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Sincerely desirous of maintaining a good understanding with the French, the president, early in January, requested Mr. Pickering, the secretary of state, to address a letter to Mr. Pinckney, the United States minister in France, stating in full the causes of difficulty between the two governments, examining and reviewing the same, and submitting, with his letter, a mass of relative documents, by which the whole matter might be fully understood. Pickering's letter and the documents were laid before Congress on the nineteenth of January, accompanied by a message from the President, in which he said that the immediate object of Mr. Pinckney's mission to France was, “to make to that government such explanations of the principles and conduct of our own, as by manifesting our good faith, might remove all jealousy and discontent, and maintain that harmony and good understanding with the French republic which it had been his constant solicitude to preserve. A government which required only a knowledge of the truth to justify its measures, could but be anxious to have this fully and frankly displayed.”

Previous to the completion of the letter to Pinckney, Washington wrote to Pickering, suggesting that some such summing up as the following might be proper:—

This allusion to depredations upon American commerce by French cruisers, hinted at a state of things which the United States government could not long endure in silence. According to a report made by the secretary of state toward the close of the session, in which he made a full exhibit of the wrongs inflicted by the French on American commerce, it appears that enormous depredations had been committed in the West Indies. All vessels having contraband articles on board, no matter whither bound, were decreed to be good prizes; and the cargoes of neutral vessels bound to or from British ports, or even to Dutch or French settlements in the possession of the British, or cleared out for the West Indies generally, were seized and confiscated. The crews of American vessels captured were generally treated with indignity, and frequently with cruelty. “Bitter complaints,” says Hildreth, “were made of Commodore Barney, then in the West Indies with his two frigates. He was accused of treating with contemptuous indifference and neglect his fellow-citizens brought in as prisoners by the French privateers, and even of having shown his contempt for his country by hoisting the American ensign union down. Yet, when he arrived in the Chesapeake for the purpose of learning and carrying to France the result of the presidential election, though he boasted of having in his pocket the orders of the French Directory to capture all American vessels, and declared that if Jefferson was not chosen president war would be declared by France within three months, he was not the less, on that account, honored and feasted by infatuated politicians who read the Aurora, and believed Washington to be a traitor!”[111]

The votes of the electoral college for president of the United States were opened and counted in the senate on the eighth of February. The result showed a very close balance of political parties. The whole number of votes was one hundred and thirty-eight, making seventy necessary to a choice. Of these, John Adams, the incumbent vice-president, received seventy-one, and Thomas Jefferson sixty-nine votes. Thomas Pinckney, late minister to Great Britain, received fifty-nine votes, Aaron Burr thirty, Samuel Adams fifteen, Oliver Ellsworth eleven, George Clinton seven, John Jay five, James Iredell three, George Washington two, John King two, Samuel Johnson two, and Charles C. Pinckney, then in France, one. At that time the person who received the highest number of the electoral votes was declared to be president, and the person who had the next highest number was declared to be vice-president.

After reading the result, Mr. Adams sat down for a moment, and then rising, said:—

“The die is cast,” wrote the new president elect to his wife, on the following day, “and you must prepare yourself for honorable trials. I must wait to know whether Congress will do anything or not to furnish my house. If they do not, I will have no house before next fall, and then a very moderate one, with very moderate furniture.” He had written to Mrs. Adams a few days before, saying: “I hope you will not communicate to anybody the hints I give you about our prospects; but they appear every day worse and worse. House-rent at twenty-seven hundred dollars a year, fifteen hundred dollars for a carriage, one thousand for one pair of horses, all the glasses, ornaments, kitchen furniture, the best chairs, settees, plateaus, &c., all to purchase; all the china, delph [Delft] or Wedgewood, glass and crockery, of every sort to purchase.”

Washington now prepared, with feelings of the most exquisite pleasure, to retire from public life. Everything which would be unnecessary at Mount Vernon he offered for sale. “The president,” wrote Mr. Adams to his wife, “has a pair of horses to sell; one nine, the other ten years old, for which he asks a thousand dollars.... He must sell something to enable him to clear out. When a man is about retiring from public life, and sees nothing but a ploughshare between him and the grave, he naturally thinks most upon that. When Charles the Fifth resigned his empire and crown, he went to building his coffin. When I contemplated a retirement, I meditated the purchase of Mr. Vesey's farm; and thought of building a tomb in my own ground, adjoining to the burying-yard. The president is now engaged in his speculations upon a vault which he intends to build for himself, not to sleep but to lie down in.... Our friend says she is afraid President Washington will not live long. I should be afraid, too, if I had not confidence in his farm and his horse. He must be a fool, I think, who dies of chagrin when he has a fine farm and a Narragansett mare that paces and canters. But I don't know but all men are such fools. I think a man had better wear than rust.”

In February, when he could begin to count the days and hours that lay between him and that retirement he so much coveted, Washington wrote to his old and dear friends upon the subject with much feeling; and every day brought him new proofs of the love and veneration in which he was held by the people. His birthday was celebrated in Philadelphia in a manner unequalled before. A grand ball was given at the Amphitheatre, in the evening, at which Washington and his lady were present. Mrs. Washington held a “drawing-room” in the afternoon, at which there was a crowd of people. “It was rendered affecting beyond all expression,” said an eye-witness, “by its being, in some degree, a parting scene. Mrs. Washington was moved even to tears, with the mingled emotions of gratitude for such strong proofs of public regard, and the new prospect of the uninterrupted enjoyment of domestic life: she expressed herself something to this effect. I never saw the president look better, or in finer spirits, but his emotions were too powerful to be concealed. He could sometimes scarcely speak. Three rooms of his house were almost entirely full from twelve to three, and such a crowd at the door it was difficult to get in.

“At the Amphitheatre, at night, it is supposed there were at least twelve hundred persons. The show was a very brilliant one; but such scrambling to go to supper that there was some danger of being squeezed to death. The vice-president handed in Mrs. Washington, and the president immediately followed. The applause with which they were received is indescribable. The same was shown on their return from supper. The music added greatly to the interest of the scene. The president staid until between twelve and one; the vice-president till near two. Both were serenaded with repeated huzzas long after they had been in bed. The latter slept so soundly that he knew nothing of it till next morning, though it is said 'Yankee Doodle' was one of the tunes played.”[113]

The eight years of Washington's administration of public affairs, as chief-magistrate of the republic, were now drawing to a close. They had been years of toil, anxiety, and vexation. They had been stormy years; yet, like a rock in the ocean, or the mountain rising from the plain, he had stood unshaken by the surges or the winds. With that serenity of mind which arises from the consolations of a conscience void of offence toward God and man, he took a retrospective view; and with the eagerness of a prisoner about to be released from his cell, to breathe the free air of heaven and repose in peace in the bosom of his home, he approached the hour when he should bid adieu to the incessant labor and turmoil of political life. To his long-tried and dearly-loved friend, General Knox, he wrote as follows two days before his retirement:—

There was a large company of ladies and gentlemen at the dinner, on the third of March, when Washington, in a somewhat informal manner, bade them all farewell. “During the dinner,” wrote Bishop White, who was one of the guests, “much hilarity prevailed; but, on the removal of the cloth, it was put an end to by the president—certainly without design. Having filled his glass, he addressed the company, with a smile on his countenance, saying, 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last time I shall drink your health as a public man. I do it with sincerity, and wishing you all possible happiness.' There was an end to all hilarity, and the cheeks of Mrs. Liston, wife of the British minister, were wet with tears.”

On that morning Washington performed an act of justice to himself, which he had refrained from doing while in office. It was in the form of a letter to Mr. Pickering, the secretary of state, giving his own statement concerning the spurious letters which we have already noticed—their dates, addresses, and signatures, and all the facts in the case, the chief of which we have already noted. “These well-known facts,” he said, “made it unnecessary, during the war, to call the public attention to the forgery by any express declaration of mine; and a firm reliance on my fellow-citizens, and the abundant proofs which they gave of their confidence in me, rendered it alike unnecessary to take any formal notice of the revival of the imposition during my civil administration. But as I can not know how soon a more serious event may succeed to that which will this day take place, I have thought it a duty that I owed to myself, to my country, and to truth, now to detail the circumstances above recited; and to add my solemn declaration that the letters herein described[114] are a base forgery, and that I never saw or heard of them until they appeared in print.

On the fourth of March, John Adams, Washington's successor, was inaugurated the second president of the United States. The event took place in the hall of the representatives, which was densely crowded with spectators. Mr. Jefferson, the new vice-president, had just taken his seat as president of the senate. That body had been convened by Washington for the occasion; and now, with their presiding officer, they went into the representatives' hall, where a large audience of ladies and gentlemen were collected to witness the inaugural ceremonies. In front of the speaker's chair sat chief-justice Ellsworth, who was to administer the oath, with three other judges of the supreme court of the United States (Cushing, Wilson, and Iredell). The new vice-president and secretary of the senate took their seats on the right; and on the left sat the speaker and clerk of the late house of representatives. At a signal the doors were thrown open, and a crowd rushed in and filled the galleries. Very soon loud cheering was heard in the streets, and a few moments afterward Washington entered, followed by the president elect. The whole audience arose and greeted them with enthusiastic cheers.

When the two dignitaries were seated perfect silence prevailed. Washington then arose, and with the most commanding dignity and self-control, proceeded to read, in a firm, clear voice, a brief valedictory. An eye-witness yet (1860) living,[115] has made the following interesting record of this portion of the scene:—

When Washington concluded his brief valedictory, Mr. Adams arose, took the oath of office, and then delivered his inaugural address, which he had prepared with much care—an address that had the rare good fortune of pleasing all parties. He sketched, with a few brief touches of a master's pencil, an outline history of the federal constitution, defined his own position in regard to it from the beginning, and then thus feelingly alluded to the retiring president:—

The hearts of the audience had already been made tender by the farewell words of Washington; and this allusion to him, in the inaugural address of his successor, made tears flow copiously—“Scarcely a dry eye but Washington's, whose countenance was as serene and unclouded as the day,” wrote Adams to his wife.

With a little tinge of evident jealousy, Adams again wrote to the same correspondent, a few days afterward, saying: “It is the general report that there was more weeping than there has ever been at the representation of any tragedy. But whether it was from grief or joy, whether from the loss of their beloved president, or from the accession of an unbeloved one, or from the pleasure of exchanging presidents without tumult, or from the novelty of the thing, or from the sublimity of it arising from the multitude present, or whatever other cause, I know not. One thing I know, I am a being of too much sensibility to act any part well in such an exhibition. Perhaps there is little danger of my having such another scene to feel or behold.

When Washington left the hall and entered his carriage, the great audience followed, and were joined by an immense crowd in the streets, who shouted long and loud as the retiring president and his suite moved toward his dwelling. The new president and all others were forgotten in that moment of veneration for the beloved friend, upon whose face few in that vast assemblage would ever look again. “I followed him in the crowd to his own door,” said the late President Duer, of Columbia college, “where, as he turned to address the multitude, his countenance assumed a serious and almost melancholy expression, his voice failed him, his eyes were suffused with tears, and only by his gestures could he indicate his thanks, and convey his farewell blessing to the people.”

The merchants of Philadelphia, to testify their love for Washington, gave to him a splendid banquet and other entertainments that evening, in the Amphitheatre, which had been decorated with appropriate paintings by Charles Willson Peale, who, twenty-five years before, had painted, at Mount Vernon, the first portrait ever drawn of Washington, in the costume of a Virginia colonel. One of the newspapers of the day thus describes a compliment that was paid to the first president on that occasion, which had been suggested and executed by Mr. Peale:—

The heads of departments, foreign ministers, and distinguished strangers in Philadelphia, were present on that gala occasion; and with that display of taste, fashion, gayety, and refinement, ended the public life of Washington.

These honors paid to the retiring chief-magistrate with the most heartfelt sincerity, excited the jealousy, enmity, and malignity of his political enemies in a most remarkable degree. Nothing was too base for them to employ in attempts to injure his character, and lower him in the esteem of his countrymen. A pamphlet written by “Jasper Dwight, of Vermont,” and published in December, 1796, which contained most severe strictures upon the Farewell Address, was circulated with increased zeal.[120]

The Aurora overflowed with gall. Its columns were filled with the most virulent attacks upon him. His denunciation of the spurious letters made the calumniators writhe, and, with the fiendish malice of assassins, they thrust his character with weapons of foulest form. Three days after his retirement one of the most violent of these attacks appeared in the Aurora, attributed to Doctor Lieb, a republican member of the Pennsylvania assembly. It was dated on the day of Adams's inauguration. He said:—

These and similar articles excited the public indignation to the highest endurable pitch; and Bache, the publisher of the Aurora, was severely beaten, when, a few days afterward, he, with some friends, visited the frigate United States, then on the stocks at the Philadelphia navy-yard. A son of the contractor gave the flagellation. The public clamor became so great, that Bache, in mortal fear of further personal violence, thought it prudent to state, in his paper, that Doctor Lieb's article was not written by the editor, but came from a correspondent.

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