The Life of George Washington. John Marshall

possible. More precisely, the struggle between Federalists and Republicans was not merely a partisan matter but a serious political drama upon the outcome of which depended the true and practicable principles of liberal and popular government. More than party is at stake here, and, in any event, a serious political education must consider both sides in the disputes Marshall recounts.

      A good challenge to the Life’s account of the Washingtonian administration is Jefferson’s little “Explanations” at the start of his Anas. The Anas consists of three volumes of memorabilia of Washington’s administration, with an intent, according to the introductory “Explanations,” to counter “the only history of that period which pretends to have been compiled from authentic and unpublished documents.” For Jefferson, at least, Marshall’s Life is the rival to be confronted. According to the Anas, the Life gilds and disguises the undemocratic corruption with which Alexander Hamilton had bamboozled an aging Washington. Hamilton was an “apostate” from the “holy cause” of republicanism. He would raise the wealthy few, put down the people, and reintroduce the corrupt British hierarchy of classes. According to Jefferson, Marshall in the Life puts an attractive shine on Hamilton and the few and their accomplishments, but is silent and cold as to “the rights of humanity,” as to democratic republicanism as a whole (which would “change the condition of man over the civilized globe”), and as to the Republican party in America. This is another common objection to the Life, and it is the one that influences many contemporary critics. These critics are less opposed to Marshall’s partisanship than to his alleged lack of democratic and humanitarian partisanship.

      The diagnosis that Jefferson is so concerned to attack is this: at the founding of the American popular government the Republican party was good at being popular but not at establishing government. Only “the temporary ascendancy” of the Federalists, according to the Life, enabled the new government to acquire strength enough to confront the inevitable shocks that were to come. Party is secondary to Marshall, and party strife is “dubious” and regrettable. A constitutional government and wise policies are primary, and it was the Washingtonian Federalists who established both. Perhaps it is relevant to note that Jefferson, despite considerable effort, was unsuccessful at recruiting an author for a rival history. While he finally endorsed the Italian Carlo Botta’s work as “more true than the party diatribe of Marshall’s,” he himself noted that even Botta borrowed heavily from Marshall (Jefferson to John Adams, June 23, 1813).

      The Life itself contains several diagnoses of partisanship, and these begin early, with divisions over support of the army during the war years. But Marshall concentrates on the growing opposition during Washington’s presidency from a “great party” that called itself “the people.” The fundamental division as he saw it was between those favoring a government strong enough to govern and those reluctant to burden the states and the majority with the necessary taxes, federal powers, and enforcement of contracts and debt payments. The Life thus supplies a sober but provocative mix: it mixes republican devotion with political science. Marshall was devoted to his country and to popular self-government. He nevertheless shows how the republican experiment might have failed. It was likely to have failed. The war for independence could have been lost (one mutiny threatened the patriot cause with “total ruin”). The attempt at national self-government under the Articles of Confederation did fail. The Americans finally succeeded. But success at war and government was due as much to superior men as to the country’s popular inclinations. It was not due to some inevitable progressive development or to the magic of popular self-rule.

      The war for independence involved a people reluctant to sacrifice, states reluctant to allow a national government strong enough to compel sacrifice, and states and peoples reluctant to support the soldiers and officers who did sacrifice. Hence, in Marshall’s judgment, the grandeur of Washington as general on the defensive, as general patching together an army, and as pillar of not only the war effort but the civil effort. “The season for action always arrived before the preparations for it were completed,” Marshall observed of the civil authorities. But Washington also had to be a general squelching visionary hopes and projects, such as enterprises against Canada that tended to dazzle Congress even as the armies starved and supplies dwindled. Similar difficulties greeted Washington as President. According to Marshall, a majority of Americans probably opposed the Constitution, which was ratified only because voters, in selecting the ratifying conventions, still deferred somewhat to character and prominence. When the new government began to govern, it had to confront the long-standing democratic and state-oriented sympathies and authorities. These attitudes and powers were organized into a movement by Jefferson and his allies and inflamed in hope and hatred by the more democratic liberalism of the French Revolution. Thus was formed a Republican party which suspected the essentials (as Marshall saw them) of a strong government and a prosperous economy.

      The Life is chiefly an account of what it took to establish the new American order. What it took, chiefly, was Washington. It took above all Washington’s “resolution” in war and peace—a forcefulness deliberate and upright, but unyielding. This is the outlook that controls not only Marshall’s occasional accounts of party conflict but also his general account of the war for independence and the struggle for an adequate government. It also controls the concluding summary of Washington’s mind and character: the moral and political lessons especially for the ambitious young who are “candidates for fame.”

      Two-thirds of the Life is about Washington’s generalship and gives a panoramic portrait of the Revolution’s major battles. The surge of British effort moved from Boston to the crucial middle colonies and finally to the South. The British kept invading and raiding. They attempted the decisive things: to destroy the Americans’ little armies, to occupy the great ports, to split the colonies down the Hudson River, and to reclaim the land and people. First came maneuvering around Boston in 1775. Then the British made the crucial takeovers in the middle colonies, first New York City in 1776, and then Philadelphia in 1777, coupled with Burgoyne’s splitting movement from Quebec to the Hudson via Lakes Champlain and George. Finally, the British thought to roll up the South from Savannah in 1779 and from Charleston and from Westover in Virginia, near Richmond, in 1780. Washington kept defending. He kept the British from extending their conquests from enclaves such as New York and Philadelphia to states as a whole and hence—given the unsettled loyalties—to the bulk of the citizenry. There was an exception in the South. After the British captured General Benjamin Lincoln’s army at Charleston, counties and whole states returned to British sovereignty. Earlier there had almost been a similar disaster in New Jersey after Washington’s rag-tag forces had been chased out of New York and then over the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. But Washington did the most necessary thing—and more. He kept his army alive, and he was resilient. Though driven across the Delaware, amazingly he returned during 1776 and 1777 to Trenton and still more amazingly to Princeton to shake the British hold over most of New Jersey. What shows through the Life, then, is Washington’s immense tenacity. Even amidst the rout around New York “he did not appear to despair.” Washington possessed an “unconquerable firmness” that showed “a serene unembarrassed countenance” to the troops and that fostered enterprise as well as vigilance. He was always devising some plan for the fox on the run to become the wolf on the attack.

      In similar circumstances a man less competent could lose. By surrendering his army at Charleston in 1780, General Lincoln lost the whole lower South. Lincoln heeded the pleas of the civil authorities and, contrary to Washington’s counsel, did not retreat when he could have saved his army. By comparison, Washington in 1777 withdrew his army rather than make a final fight for Philadelphia, despite the pleas of civil authorities and despite the fact that Philadelphia was the seat of the Continental Congress. In 1780–81, General Nathanael Greene regained in the South most of what Lincoln had lost—and by a Washingtonian strategy. Greene and his able commanders fought many battles and won few. But he never lost his army, and he was always dangerous. By continually harassing the enemy, by masterfully employing a popular guerrilla force, by dividing his army to force the British to divide and weaken theirs, and by keeping civilians loyal to the patriot cause, Greene made the lower South too difficult for the British to occupy. Greene’s strategy was that of the Commander in Chief, with the sole exceptions of the Continental Army’s victories over Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777