Washington felt enormously gratified. After four grueling months, they were presenting the nation with a proposal for an entirely new government. Not just something that would be new to America, but new to the entire world.
Once they settled that each state would have two senators, they were able to rebalance all the remaining elements until they had an excellent design. Not a perfect design, of course, but certainly the most thoughtful and debated republic in world history. A nation formed not with the sword, but with reason. Now it would be up to the people to ratify their work.
At the conclusion of Franklin’s speech, Nathaniel Gorham, a Massachusetts Congregationalist, asked for the floor. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I wish that the clause declaring, ‘the number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every forty thousand,’ be changed to ‘thirty thousand.’”
Washington slowly rose to call for a vote, hesitated, and then expressed his opinion publicly for the first time during official proceedings. “Although I have hitherto restrained myself, my wish is that the proposal be approved. Many consider the small proportion of representatives insufficient to secure the rights and interests of the people. Late as the present moment is, it will give me great satisfaction to see this amendment adopted.”
It passed unanimously. No one dared deny the hero of the revolution his sole request over these many months.
Washington kept his visage properly masklike as the vote concluded, but James Madison, sitting nearby, could see Washington’s head turn ever so slightly toward him. Madison knew that his fellow Virginian’s little speech was a gift to him, in appreciation for Madison finally agreeing to—as Washington had predicted—the great compromise that had made this new constitution possible.
Washington summoned the delegates geographically, north to south, to advance. He signed first, inscribing his name with a flourish. Hamilton signed, too, though he represented no one but himself. Pennsylvania’s Gouverneur Morris hobbled forward on his wooden peg leg to sign. When Georgia’s delegates—including Colonel Few and Major Pierce—had finished, Washington commended the delegates for their accomplishment, but with a warning. “Should the states reject this excellent constitution,” he said, “the probability is that an opportunity will never again offer to cancel another in peace.
“The next will be drawn in blood.”
Benjamin Franklin quizzically looked toward the back of Washington’s chair—and pointed to a painted half sun.
“Painters find it difficult to distinguish a rising from a setting sun,” Franklin said aloud to the delegates standing around him. “I have often in the course of these sessions looked at that painting behind my dear friend without being able to tell if it was rising or setting.
“Now, at length, I have the happiness to know that it is a rising sun.”
14
Little Short of a Miracle
A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come. Should every thing proceed with harmony and consent according to our actual wishes and expectations; I will confess to you sincerely, my dear Marquis; it will be so much beyond any thing we had a right to imagine or expect eighteen months ago, that it will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence, as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it.
—GEORGE WASHINGTON TO THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE, 1788
Sometimes success can be fleeting. It vanishes into the mist so fast that, if you blink, you’ve missed it.
Life’s funny that way. You struggle for years to attain the prize, and, suddenly, you discover that what you sweated and bled for wasn’t everything that you thought it was. Was it all really worth it?
Yorktown didn’t bring a magic end to America’s troubles—and George Washington was the first to know it. There was no constitution yet; the Articles of Confederation still governed the thirteen independent states—except that it didn’t actually govern very much at all. The country lacked a sound currency (even by today’s standards). There was no real standing army or navy to speak of. Each state fielded its own militia, and eleven states had their own navies. Patrol the frontier? Good luck. Fight the terrorists of the day—the Barbary pirates? Try doing that without a national navy. It’s nearly impossible for a government to accomplish anything without the power to raise revenue. The feds—or rather the confeds—had to live off handouts from the states.
It was a bizarro world. The national government couldn’t tax you—or anybody else. (That’s good, at least up to a point, as even conservatives would admit that there are some things, like national defense, for example, that the government needs revenue for.) But worse, the national government was the biggest welfare recipient on the continent.
George Washington hated this setup. He knew how much damage a weak government had caused during the war. The country couldn’t equip an army. It didn’t pay its soldiers. It issued worthless paper money. It didn’t do much of anything at all, in fact, except beg from the states and interfere with Washington’s command.
At the end of the war Washington was the most popular man in America. He might have been the most popular and admired man in the world (fortunately for us, public opinion polls weren’t around yet), yet all he wanted to do was go home. He’d done his job. He’d established his reputation. He’d sacrificed everything he had. If there had been a lifetime Oscar for service to the country, he would have already won it.
But there was a major fly in the ointment: What if all his work came undone? What if, after all they had been through, the American experiment still failed? And if it did fail, what would happen to his reputation, to the popular regard he had worked so hard for? Being the father of a miserably failed country really wasn’t much of an honor, was it? Could Valley Forge, Trenton, and Yorktown, and all of the Divine Providence that went along with them, really have been for nothing?
Washington desperately wanted for that to not be the case. Life on the Potomac at Mount Vernon was pretty sweet. “[H]aving happily assisted in bringing the ship into port,” he wrote to New York’s John Jay in September 1786, “and having been fairly discharged, it is not my business to embark again on a sea of troubles.”
But he kept hearing the thunder of disunity rumbling in the distance—and, as time moved on, it only grew louder. His old friends like Henry Knox began sounded the alarm. Troubles percolated with both Britain and Spain along our western frontiers. London refused to evacuate its forts in our northwest territories. Madrid was choking off our access to the Mississippi River. Some westerners even talked of seceding and joining the Spanish Empire.
Washington was worried, and not only for his country. He was worried that he would be called out of retirement. A five-state convention meeting in Annapolis in 1785 had demanded that the Confederation Congress call an all-state convention to amend the Articles. Virginia appointed Washington to attend as one of its delegates. But he still didn’t want to go—at least, not until a very unpleasant situation got his attention.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF LEADERSHIP
Massachusetts, like the rest of the country, lacked a sound currency. Creditors demanded to be paid in gold or silver, and when they weren’t, they went to court to seize the debtors’ lands. Farmers who lost their land were not happy and they stormed courthouses, seized the armory at Springfield, and started a full-fledged insurrection called “Shays’s Rebellion,” named after one of its leaders.
But the rebellion soon moved from debt repudiation to something far more dangerous. There was something in the air—and it was not good. “[The rebels’] creed,” Henry Knox warned Washington in October 1786, “is that the property of the United States has been protected from the confiscations of Britain by the joint assertions of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all, and he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept from off the face of
the earth.”
Sounds a little bit like communism, doesn’t it? This new government couldn’t even maintain order or protect private property right. His beloved nation was descending into anarchy.
He wrote to Henry Lee Jr.:
The picture which you have drawn, & the accounts which are published, of the commotions … in the Eastern States [New England], are equally to be lamented and deprecated. They exhibit a melancholy proof of what our trans Atlantic foes have predicted; and of another thing, perhaps, which is to be still more regretted, and is yet more unaccountable, that mankind left to themselves are unfit for their own government. I am mortified beyond expression whenever I view the clouds which have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned upon my Country…. For it is hardly to be imagined that the great body of the people … can be so enveloped in darkness, or short sighted as not to see the rays of distant sun through all this mist of intoxication & folly.
Because of the threat it posed to the nation as a whole, Shays’s Rebellion got Washington’s attention, and it got the Confederation Congress’s as well. In February 1787 the Congress finally authorized the all-state convention that had been demanded at Annapolis. But only then, when Washington knew that he was participating in a legal, authorized revision of the Articles, rather than a coup d’état, did he agree to attend the new convention.
He had served before, and he would serve again.
If you’re a soldier who’s served America you may be able to relate to the way Washington felt. Maybe you did a tour in Vietnam or Iraq and then 9/11 happened and you heard the call again. Those who love America understand that service to our country never really ends—whether that means taking part in elections or being active in charity or being part of the community in different ways.
Washington knew he would serve again. Why else would he have immersed himself, with James Madison and John Jay, in a long-distance “correspondence course” on the theory and practice of republican governments? One of Washington’s great skills was that he led by listening. First he got the information. Then he synthesized it. Then he acted.
There were roughly three dozen lawyers at the Constitutional Convention, and Washington may have had as little formal schooling as any man in the room, but when he arrived, he was ready to discuss constitutional law with any one of them.
A Lifetime of Learning
I know that getting a formal education in political science or economics is wonderful, but I can also confidently tell you that a formal education can also mean politically motivated teachers and a lot of closed-minded thinking. After all, how many professors do you know that will teach kids Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, or Thomas Sowell? Not many. Sometimes educating yourself is not only a necessity but a blessing. It allows you to explore ideas in a way professors like to inhibit with their preconceived ideological notions. As the columnist Heather Mac Donald recently pointed out, in the past academic year at Bowdoin College, “a student interested in American history courses could have taken ‘Black Women in Atlantic New Orleans,’ ‘Women in American History, 1600–1900,’ or ‘Lawn Boy Meets Valley Girl: Gender and the Suburbs,’ but if he wanted a course in American political history, the colonial and revolutionary periods, or the Civil War, he would have been out of luck.”
America allowed the Founders to test ideas that were considered radical elsewhere. They were allowed to think freely without worry of repercussion. Though highly educated in classical texts, most of the Founders were not weighed down by conventional thinking or pseudoscience and gender studies. That was a blessing.
Washington remained self-conscious about his lack of a formal education his entire life. Ironically, it was this fact that drove his intellectual curiosity and ensured that he would always be overly prepared for any debate.
And that wasn’t the only homework he’d done to prepare. During the war he had employed an extensive network of spies. We’ve already met some of them: Yale’s Nathan Hale in 1776; the farmer James Honeyman at Trenton. James Armistead at Yorktown is another. Good intelligence, Washington knew, was a key to victory.
If he were to agree to attend the Constitutional Convention, he needed to know in advance if it had a reasonable chance of success. Would there be enough boots on the ground to really create a stronger national government—or would it crash and burn? Washington needed to know where to pick his fights.
He turned to James Madison to gather the intelligence he needed. One by one, as each state had chosen its delegates, Madison sounded them out and found a solid core of federalists among the attendees. He reported the news back to Washington.
Washington got on board because he had done his homework—he knew there would be a ton of work to do, but he also knew there was at least a chance that it would all pay off. As baseball’s Branch Rickey (the man who brought Jackie Robinson into the big leagues) once said, “Luck is the residue of design.”
LET’S WALK BEFORE WE RUN
Washington arrived at the convention on time. That may not seem like much, but it was. It showed responsibility and organization—and respect. Remember, back then you weren’t jumping on a flight or driving your car to Philadelphia. The planning required to be on time was immense, and it meant that you would be taking the proceedings seriously.
On Monday morning, May 14, 1787, the day the Constitutional Convention opened, there was no quorum. In fact, it wasn’t even close. There wouldn’t be one until Friday, May 25, and, even then, only twenty-nine delegates showed up—barely a majority. But Washington was there on day one, ready to go when hardly anyone else was.
Washington was a great listener, but he was also a very active man, and sitting around paying attention as the delegates repeated the same points for four to seven hours each day couldn’t have been much fun. But he knew he wasn’t there for fun; he was there for work, and just by being present he would add weight to the proceedings.
Washington didn’t just show up in Philadelphia on “opening day”; he showed up every day. And he rarely excused himself for a break. When he did, they were short, unlike other delegates, who might be gone for weeks. Some delegates hardly attended at all.
But Washington was there. He was persistent. As Calvin Coolidge said:
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
When Woody Allen once said, “Eighty percent of success is just showing up,” he offered some good advice. Life isn’t all glamour. It’s putting one foot in front of the other—and to do that you’d better be there in the first place.
This is such an important lesson for us today: to make a real impact you’ve got to get involved. That doesn’t mean firing off emails or letters: It means really getting involved. Showing your face, proving your commitment, earning your respect.
It doesn’t have to be anything on the scale of a national convention. You can visit the sick or the elderly or pay your respects at a wake or a funeral. Showing up counts—sometimes in ways that we don’t even realize on the surface. If there’s a rally for something you believe in—go to it! You might be the person standing at the back of the crowd, but your presence matters. Others will take notice. So be there. George Washington was.
CHECK YOUR POCKETS
Washington insisted on great secrecy during the deliberations. Given his own reliance on intelligence gathering in the past, he knew better than anyone that information in the wrong hands could prove disastrous. He didn’t want the media reporting—or distorting—the delegates’ words. He didn’t want “leakers” or spinmeisters. He wanted delegates to speak their minds freely—and to be free to change their minds if the facts demanded it—without regard to public outrage.
The Rumor Mill
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Sometimes it feels like we can’t even have an honest conversation anymore. I’m sure this is nothing new. The great thing about technology is that today, unlike in Washington’s time, I am able to quickly respond and give the full context of the quotes and arguments that have been distorted. But in those days, rumors and false accusation were very hard to correct. If enough of them got out there they would soon be accepted as truth and could sink the entire convention.
When the Constitutional Convention started, each delegate received a copy of Edmund Randolph’s Virginia Plan. There were many changes made to it, but basically this was the road map to a new constitution. Obviously, copies of the Virginia Plan were to be kept top secret at all costs.
One day, Pennsylvania’s Thomas Mifflin found a copy of the plan lying around at the State House. He brought it to Washington, who waited until day’s end to announce he had it. “Gentlemen,” Washington grimly announced, “I am sorry to find that some one member of this body has been so neglectful of the secrets of the convention as to drop in the State House a copy of their proceedings which by accident was picked up and delivered to me this morning. I must entreat Gentlemen to be more careful, lest our transactions get into the newspapers, and disturb the public repose by premature speculations. I know not whoso paper it is, but there it is [throwing it down on the table]; let him who owns it take it.”
The delegates shook in their boots. Imagine being reprimanded by George Washington! They fished into their pockets and desk drawers to find their own copy—and prayed that the copy on Washington’s desk wasn’t theirs. The panic-stricken South Carolina delegate Pierce Butler rushed home to find his in the pocket of his other coat.