Edward J Larson - The return of George Washington : uniting the states, 1783-1789

IN MEMORY OF

Pauline Maier & Edmund Morgan

Two Extraordinary Historians of the Revolutionary Era

Who Passed During the Writing of This Book.

To Paraphrase Isaac Newton and Bernard of Chartres:

We See Further by Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.

BOOK I
From New York to Mount Vernon, 17821786

BOOK II
To, From, and In Philadelphia, 1787

BOOK III
From Mount Vernon to New York, 17881789

ON A CHILLY SPRING morning in April 2014, I sat on Mount Vernons broad front piazza watching the sun rise slowly over the Potomac River. The window off George Washingtons upstairs bedroom was over my right shoulder, and the east-facing door to his first-floor office stood directly behind me. Washington would have seen much this same view 225 years earlier, knowing it might be a long time before he observed it again. The American people had called him to the presidency, and he was preparing to leave his beloved Mount Vernon plantation for the seat of government in New York on April 16, 1789. Due to private preservation efforts and public land-use restrictions, this vista over the Potomac, the one that Washington most loved and built his piazza to frame, survives virtually unchanged in the midst of Northern Virginias urban sprawl.

As an inaugural fellow at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, with a residency on the grounds of Mount Vernon, I was able to enjoy this and other scenes on Washingtons plantation many times over the course of a year. The view from the piazza became my favorite, too, especially at sunrise in the spring, when flowering trees and soft green leaves give off a warm glow in the early-morning light. It was obvious why Washington was reluctant to leave Mount Vernon for public service in a job that he neither sought nor wanted.

The words that Washington sent six months earlier to fellow Virginian James Madison urging him to serve in the new federal government applied equally to himself, however. Supporters of the new Constitution and the union it created, he had implored Madison, forgetting personal considerations, must combine their collective efforts through service in the new government to avert the great national calamities that impended without it. By 1787, four years since the United States secured its independence, Washington had come to believe that the country faced as grave a threat from internal forces of disunion in the mid-1780s as it had from external ones of tyranny in the mid-1770s, when he accepted leadership of the patriot army at the outset of the Revolutionary War. Now his country again called on his service, this time as the elected leader of the worlds first extended republic.

Countless books tell the story of Washington as commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, and nearly as many relate the history of his role as the first President of the United States. Indeed, books about Washington could fill a library. They fill a bookcase in mine. Few of them focus on the six years between his wartime and presidential service, which is the subject of this one. Even the finest full biographies of Washingtonfrom Douglas Southall Freemans six-volume classic of the late 1940s and early 1950s through James Thomas Flexners masterful four-volume series of the late 1960s and early 1970s, to Ron Chernows superb 2010 Washington: A Life, all Pulitzer Prize winnersdevote the interlude between his military tenure and presidential terms mostly to presenting his life as a Virginia planter. Moreover, when biographers reach the Constitutional Convention, over which Washington presided, they typically present him as a stiff, silent figure who mainly contributed his prestige and dignity to the proceedings. The standard narrative then has him retiring to Mount Vernon through the ratification debates and first federal election until called to the presidency.

With this book, I retell the story from Washingtons resignation as commander in chief through his inauguration as President. Not meaning to diminish the importance of his domestic life during this period, I stress his crucial role as a public figure and political leader during these critical years between the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 and the start of the federal government in 1789. Many accounts, such as David Hackett Fischers riveting Washingtons Crossing, present Washington as The Indispensable Man (as Flexner famously called him) during the Revolutionary War. Others show his similar centrality as President, perhaps most notably Forrest McDonalds The Presidency of George Washington. I argue that Washington was equally importantequally indispensableduring the interval between these two better-known stages of his life. Often working behind the scenes but still very much in the public imagination, he helped to bind the states into a single federal republic. This period in Washingtons public life merits as much attention as those that preceded and followed it. It built on what came before and laid the foundation for what followed. From 1775 until his death, Washington was the indispensable American.

As Washington understood matters, the immediate threat to America during the 1780s flowed from the weakness of the central government. More than anyone, he led the effort to reform it. The honor, power, and true Interest of this Country must be measured by a Continental scale, Washington wrote in 1783. Every departure therefrom weakens the Union, and may ultimately break the band, which holds us together. Washingtons vision and continuing service led the way toward the new American union that endures to this day.

I CAN ONLY BEGIN to identify the many institutions and individuals that have helped me to conceive, research, and write this book, and can never adequately thank them all. The idea for it began while I was teaching American constitutional law and history to Australian students as a visiting professor at Melbourne Law School. Retelling the story to non-American students helped me to reconceive it in my own mind. Research for this book began in earnest while I was teaching as a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, where I benefited from the chance to discuss the topic with such extraordinary colleagues as Dean Larry Kramer, Jack Rakove, Michael McConnell, and Lawrence Friedman. In my final stages of writing, I enjoyed the privilege of working as a Fellow at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, where I could call on the likes of Douglas Bradburn, Mary Thompson, Stephen McLeod, Mark Santangelo, Dawn Bonner, James Martin, Susan Schoelwer, and Adam Shprintzen for assistance. Throughout, I have enjoyed the ongoing support of Pepperdine University, where I teach history and law. My special thanks go to Pepperdines president Andy Benton, Law School dean Deanell Tacha, Seaver College dean Rick Marrs, and Research Librarian Jodi Kruger.

Friends and family made major contributions to this book. First of all, I am deeply indebted to historian of the Revolutionary Era Ray Raphael, First Federal Congress Project co-director Kenneth R. Bowling, and constitutional scholar Dan Coenen for reviewing vast swaths of my manuscript. When it comes to this period in American political history, Ray and Ken know the forest and every tree. Among the many other scholars who suffered my questions and gave wise counsel, Akhil Amar, William Baude, Richard Beeman, Michael Coenen, Susan Dunn, Paul Finkelman, and Pauline Maier merit special mention, as do my editor, Peter Hubbard, and my book agent, B. G. Dilworth. For starting me on this course, my belated thanks go to my teachers James MacGregor Burns, Norman K. Risjord, Robert M. ONeil, Laurence Tribe, and John Hart Ely. Most of all, my gratitude goes to my wife, Lucy, and our children, Sarah and Luke. Research and writing take so much time away from every other part of life.