CHAP. I.

CABINET MINISTERS.

1131

Congress adjourned for three months on the 29th of September. The President, who had been confined to his bed six weeks in the summer with a severe malady which, at one time, put his life in peril, resolved to make a journey into New England during the recess, in search of renewed strength and to become better acquainted with the country and the inhabitants. Before his departure he selected the cabinet ministers who were to be his advisers and made other appointments, all subject to the approval or disapproval of the Senate. He chose Thomas Jefferson for the important post of Secretary of State. Washington knew his worth as a patriot and statesman. He had succeeded Dr. Franklin as minister to the French court, and was about to return home. The President had ample opportunities for knowing the transcendent abilities, practical common sense, and sterling patriotism of Alexander Hamilton, and he chose him to fill the really most important office in the cabinet at that time, that of Secretary of the Treasury. General Henry Knox was then the Secretary of War, and he was continued in the office; for his tried patriotism, steady principles and his public services, had endeared him to Washington, and secured the public confidence. Edmund Randolph of Virginia, who was a distinguished member of the bar, and a leading spirit in the convention that framed the Constitution, was chosen to be attorney-general. Washington regarded the national judiciary as the strong right-arm of the Constitution to enable it to perform its functions with justice, and he selected John Jay of New York for the office of Chief Justice of the United States, as the most fitting man for the place to be found in the country. Consulting alike, in this nomination, the public good and the dignity of the Court, he expressed his own feelings in a letter to Mr. Jay, in this wise: "I have a full confidence that the love you bear to our country and a desire to promote the general happiness, will not suffer you to hesitate a moment to bring into

JOHN JAY.

action the talents, knowledge, and integrity which are so necessary to be exercised at the head of that department, which must be considered the keystone of our political fabric."

So it was that with great wisdom, prudence and foresight, the sagacious founders of our republic organized and set in motion the machinery of government. The tests of more than eighty years' experience have elucidated the practical philosophy evinced by these men, individually and collectively, in the performance of their delicate and very difficult task. At the very outset, the new system of government encountered enormous strains, and the tests amounted almost to positive demonstrations of the unconquerable strength of our republic which it derived from the sap of free institutions. The wisdom and sagacity of the first President were also manifested in his choice of his aids in the management of the new government. He chose men of tried patriotism, intelligence and virtue, on whom he could rely for judicious counsel and courageous action-two very important qualities at that juncture in our national life.

52

CHAPTER II.

THANKSGIVING DAY

THE

INTO APPOINTED-THE PRESIDENT'S JOURNEY ETIQUETTE-CEREMONIES AT OPENING OF CONGRESS-HAMILTON'S REPORT ON THE MEASURES ADOPTED-FIRST DEBATES IN CONGRESS ON SLAVERY

NEW

ENGLAND-OFFICIAL

FINANCES-FINANCIAL MEASURES

SEAT OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT CHOSEN-PATENTS AND COPYRIGHTS-TREATY WITH SOUTHERN INDIANS-A NATIONAL CURRENCY, BANK, COINAGE AND MINT ESTABLISHEDVERMONT AND KENTUCKY ENTER THE UNION-FIRST CENSUS-WARS WITH THE INDIANS IN THE NORTHWEST, AND THEIR FINAL SUBJUGATION.

A

FEW days before Congress adjourned in September, that body, by resolution, requested the President to recommend a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by the people of the whole nation, in acknowledgment of the signal favor of the Almighty in permitting them to establish in peace a free government. Washington issued a proclamation to that effect. It was the first call for a national thanksgiving since the establishment of the new government. On the same day (October 3, 1790) he wrote in his diary: "Sat for Mr. Rammage [an Irish artist] near two hours to-day, who was drawing a miniature picture of me for Mrs. Washington. Walked in the afternoon, and sat at two o'clock for Madame de Brehan [or Brienne, sister of the French minister Moustier], to complete a miniature profile of me which she had begun from memory, and which she had made exceedingly like the original."

The President appointed Thursday, the 26th of November, as the day for the national thanksgiving, and on the 15th of October, he set out on his journey to New England. Rhode Island, not having yet adopted the new Constitution, was not in the Union, and he did not tread upon its soil, but went to Boston by way of Hartford, Springfield and Worcester, arriving there on Saturday, the 24th. There he had an official tilt with John Hancock, who was then governor of Massachusetts. Hancock had invited Washington to lodge at his house in Boston. The invitation was declined. After the arrival of the President, the governor sent him an invitation to dine with him and his family, informally, that day, at the conclusion of the public reception ceremonies. It was accepted by Washington, with a full persuasion that the governor would call upon him before the dinner hour. But

Hancock had conceived the proud notion that the governor of a State within his own domain was officially superior to the President of the United States when he came into it. He had laid his plans for asserting this superiority by having Washington visit him first, and to this end he had sent him the invitations to lodge and dine with him. At near the time for dinner, as Washington did not appear, Hancock evidently felt some misgivings, for he sent his secretary to the President with an excuse that he was

too ill to call upon his Excellency in person. The latter divined the nature of the “indisposition," and dined at his own lodgings at "the widow Ingersolls," with a single guest. That evening the governor, feeling uneasy, sent his lieutenant and two of his council to express his regret that his illness had not allowed him to call upon the President. "I informed them explicitly," Washington wrote in his diary, "that I should not see the governor except at my lodgings." This took the conceit entirely out of Hancock,

CHAP. II.

OPENING OF CONGRESS.

1135

who was well enough the next day (Sunday) to call upon Washington and repeat, in person, the insufficient excuse for his own folly.

The President extended his visit eastward as far as Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he sat to a persistent portrait painter named Gulligher, who had followed him from Boston. From that point he took a more northerly route back to Hartford, and arrived at New York on the 13th of November.

There, on the 8th of January, 1790, the second session of the first Congress was begun in the old Federal Hall. The proceedings were opened by a message or speech from Washington, which he delivered in person. At eleven o'clock that day he left his house in his coach drawn by four bay horses, preceded by Colonel Humphreys and Major Jackson in military uniform, riding two of his white horses, and followed by his private secretaries, Messrs. Lear and Nelson, in his chariot. His own coach was followed by carriages bearing Chief-Justice Jay and the Secretaries of the Treasury and War, Secretary Jefferson not having arrived at the seat of government. At the outer door of the Hall the President was met by the door-keepers of the Senate and House of Representatives, and conducted by them to the door of the Senate Chamber, from which the President was led through the assembled members of Congress, the Senate on one side and the House on the other, to the chair, where he was seated. The members all rose as the President entered, and the gentlemen who had accompanied him took their stand behind the Senators. In the course of a few minutes the President rose (and with him the members of both houses) and made his speech, after which he handed copies to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and then retired, bowing to the members (who stood) as he passed out. In the same manner as he came, and with the same attendants, he returned to his house. "On this occasion," Washington wrote in his diary, "I was dressed in a suit of clothes made at the woolen manufactory at Hartford, as the buttons also were." At an appointed hour on the 14th the members of the houses of Congress proceeded in carriages to the mansion of the President (those of the House of Representatives with the mace, preceded by their Speaker), and there presented their respective addresses in response to his speech. These stately ceremonials at the opening of the sessions of Congress were in vogue until Jefferson took his seat as Chief Magistrate, when they were all omitted and the President sent to the assembled Congress his annual and other messages in writing, by his private secretary, as is now done.

The public credit was a topic that demanded and received the earliest and most earnest attention of Congress at the second session. The report