The rabid republicans began to laugh. Speaker Muhlenberg dubbed Maclay, ‘Your Highness of the Senate.’ Maclay himself, usually sardonic, grew facetious in debate, and thought the title satisfactory if the President was really high ‘and gloriously greased with a great horn of oil’ to make him conspicuous. Even Robert Morris complained that the Congress was also ‘Protector of the Rights of the People.’[17] But alas, it was a case of love’s labor lost, for when the ponderous title reached the House, James Madison quietly announced that the Constitution had given the head of the State a title—‘President of the United States’; and so it has been from that day to this.
The more thoughtful had witnessed the tempest in a teapot with some misgivings. Madison thought the success of the Senate plan would have ‘given a deep wound to our infant Government’;[18] and Ames thought it ‘a very foolish thing to risk much to secure’ and wished ‘that Mr. Adams had been less disguised.’[19] But they who continued for twelve years to refer to ‘the court’ were not content. A correspondent of Fenno’s ‘Gazette,’ the ‘court journal,’ continued to plead for ‘titles of distinction’ and to pray piously that Congress would ‘not leave the important subject to chance, to whim, caprice, or accident.’[20]
IV
In the midst of these acrimonious discussions of the flubdubbery of ceremonials, and with Adams proposing that the Sergeant-at-Arms be called ‘Usher of the Black Rod,’[21] Washington reached New York. A black mass of humanity awaited him in the rain at the water-front, peered down upon him from roofs and windows. The roaring of cannon and the pealing of bells apprized the crowd that the ornate barge the city had provided to ‘waft His Excellency across the bay’[22] had been sighted. The thirteen pilots in white uniforms who manned the barge were conspicuous as it moved on to the accompaniment of cheers to the Wall Street wharf. As it swept alongside the landing, bands on the banks joined in the noisy welcome of the cannon and the bells. When Washington, in a plain suit of blue and buff, rose to descend ‘the stairs covered with crimson trapping, the shouts of the populace drowned the combined noises of the mechanical devices.’[23]
Declining the use of carriages, he proceeded with his party and the committee on foot down Wall Street to Pearl, then Queen, and up the full length of that then fashionable thoroughfare, which boasted a sidewalk that would accommodate three walking abreast, to the house prepared for him on Cherry Street. The crowd followed, men, women, and children, masters and men. There at the house they left him; and a few moments later he returned down Pearl Street to the home of Governor George Clinton to dine. That night the houses of the city were illuminated. The monarch had entered his capital. To the masses he was the maker of a nation; to the world of fashion he was the creator of a court.[24]
The day of inauguration found the city fluttering with flags, colorful with decorations, Wall Street fairly screaming with the spirit of festivity. Wreaths and flowers hung from windows. A reverential throng packing Wall, Broad, and Nassau Streets watched the great man enter the Hall; and a few minutes later he appeared upon the balcony of the Senate Chamber—a gallant figure in deep brown, ‘with medal buttons, an eagle on them, white stockings, a bag and sword’[25]—to take the oath.
The keen eyes of Alexander Hamilton surveyed the scene from his home across the street.
Thence back to the Senate Chamber where the inaugural address, in trembling hands, was read with difficulty because of the shaking paper. The erratic but loyal Maclay was pained to find that his hero was not ‘first in everything.’[26] Thence back to the house on Cherry Street.
Never had the little city been so picturesquely and brilliantly illuminated as on that night of general rejoicing. Transparent paintings shone all over the town—that at the bottom of Broadway ‘the finest ever seen in America.’[27] It was a beautiful evening, ‘and no accident cast the smallest cloud upon the retrospect.’[28]
A few evenings later, an inaugural ball was given by the Assembly in their rooms on Broadway above Wall Street. The President ‘was pleased to honor the company with his presence,’[29] and ‘every pleasure seemed to be heightened’ as a result.[30] There, too, was ‘His Excellency the Vice-President,’ and members of Congress with their families, officers of the army, the Ministers of France and Spain. ‘Joy, satisfaction and vivacity was expressed on every countenance.’[31] Each lady, passing the ticket-taker, was presented with a fan made in Paris, with an ivory frame containing a medallion portrait of Washington in profile. ‘A numerous and brilliant collection of ladies’ it was, according to the impressionable reporter, all dressed ‘with a consummate taste and elegance.’[32]