The President’s Progress (June 1969 | Volume: 20, Issue: 4)

The President’s Progress

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Authors: James Thomas Flexner

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June 1969 | Volume 20, Issue 4


Never was the election of a President so much a foregone conclusion and yet so tortuous in consummation. The Electoral College met on February 4, 1789, but its unanimous vote for Washington could not be official until the president of the Senate, temporarily elected for the purpose, opened the ballots in the presence of both houses. Congress was due to convene in New York on March 4. On the fifth, only eight senators and seventeen representatives —pitifully less than a quorum—had appeared.

As the most unpleasant season of the farming year moved slowly by, Washington waited at Mount Vernon in a frustration that was increased by the non-arrival of some promised grain seed, which prevented him from carrying out that year’s stage in his longrange plan for the rotation of crops. ”£500 would be no compensation,” he wrote, “for this disappointment.”

The continuing word was that legislators were dribbling into New York—now a senator, then a representative—but a quorum was still unachieved on March 30 when Knox notified Washington that the delay had already cost the new government the spring imposts, estimated at £300,000. Washington replied that he was sorry about the imposts but was more worried over “the stupor, or listlessness” being displayed by the men on whom the success of the Constitution would depend. The high-spirited anticipation he had so recently savored faded rapidly into such gloom that he wrote as darkly as he had ever written during the blackest hours of the Revolution:

My movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skill, abilities and inclination which is necessary to manage the helm.… Integrity and firmness is all I can promise; these, be the voyage long or short, never shall forsake me although I may be deserted by all men. For of the consolations which are to be derived from these (under any circumstances) the world cannot deprive me.

Washington was not cheered when lie faced up to the i’act that, H lie were not to leave debts behind him in Virginia, he would have “to do what I never expected to be reduced to the necessity of doing,” what, indeed, he regarded as the most disastrous of all steps for a farmer: borrowing money at interest. After he had finally steeled himself thus to raise more than a thousand pounds, he discovered to his dismay that his credit was not considered good enough. Businessmen were not willing to lend. Finally, he tried a personal connection, appealing to “the most monied man I was acquainted with.” But Charles Carroll of Carrollton also refused, explaining that he could not collect interest on