he was no stranger to rebellion. But although he had helped to lead the people in their revolt against the British monarchy, he had little sympathy for rebellion against the new republic.
Bowdoin feared that if he did not crush the uprising quickly, the republic for which they had just fought would be lost. Unwilling to allow this “civil War” to “destroy the fair temple of American liberty,”6 he vowed to take “vigorous measures [towards] the effectual suppression of the Insurgents.”7 Instead, he ended up fanning the flames.
Having inherited enormous wealth from his merchant father, this Harvard-educated member of the Boston elite was far more adept at writing scientific papers in Latin than at empathizing with farmers. He thus became an easy target for the rhetoric of the brewing class war. The poor farmers viewed Bowdoin as yet another wealthy Boston merchant seeking to oppress them. The firestorm spread further, and Shays was unable to mediate a peaceful resolution when Bowdoin’s state militia fired on a group of rowdy protesters one hot summer day. Three farmers fell dead, while the rest scattered in terror. With blood spilled, Shays proclaimed, “The seeds of war are now sown.”8 And with that, the farmers began a new revolution. This time they sought to throw off the reins not of the British but of Massachusetts and the new American government.
Calling upon the lingering revolutionary spirit, thousands of famers—many of the very same men who had just fought the British—joined in the so-called “Shays’ Rebellion.” The revolt raged for almost a year, pitting Bowdoin’s Massachusetts establishment army—financed by the wealthy merchants of Boston—against the “common people,” whose champions “tried to make real the vision of justice and equality embodied in our revolutionary declaration of independence,” as a monument to the rebellion put it. Adopting the revolutionary rallying cry, “True Liberty and Justice may require resistance to law,” these class warriors’ uprising led many Americans to fear that the Revolution’s democratic impulse would rage unchecked, pulling the nation into perpetual anarchy.9 Democracy was a new experiment for the Americans, and perhaps it was already a failed one.
In bloody skirmishes that pitted neighbor against neighbor, the poorly armed farmers were confronted by the booming cannons and rifles of Bowdoin’s well-trained state militia. Despite Shays’ fierce leadership, his hungry, ill-equipped and ill-trained men were scattered before the Massachusetts militia’s firestorm. Losing battle after battle, the farmers began to return home as the bodies began to pile up in the fields. The rebellion was crushed. With ransoms on the heads of the rebel leaders, Shays fled into hiding in Vermont. He lived on the lam for many months, seeking to escape the Massachusetts gallows.
Governor Bowdoin, meanwhile, suffered politically for his harsh suppression of the rebellion. He was voted out of office and replaced with a more conciliatory administration. The incoming governor pardoned Shays as a step towards reconciliation with the farming communities. Shays was able to return to what was left of his farm and resume his humble existence. Although his rebellion in and of itself was not much of a military threat to the new country, it was significant as a symbolic one. The message of Shays’ Rebellion was clear: the American republic was failing miserably.
Washington could remain on the sidelines no more. He was appalled by the country’s downward spiral. “What gracious God, is man! that there should be such inconsistency and perfidiousness in his conduct?” he lamented. “It is but the other day, that we were shedding our blood to obtain the Constitutions under which we now live; Constitutions of our own choice and making; and now we are unsheathing the sword to overturn them.”10 Reflecting on the economic and political turmoil all around him, Washington bemoaned how far his nation had fallen:
No morn ever dawned more favourably than ours did; and no day was ever more clouded than the present! . . . Without some alteration in our political creed, the superstructure we have been seven years raising at the expence of so much blood and treasure, must fall. We are fast verging to anarchy and confusion!11
He warned, “the wheels of Government are clogged, and . . . from the high ground on which we stood, we are descending into the vale of confusion and darkness.”12
So perilous was the situation that “even respectable characters [spoke] of a monarchical form of Government without horror.” Washington exclaimed, “what a triumph for our enemies to verify their predictions! what a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious!”13
Just four years after his glorious victory over America’s bitter British foes, the nation’s founding hero asserted in 1787, “We are either a united people under one head, and for federal purposes; or we are thirteen independent sovereignties, eternally counteracting each other.”14 Without some sort of federal power that “pervade[d] the whole Union,” Washington could “not conceive” how the United States would survive.15 The nation needed a new government.
Washington was gravely concerned about his legacy. He was intent on protecting his pedestal in history and feared risking it by coming out of retirement. He agonized over the reputational damage should he throw his support behind government reform only to have it fail. But in the end, he was a man of action and not about to sit idly by while his beloved country unraveled. He readied his trusty horse and set off from his estate to meet with other leaders in a desperate attempt to salvage the United States.
Washington leapt back onto the public stage in grand style. On a bright Sunday afternoon in May 1787, his black carriage cut through the bustling streets of Philadelphia.1 And this was no understated entrance. Accompanied by a ceremonious cavalry escort and a parade of top military officials, his arrival was heralded by the competing booms of celebratory cannon and gun salutes. With a population of 30,000 people, the city was the largest in the nation and throngs of these inhabitants were eager to witness the national hero’s thundering arrival.
The spring air was filled with a fanfare of chiming bells and the loud cheers of citizens crowded alongside the dusty cobblestone streets.2 As the carriage passed, admirers fawned from the ornately trimmed windows of the two- and three-story brick buildings that hugged Philadelphia’s streets. Women applauded in their colorful, low-necked cotton bedgowns and white ruffled aprons; men in billowing white shirts, woolen waistcoats, dark breeches, and white stockings waved their tricorne hats in the air; children, squirming in uncomfortable miniature versions of the adults’ clothing, cheered the procession. Washington was the first American superstar and known to elicit a few shrieks from young women—puritanical norms be damned!
Washington’s carriage slowed to a stop in front of the finest house in the city. Here he was to be graciously hosted by its owners, who were honored by his mere presence. As the crowd roared in adulation, Washington’s large, almost majestic frame emerged from the carriage. Standing up to full height, his tall powerful figure presented a simply regal appearance. With his white-powdered hair tied in black satin and his famously masculine features, he exuded the confidence and grandeur for which the nation yearned. A man of elegantly understated fashion, he dressed in the fineries befitting his high station, yet nevertheless carried himself with his trademark humility as a servant of his nation.3 Although he was not a king, the eminent man sure was treated like one.
Washington was just one of Virginia’s delegates to the nation’s Constitutional Convention. The elected assemblies of the states had chosen representatives from among America’s top political leaders to attend this convention for the purpose of fixing the nation’s government.4 These seventy men were considered by many to be the “wisest and best men in the country,” and such confidence in their wisdom and character would be crucial to the public’s acceptance of their plans for mending the country.5
Americans