained, “which will at a stroke eliminate the difficulties of converting between pounds, shillings, dollars, and all the other coins that jangle in our purses; and we shall have a national currency, so that there will be no complicated formula, as there is now, to convert the coin of New Hampshire to that of North Carolina. As the people are familiar with the name, and as it carries no memories of our oppression by the British, we shall call our coin the dollar, and if—”

“And these dollars,” Washington interrupted—“of what size and weight will they be?”

“The weight, of course, will depend on the value we assign to the United States dollar; as for the size, we shall consult with the men we choose to run our mint, who will be able to tell us how such and so much a weight of silver is best distributed in a coin.”

“These are very important considerations from the point of view of a coin’s projectile properties,” said Washington. “The Spanish milled dollar travels well through the air, and possesses enough heft to carry it to its target without being too much buffeted by the wind. I should hate to see an American dollar without those properties; for men who throw dollars for sport are very particular about the dollars they throw, and might reject our United States dollar if its range and accuracy do not meet their expectations.”

“I am certain you could persuade our mint to take those considerations into account,” said Hamilton. “Now, as I said, multiples of ten will—”

“A milled edge also improves the grip, which for sporting purposes is one of the most important considerations.”

“Yes. The grip. Now, as I was saying, we shall make our dollar divisible into tens, which we might call ‘dimes,’ as being, of course, the tenth part of a dollar. A tenth part of a dime would then be a ‘cent,’ because it is the hundredth part of—”

“I thought you said it was the tenth part.”

“It is the tenth part of a dime, and therefore the hundredth part of a dollar.”

“Why can’t it make up its mind?”

“It is both at the same time!”

“My word! That’s clever.”

“And then the tenth part of a cent would be a mill, bec—”

“Because it is the millionth part of a dollar!”

“No,” Hamilton explained with strained patience, “only the thousandth part.”

“Then why is it called a mill?”

“Because it is—”

“Why not a thou?”

“Because the names come from Latin, or rather—”

“Oh, Latin,” said Washington knowingly. “Well, Latin is another matter altogether.”

Hamilton was about to say something more, but then appeared to realize that he had won as much of a victory as he was likely to win in this discussion, and resumed his earlier topic. “As I was saying, the division into tens will make calculations much easier for ordinary shopkeepers and merchants, who will find their duties lightened considerably.”

“For example,” said Washington, “if I buy a turkey quill at Stimson’s in Alexandria for one bit, which is an eighth of a dollar, then that comes to…now let me see…”

“Twelve and a half cents,” said Susanna.

“Twelve and a half? Well, that doesn’t sound very easy at all. How is that easier than saying ‘one bit,’ Hamilton?”

“It just is!” Hamilton sputtered. “Tens are easier!”

I looked at Susanna, but she had nothing more to say. With Hamilton’s explosion, she had accomplished her goal.

It is perhaps too early to speak with authority, but generations to come may remember the planting of our new capital city as the most lasting achievement of Washing­ton’s first term as President. The location of it was much debated, and it was early decided that, if the city were located on the border between two states, with perhaps land taken from both of them, it would more clearly appear to belong to the whole Union, and not to any individual state. But which border was to be chosen? To many in Congress, especially the representatives from Mary­land and Penn­syl­vania, the border between Mary­land and Penn­syl­vania seemed the obvious choice, as being the traditional line between North and South. Wash­ing­ton, however, favored a site at the head of navigation of the Potomac, which, he said, would give the new city water access to the Chesa­peake, that great arm of the greater sea, and thus easy transportation to such important destinations as would not be similarly accessible from other sites. That the site was easy to reach from Mount Vernon may also have figured in his calculations. At any rate, Washington’s site was chosen, because it was usually easier to give Washington what he wanted if he seemed to be set on getting it.

The business of surveying the new capital and beginning its construction gave Washington an excuse to get back to Mount Vernon, where he always felt more at home, and thus for us to get back to our house on Prince-street. Washington threw himself into the project with much enthusiasm, and he was delighted to report to us that he had found a little Frenchman named Pierre L’Enfant who was just the man to lay out his new city. He invited us to meet this man at Mount Vernon, where he would explain exactly where he had chosen to place the capital.

When we arrived at Mount Vernon, we expected to find a pale little Frenchman; but the man who was seated (on a very tall stool) at Wash­ing­ton’s immense table, with various maps and surveys spread out before him, was nearly as dark as Susanna.

“This is Mr. Banneker, Mr. L’Enfant’s assistant,” Washington told us. “Mr. Banneker, my good friends Mr. Gist and Colonel Phillips.”

Mr. Banneker looked puzzled for a moment; and then he appeared to recall that Washington had his quirks, and accepted the introduction as it came to him.

“And is Mr. L’Enfant here?” I asked after the usual greetings.

Mr. Banneker hesitated, but Washing­ton answered for him: “Oh, Mr. L’Enfant is not visible in the strict sense.”

Mr. Banneker smiled helplessly, but we simply accepted the information as it came to us.

“Now, Mr. Banneker,” Washington continued, “what does Mr. L’Enfant think of the site?”

“Mr. L’Enfant thinks it’s mostly a swamp,” replied Mr. Banneker. “Mr. L’Enfant wonders why you don’t put the city somewhere on higher ground.”

“But this is the best possible site. Look—it’s a perfect square. Where else would you find that?”

“It is a perfect square,” said Banneker, “because you drew it that way on the map.”

“Well, yes. Of course I did. Why would I draw it in a shape that it is not?”

Banneker paused for a moment, wearing that expression common to all who entered thus into a debate with Washington and found themselves unaccountably bested. Then he continued: “The site also includes two cities already extant, namely George­town and Alexandria.”

“That should present no problem. They can be moved. So, since we have overcome all objections, it seems to me that Mr. L’Enfant can continue with his plans.”

It happened that Mr. Banneker was staying in Alexan­dria on Duke-street; so, although Wash­ing­ton had sent a coach to fetch him, we offered to take him home in ours, an offer he gladly accepted. In the coach Susanna did not let much time pass before saying, “Tell me about Mr. L’Enfant.”

Her smile left Banneker in no doubt that she understood most of the story already, so he was quite candid with us. “Mr. L’Enfant is a creation of my own. I realized, madam, that my color might obscure my abilities, and I thought if I described myself as the assistant to a well-known French engineer, I might be able to secure a better class of client. I did not expect President Wash­ing­ton to choose me for such an important commission, and I was certain that my deception would be discovered when he demanded to see Mr. L’Enfant personally. But when I insisted that Mr. L’Enfant could not be seen, President Wash­ing­ton took me more literally than I had expected. It seems there is some person by the name of Irving⁠—”

“Not a person,” I told him. “A mule.”

“Ah,” said Banneker, and he seemed not to know what to say after that.

“I don’t believe the deception was necessary,” said Susanna. “The President believes I am a white man named Phillips. That the fact is otherwise should, in spite of my masculine garb, be apparent to you.”

“Abundantly,” said Banneker, with an expression that brought me a momentary pang of jealousy. “That said, will you betray me to him? I have no doubt I deserve it, but—”

“I do not think it would be possible to change Wash­ing­ton’s mind about you,” I said. “He has known my wife Susanna for thirteen years, and not even the arrival of our children could persuade him that she is anything other than Colonel Phillips.” I own I added these details partly in order to forestall any false impressions Banneker might have about Susanna. When a man possesses a single precious jewel, he may at times seem overcautious.

“So you will not betray me?”

“Vive L’Enfant, as far as I’m concerned.”

Banneker soon had a draft of his plan ready, and Susanna and I, along with Parson Weems, were privileged to be at Mount Vernon when he presented it to Washington.

“You see that the pattern of the streets is very rational,” Banneker explained. “They go north and south, or east and west; the former numbered, the latter named by letters of the alphabet.”

“Oh, yes, this is very fine,” said Washington. “I foresee a mighty city rising here—a city whose position at the head of navigation on the Potomac will give rise to undreamt-of prosperity; a city of globe-circling commerce, of gleaming towers and verdant parks; a center of learning and the arts—”

“A city called Washington?” asked Parson Weems.

“No, of course not. Don’t be absurd. It would be presumptuous of me in the extreme to establish a capital bearing my own name. I was thinking of ‘Columbia,’ after the great navigator who discovered the New World. How does that sound?”

“A fine name,” Susanna said with what sounded like relief.

“Now, this round thing here,” Washington continued—“what is that?”

“A natural basin, which we shall improve as a promenade for the residents. I was thinking it might look especially splendid in the spring if we planted the perimeter with cherry trees.”

“I think not,” said Washington, suddenly stiff.

“But the blossoms would make—”

“No cherries. I particularly desire you, for very good and sufficient reasons, not to plant cherry trees.”

“Of course if you insist—”

“I think we can do without the cherries.—Now, you have all these streets going straight up and down or back and forth.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And this is the President’s house here. And the Capitol, where the Congress meets, here. Now, what happens if the President needs to go to the Capitol to address Congress?”

“Then he can walk down past this street, and this, and then turn left and walk straight to the Capitol like this,” replied Banneker.

“Would it not,” asked Washington, picking up the quill and dipping it in the ink, “be more efficient to have a street connecting the two points directly?” He drew a straight line between the President’s house and the Capitol on the map.

Banneker looked horrified. “But it destroys the logical symmetry of it all. If you—”

“And then to get from here to here you could have a street going directly like this.” He drew a diagonal straight across Mr. Banneker’s neat horizontals and verticals. “And from here to here” (he drew another line), “and here to here, and here to here.”

“But I had a perfectly neat system of numbered and lettered streets!” And then, recollecting himself, Banneker added, “I mean, Mr. L’Enfant had.”

“I’m sure Mr. L’Enfant will see the wisdom of these improvements. We could name these more direct streets after states of the Union. This one could be Pennsylvania, this one New-York, this one Virginia, this one Wisconsin, this one Georgia, and so on.”

“There’s no state called ‘Wisconsin.’ ”

“We could make one to match the street. Plenty of room in the Northwest. I don’t see why some of my land can’t be set aside for states with whimsical names.”

Mr. Banneker sighed and said, “I’ll present the idea to Mr. L’Enfant.”

Later, as we were on our way home in our coach, Susanna asked me, “Will anyone be able to find his way in our capital city once Washington has done with altering the plans?”

“Probably not,” I replied. “But consider the advantages. If we ever go to war again, the enemy will never successfully invade our capital. Any invading force would find itself hopelessly lost and easily overcome.”

“I do love your good cheer,” said Susanna, “but please, just this once, will you admit to me that the man is an imbecile?”

To be continued in Chapter XIV.

By an Associate.

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Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter XII.—Washington for President.—Mr. Hamilton’s plan for electing him.—New terminology for a new form of government.—Posters, broadsides, and articles in the papers.—Campaign tour.—Debate with Adams.—Washington elected.

To the question of who should be our president there could, in Washington’s mind, be only one answer. How to arrange the desired result, however, was not completely obvious. The Constitution had created a mechanism by which a president would be chosen: viz., Susanna’s “Electoral College,” a term I quickly learned not to mention in her presence. But what was an Electoral College, and how did one come to be? The Constitution’s rules were simple and direct, but only because they left many questions unanswered. When the people chose electors, were they to choose men whose judgment they trusted on account of long experience and preeminence in wisdom? Phrased in those terms, the question answered itself quickly. It was decided by no one, or by everyone at once, that the people would choose men who had already made up their minds as to which candidate they would choose, and would not change their minds under any circumstances, no matter what new evidence might come to light.

There were many men who thought they might be exactly the man required for this new position of President. Fortunately Washington had a weapon in his arsenal that could not be matched by any of his opponents. Mr. Hamilton had already concluded that his own prospects of advancement depended upon Washington’s being elected President, and he threw himself into the project with his customary enthusiasm.

“We need to make sure you’re appealing to all demographics,” Hamilton explained over Madeira on the back porch at Mount Vernon.

“What are demographics?” Washington naturally asked.

“That’s a term I’ve come up with on my own. It literally means ‘people-writing.’ ”

“You want me to write on people?”

“No, you misunderstand—”

“I usually just sign their autograph albums, and that makes them happy enough.”

“It’s not about writing on—”

“I’d think the quill would tickle them terribly.”

“Please try to—”

“There was one young woman in Annapolis who made a request I considered somewhat immodest, but even that was on fabric.”

“Look, there are—”

“And the ink feathered, so that to my mind the signature was spoiled, but on the other hand I should hope that not many people will see that much of her anyway.”

“It doesn’t mean writing on people,” Hamilton said. “It means writing about people.”

“Oh, I see,” said Washington. “Well, really, when I think about it, I do seem to write mostly about people, except for Irving of course. That is, when I do write. Well, I shall be very glad to have a new word for it.”

“Let me begin again,” said Hamilton. “There are many different kinds of people, and we want to make sure you appeal to all of them. The best way to do that is with targeted advertising, as I call it.”

“Do you—”

“And I’m not shooting anything!” Hamilton explained quickly. “Let me show you what I mean. What sort of people do you think go to cheap inns and taverns?”

“Well,” said Washington, “I should think they would be people with little money who like to drink.”

“There you are, then,” said Hamilton. ‘We put up a poster in every cheap tavern: “Share a Drink with Washington—A Man of the People, for the People, Protecting Your Interests from the Rich.’ And then what sort of people go to the races?”

“Mostly wealthy planters,” Washington replied.

“So we put up posters wherever the races meet: ‘Washington—The Prince of Planters, Protecting Your Interests from the Mob.’ You see how it works. You aim, so to speak, your advertisements at the people who are likely to see them in the place where we hang them. Thus your advertisements are targeted, as I call it.”

“But it seems to me that you have General Washington acting in two entirely contradictory ways,” said Susanna. “You have him protecting the poor against the rich, and the rich against the poor.”

“I prefer to say ‘complementary’ rather than ‘contrary,’ ” said Hamilton. “Like St. Paul, you become all things to all men.”

“Oh, well, if it’s in Scripture,” said Washington.

“We’re simply broadening your appeal by the Pauline method, as it were. Similarly, in the New England states, we shall have posters to tell the people that Washington is the protector of shipping and manufacturing interests against the rich plantation-owners, and in the South, of course, we shall be careful to say that Washington, the man of the South, will protect Southern interests against Northern plutocrats.”

“Plutocrats?” Weems asked.

“It’s another word I’ve come up with on my own,” Hamilton said proudly. “It means rich people with too much influence.”

“My word, Hamilton, you certainly are enriching our American language,” said Washington. “Why, if we keep adding words at this rate, no one will be able to understand us at all.”

“We explain what they mean as we introduce them,” Hamilton responded. “I have a list, you see, and I add to it every day.” He shuffled downward in his stack of papers until he found the one he was looking for. “Here it is.”

Washington took the paper, which looked tiny in his hand, and examined it closely. “Well, you certainly have been busy, Hamilton. You have some fine words here, if I’m any judge of words. Like ‘ee-lights,’ for example. What are ‘ee-lights’?”

“That’s ‘ay-leets,’ ” said Hamilton. “It’s a word I borrowed from the French.”

“Oh, well, I suppose if we pillage foreign languages, there’s no end to the number of words we can come up with. I thought you were just making them up out of your own head, like ‘sizzwappler.’ ”

“ ‘Sizzwappler’? What’s that?”

“It’s a word I just made up out of my own head,” Washington explained.

“But, you see, these words are formed on regular principles out of the materials already afforded us by the Saxon, French, Latin, or Greek.”

“It seems like a great deal of work to have to know four languages just to make up words in English. I think my method is much simpler. What does ‘ay-leets’ mean, anyway?”

“It means people who are better educated, with more wisdom and understanding, than the average man.”

“Oh, I see. So you want to tell the people that I am one of these ay-leets.”

“No! People hate the elites. They don’t want anyone to be wiser or to know more than they do. They want a leader who’s as stupid and ignorant as they are.”

“But then why would they want someone like me?” asked Washington.

A brief silence followed, and then Hamilton explained, “It’s simply a matter of image.” He pointed to the word “image” in his list. “We want to create an image of you as a man of the people.”

“You mean like a statue?”

“No!” Hamilton put some effort into getting his annoyance under control; it could perhaps be unwise to be too short with a man who was three times his height. “You have doubtless imagined, say, George the Third in your mind.”

“Oh, yes,” said Washington. “I picture him with long ears that stand up and out from his head, a long muzzle, four hooves, a long and brushy tail…”

“You mean like a mule?”

“Precisely. I believe he shares many characteristics with my archnemesis Irving.”

Hamilton looked blank for a moment, and then assimilated this new addition to the conversation and went on. “Well, that image in your mind stands in for King George. When you think of King George, that is what you think of. What we want to do is control the image the voters have of you in their minds. We want them to see the right image when they hear your name.”

“Oh!” cried Washington, “so they can see me when I’m not there! That’s extraordinary, Hamilton. It’s a remarkable idea. A real sizzwappler. Do you have a word for that, too—people seeing me when I’m far away?”

“It’s not really— Well, actually, I suppose it is seeing you when you’re far away, isn’t it? We could call it “teleoptics,’ or ‘proculovision.’ ”

“How about ‘television’?” asked Washington. “I like the sound of that.”

“No, you can’t combine Greek and Latin parts that way. But you see the principle, don’t you? When the ordinary tavern-goer thinks of you, we want him to think of someone like him—someone who hates the rich industrialists and planters and merchants and suchlike people and looks out for the interests of the ordinary man. When the planters think of you, we want them to see a rich planter who thinks the way they do and hates the common mob. That’s what I mean by ‘image.’ ”

“But the way you paint these images of me, I’m not sure I’d like me very much if I met me.”

“We don’t care what you think of you. We care what they think of you. We need to reach the people who will vote for the electors who will vote for Washington.”

“And you will do this by putting up images of me?”

Hamilton looked blank again for a moment, and then said, “If necessary.”

The only other candidate we really had to fear was John Adams, who was not nearly so well known as the General. But Hamilton was bent on leaving nothing to chance. Soon we began to see Washington-for-President broadsides and posters wherever we went. When Susanna and I took little Crispus and Jane for a walk down toward the docks, there were Washington’s posters:

WASHINGTON
for
LOWER
TARIFFS
and
MARITIME
IMPROVEMENTS

Later Susanna asked Hamilton what he meant by “maritime improvements,” and he replied, “It means whatever the shipping interests want it to mean.”

Not long afterward, a poster appeared across from St. Paul’s, very near our house:

DON’T LET THEM TAKE YOUR SLAVES

Vote for
WASHINGTON

Because when slavery is outlawed,
only outlaws will have slaves.

Susanna was especially enraged by this one because she already knew that Hamilton had sent to Boston to have posters put up with a very different message:

KEEP MASSACHUSETTS FREE

Vote for
WASHINGTON

Don’t let slaveholders
control the confederation.

“How is that even logical?” she had demanded of Hamilton when he told us of the Boston posters. “Washington is a slaveholder himself, and you are asking them to put him at the head of the Union.”

“The people will vote for the image,” Hamilton had replied. “The man is immaterial.”

Meanwhile Mr. Adams’ campaign was not idle. A few days after Washington’s first posters were put up, a small poster appeared on the wall of the Lyceum:

You Might Consider Voting
for

JOHN ADAMS

If It Is Not
Too Much Trouble.

We saw no other Adams posters, but the mere existence of this one raised Mr. Hamilton’s ire to a frightening degree. “We must crush this Adams,” he said when we were again gathered on the porch at Mount Vernon. “We must pound him into the earth until there is no life left in him.”

“Mr. Hamilton,” Washington said with obvious shock, “John Adams is a friend of mine, and no consideration could induce me to do him the least injury.”

“I meant it metaphorically, of course,” Hamilton said hastily. “Privately you and Mr. Adams may remain the best of friends. It is only in the political sense that we must beat him down and crush his bones to powder under our boots. That is what ‘politics’ means.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” said Washington. “What would we do to beat him down politically but not personally?”

“Well, for a start, we might place anonymous articles in the Gazette, which would soon be picked up by the papers from Boston to Savannah.”

“I see. And what would these articles say?”

“Anything unflattering about Adams that would damage his reputation. We could question his masculinity, for example.”

“Don’t be absurd, Hamilton. Adams is as much a man as any of us here. I know a man when I see one; I can tell the difference.”

Hamilton glanced helplessly at Susanna, but she gave him a look that would wither an oak tree.

“The content of the accusation is not important,” Hamilton bravely continued. “In fact it will be more effective if we do not phrase the thing as an accusation, but rather as a question. “Is John Adams a Horse Thief?” You see we say nothing dishonest; we merely ask a question. Or, better yet, a denial: “Adams Denies Arson Charges, Say Campaign Insiders.” We tell no untruth: in fact we specifically deny that Adams is an arsonist. Nothing could be more honest than that.”

“But what do you accomplish by telling the voters that Mr. Adams has done nothing wrong?” I asked.

“Ah, but we do not precisely tell them that he has done nothing wrong. We tell them that he has denied doing something wrong, and they will conclude from that that someone has accused him of doing it, and then they will wonder, Did he do it? And there will be a good number of them who think, in the words of the old adage, ‘Where there’s smoke—’ ”

“ ‘—permission ought to be asked of the ladies.’ Yes, I am familiar with the proverb,” Washington said. “But something about this makes me uneasy, Hamilton. Is it not possible to win the office of President simply by giving the public a candid assessment of my intelligence and abilities, and thus allowing the people to make an informed decision?”

Hamilton thought for a moment.

“No,” he replied at last.

Soon Hamilton’s anonymous articles began appearing in the Alexandria Gazette. As Hamilton had foretold, the articles were not long in being reprinted in Philadelphia, Charleston, Baltimore, New-York, Savannah, Hartford, and even as far west as Pittsburgh; or so I was told much later by a certain Mr. Brackenridge, who will appear later in these pages.

Not long after that, we began to hear the rumors in the usual gossip at the taverns and coffee-houses of Alexandria, and even in church: they say that Adams stole twenty horses from a defenseless old widow in Quincy; they say that Adams has one-quarter African blood in his veins; they say that Adams wears a long coat to hide his pointed tail; they say all those things that Hamilton’s articles specifically denied about Adams, which, as Hamilton had intended, introduced thoughts that had not previously been in the minds of the people. Adams and his friends wrote letters denying the rumors, but all their denials were merely favorable breezes under the wings of Rumor, and had the effect of spreading the stories farther and farther. In effect, Adams was doing Washington’s campaigning for him.

Meanwhile, Hamilton arranged for Washington to travel up and down the country to meet the people face to face—“shaking hands and kissing babies,” as Hamilton explained, although the latter part of the program was quickly abandoned when we discovered that the effect on babies of a fifteen-foot man bending down to kiss them was not uniformly positive. We traveled in a train of coaches and wagons, which Hamilton called a “cavalcade,” that included a large number of correspondents for the various papers up and down the country. After Washington began to complain of back pain, we added a large crew of diggers, who would go ahead of us and prepare a nine-foot-deep trench for Washington to walk up and down in, so that he could greet the people who came to see him without bending over. Everywhere we stayed, of course, Washington put up one of his brass plaques, which were greatly prized by the communities; most of them appeared now on churches and meeting halls, and not a few barns; which, but for the very most opulent planters’ houses in the South, were generally the only available buildings sufficiently large to accommodate Washington’s current dimensions. We had to send men ahead—“advance scouts,” Hamilton called them—to find such accommodations, and, after two regrettable incidents that were much talked about where they occurred, to make sure that the location chosen for Washington’s appearance before the crowd was not dangerously near a cherry orchard.

As more and more writers for the weeklies joined our cavalcade, their demands upon Washington’s time grew more and more inconvenient, until at last Hamilton set aside certain times when all of them could gather at once and ask the General whatever questions occurred to them. Because of the press of correspondents trying to push their way to the front, these occasions quickly became known among the literary gentlemen as “press conferences.” The usual procedure was that one correspondent at a time would be chosen to ask a question, to which Washington would give a reply, and then Hamilton, standing on a raised platform beside him, would explain what Washington meant by what he had said. It was not obvious to Washington that these explanations were truly representative of his own thoughts; but Hamilton gave him another lecture on the subject of “image,” and Washington agreed because agreeing made the lecture stop.

Hamilton’s master stroke was to arrange a face-to-face debate between Washington and Adams in Philadelphia. In this debate, certain correspondents from the Philadelphia papers were permitted to ask questions, which both candidates answered extemporaneously. Mr. Adams answered every question intelligently, and had all the information about tariffs, diplomacy, commerce, finance, Indian affairs, and turnpikes ready to hand. Washington had none of that, with the result that his brief answers and irrelevant aphorisms held the attention of the audience, and he was universally judged to be the winner of the debate.

At last the great day came; the people went to the polls in great numbers; they chose electors for Washington; and the General was ready to take his place as the first President of the United States.

But if the electoral process was obscure, it was clarity itself in comparison with the presidency. The Constitution specified a few duties of the President, which, taken together, might occupy a day of his time out of the month. What was the President supposed to be doing the rest of the time?

To be continued in Chapter XIII.

By an Associate.

---

Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter XI.—Washington’s private life.—Failings of the Articles of Confederation.—Constitutional Convention called.—Seating difficulties.—One dollar, one vote rejected.—Question of apportioning representation.—The Three-Fifths Compromise.—Constitution adopted.

Over the next few years Susanna and I saw Washington frequently, but we were not in constant attendance as before. We took up residence in my house on Prince-street in Alexandria, and about a year afterward Susanna gave birth to our son Crispus Attucks Gist, named for her martyred friend in Boston. A year later, our daughter Jane Adams Gist arrived, whom we named for Mrs. Adams because she and Susanna had conceived a warm friendship. After that, although we certainly did everything in our power to encourage them, no more children arrived, and we assumed—mistakenly, as we were to discover much later—that, for whatever reason, Susanna was incapable of bearing any more.

Parson Weems had retired to Georgetown across the river to work on his tracts, of which he issued a steady stream: “On the Falsity of All Human Traditions, Saving Certain Exceptions Herein Enumerated”; “On the Poor Fashion Sense of the Romish Hierarchy”; “An Inquiry into the Scandalously Immoral Behavior of Certain Orders of Nuns, with Numerous Woodcuts”; “Whether the Pope Possesses a Hidden Tail, with a Commentary on the Seventeenth Chapter of Revelation”; and other similar titles, most of which sold very well, assuring their author a comfortable living. He had them printed at the Gazette office in Alexandria, and would generally stop for dinner with us after a day at the printer’s; I was always glad to see him, and Susanna was at least polite to him, though she was not as fond of him as I was.

Of course we were frequent guests at Mount Vernon. Washington was not a man to forget loyal friends, and I believe Susanna, Parson Weems, and I saw more of him than did all the great men of the age who stopped to pay tribute to the greatest of them all, and to seek his advice, an experience that usually left them more baffled than they had been before they arrived.

In short, I will say that my own life was very pleasant in the few years after our victory in the War of Independence; and so, I believe, was Washington’s. Our country, however, was suffering.

The difficulty, as all agreed, lay in the Articles of Confederation. That agreement, hastily put together when the states were in the throes of their war for independence, gave us a national government that existed only at the whim of the states; and we soon discovered that the states could be quite whimsical. The Congress depended on the contributions of the states for its budget, and there were no consequences for states that failed to make the agreed-on contributions. Moreover, the Empire of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation showed a distressing tendency to bully the other states, which the Articles of Confederation provided no means of counteracting. Clearly some revisions were necessary, and it must be soon, preferably before Connecticut declared war on Rhode Island.

Thus the Congress voted to call a convention in Philadelphia for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and naturally Virginia chose Washington as one of her delegates.

“I should like to have you and Phillips with me,” Washington said when he told me about the convention. “Your steadying influence, and his incisive mind, will be of great use to me in Philadelphia. We ought to have Parson Weems as well, if he can spare the time, for a bit of spiritual advice would not come amiss at this important juncture.”

“I’ll have to ask Su— Phillips, but for my part I should be glad to offer whatever assistance I can give.”

Susanna was reluctant to leave the children for so long, though we had a capable and intelligent nurse whom they loved, and who would be more than adequate to the task of caring for them. “But on the other hand, if Virginia has chosen Washington, the other states have probably chosen the usual lot of imbeciles; and if I can be there to speak for sanity— Very well; we’ll go, and the children will come with us.”

“Is that wise?” I asked.

“Crispus is already speaking in complete sentences,” said Susanna. “Perhaps he can draft some of the articles.”

So it was done. We made slow progress to Philadelphia with Jane and Crispus, but they enjoyed the new sights along the way, and certainly Susanna and I were happier for not worrying about what might be happening to them at home.

When we arrived in Philadelphia, we found the preparations for the convention already in progress, and already encountering their first difficulty. Washington had grown considerably since the successful conclusion of the war. He was now a little over thirteen feet tall, and while this height presented no architectural problem in the ample chamber chosen for the convention, it was clear that none of the furniture was at all adequate to Washington’s current dimensions.

Here was a problem the convention would have to solve before it could even begin to address the perceived weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation. It was imperative that at least one chair be made in Washington’s size. Yet no one wished to be the one who drew attention to Washington’s unusual height. We all preferred not to mention it, and I was never quite sure how much Washington himself was aware of his own size. Furthermore, the pride of some of the other delegates would hardly admit of one delegate’s having an obviously larger seat than the rest. The representatives from Rhode Island, where size has often been a sensitive question, threatened to withdraw from the union altogether and form an independent and potentially hostile Empire if any Virginian sat in a chair whose dimensions exceeded those of the chairs occupied by Rhode Island by so much as a single inch.

In the end it was decided by the Standing Committee on Seating that all furniture in the hall should be so made as to accommodate any delegate up to fourteen feet tall. Thus the problem was addressed without any specific reference to Washington himself, and the feelings of smaller delegates were spared. Most of the delegates required stepladders, or for some of the more infirm hoisting tackle, to make the ascent into their seats; but the important thing was that harmony was preserved, and the convention was not irreparably split over questions of protocol before any of the more important issues had been dealt with.

Susanna and I did not attend the sessions with Washington, so we heard about the actual debates second-hand; but we heard them in great detail, for Washington loved to talk about them. The first debate, of course, was over the presidency of the convention, and as far as Washington was concerned there could be only one reasonable choice. Fortunately, he was able to make the other delegates see reason, or see how difficult it would be if they did not see things his way. The first day he came back to the inn where we were staying (a house with comfortably high fifteen-foot ceilings, and a large back parlor where we accommodated Washington by laying four beds side by side) to announce that he had been chosen president of the convention. Furthermore, he was quite pleased to find that his old friend Alexander Hamilton had come to the convention as the delegate from New-York state. “The men of New-York sent only one delegate,” said Washington, “and in this I believe they have shown wisdom; for one Hamilton is worth half a dozen of the rest. I believe his ‘one-dollar-one-vote’ proposal has a very good chance of acceptance.”

“One-dollar-one-vote?” I repeated.

“Hamilton explained it to me. It seems very clever. Each man would have a voting power proportional to his wealth, so that the burden of government falls most heavily upon those who most naturally have an interest in the stability of the Union.”

“I’d like to talk to Hamilton about that personally,” said Susanna. I did not like the way the fingers of her right hand were closing into a fist.

“The thing that worries me,” Washington continued, “is that the delegates from the Empire of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation have gone home and refused to have anything further to do with the convention. I hope that troublesome state is not bent on causing us more difficulties. We need the cooperation of all the states, for a civil war between Rhode Island and the other states would be destructive and unpleasant. However, we can only trust in our own wisdom to erect a government that will, by its obvious utility, recommend itself even to the mobs in Newport and Providence.”

“Perhaps,” Susanna suggested, “we ought to trust in God instead.”

We did in fact see quite a bit of Mr. Hamilton as the days went on. He often dined with us, and he spoke of his plans for a government “of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy” with great enthusiasm. I kept one eye on Susanna’s right fist, for there was something about Mr. Hamilton that unsettled her.

Eventually, however, it became clear that Hamilton’s most audacious proposals would not gain the support of most of the states. Many of the delegates, indeed, were insisting that every man should have a vote.

“Why every man?” Susanna asked when Washington brought us this news.

“That is indeed the question Hamilton has been asking. He believes that at least a property requirement—”

“No, I mean, why should the franchise be limited to men?”

“What do you mean? Would you have horses and mules vote as well?”

“Why should women not vote for their elected representatives? In all matters with which this government is concerned, they are equally affected. It is their homes that will be taxed, their husbands and sons who will be sent to war; it is they who will suffer most from bad government and benefit most from good.”

“Yes, Phillips,” replied Washington, “but women have not the analytical capacity which you and I enjoy. Surely you, of all people, with your exceptionally keen mind, can appreciate that difference. Your suggestion of extending the franchise to horses and mules may, however, be worthy of consideration.”

Susanna was about to say something in reply, but clearly thought better of it, and merely sat with her head down and her fingers on her temples. Many of her conversations with Washington seemed to end the same way.

The apportionment of representation in Congress was another difficulty that much concerned Washington. Susanna suggested an elegant compromise in which there would be two houses of Congress, like the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the one apportioned by population, and the other with equal representation from each state. This was eagerly adopted when Washington brought it up the next day, but then the question of how to determine the population of a state came up. The states of the South wished to have their slaves included; the states of the North, naturally, did not wish to concede so much influence to the South.

“They are still debating it—the representation question,” Washington told us one evening.

“They seem to be unable to face the real question of slavery,” said Susanna.

“And they have spent days debating,” Washington continued, “with no result that I can see other than frayed tempers and a considerable diminution of the Madeira stock.”

“It is because no one is bold enough to ask the real question,” said Susanna. “Instead they will talk themselves in circles, never touching on the one thing no one dares mention, until they are so weary of talking that they will make some absurd compromise and decide that a slave counts as, oh, three-fifths of a person, and then call it a job well done and hope no one ever reads the text.”

“Three-fifths of a person,” Washington repeated quietly. And then he suddenly brightened. “My word, Phillips, what a mind you have! Yes, that’s the answer!”

Susanna began to protest: “But I was just⁠—”

“Yes, yes, it solves the problem perfectly—an almost mathematical balance between the regions!”

“But it’s abs—”

“I must tell Hamilton at once!” He had risen and was already headed for the door, with that odd hunching walk he had developed in unconscious adaptation to the usual dimensions of interior doorways. “I don’t know what we’d do without you, Phillips! This is the best idea you’ve had since that Electoral College thing.” He ducked out the door.

“What? Wait—they adopted that too? But that was⁠⁠—”

The door closed.

“But that was a joke!” she almost wailed to the closed door. Then she turned to me. “Christopher, can we stop him?”

“I don’t think anything can stop the General once he has an idea stuck in his head.”

“But they’re making a hash of my country, and it’s all my fault!”

I stood and took her hand. “My dearest, the greatest minds of these United States are gathered here in Philadelphia. Every point in this new form of government is accepted only after mature deliberation.”

“Yes, but…” She laid her head on my shoulder. “But the greatest minds in these United States are all a bunch of imbeciles.”

Susanna was not well pleased when, the next day, Washington came back from the day’s session with the news that the “three-fifths” compromise had been accepted with minimal debate. She had to endure Washington’s congratulations over dinner, which she did with silent mortification; and Washington kept bringing up the subject for the rest of the evening, so that Susanna found it necessary to retire early on the excuse of a headache.

She was still awake when I joined her in bed, and she was still feeling gloomy. “I’ve made a mess of the Constitution,” she said as we lay in the dark (speaking quietly, so as not to wake the children), “and there’s nothing I can do to change it.”

“The Constitution need not be perfect,” I assured her. “It will still be better than the fraying fabric of Confederation.”

“But I’ve just increased the power of the slaveholders by an enormous amount. Slavery will simply wither away, you keep saying. Do you see it withering now?”

“With a strong federal government, the men of the North and East who oppose slavery will find partners in the South, and the institution will be ended peacefully, with minimal disruption. The alternative is disunion and bloodshed. You may have been responsible for saving the Union, Susanna, and averting a bloody civil war. In a few decades at most, slavery will be extinct, and⁠⁠—”

“And all the men and women and little helpless children who died as slaves will look down from heaven and say, ‘Thank you, Susanna Gist—thank you for letting us die without tasting freedom. Thank you for making sure⁠⁠—’ ”

She stopped. There was a loud whooping coming from downstairs, accompanied by rhythmic pounding. Washington was laughing.

“Someone must have told him a joke this afternoon,” I remarked.

The whooping continued, and then we very distinctly heard him shouting, “Three-fifths of a person!” Then more pounding, as of heels kicking on the floor.

Susanna turned over and pulled the coverlet over her head.

There were times, indeed, when it seemed to all of us that the convention must end in failure, and that no agreement could ever be reached among the states. Nature, however, proved our ally. The insupportable heat of a Philadelphia summer was now fully upon us. Curiously, the children seemed to grow more cheerful as the heat grew more oppressive; but Washington reported that the delegates were withering. More and more provisions were accepted in this new constitution simply because it was easier to say “yes” than to debate in the sweltering furnace where the convention was meeting. Washington told us that the delegates from Massachusetts had nearly got a constitutional prohibition of red chowder written into the document before Mr. Hamilton woke from his afternoon somnolence and vetoed it.

When at last the Constitution of the United States had been accepted by the convention, we returned home and awaited the verdict of the states. It took a year and a half, but at last the Constitution was ratified by the state conventions. Now there was much to be done. A whole national government had to be built from the very foundation. But in Washington’s mind there was really only one interesting question: who was to take on the exalted and onerous duties reserved in the Constitution for the President of the United States?

To be continued in Chapter XII.

By an Associate.

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Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter X.—New-York or Virginia?—Susanna presents the case for Virginia.—Plans for surrounding Cornwallis.—Susanna suggests amending the plans.—Surrender of Cornwallis.—Army discontented.—Plot to make Washington king.—Washington’s retirement.

We were now presented with a dilemma. Part of the British force was bottled up in New-York, where it might be possible, with the aid of the French fleet, to lay siege to them. The greater part, however, was in Virginia, where Cornwallis was perhaps planning a blow against Richmond, and thus might at a stroke cut off the South.

“To retake New-York,” I pointed out, “would be a great boost to American spirits.”

“But the army in Virginia,” Susanna said, “may do us more damage than the loss of New-York ever did, or even the loss of Philadelphia, which after all was only temporary. I think—begging your pardon, Chr— Mr. Gist—that we ought to strike boldly against Cornwallis; we may at least prevent him from cutting off the Carolinas and Georgia, and if we are bold enough, and fortunate enough, we might defeat Cornwallis altogether. Such a victory would, in effect, win the war, as without Cornwallis’ army the British could have no hope of success.”

“It sounds very well,” said Washington, “but how are we to be sure of victory against so great an army? Cornwallis has greater numbers on his side.”

“The French fleet, sir, will be essential,” replied Susanna. “Cornwallis, we hear, has taken a position on the peninsula. If the French can prevent his escape by water, and prevent his being reinforced or resupplied, then we need only block the land routes, and we have him.”

This seemed like good advice to Washington, and so Admiral de Grasse was summoned to a meeting with the General, at which La Fayette was also present, along with Susanna and me. We unrolled a large map of the peninsula between the York and James rivers, and the three great leaders studied it in intense silence for a while. At last Washington spoke.

“If we dispose our soldiers here, on the north and east, with Fayette’s French army on the south, then you, Admiral, should be able to cut off Cornwallis completely by water to the west.”

“Yes,” de Grasse agreed, “the plan, it is excellent. He shall not escape us, by blue.”

Susanna looked down at the map. “I believe, sirs, that you have mistaken the water for the land, and the land for the water. These wavy lines here, you see, indicate the water; the land is this area behind them, here.”

“Ah!” said Washington. “Thank you, Phillips. Well spotted. That is important information, and complicates the strategy considerably. We cannot expect the men to stand very long in water that is possibly up to their necks, or even over their heads. We shall need to make some adaptations; perhaps some sort of bridge or pier assembly, or better yet a series of floating wooden platforms with which we can surround the peninsula on three sides, and on which the men can stand dryshod for an indefinite period of time. It will require a good bit of wood, which will require a good bit of labor; although the labor will be hastened considerably if we can find any large stands of wild cherry. That will do for the army; but, unless I am very much mistaken, the disposition of the fleet will require at least as much thought and labor, if not more.”

“Very assuredly,” the Admiral agreed. “I believe that a construction of the rollers, made perhaps of the trunks of the trees, will be necessary for the placing of the ships in position, if indeed suitable trees find themselves nearby.”

“Well, there fortune favors us,” said Washington. “Tidewater Virginia has many stands of pine that grow straight and tall, with few branches until very near the top; such trees would, it seems to me, make admirable rollers for our purposes.”

Susanna was sitting with her head down, her eyes closed, and her fingers on her temples; but now she spoke again. “If I may be so bold, sirs, it might be better to reverse the positions of the army and the fleet.”

The General and the Admiral both looked at her blankly for a moment; then Washington spoke slowly and cautiously. “Do you mean, the army on the land, and the navy in the water?”

“Yes, sir,” Susanna said with care and patience. “Each force deployed in its native element, so to speak.”

“My word, Phillips! How much simpler that makes everything! You see, Admiral, why I insist on having Captain Phillips present whenever we discuss strategy. Captain Phillips? No, sir—Phillips, you are promoted to colonel as of this instant. We’ll skip lieutenant colonel—no point in lingering there, eh, Phillips? Well done.”

Later, as the meeting adjourned, I heard Admiral de Grasse ask Washington in a lowered voice, “That so brilliant young officer, the Colonel Phillips—is it that he perhaps appears pale to you?”

“I have often worried about that myself,” Washington replied, “but it seems to be his natural complexion. If he were not so valuable to me, I should insist that he take a few weeks’ rest; but, between us, Admiral, there are days when I do verily believe that our success in this war depends upon young Phillips.”

“It can be that you there have reason, General,” said the Admiral. “The army on the land and the navy in the water! Sacred blue! It is brilliant in its simplicity.”

As soon as it was practical, therefore, the French fleet set off for the Chesapeake; meanwhile the combined American and French armies marched southward. Everything went according to plan. Admiral de Grasse was in position with his fleet; the combined armies blocked the land route on the peninsula. Cornwallis was surrounded, and unless he fought his way up the peninsula, or unless a large British fleet defeated the French, he was helpless.

“And now what shall we do?” Washington asked at the council of war he had called.

“Nothing,” Susanna suggested.

“Nothing? But it seems to me that the ‘nothing’ strategy was ineffective at New-York, and I thought we had given it up.”

“There are times when nothing is effective, and times when it is not effective,” Susanna explained with all the patience in her power. “When something has to be done, then nothing will not do. But there are times when circumstances favor patience, and at such times waiting is preferable to action, which may risk an undesirable result. I believe this is one of those times. Provoking a battle risks defeat; keeping Cornwallis bottled up in the peninsula must deplete his resources and eventually induce him to surrender.”

“My word!” said Washington, “who would have thought that nothing would be so much more complicated than something?”

Hamilton spoke up. “It’s all very well to do nothing when nothing can be done, Su— uh, Colonel Phillips. But at any moment a British fleet may arrive in the bay, and then everything depends on the French ships, which may not be able to hold off a sufficiently powerful attack. Cornwallis knows this, and therefore Cornwallis will never surrender. It seems to me, therefore, that an immediate attack—”

“Excuse me, General,” said a young lieutenant who had appeared behind Washington.

“Just a moment, Hamilton,” said Washington, and he turned to the lieutenant. “What have you to report?”

“Lord Cornwallis is here, sir. He says he would like to surrender, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Tell him it’s really no trouble at all,” said Washington. “I’ll be with him directly, as soon as I’ve heard what Hamilton has to say.” The lieutenant went off to deliver Washington’s reply, and Washington turned back to face Hamilton. “Now, Hamilton,” Washington said, “please continue what you were saying, and forgive the interruption.”

“As I say,” Hamilton resumed, “I believe Cornwallis, in his present circumstances, will never surrender; and it behooves us, therefore—”

“But, Hamilton,” Parson Weems interrupted him, “Cornwallis is surrendering right now.”

“But that is a mere fact,” Hamilton replied. “My argument is founded upon reason.”

“Then, since the facts demand our attention now,” said Susanna, “let us attend to them, and we may reserve reason for our leisure.”

“Well said, Phillips,” Washington concurred. “For there is a wise old saying—” He produced the copybook, and we waited for him to find the page, which had become more and more difficult for him to do as his fingers increased in size. “Here it is: ‘Do not jog the desk on which another is writing.’ I find it useful to have a fund of these proverbs ready to hand, so to speak, for they distill the wisdom of our elders to its essence. Let us now receive Lord Cornwallis as gentlemen.”

The men had helpfully found Cornwallis a barrel to stand on, so that he and Washington could see eye to eye. He was waiting there, and Washington immediately engulfed Cornwallis’ hand in his own.

“General,” said Washington, “welcome to our camp.”

“General Washington, sir,” replied Cornwallis, “it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance at last.”

“Oh, I know what you mean. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for ages. One never really gets to know a man when one is only firing cannonballs at him. I hope you don’t take it too personally, by the way—the cannonballs, I mean, and the defeat and such.”

“Certainly not. I have long since learned to expect that I shall often suffer such reverses, which I attribute entirely to the machinations of Willoughby.”

“Willoughby?” asked Washington.

“My mortal enemy—the most fiendishly devious and diabolically wicked stoat ever born. Of course he is not—

“—not visible in the strict sense! Ah, Cornwallis, I know exactly what you mean!”

“Of course you do, sir! I know that a man of your talents must have the same experience. It is the very mark of a commander’s greatness that he is pursued throughout his career—”

“—by the forces of envy and malice—”

“—personified in a malevolent invisible animal!” they both finished together.

“Mine is a mule named Irving,” Washington said.

“General Washington, it is a positive honor to surrender to a soldier of your caliber. I hope we can settle on gentlemanly terms.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I think it will be sufficient if you give me your word not to have anything more to do with fighting against the United States, and then you can be on your way.”

“My word as a gentleman,” said Cornwallis, extending his hand.

“I accept your word,” said Washington, taking the offered hand.

“But—” Hamilton sputtered, but Susanna and I both gestured to him to keep quiet.

“But how,” he continued quietly to us, “I mean—what guarantee do we have that he’ll keep his word?”

“He’ll keep his word,” Susanna insisted.

“But how do you know that?” Hamilton demanded in a hoarse whisper.

“I know it because he’s just as much of an imbecile as Washington is,” she replied. “And I sometimes wish the world were filled with such imbeciles.”

As Susanna had expected, the victory over Cornwallis virtually ended the war. It was true that no treaty of peace had been signed, and Sir Henry Clinton in New-York refused to recognize the de-facto victory of the American side, continuing to occupy the city with such forces as he had; but the United States could get along very well without the city of New-York, and did so for the next two years. Nor did Clinton ever admit defeat: he is still there, in a small house on Wall-street, with two aged captains for company, and occasionally issues orders to occupy Hartford or Albany or whatnot, which his captains receive with deference and alacrity, without, however, setting foot out the front door.

The army now had nothing to do, and idle men began to consider more carefully the question of their payment. Once again the Congress attempted to pay them in paper money, which the men rejected as not worth so much as the same paper without any printing on it. So discontented were the men that they began to speak openly of marching to Annapolis (where the Congress was meeting at the time) to have Washington made king: for they imagined that, once granted royal power, Washington would not be long in finding the means to pay them in specie. This plot came to the ears of Washington himself, who mentioned it over the Madeira one evening after supper in the old brick church he had made his headquarters, it being the only nearby building where his ten-foot figure could be comfortably accommodated. We had made a special table for him, with a chair his own height and a set of benches with stepladders so that we could all sit at the same table with him.

“Of course we do have the Articles of Confederation,” Washington said, “but I believe those must be regarded as a temporary measure. If we are to have a single nation rather than a rabble of thirteen unrelated States, we must adopt a form of government conducive to unity. A monarchy would, obviously, serve that purpose, and a careful choice of monarch is vital to the viability of our union. It ought to be—”

“Yes, we have been over this ground before,” said Susanna, “and we know that it ends at the conclusion that our ideal monarch would look very much like you, General Washington. But of course one doesn’t put oneself forward as seeking the kingship.”

“One doesn’t?”

“Modesty and diffidence are considered greatly desirable qualities in monarchs. Indeed, a monarch’s impassivity is precisely what makes him look like a monarch. It is essential to show that you do not desire the position of king, and that you would accept it only with extreme reluctance.”

“Do you think so? Yes, I can see how that might be true.”

“If you would like, I could draft you a few remarks, which you might use when the occasion presents itself.”

“Oh, would you, Phillips? That would be very kind of you.”

Later, as Susanna sat at the desk in our chamber writing some remarks for Washington to deliver extemporaneously, I asked her, “What exactly are you up to?”

“Kiss my neck and don’t ask questions,” she replied.

It was not long before the expected occasion did present itself. A gathering of junior officers and enlisted men formed in front of Washington’s church headquarters, and when Washington appeared at the door, they presented him with a set of resolutions calling upon him to lead the army to Annapolis and declare himself king.

Fortunately, Washington had laboriously memorized Susanna’s response. “Gentlemen,” said he, “I am sensible of the honor you do me in making this request, but at the same time I find it impossible to acquiesce. Are you not aware that we have spent seven years fighting a war not only against George III, but against the very institution of monarchy? Why, every man I see before me is a king on a throne of gold; for in our republic, gentlemen, the power rests with the people themselves, and not with some class of arbitrarily distinguished men who have no more natural parts than you have, and perhaps a great deal less good sense. Would you have me elevate myself above you, when we have fought so long and so hard for the principle that all men are created equal? No, gentlemen, so reluctant am I to abandon our shared republican principles that I could never desire the position of king, and only the direst circumstances would induce me to accept such an honor.”

At the conclusion of this speech, the men gave a mighty cheer, which pleased Washington very much; but what did not please him nearly so much was that they took him at his word, and did not make him king.

“Well,” said Susanna, “we tried our best.”

“We did,” Washington agreed; “the principle was inarguably sound, and our lack of success can only be attributed to the malice of Irving, who would not wish to see me crowned king if he could prevent it. Irving will yet be the death of me, you may be certain of that. But though he may prevent my elevation to the throne, I hope he will not be able to prevent my enjoying the fruits of our hard-won victory. The time has come for me to retire from public life, and to give my full attention to the development of my estate at Mount Vernon.”

With this surprising announcement, Washington abandoned all hope of becoming King of the United States. Shortly afterward, a formal peace was concluded, and Washington traveled to Annapolis to resign his commission before the Congress. He was able to witness personally the evacuation of New-York by the British, with the exception of Clinton and the two captains aforesaid; and then he retired to Mount Vernon, fully intending to remain there for the rest of his life.

To be continued in Chapter XI.