Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3.

by Benson John Lossing

Washington was not unmindful of these signs, and the necessity of paying due respect even to the prejudices of the people; and as the time for his second inauguration was drawing near, he asked the opinions of his cabinet concerning the forms to be used on that occasion. Jefferson and Hamilton proposed that he should take the oath of office privately at his own house, a certificate of the fact to be deposited in the state department. Knox and Randolph proposed to have the ceremony in public, but without any ostentatious display. Washington's opinion coincided with the latter; and at a cabinet meeting held on the first of March, Mr. Jefferson being the only absentee, it was agreed that the oath should be administered by Judge Cushing, of the supreme court of the United States, in public, in the senate chamber, on the fourth of the month, at twelve o'clock at noon, and that the “president go without form, attended by such gentlemen as he shall choose, and return without form except that he be preceded by the marshall.”

Accordingly, a little before twelve o'clock, the president rode from his residence to the Congress hall in his cream-colored coach drawn by six horses, preceded by the marshall, as proposed, and accompanied by a great concourse of citizens, and took the oath in the senate chamber. The heads of departments, foreign ministers, members of Congress, and as many spectators as could find room in the apartment, were present. Previous to the administration of the oath by Judge Cushing, Washington arose and said:—

“Fellow-citizens: I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its chief magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of the United States of America. Previous to the execution of any official act of the president, the constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence; that if it shall be found, during my administration of the government, I have in any instance violated, willingly or knowingly, the injunction thereof, I may, besides incurring constitutional punishment, be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.”

The oath was then administered, and the president returned to his residence as he came.[42]

It was with sincere reluctance that Washington entered upon the duties of the office of chief magistrate of the nation for a second term. “To you,” he said in a letter to Colonel Humphreys (then abroad) soon after his inauguration—“To you, who know my love of retirement and domestic life, it is unnecessary to say, that in accepting this reappointment I relinquish those personal enjoyments to which I am peculiarly attached. The motives which induced my acceptance are the same which ever ruled my decision when the public desire—or, as my countrymen are pleased to denominate it, the public good—was placed in the scale against my personal enjoyments and private interest. The latter I have ever considered as subservient to the former; and perhaps in no instance of my life have I been more sensible of the sacrifice than at the present; for at my age the love of retirement grows every day more and more powerful, and the death of my nephew will, I apprehend, cause my private concerns to suffer very much.”[43]

On account of this death, Washington made a hurried visit to Mount Vernon in April, and while there the important intelligence reached him that France had declared war against England and Holland, an event which prophesied a general European war. Almost simultaneously with this intelligence came that of the execution of King Louis, by order of the National Convention of France. The king, who had been a mere shuttle-cock of faction for two years, was beheaded on the twenty-first of January, with circumstances of brutality which make humanity shudder. His death had been long predestinated by the ferocious men who ruled France, and, to accomplish it with a semblance of justice, he had been accused of crimes of which he was utterly innocent. Even at the last moment, when standing before the implement of death, he was made to feel the brutality of men in power. He looked complacently upon the vast multitude who came to see him die, and was about to say a few words, when the officer in charge, with ferocious emphasis, said, “No speeches! come, no speeches!” and ordered the drums to be beaten and the trumpets to be sounded. Louis was heard to say, “I forgive my enemies; may God forgive them, and not lay my innocent blood to the charge of the nation! God bless my people!” Thus perished a monarch, patriotic and amiable, but too weak in intellectual and moral power to control the terrible storm of popular vengeance which a long series of abuses had engendered.

For many months Washington had watched with great anxiety the manifestations of public feeling in the United States while the bloody work of the French Revolution was progressing. He saw with alarm the spirit of that Revolution, so widely different from that which had shaken off the fetters of kingly rule in America, working insidiously into the constitution of the politics of the United States, and passion assuming the control of reason in the minds of his people. This was specially manifested by an outburst of popular feeling when the proclamation of the French republic reached America, and news that French arms had made a conquest of the Austrian Netherlands. Forgetting the friendship of Holland during our war for independence, and the spirit of genuine liberty (of which that, flaunting its bloody banners in France, was but a ferocious caricature) which had prevailed in the Netherlands and made it the asylum of the persecuted for conscience' sake for centuries, the people of Boston and other places held a celebration in honor of the temporary victory. In the New England capital there was a grand barbecue. An ox was roasted whole, and then, decorated and elevated upon a car drawn by sixteen horses, the flags of France and the United States displayed from its horns, it was paraded through the streets, followed by carts bearing sixteen hundred loaves of bread and two hogsheads of punch. These were distributed among the people; and at the same time a party of three hundred, with Samuel Adams (lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts) at their head, assisted by the French consul, sat down to dinner in Faneuil hall. To the children of all the schools, who were paraded in the streets, cakes were presented bearing the inscription, “Liberty and Equality.” By public subscription, the sums owed by prisoners for debt, in jail, were paid, and the victims were set free. There was a general jubilee in Boston on that barbecue day.

With a similar spirit the news of the death of the king was hailed by the leaders of the republican party in the United States; and when intelligence of the French declaration of war against England went over the land, a fervor of enthusiasm in favor of the old ally was awakened which called loudly for compliance with the spirit and letter of the treaty of 1778, by which the United States and France became allies in peace and war. By that treaty the United States were bound to guarantee the French possessions in America; and by a treaty of commerce executed at the same time, French privateers and prizes were entitled to shelter in the American ports, while those of the enemies of France should be excluded.

There was now a wide-spreading sentiment in favor of an active participation with France, on the part of the United States, in her struggles against armed Europe; and many, in the wild enthusiasm of the moment, would not have hesitated an instant in precipitating our country into a war. Indeed, for a while, the universal sentiment was a cheer for republican France, whose Convention had declared, in the name of the French nation, that they would grant fraternity and assistance to every people who wished to recover their liberty; and they charged the executive power to send the necessary orders to the generals “to give assistance to such people, and to defend those citizens who may have been, or who may be, vexed for the cause of liberty.”