A carriage was in waiting to convey the president to his lodgings in Osgood's house, in Cherry-street, and a carpet had been spread, from the wharf to the vehicle, for him to tread upon. But he preferred to walk. A long civic and military train followed. From the streets, windows, balconies, and roofs, he was greeted with shouts and the waving of handkerchiefs. All the bells in the city rang out a joyful welcome; and from Colonel Bauman's artillery heavy peals of cannon joined the chorus. The president and a large company dined with Governor Clinton; and in the evening, the streets, though very wet after a warm shower, were filled with people to witness a general illumination of the houses.
While the name of Washington was spoken with reverence by every lip; while in the ears of senators were yet ringing the remarkable words of Vice-President Adams—“If we look over the catalogues of the first magistrates of nations, whether they have been denominated presidents or consuls, kings or princes, where shall we find one whose commanding talents and virtues, whose overruling good fortune, have so completely united all hearts and voices in his favor; who enjoyed the esteem and admiration of foreign nations and fellow-citizens with equal unanimity?” while the occasion of his arrival “arrested the public attention beyond all powers of description”—“the hand of industry was suspended, and the pleasures of the capital were centered in a single enjoyment,” that great man, exercised by a modest estimate of his own powers in a degree amounting almost to timidity, wrote in his diary:—
“The display of boats which attended and joined us on this occasion, some with vocal and some with instrumental music on board; the decorations of the ships; the roar of cannon, and the loud acclamations of the people which rent the skies as I passed along the wharves, filled my mind with sensations as painful (considering the reverse of this scene, which may be the case, after all my labors to do good) as they are pleasing.”
And a few days after his inauguration he wrote to Edward Rutledge:
“Though I flatter myself the world will do me the justice to believe that, at my time of life and in my circumstances, nothing but a conviction of duty could have induced me to depart from my resolution of remaining in retirement, yet I greatly apprehend that my countrymen will expect too much from me.... So much is expected, so many untoward circumstances may intervene, in such a new and critical situation, that I feel an insuperable diffidence in my own abilities. I feel, in the execution of the duties of my arduous office, how much I shall stand in need of the countenance and aid of every friend to myself, of every friend to the Revolution, and of every lover of good government.”
How nobly, ay, and how sadly, do these feelings of Washington—his humiliating sense of the great responsibility laid upon him when he assumed the office of the chief magistrate of the republic—contrast with the eager aspirations of mere politicians to sit in the seat of that illustrious and conscientious man! How the spectacle illustrates the words of the poet:—
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!”
FOOTNOTES:
[11] “The first number of the Federalist,” says J. C. Hamilton in his History of the Republic of the United States, “was written by Hamilton, in the cabin of a sloop, as he was descending the Hudson, and was published on the 27th of October, 1787. After the publication of the seventh, it was announced: 'In order that the whole subject of the papers may be as soon as possible laid before the public, it is proposed to publish them four times a week.'" It was originally intended to comprise the series within twenty, or at most twenty-five numbers, but they extended to eighty-five. Of these Hamilton wrote sixty-five.
Concerning these papers, Washington wrote to Hamilton, at the close of August, 1788: “I have read every performance which has been printed on one side and the other of the great question lately agitated, so far as I have been able to obtain them; and, without an unmeaning compliment, I will say, that I have seen no other [than the Federalist] so well calculated, in my judgment, to produce conviction in an unbiassed mind, as the production of your triumvirate. When the transient circumstances and fugitive performances which attended this crisis shall have disappeared, that work will merit the notice of posterity, because in it are candidly and ably discussed the principles of freedom and the topics of government, which will be always interesting to mankind, so long as they shall be connected in civil society.”