If the American Revolution has been
remembered like a five-act play, the years after the war are the tension-filled
fourth, so suspenseful as to border on melodrama. Even the heroes seem almost
hysterical. John Quincy Adams, 20 years old in 1787, deemed it the “critical
period” even before its conclusion. The new states went their own democratic
ways in dealing with a credit crisis and left the Continental Congress unable to
pay its debts. A high point of revolutionary radicalism, it was a low point for
what Adams called the “bonds of union.”
It is not a period we usually associate with
George Washington, the retired commander who became America’s first president in
1789. Biographers usually depict him happily rotating his Mount Vernon crops,
barely aware that there could be another call to service. The general had
distanced himself from a Congress that couldn’t pay his army’s bills and from
the mutinous results. Seizing power like Caesar was never really an option;
returning home like Cincinnatus made a virtue of necessity. But as Edward J.
Larson reveals in “The Return of George Washington: 1783-1789,” there’s more to
the story than Washington’s republican refusal of a crown.
The general kept in touch with political
leaders from several states. Like most generals who survive to fight another day
at a higher rank, Washington was also a politician, and a better one than his
image might suggest. He knew when to save political capital and when to spend
it. He played a “crucial role as a public figure and political leader” by
networking in favor of a stronger central government.
Precisely because of his experience during
the war, Washington worried about frontier security and international opinion of
the republican experiment. He made it clear that he favored a revised union, but
did not go public with his concerns until others did. Larson praises
Washington’s acute sense of political theater: He skipped a meeting of state
leaders in Annapolis, and even “played Hamlet” on attending the Constitutional
Convention in Philadelphia. Hanging back allowed his actions and carefully
planted statements to have maximum impact. He gave no one ammunition to use
against him or the nationalist cause. Washington’s nonpartisan, cross-regional
appeal depended upon seeming to be above particular interests. He played this
role expertly as president of the convention, pushing nationalist measures
behind the scenes while enforcing the convention’s high-minded tone — and its
secrecy. The surprisingly flexible and strong presidential office could then be
devised with him in mind.
Even before the convention finished its
work, newspapers made Washington the measure of what the new order might mean.
Larson is a sure guide through the complexities of writing and ratifying the
Constitution. His almost Washingtonian sense of gravity and balance slips only
occasionally into the traditional melodrama, as in the first scene, when
Washington, resigning as commander of the Continental Army, “stood erect — still
a towering figure on a solid frame.” How else, alas, can the protagonist of “one
of the most remarkable events in the history of war, revolution and politics” be
described? Did “his daily presence on the dais” at the Constitutional Convention
really speak “louder than the speeches of anyone in the hall”? The poet Stephen
Spender may have been able to “think continually of those who were truly great,”
but the convention delegates wisely spent their time listening to one another,
not gazing on the man with the gavel.
Thankfully, in most scenes Larson pulls back
the curtain to show us the messier, still dramatic realities. We don’t fully
understand Washington or the nation he founded without remembering that during
this period he was sometimes as annoyed by squatters on his Ohio Valley lands,
and by his Virginia slaves, as he was by provincially minded legislators.
Restoring the politics to Washington’s rise adds motive and depth to the
nationalist who rode north to the rescue.
THE RETURN OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
1783-1789
By Edward J. Larson
Illustrated. 366 pp. William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers.
$29.99.
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