Blood of Tyrants. Logan Beirne
he would have been the fiercest man amongst the savage tribes.”17 The painter wanted to capture his subject’s true “fierce and irritable disposition” in the portrait, but Washington shut him out. Stuart believed that Washington, “like Socrates,” was possessed of “great self-command [that] always made him appear a man of a different cast in the eyes of the world.”18
Stuart grumbled, “an apathy seemed to seize him, and a vacuity spread over his countenance most appalling to paint.”19 Possibly out of spite, the artist emphasized Washington’s stern glance and the severe lines around his mouth that were caused by his false teeth.20 This portrait was far from a flattering glamour shot, and Stuart never actually finished it. But Americans loved Washington so much that they nevertheless embraced the steely image that emerged from the sitting. Ironically, it was this stiff, almost annoyed-looking representation of the dynamic man that would grace the dollar bill and shape countless people’s perception of him.21
Whatever his expression, Washington was internationally recognized as liberty’s great champion and seen as “a living embodiment of all that classical republican virtue the age was eagerly striving to recover.”22 He was lauded for uniting “the intrepidity of Aristides, the patriotism of Cato, the military prudence of Caesar, and the humanity of Scipio.”23 The world marveled at “[t]he virtuous simplicity of his retirement after the consummation of his country’s independence; the harmony of his public and his private life; the purity of his patriotism and the splendor of his military career, [which] formed altogether such a union of goodness and greatness in the character of one individual as was calculated to excite the warmest interest, and command the admiration of mankind.”24
Distant admiration, however, was not what the United States needed after the war. Washington’s retirement had added to the political void. No longer faced with the immediate threat of British invasion, and without a leader to unite them, the states quickly fell into discord. And Congress was ineffectual at holding them together—the quarrelling children were growing into rowdy teens and the feeble grandmother was losing control. The United States were far from united.
Not as Happy in Peace as They Had Been Glorious in War
These were desperate times. Besides being perilously disunited, the country was in dire straits economically. In order to fund the war, America had already spent far beyond her means, racking up $54 million in federal debt and an additional $24 million in state debt.1 The fragile nation was deeply indebted to her French allies for their wartime monetary assistance and also owed vast sums to her own American patriots who had provided guns, rations, and blood for the war effort. These soldiers and civilian suppliers had been essential in keeping Washington and his army fighting. But now that they had won, the resultant debt threatened to crush the fledgling nation. The thirteen states were not “as happy in peace as they had been glorious in war.”2
Thomas Jefferson expressed the view of many Americans in decrying “public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared.”3 The nation’s vast outstanding debt was reminiscent of their plight under the British monarchy. The Crown had exhausted much of its wealth during the Seven Years’ War and endeavored to fund its debt by taxing the colonies—which was one of the main reasons for the Revolution in the first place. Now America had its own financial predicament, and many feared that a large national debt might pave the way back to monarchy. “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt,” Jefferson warned.
We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. . . . This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. . . . And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.4
While he disagreed with Jefferson on many issues, Alexander Hamilton, the primary architect of the American financial system, likewise wrote, “Nothing can more interest the national credit and prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to husband all the means previously possessed for extinguishing the present debt, and to avoid, as much as possible, the incurring any new debt.”5 As far as many of the Founders were concerned, “Public Debt is a Public curse.”6
Americans and the world were losing faith in the new nation’s ability to meet its obligations. Veterans began to assume that they would never see their war salaries. They had been given IOUs because Congress and the states lacked the funds to pay them. But by the late 1780s, the war had been over for a few years and the veterans had lost confidence that they would ever see their hard-earned compensation. The humble veterans began selling their government’s promissory notes for a fraction of their value. They needed to eat today, and gave up hope that the United States would repay them tomorrow.
The veterans certainly had good reason for concern. Some politicians believed the nation should extricate itself from its crushing burden by simply refusing to repay, thereby making the loans worthless to the nation’s—irate—creditors. But while many people did not mind bilking the French, such a default would severely harm those veterans and other Americans to whom vast sums were owed.7 Further, it would destroy the government’s credibility and make borrowing in the future difficult, to say the least.
Washington had already made up his mind on this issue: he insisted that the country pay down its debt. He approached the matter as a question of honor, explaining, “the path of our duty is plain before us, honesty will be found on every experiment, to be the best and only true policy, let us then as a Nation be just, let us fulfil the public Contracts . . . with the same good faith we suppose ourselves bound to perform our private engagements.”8 Only by acting honorably and working to extinguish the debt would the new nation enjoy legitimacy and thrive.
Washington joined with those who advocated that the country repay quickly. “No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt,” he believed; “on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable.”9 He encouraged the nation to act virtuously by “shunning occasions of expence, but by vigorous exertions in time of Peace to discharge the Debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen which we ourselves ought to bear.”10
In the 1780s, however, it appeared that the nation would never be able to dig itself out of its financial hole—no matter how virtuously it behaved. Congress had little means of doing so, since under the Articles of Confederation it lacked the power to control the nation’s spending or collect taxes.
Congress could do little more than implore the states to finance the central government with donations. Congress proposed various methods by which the states might raise revenue towards paying off the national debt, but the states, each unwilling to have its citizens bear the brunt of higher taxes, refused to implement any of these ideas. They had their own debts to handle and their own citizens to care for.
The impasse fed interstate strife. Politicians clashed over whether the states should repay separately or the national government should assume the debt as a united body. While some intellectuals like Jefferson opposed entrusting the national government with such power, other, more down-to-earth Americans criticized the measure as simply unfair—certain southern states had already made great headway in repaying their debt and decried efforts to bail out the northern ones.
The debt controversy threatened to split the United States apart. The situation became so desperate that the Congressional Board of Treasury warned that if the national government could not procure more funds from the states,11 “nothing . . . can rescue [the United States] from Bankruptcy, or preserve the Union of