As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, George Washington performed many of the functions of a chief executive and head of state. After presiding over the convention that framed the US Constitution of 1787, Washington was elected the first president of the United States in 1789. During his two terms in office, Washington helped to establish the framework for presidential power in the United States.
The Election of 1789
In December 1783, three months after the end of the American Revolutionary War, General George Washington relinquished command of the Continental Army and retired to his estate at Mount Vernon in Virginia on the banks of the Potomac River. By doing so, he was consciously following the example of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman of the 5th century BCE who relinquished his powers as dictator six months after being summoned to save the Roman Republic.
Washington kept himself informed of political developments at Mount Vernon, and he supported efforts by his former military aide Alexander Hamilton and his fellow Virginian James Madison to centralize power by revising or even replacing the existing Articles of Confederation. In May 1787, Washington was elected President of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Washington’s desire to remain independent from any political faction and his widespread popularity allowed him to be a neutral arbiter on contentious questions. By September 1787, the delegates had agreed on a new Constitution which strengthened the national government by establishing an executive branch led by a president.
By the time the Constitution was ratified in the summer of 1788, it was widely assumed that Washington would become the nation’s first president. After some hesitation, Washington agreed to put his name forward and was unanimously elected president by the Electoral College in the 1789 election. During the earliest elections, each elector had two votes, and John Adams of Massachusetts became vice president by virtue of receiving 34 votes, the most of any other candidate. On April 30, 1789, Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States at New York’s City Hall.
Constitutional Powers
Article II of the US Constitution states that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America,” who will hold office for a term of four years, elected by members of an Electoral College weighted according to the Congressional representation of each state.
Article II also declares that the president is ex officio commander-in-chief of the United States Army and Navy, has powers to appoint ambassadors, judges, and other officials with the advice and consent of the Senate, and is also empowered to make treaties with foreign states, also subject to Senate approval.
As a high-level document, the Constitution gives little detail about the day-to-day functioning of the executive government. It was up to Washington on the one hand and Congress on the other to figure out how the new Constitution would work in practice.
As commander of the Continental Army, Washington had regularly been frustrated by the inadequacies of the Continental Congress, which was forced to defer to the states in supplying his army with men and equipment. As a result, he instinctively favored a stronger presidency for effective administration and enhanced national security. The debate about the extent of the powers of the president in relation to Congress and the federal government in relation to the states split Washington’s cabinet and continues to this day.
A Cabinet of Titans
While Article II of the Constitution allowed the president to seek written advice from the heads of departments, it did not explicitly include provisions for cabinet government. The framers of the Constitution were keen to avoid a system where the president’s cabinet of ministers would determine policy while also being able to vote on it in Parliament. Nevertheless, after becoming president, Washington began holding cabinet meetings with the heads of each department.
Washington’s cabinet was dominated by the leading statesmen of the day. His Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, was the author of the Declaration of Independence and had served as ambassador to the French government in Paris. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton served as Washington’s chief aide during the Revolutionary War and commanded troops during the Siege of Yorktown. The Continental Army’s chief of artillery, Henry Knox, served as Secretary of War, while prominent Virginian politician Edmund Randolph was Attorney General.
Hamilton and Jefferson championed different visions of the American republic. While the Federalist Hamilton favored a strong central executive, commercial and industrial development, and good relations with Britain, the Republican Jefferson supported a weaker executive, an agrarian economy, and a continued commitment to the wartime alliance with France. During his first term, Washington harnessed the creative tension between Hamilton and Jefferson to lay the foundations of American government. However, the personal animosity between the two men caused both to leave the administration during Washington’s second term.
A National Financial System
As Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton emerged as the driving force in Washington’s administration. Unlike Washington, he had a comprehensive vision for the federal government’s architecture and sought to implement it in office. During the Revolution, the Continental Congress had incurred significant war debts but could not raise the taxes to pay them off.
In his Report on the Public Credit, submitted to Congress in January 1790, Hamilton proposed having the federal government assume state debts, thus creating the national debt. Hamilton argued that it was essential for the government to maintain confidence in its credit so that it could continue to borrow to invest in economic development. The assumption of state debts would strengthen the national government by transferring bondholders’ loyalties to the federal government rather than the states.
Hamilton’s proposals were opposed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on two counts. Hamilton’s plan would not only substantially increase the federal government’s power. It would also benefit financial speculators who bought the credit notes from war veterans who had sold them at heavy discounts, expecting them never to be redeemed.
In December 1790, Hamilton proposed to establish a central bank to create a national currency, issue loans to public and private entities for investments, and serve as a depository for government funds raised from taxation. While Jefferson and Randolph raised objections in the cabinet over the bank’s constitutionality, Washington accepted Hamilton’s arguments that the bank was constitutional since Congress could do what was “necessary and proper” to fulfill its functions.
A New Capital City
As Hamilton struggled to seek congressional approval for his economic program due to opposition from the Jeffersonians in the House of Representatives, America’s political leaders were also split over the location of a permanent federal capital. As a New Yorker, Hamilton was keen to keep the government in New York. However, Washington and Jefferson preferred a location on the Potomac River close to their native Virginia.
In June 1790, Hamilton visited Jefferson and Madison and offered to support a capital on the Potomac in return for the Jeffersonians to drop their opposition to his economic program. Washington was empowered to choose a site for the new capital and selected a tract of land not far from Mount Vernon. After the passage of the Residence Act in July 1790, in early 1791, Washington appointed the French architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant to design the new Federal City, which would incorporate the existing towns of Georgetown in Maryland and Alexandria in Virginia. In September, the city was formally named Washington, District of Columbia.
Since the construction of the new capital was expected to take a decade, Washington and the federal government temporarily moved to Philadelphia, which had served as the nation’s capital for much of the Revolutionary War. The result of Hamilton and Jefferson’s compromise meant that the two major issues that dominated Washington’s first term were resolved in the president’s favor, though Washington himself would not live to see the inauguration of Washington DC as the nation’s capital in 1800.
Proclaiming Neutrality
Washington’s second term was dominated by foreign affairs. The outbreak of war between France and Britain in February 1793, following the execution of King Louis XVI, threatened to draw the United States into the conflict. Washington was concerned about the radicalization of the French Revolution and recognized that the United States was too weak to get involved in the conflict and preferred to remain neutral.
Although Washington’s cabinet agreed that neutrality was the best course of action, Jefferson sympathized with the French Revolution and was afraid of repudiating the wartime alliance that had helped America gain independence. Hamilton and Knox argued that the overthrow and execution of King Louis voided the treaty.
The crisis came to a head in early April 1793 after French envoy Edmond-Charles Genêt landed in South Carolina. While Genêt was welcomed enthusiastically by Americans as he made his way to Philadelphia, Washington was troubled by his efforts to recruit Americans to fight for France. After consulting his cabinet, Washington issued his Neutrality Proclamation on April 22, 1793, threatening legal sanctions against Americans who assisted any of the belligerent powers.
Disagreements over Washington’s authority to issue the Neutrality Proclamation led to a bitter exchange in the press between Hamilton and Madison under the pseudonyms “Publius” and “Helvidius” respectively. By July 1793, popular sentiment shifted against France after Genêt reportedly insulted Washington during a meeting in June and threatened to appeal directly to the people against the president. Washington and his cabinet demanded Genêt’s recall, but after learning that the Jacobin government in France intended to put him on trial, Washington granted him asylum to spare him from the guillotine.
The Jay Treaty
The fallout from the Neutrality Proclamation led Jefferson to resign as Secretary of State in December 1793. In the meantime, tensions with Britain had also increased after the Royal Navy enforced its blockade against France by intercepting American ships bound for French ports. The British navy’s practice of impressment—forcibly recruiting sailors from American ships whom they claimed to be British deserters—also caused consternation in the United States.
In 1794, Washington dispatched Chief Justice John Jay to negotiate a treaty with Britain intended to address these tensions. Jay was an experienced diplomat and was a member of the American delegation that negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris to end the American Revolutionary War. In November 1794, Jay signed a treaty that formalized a trading relationship on a most-favored-nation basis and an undertaking from the British to withdraw from several forts in the northwest. However, the British refused to give any ground on impressment, and the issue of seizing American ships went to arbitration.
After Jay returned to the United States in March 1795, Washington brought the Jay Treaty to the Senate in June. Despite considerable opposition from the Jeffersonians, Washington recognized that it was the best deal the US could hope for and spoke in its favor. In the Senate, the treaty was passed by a margin of 20-10, reaching the required two-thirds threshold for ratification.
Bidding Farewell
As his second term drew to a close in 1796, Washington was disillusioned by the split between the Federalists and the Republicans. His exploits during the Revolutionary War did not prevent him from being the target of scathing attacks by Jeffersonians. Washington had initially desired to retire after a single term but was dissuaded by both Hamilton and Jefferson, who believed he was the only person who could keep the country together.
By 1796, both Hamilton and Jefferson had left the cabinet. While Hamilton remained a close advisor behind the scenes, Jefferson’s opposition to the Jay Treaty caused Washington to break ties with him. Keen to relieve himself from the burdens of office and with his health deteriorating, Washington asked Hamilton to redraft a farewell address that had been produced by Madison in 1792. First published in a Philadelphia newspaper on September 19, 1796, Washington’s Farewell Address stressed the importance of maintaining national unity as a guarantor of American freedom and warned of the dangers of factionalism and party politics.
While Washington’s warnings about party politics did not prevent the rise of a two-party system, his decision to relinquish the presidency after serving two terms set a precedent that was not broken until Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a third term in 1940. In March 1797, the 65-year-old Washington left office and returned to Mount Vernon, where he died on December 14, 1799.
