Jonathan Horn - Washingtons End: The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle

ALSO BY JONATHAN HORN

The Man Who Would Not Be Washington:

Robert E. Lees Civil War and His Decision

That Changed American History

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Copyright 2020 by Jonathan Horn

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First Scribner hardcover edition February 2020

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Jacket design by Jason Arias

Jacket artwork: Portrait of George Washington Taking the Salute at Trenton (oil on canvas), Faed, John (18191902) / Private Collection / Photo Christies Images / Bridgeman Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-5011-5423-2

ISBN 978-1-5011-5425-6 (ebook)

To my parents for a beginning

To Caroline and Laura for believing in the end

We know little of ourselves & much less the designs of Providence.

George Washington

P eering through the doorway into the chamber minutes before noon on March 4, 1797, John Adams hears whispers and sees the backside of the hero receding down the aisle: his long hair powdered and pulled back into a queue that is tied and tucked into a bag below the nape of the neck, in a style common among the now old men who wrote the first chapter of their countrys history. The back of the head would look much like Adamss own if not standing a half foot taller. The whispers in the chamber rise to a roar as the great man nears the halfway point between the door to the east and the dais to the west. Washington! Washington! the people packing the gallery on the north side cry. Soon they will see what no one alive ever has: the title of head of state peacefully passing from one breathing man to another. The thought leaves Adams light-headed.

Outside the chamber, the wind blows from the southwest, the direction George Washington will soon ride to his Virginia home, as if nature itself resists his leaving Philadelphia, the countrys interim capital. Adams waits under the cover of the portico connecting the lower chamber of Congress Hall to the old state house now shorn of the rotting steeple that watched over the Continental Congress in 1775, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, when he nominated Washington for commander in chief of the Continental Army. The old stories of Washingtons courage during the French and Indian War had impressed everyone. How handsome he looked in the uniform he wore to the Congress! Even then, Adams envied Washington. [His] excellent universal character would command the approbation of all America and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person in the Union, Adams remembers having told the delegates, while worrying that the people might turn the general into an idol.

In a sense, the people have. They bestow Washingtons name on their children and towns, hang his portrait in their homes, and celebrate his birthday with balls, like the splendid but tedious one Adams attended ten days ago when Washington turned sixty-five. The Philadelphia socialites have hinted at the advice they would give: rent the house Washington will vacate; dress and act as he would. Disappointment, Adams knows, awaits. The people must adjust to a new kind of president, one who cannot afford to entertain in the same style. No more formal dinner parties with carefully curated guest lists; the company of a few select friends must do. No more driving through Philadelphias streets behind six horses; two must suffice. No more congressmen pausing to pay tribute on the presidents birthday, if for no other reason than the calendar: Adamss upcoming sixty-second will occur during a recess (he has already checked).

Adams has not slept in more than a day. The stress has built ever since he heard Washington promise to attend the inauguration. Adams misses Abigail, the wife he left back home in Massachusetts, though even she doubts whether he can fill Washingtons place. It is not because of a superior education, for Adams knows Washingtons schooling ceased around his fifteenth birthday, before he ever attended a college like Adamss alma mater, Harvard. Nor does Adams think it is because of Washingtons superior character, for there are thousands of others who have in them all the essential qualitiesmoral & intellectualwhich compose it. Washingtons willingness to surrender power merely conforms to a culture obsessed with Cincinnatus, the ancient Roman general who saved the republic only to surrender power and return to his farm. Had Washington lived in another culture or at another time, he might have instead copied Caesar. Where the people applauding in the chamber see selflessness, Adams sees ambition for the same fame he detests himself for coveting.

What, then, accounts for Washingtons immense elevation above his fellows? The answers, Adams believes, are so obvious as to be overlooked: for example, Washingtons standing six feet tall and looking even taller thanks to the king-sized hands and feet crowning those long, elegant limbs. There has never been a choice but to look up to Washington. Hailing from Virginia, the oldest colony and largest state, has magnified his advantage because Virginian geese are all swans, or so they tell themselves in the Old Dominion. Wedding the wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis thirty-eight years ago has given Washington control over an immense fortune and an unsurpassed reputation for disinterestedness, all because he could afford to serve without salary during the war. Having no biological childrenthe two Custis grandchildren who have lived with him during the presidency are the fruit of Mrs. Washingtons first marriagehas reassured a people paranoid about hereditary succession and has mostly spared Washington from irritating rumors like the one dogging Adams about positioning his oldest son, John Quincy, as heir apparent. Possessing unusual self-command allows Washington to conceal his fierce temper, even though he often loses control of it behind closed doors. In public, he has the gift of silence, a rare talent for pursing his lips and clenching his jaw so as to hide those ugly blackish-looking false teeth and let people imagine instead the wondrous depths of rivers whose bottoms we cannot see.

Washington knows how to leave people wanting more. For their eyes, he has always staged his entrances and exits with a strain of Shakespearean excellence: the moment in 1775 when he darted out of the room rather than (modesty forbid!) hear his name nominated for commander of the Continental Army; the solemn scene eight years later when he resigned his commission after securing Americas independence; the reluctance he manifested before emerging from retirement to chair the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and to accept the newly created office of president in 1789; the prophetic-sounding farewell address he published this past September, weeks before the election so as to deter the electors from giving him the third term he would otherwise have received.