George Washington by David O. Stewart

Author:David O. Stewart [Stewart, David O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

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Later generations would wonder at the presidential election of 1789. No political parties organized campaigns. No candidates stumped for votes. No elector was pledged to any candidate. Politics, eighteenth-century-style, was built on personal connections and the written word. Pro-Constitution leaders pushed for Washington. He rarely mentioned the presidency, but urged the election of Federalists to Congress.33 He also paid little attention to the vice presidency. When John Adams, a Constitution supporter, emerged among Federalists as a consensus choice for the office, Washington wrote a private letter supporting Adams, but did it only five days before electors were to vote, too late to have any impact on the balloting.34

The ten states participating in the vote—New York’s legislature failed to agree on how to choose electors—designated electors in different ways. Only in Virginia did individual voters choose by districts; several states used some form of statewide voting, while three state legislatures selected electors. In New Jersey, the governor and his appointed privy council made the choice.35

Washington rode to Alexandria in early January 1789 to vote for the elector from his congressional district, and a month later to vote for his congressman. The voting by the presidential electors on the first Wednesday of February was supposed to be secret, but leaked tallies confirmed Washington’s victory. Expecting to win, he had already ordered cloth from Connecticut for a new homespun suit that would highlight American industry.36

Federalists won a commanding share of congressional seats, but the official count of the presidential vote was delayed by the same defect that afflicted the old Congress: no quorum. On Congress’s scheduled opening day, only eight of twenty-two senators and thirteen of fifty-nine representatives were present.37

At Mount Vernon, Washington inspected the Potomac improvements, made what he thought would be his last visit to his mother in Fredericksburg, and wrote more instructions for managing his farms. His anxiety about the presidency, expressed to Knox, was unfeigned:

My movements to the chair of government will be accompanied with 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 & inclination which is necessary to manage the helm.38

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