August 22, 1789—For the second time in less than a month, the U.S. Senate managed to tick off George Washington. This time, however, the Father of His Country, barely able to contain his anger, set a precedent in how future Presidents would abide by the treaty provision of the Constitution.
As the man who presided over the Constitutional Convention, Washington took with the utmost seriousness the document negotiated so painstakingly in Philadelphia. On this particular occasion, the clause about “advice and consent” came into play.
Washington was struggling with one of the most vexing problems of the young republic, one that would bedevil the United States for more than a century (and, some would argue, to this day): how to treat Native Americans.
The Treaty of Paris in 1783 had unleashed a trans-Appalachian wave of white settlers into lands occupied by Native-Americans—just as, ironically, the conclusion of the French and Indian War had encouraged American colonists to migrate west.
Washington approached the problem with a mixture of hard-headed realism and moral fervor.
He knew that a restless Native-American population within American territory or just outside its borders could serve as an ally of a hostile power—as had happened in the American Revolution, when he had felt compelled to order General John Sullivan to lead a detachment into upstate New York to eliminate Britain’s Indian confederates as a fighting force.
At the same time, Washington—along with the two other principal aides involved with Indian policy, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson—believed, as historian Joseph J. Ellis wrote in American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, that “Indian removal was incompatible with the republican values they cherished."
Washington studied that treaty clause again. It was rather terse, but clearly some form of early participation by the Senate was envisioned.
As the man who presided over the Constitutional Convention, Washington took with the utmost seriousness the document negotiated so painstakingly in Philadelphia. On this particular occasion, the clause about “advice and consent” came into play.
Washington was struggling with one of the most vexing problems of the young republic, one that would bedevil the United States for more than a century (and, some would argue, to this day): how to treat Native Americans.
The Treaty of Paris in 1783 had unleashed a trans-Appalachian wave of white settlers into lands occupied by Native-Americans—just as, ironically, the conclusion of the French and Indian War had encouraged American colonists to migrate west.
Washington approached the problem with a mixture of hard-headed realism and moral fervor.
He knew that a restless Native-American population within American territory or just outside its borders could serve as an ally of a hostile power—as had happened in the American Revolution, when he had felt compelled to order General John Sullivan to lead a detachment into upstate New York to eliminate Britain’s Indian confederates as a fighting force.
At the same time, Washington—along with the two other principal aides involved with Indian policy, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson—believed, as historian Joseph J. Ellis wrote in American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, that “Indian removal was incompatible with the republican values they cherished."
Washington studied that treaty clause again. It was rather terse, but clearly some form of early participation by the Senate was envisioned.
It indicated that the President had “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.'' Maybe even a council of advisors from the group might be warranted. Such a group would help the President secure a treaty with southern Indians, as well as the backing of Congress for the venture.
So Washington strode into the Senate chamber, with the hefty Knox puffing behind and ready to offer technical details on the negotiations with the Creek Indians.
Though Washington sat in the presiding officer’s chair while Vice President John Adams read his message, that six-foot-two-inch frame—several inches larger than the average male size of the day—filled the room anyway. Maybe that impression was furthered because the image-conscious President came in carrying his sword—a not-so-subtle reminder that momentous matters of war and peace were at stake.
So Washington strode into the Senate chamber, with the hefty Knox puffing behind and ready to offer technical details on the negotiations with the Creek Indians.
Though Washington sat in the presiding officer’s chair while Vice President John Adams read his message, that six-foot-two-inch frame—several inches larger than the average male size of the day—filled the room anyway. Maybe that impression was furthered because the image-conscious President came in carrying his sword—a not-so-subtle reminder that momentous matters of war and peace were at stake.
(The President, a theater buff, sure knew how to milk a moment--he had advertised his availability to lead the army early in the war by wearing his officer's uniform from the Virginia militia, and as the war concluded he had put out a potential officers' mutiny caused by congressional foot-dragging on pay by taking out his spots, noting that he was aging and losing his sight in the service of his country, reducing just about everyone assembled to helpless blubbering.)
I say the Senators were sweating bullets in that August heat because a) Washington, for all his undoubted greatness, had a well-deserved reputation for hauteur; and b) they knew that one of them had managed to get under his skin a few weeks before.
Just over two weeks previously, a Senator from Georgia had invoked the concept of senatorial courtesy for the first time, helping to reject the President’s appointment for a naval post in Savannah because it hadn’t been cleared with him first--and he resented the fellow. Washington had replied with characteristic iciness (“Permit me to submit to your consideration whether on occasions where the propriety of Nominations appear questionable to you, it would not be expedient to communicate that circumstance to me, and thereby avail yourselves of the information which led me to make them, and which I would with pleasure lay before you").
This time, the advice Washington sought related to seven questions. Considerate fellow that he was, he didn’t design them as open-ended questions (“What do you think about…?”) or even as those multiple-choice monstrosities that have given agita to several generations of SAT takers. No, these questions only required a yes or no. Nothing hard.
Finally, Adams finished reading. “Do you advise and consent?” he asked.
The 26 freshman Senators at the time sat in absolute silence. At last, Robert Morris of Pennsylvania—who, as financier of the American Revolution, had grown used to General Washington’s frequent (usually futile) requests for aid—whispered to home-state colleague William Maclay, according to the latter’s journal: “We will see who will venture to break silence first."
Maybe the Senators thought the President was going to use that sword on them. In any case, whether the items Adams read didn’t sink in or they decided to revert to old habits, the self-styled “world’s greatest deliberative body” indicated that it needed more time.
In short, it did what it would always do so reflexively over the next two centuries: it referred the matter to a committee.
Now the President acted in a way that evoked what some of those present might have recalled at the Constitutional Convention, when the President announced that someone had been careless about leaving notes around—i.e., exposing the delegates to leaks— or what just about all of them must have heard about from the Battle of Monmouth, when the Continental Army’s commander in chief had turned on his dilatory subordinate, Gen. Charles Lee, and, reliable reports indicated, "turned the air blue" with his language.
The President, Maclay observed in his journal, “started up in a violent fret. ‘This defeats every purpose of my coming here,’ were the first words that he said.”
As the first President, Washington became famous for establishing wise precedents. Would that the same could be said for Congress. The Senators began offering one contradictory motion after another.
Years later, Vice-President Adams’ son John Quincy Adams—himself appointed to the diplomatic service by Washington, before succeeding him and his father in the Oval Office—pondered the result in his diary:
When Washington left the Senate chamber he said he would be damned if he ever went there again. And ever since that time treaties have been negotiated by the executive before submitting them to the consideration of the Senate.
I say the Senators were sweating bullets in that August heat because a) Washington, for all his undoubted greatness, had a well-deserved reputation for hauteur; and b) they knew that one of them had managed to get under his skin a few weeks before.
Just over two weeks previously, a Senator from Georgia had invoked the concept of senatorial courtesy for the first time, helping to reject the President’s appointment for a naval post in Savannah because it hadn’t been cleared with him first--and he resented the fellow. Washington had replied with characteristic iciness (“Permit me to submit to your consideration whether on occasions where the propriety of Nominations appear questionable to you, it would not be expedient to communicate that circumstance to me, and thereby avail yourselves of the information which led me to make them, and which I would with pleasure lay before you").
This time, the advice Washington sought related to seven questions. Considerate fellow that he was, he didn’t design them as open-ended questions (“What do you think about…?”) or even as those multiple-choice monstrosities that have given agita to several generations of SAT takers. No, these questions only required a yes or no. Nothing hard.
Finally, Adams finished reading. “Do you advise and consent?” he asked.
The 26 freshman Senators at the time sat in absolute silence. At last, Robert Morris of Pennsylvania—who, as financier of the American Revolution, had grown used to General Washington’s frequent (usually futile) requests for aid—whispered to home-state colleague William Maclay, according to the latter’s journal: “We will see who will venture to break silence first."
Maybe the Senators thought the President was going to use that sword on them. In any case, whether the items Adams read didn’t sink in or they decided to revert to old habits, the self-styled “world’s greatest deliberative body” indicated that it needed more time.
In short, it did what it would always do so reflexively over the next two centuries: it referred the matter to a committee.
Now the President acted in a way that evoked what some of those present might have recalled at the Constitutional Convention, when the President announced that someone had been careless about leaving notes around—i.e., exposing the delegates to leaks— or what just about all of them must have heard about from the Battle of Monmouth, when the Continental Army’s commander in chief had turned on his dilatory subordinate, Gen. Charles Lee, and, reliable reports indicated, "turned the air blue" with his language.
The President, Maclay observed in his journal, “started up in a violent fret. ‘This defeats every purpose of my coming here,’ were the first words that he said.”
As the first President, Washington became famous for establishing wise precedents. Would that the same could be said for Congress. The Senators began offering one contradictory motion after another.
Years later, Vice-President Adams’ son John Quincy Adams—himself appointed to the diplomatic service by Washington, before succeeding him and his father in the Oval Office—pondered the result in his diary:
When Washington left the Senate chamber he said he would be damned if he ever went there again. And ever since that time treaties have been negotiated by the executive before submitting them to the consideration of the Senate.
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