Mr. President (21 page)

“Reasons,” though, were not the issue. The newspapers reprinted the letter not because of the argument it made but because of who made the argument. Washington’s endorsement had a far greater impact than the most cogent of essays, and supporters of the Constitution exploited it brazenly. “Is it possible,” asked one writer in
The Independent Gazetteer
, “that the deliverer of our country would have recommended an unsafe form of government for that liberty, for which he had for eight long years contended with such unexampled firmness, consistency and magnanimity?” Another proponent suggested “that the Federalists should be distinguished hereafter by the name of Washingtonians, and the Anti-Federalists by the name of ‘Shayites.’ ”
¹⁵

Claims of Washington’s importance in shaping the new government sometimes overshadowed the evidence. A writer in
The Massachusetts Gazette
reported with confidence a tale from the convention: Washington had held the floor “two hours at a time, in speaking upon some parts of the proposed system,” and “he advocated every part of the plan with all those rhetorical powers which he possesses in eminent degree.” According to Madison’s notes, Washington spoke substantively exactly once, and then but briefly on the final day of the convention.
¹⁶

Washington’s impact was no secret. William Grayson, a Virginia Anti-Federalist, listed an impressive array of leading figures on his side that included not only Mason and Richard Henry Lee but also three former governors, “most of the judges of the General Court,” and several others. All of these, though, were offset by one key Federalist, General Washington, “who is a host within himself.” Washington’s support made the structural arguments of his opponents moot. When they issued dire warnings about power-hungry presidents taking advantage of the new system, Washington, a flesh-and-blood counterexample, made them look foolish. Nobody could imagine that George Washington, who had voluntarily relinquished his authority, would
ever succumb to foreign intrigue or cling to power or team up with factions or lead an army against his own people. Richard Henry Lee tried to muster his own heroes—Moses and Montesquieu—to counter Washington, but this retort seemed a mark of desperation.
¹⁷

At the Federal Convention, Washington had said little but exerted great influence merely by his presence; delegates might not have settled on a single executive so readily had they not looked to him as a model. Perhaps, too, they would not have ceded to Gouverneur Morris’s relentless push to free the office from congressional selection. Almost certainly, delegates would have been more reluctant to allow indefinite terms, opening the possibility of a president for life. That was pushing the limits of what people out of doors would accept, and without Washington delegates would probably have reined themselves in and not risked a backlash. Now that the debate had moved out of doors, Washington’s support was skewing the battle over ratification. There can be no doubt that the new office would have received closer public scrutiny had Americans not felt so comfortable with making the nation’s deliverer, General George Washington, its first occupant.

All eyes were on Richmond in June 1788. In the nine months since the Federal Convention had submitted its plan for public approval, eight states had ratified the Constitution, and if Virginia followed suit, the new rules would become the law of the land, and the four holdouts would most likely fall into line. On the other hand, if Virginia rejected the Constitution, neighboring North Carolina, where Anti-Federalist sentiments ran strong, would probably follow its lead. If those two states then formed their own confederacy, as some Anti-Federalists threatened and all Federalists feared, South Carolina, Georgia, and likely Maryland would find more in common with their slave-society compatriots than with the old United States and withdraw their prior votes for ratification, and the fast-growing territories west of the Appalachians, Kentucky and Tennessee, would undoubtedly side with the southern confederacy as well. One nation would become two. Further, once Virginia rejected the Constitution, its leading resident, George Washington, would become ineligible for the presidency of the United States.

Virginia’s epic battle over the Constitution took place in an unlikely venue. Back in October 1787, when the state legislature called for a
ratification convention, people hoped it would meet in the brand-new state capitol, which Thomas Jefferson modeled after the ancient Roman temple Maison Carrée. That would have been a grand opening for the noble home of Virginia’s republican government, but come June, the building was still under construction, so the convention met instead in a large wooden structure known locally as Mr. Quesnay’s Academy. The French chevalier Quesnay de Beaurepaire, who wanted to establish a European-style cultural center in Virginia, intended the building to house theatrical productions, and here indeed was the best show in town. The actors, the greatest statesmen in Virginia and many would say in the nation, played both to each other and to members of the public who crowded into the balcony gallery.
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This venue suited the legendary Patrick Henry perfectly. Henry had been a major force in Virginia politics since bursting onto the stage during the Stamp Act resistance almost a quarter century earlier. He had drummed up support for the war, served two extended terms as governor, and excited audiences as no other revolutionary could. At a time when political oratory was treated as something of a sport, Henry was universally regarded as a superstar. Now, with thundering voice and dramatic gestures, the state’s most influential Anti-Federalist would make the most of his talents. In characteristic style, he would pose rhetorical question after rhetorical question, each one proving his point beyond all doubt. “Your passions are no longer your own when he addresses them,” said George Mason, his ally on this occasion.
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On June 5, the third day of debates, Patrick Henry took the floor early and held it until the meeting adjourned. Although the convention had agreed to address the proposed Constitution point by point and the topic on the table was the composition of the House of Representatives, Henry veered far from that subject. The Constitution “has an awful squinting,” he declared. “It squints towards monarchy. And does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American?” (This “squinting” image became a popular refrain among Anti-Federalist polemicists.) Henry continued:

David Robertson, the Federalist-leaning lawyer who used shorthand to record the debates as he listened from the gallery, broke off at this point, unable to keep pace with Henry’s invective. “Here Mr. Henry strongly and pathetically expatiated on the probability of the President’s enslaving America, and the horrid consequences that must result,” he jotted down.
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Did Henry really believe his apocalyptic prophecy? Was he absolutely horrified by the executive office the framers of the Constitution tried to impose on the American people? His assault on the presidency needs to be placed in the context of his other tirades at Virginia’s ratifying convention. Almost as dangerous as the president were “two sets of tax-gatherers—the State and the Federal Sheriffs.” State tax collectors, “those unfeeling bloodsuckers,” had been bad enough, and federal collectors, more remote from the people, would of course be much worse:

Congress, too, received its share of Henry’s blows. “We ought to be exceeding cautious in giving up this life—this soul—of money—this power of taxation to Congress,” he warned. “Must I give my soul—my lungs, to Congress? … What powerful check is there here to prevent the most extravagant and profligate squandering of the public money?”
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For Henry, Congress’s power to regulate commerce under the new
plan was particularly worrisome. One of the hottest political topics in the nation was John Jay’s tentative agreement with Spanish ministers. Jay was ready to bargain away American rights to shipping on the Mississippi in return for favorable trade concessions that would benefit eastern merchants, but according to the Articles of Confederation he would need the votes of nine of the thirteen state delegations in Congress to cement the deal. Five southern states with access to the West doomed the potential treaty, but under the new Constitution a simple majority in Congress would suffice. The North thus joined the president, federal tax collectors, and Congress on Henry’s list of villains. If the Constitution were ratified, northern representatives would “give away this river,” and that was just the beginning of northern tyranny. On June 24, as the convention reached its climax, Henry warned his fellow delegates and the onlookers in the gallery that it was only a matter of time before northern congressmen would “liberate every one of your slaves.” The proposed Constitution gave them “the power in clear unequivocal terms … to pronounce all slaves free,” and they “will clearly and certainly exercise it.”
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We have no way of determining whether Patrick Henry was more worried about the president, tax collectors, Congress, or the North. Once he decided to oppose the Constitution, he utilized his immense powers of persuasion to their best advantage. The president is even worse than a king? If that instilled doubt, he’d use it. Tax collectors will bleed you dry? Try that one too. Congress will take away your slaves? That should work in this venue.

Henry’s blanket indictments of the proposed Constitution were not unusual. For some Anti-Federalists, the new office of the presidency may have triggered resistance to the plan, but for others federal taxation, the loss of state and local control, the prospect of a standing army, or the lack of guarantees for basic liberties might have raised more serious concerns. Whatever their individual reasons, those who decided against the Constitution tried to defeat it by using any and all arguments they could muster, so they naturally raised alarms about the powers of the presidency. Since the Articles of Confederation had lacked an executive branch, all these powers were entirely new and potentially suspect. Item by item, each enumerated power became the object of complaint.

The president’s role as commander in chief was a ready target. A
Virginia writer, under the name Impartial Examiner, labeled the president “generalissimo.” Mercy Otis Warren, writing as A Columbian Patriot, called him a “despot” who could “draw out his dragoons” to suppress those who opposed him. Benjamin Workman, a mathematics instructor at the University of Pennsylvania who assumed the name Philadelphiensis, wrote that an American “king with a standing army at his disposal ought to cause the blood of a free citizen to boil with indignation.” He predicted that under the president’s leadership, the government would become “
despotic
and
oppressive
, and the people will become
abject slaves
.” Elections would be worthless, he said. The government would soon be composed “only of an
emperor and a few lordlings
, surrounded by thousands of blood-suckers and cringing sycophants.”
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The presidential pardon, Anti-Federalists argued, was discretionary and unrestrained. Logically, they were on strong ground here. The framers had wanted to check the authority of abusive courts, but in doing so, they gave the president a power that could not be overruled by any governmental body under any circumstance. “The President ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself,” Mason argued at the Virginia ratifying convention. “It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic. If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment, or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection? The case of treason ought, at least, to be excepted.”
²⁶

Anti-Federalists attacked the various ways the executive could interfere with the legislative branch, thereby undermining the separation of powers, which Federalists claimed to hold so dear. The vice president, second-in-command to the chief executive, presided over the Senate, a legislative body, for no apparent reason. The president had the power to convene or adjourn the two houses of the legislature. (Although he could convene Congress only on “extraordinary occasions” and adjourn it only temporarily when the two houses disagreed on the timing for adjournment, Anti-Federalists likened the president’s power to that of the British Crown, which had dissolved colonial legislatures at will.) Worse yet, the president could interfere with legislative functioning by vetoing a bill at his discretion. True, his “negative” could be overridden by two-thirds of each house of Congress, but Anti-Federalists
preferred to downplay that provision. The writer using the name Impartial Examiner acknowledged the two-thirds override but quickly suggested it would give the president “in the legislative scale of government a weight almost equal to that of two thirds of the whole Congress.” Then, to ramp up the argument, the writer created and attacked a phantom absolute veto: