While the obvious drama of the Life is the course of the Revolutionary War, the underlying drama is the way in which Washington’s generalship gave birth to his country. He made a national army out of what was virtually no army—“an undisciplined, ill-organized multitude” from various states. He kept an army despite shortages of soldiers, supplies, arms, and back pay. He kept it by his own example, especially among the officers. He kept it by severe punishment—the execution of deserters, of spies (even in the difficult case of Major André), and of mutineers. Often it seemed that the army was loyal only to him. But Washington kept the army loyal to the cause of free government when it might have turned away or even turned traitor. Marshall dwells on the key incidents. These include Washington’s overcoming a massive mutiny of Pennsylvania soldiers insisting on their back pay, the mutiny that “threatened the American cause with total ruin” in 1781, and with the war over, Washington’s overcoming a potentially massive mutiny by officers bent on assuring their pay before the army disbanded in 1783.
What Marshall quietly reveals is not only how Washington fought, but how Washington kept a deeply divided people loyal to the fight for self-government. The soldiers and the officers were kept loyal in the army. Outside the army, many people were kept loyal by the army and not least by the example and persuasiveness of its Commander in Chief. Still, states typically competed to sacrifice the least in men, money, and materiel. A sluggish administration at the national level was a constant problem, especially because Congress administered finance and even war by committee. Not least galling to Washington were the fear and envy directed against the army itself. Legislators often held back prerogatives and pay, especially from the officers. One is struck by Washington’s indignation at the injustice done to those who did the most and sacrificed the most to win American independence. One is struck, too, by his patient obedience and his diplomatic but persistent pressing of his political masters to do what justice and the war effort required.
The second portion of the Life shows Washington dealing politically with what he had helped to keep in line militarily. Marshall takes readers through troubles under the Articles of Confederation, to a glimpse of the Constitutional Convention, to the work of making a paper plan into a real government. The theme of this portion is the statesmanship needed to establish the plan. Marshall supplies a checklist of the country’s immense problems at the start of Washington’s administration; and he reports how the first President addressed each and all. Economic well-being is restored by negotiating trade agreements and enforcing contracts. Credit is restored through taxes and by paying at full agreed value all public debt (state as well as federal). A mixture of patient diplomacy and decisive forcefulness deals successfully with Indians, foreign powers, and a democratic insurrection.
The context of the particular policies is a general political struggle: a point-counterpoint between Washington’s efforts and a popular party of opposition. The start of the struggle was in a constitutional question with political implications for the Presidency (the most undemocratic of political branches): did executive dismissals, as well as appointments, require assent of the Senate? Opposition to the party of the government became “systematic opposition” in reaction to Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s plan to assume state debts as well as federal, with its implications for federal power, and to fund them at face value, with its benefit for creditors and speculators at the cost of higher taxes. The next stage was an open extension of the attack to the hero himself. It arose in reaction to Washington’s proclaiming neutrality as France, the new voice of democratic Revolution, warred with the old monarchical Britain. It rose to a crescendo of popular meetings and invective on the occasion of Jay’s Treaty settling disputes with Britain. Could the new government really govern? Or would the final power be the torrent of popular outrage, or those rebelling in western Pennsylvania against the new taxes on liquor, or the activists in democratic societies modeled on the French revolutionary clubs—or the revolutionary French emissary Genêt, who ignored court orders and federal law while provoking indignation against the administration and authorizing French acts of war from American soil? Would the Presidency have the authority in foreign affairs marked out by, say, The Federalist’s famous discussion of executive power? Or might the Senate obtain the records of the Executive’s diplomacy, thus to publicize and baffle it? Might the Senate try to control executive appointments by disallowing the President’s dismissal of his subordinates? Could the House scuttle treaties made constitutionally—negotiated by the executive, with the Senate’s consent—by refusing to provide the enforcing legislation?
The new government succeeded, and Marshall, without claiming for the first President all the credit, emphasizes what Washington did. To begin with, Washington “was slow to commit himself”; he weighed seriously different points of view. He tried to appoint the best people (Hamilton and Jefferson sat in his cabinet), and he sought substantive counsel from his advisors. He was upright, acted out of duty, aimed to conciliate differences of party, rectified grievances, and took account of objections to his own judgments. He tried to negotiate with the Whiskey rebels, sought counsel from all sides in the heated controversy over the constitutionality of a national bank, and deliberated long and hard as to the merits of John Jay’s proposed treaty with Great Britain. But with deliberation and moderation in decision went determination when decided. Against the Whiskey rebels, for example, Washington put together an intimidating army and thus dissolved a threatening insurrection without battle or casualty. When protests against the Jay Treaty threatened to overwhelm the government, Washington approved it promptly. Confronted with executive decisiveness, the crowds subsided.
The Life concludes with one of the finer brief character sketches in American literary and historical writing. It is an economical précis, a compression of intellectual and moral virtues that in itself calls for much pondering. No one who considers this section can suppose that Marshall writes simply for political purpose, to say nothing of partisan purpose. He admires for their own sake the eleven or twelve qualities that he lays out, from Washington’s “unaffected and indescribable dignity,” to his judiciousness, the subordination of ambition to duty, the devotion to a constitutional republicanism of equal rights, and the enterprise as well as caution in military matters. But Marshall also means to call the attention of his readers to the need in democratic government for superior character in the highest offices. Of Washington he writes, “Respecting as the first magistrate in a free government must ever do, the real and deliberate sentiments of the people, their gusts of passion passed over without ruffling the smooth surface of his mind. Trusting to the reflecting good sense of the nation, he had the magnanimity to pursue its real interests in opposition to its temporary prejudices; and in more instances than one, we find him committing his whole popularity to hazard, and pursuing steadily the course dictated by a sense of duty, in opposition to a torrent which would have overwhelmed a man of ordinary firmness.”
Robert K. Faulkner
Boston College
Battle of Trenton, December 26, 1776
Battle of Saratoga, September 19–October 7, 1777
Battle of Yorktown, September 30–October 19, 1781