Washington's Constitution

When the Convention did obtain a quorum, it promptly chose Washington as its president and turned to the matter of rules. Those rules provided that, so long as it was represented, each state would have one vote; a majority of states represented could carry a vote; and, most controversially, secrecy would prevail throughout. With windows shuttered and doors closed the members met day after day, six days a week, for more than three months. Due to the strictly enforced secrecy, the only record of the proceedings came from Madison’s minutes, which he kept private for a generation, the official tally of motions and votes, and a scattering of personal notes and letters.

The silence that engulfed the Convention limits what is known about Washington’s role because, as presiding officer, he rarely spoke on substantive matters inside the hall, where Madison recorded the debate. Washington did talk privately with other members, of course, and voted with the Virginia delegation. He also supervised the deliberations and called on members when they spoke. But no one recorded these utterances and, obeying the secrecy rule, Washington did not repeat them in letters or other writings. The other members likely knew where he stood on significant matters, but beyond his oft-stated desire to create a central government with power to tax, maintain an army, and regulate interstate and international commerce—positions that he had publicly championed since 1783—the record of his specific contributions to the Constitution remains frustratingly oblique. We can only surmise those details from the clues available to us. But those clues are revealing, especially his often decisive vote within the Virginia delegation. In the end, for example, it was his vote that allowed Virginia to endorse the Constitution.

The initial battle won, the war then raged over the precise structure and powers of Congress, the nature of the executive, the establishment of inferior federal courts, protections for state-sanctioned slavery, and myriad other matters. Washington again remained silent but wrote privately, including to Alexander Hamilton: “The Men who oppose a strong & energetic [central] government are, in my opinion, narrow minded politicians, or are under the influence of local views.”

No issue mattered more to him than the new government’s sovereignty over matters of national concern, which the Convention ultimately identified in a list of enumerated powers assigned to the central government that included every one that Washington had lobbied for since 1783. There were other topics for the members to address, some so divisive as to nearly derail the Convention. Some were issues that every delegate knew would directly impact Washington, should he lead the resulting government. They would look to him on these issues too, and he, in turn, helped to shape the outcome, but national supremacy mattered most to him. “Vain is it to look for respect from abroad, or tranquility at home,” Washington wrote to Lafayette one day before the delegates approved the list of enumerated powers, “till the wisdom and force of the Union can be more concentred.”

The members debated the executive at length three separate times during the Convention. In June, during the first of these occasions, they raised virtually all of the issues about the presidency that would later occupy them, but they had trouble even resolving whether one person or a committee should hold the office. With Washington in the room, a unitary executive should have seemed obvious to all, especially since every state had but one governor. Fearful of investing too much power in any single person, however, some delegates—including two from Virginia—favored an executive triumvirate like those of late republican Rome. Denouncing a single executive as “the fetus of monarchy,” Randolph averred that “the people” would oppose it. Further, George Mason added, an executive troika could better represent the country’s three regions than could any one ruler.

These comments on a single executive, coming as they did from old friends, vexed Washington, who prided himself on his republican virtue, public support, and unbiased nationalism. Every delegate who knew him well must have understood that Washington would never consent to serve as one member of an executive triumvirate nor be suited for such a post. While he remained silent, others rallied to defend the sort of unitary executive that Washington was so clearly qualified to fill. “Unity in the Executive” promotes “vigor and dispatch” in office, James Wilson noted, and by fixing responsibility on one person, served as “the best safeguard against tyranny.” Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts stressed that a troika would be especially troublesome in war. “It would be a general with three heads,” he declared.

While these positions came out in the course of the formal debate, delegates discussed them on other occasions as well. Like Washington, some members regularly attended evening teas and balls, where they could talk in semiprivate settings. Even those delegates who did not circulate in high society inevitably spent considerable time together outside the Assembly Room. Most of them lived tightly packed into a handful of the city’s best boarding houses and inns, where they dined at common tables.

While he stayed in a private home where he could dine in, Washington frequently ate out with other members. Indeed, on June 2, after the extent of disagreement over the power and structure of the executive first became apparent, Washington ate with the delegates at City Tavern, where the subject of day’s heated debate—should the United States have one executive officer or three—likely came up and surely remained on everyone’s mind. While in session earlier that day, the members raised and could not resolve the issue; but now, as many of those delegates casually dined with the man who would be that king, Washington’s presence must have reassured them. As a frequent guest at City Tavern, Pierce Butler may have been present. If so, it might explain his later comment that powers vested in the executive would not “have been so great had not many of the members cast their eyes toward General Washington as President.” At the Convention’s next session, the states voted by a margin of seven to three for a single executive. Virginia joined the majority, with Washington casting the deciding vote.