Washington’s Diamond Shoes

PETER: Major support for BackStory is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

ED: From the Virginia foundation for the Humanities, this is BackStory with the American Backstory hosts.

BRIAN: Welcome to the show. I’m Brian Balogh and I’m here with Ed Ayers.

ED: Hey.

BRIAN: And Peter Onuf’s with us.

PETER: Hey, Brian.

BRIAN: And this–

JOANNE FREEMAN: Hi, there.

BRIAN: –is Joanne Freeman. She’s an historian at Yale University who specializes in America’s founding era. And she told me this amazing story the other day about a guy named William Maclay. Maclay was one of Pennsylvania’s first US senators, meaning that he was in the Senate when George Washington was president.

JOANNE FREEMAN: And Maclay really admired Washington. He calls him the first of men throughout his diary. And he doesn’t know what to do whenever he’s around Washington. Like, his bows, he thinks they’re awkward and he doesn’t know where to stand or where to look.

BRIAN: He’s infatuated.

JOANNE FREEMAN: He is and a little awestruck. And he describes in his diary a dinner party where he enters the room and Washington’s at the door. And he’s totally flustered. And he makes a bow that he thinks looks really stupid. And he sees an empty seat across the room by some guys from Rhode Island. And he says, I’m heading for the empty seat by the Rhode Island guys. And as he takes a few steps–

BRIAN: Oh, no, not Rhode Island.

JOANNE FREEMAN: I know, heaven forbid. As he makes a few steps away from Washington, he sees out of the corner of his eye, Washington gesture for him to come and sit near him. So Maclay pauses and he thinks to himself what would be the good sort of patriotic, small, r, republican, thing to do?

Because if I turn around and I take that seat, I’m treating him kind of like a monarch. And if I treat him like a monarch, he’s going to think he’s a monarch. And if he thinks he’s a monarch, he’ll become a monarch and then we’ll destroy the government. So he doesn’t take the seat. He keeps walking because he’s afraid that if he takes that seat, it could destroy the government.

BRIAN: This was the level of anxiety swirling around George Washington in 1789 as he abandoned life as a retired war hero and assumed the role of chief executive. And if you think Maclay was worried about details, Washington was 10 times more worried. Nobody sweat the minute details more than George Washington.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Every single thing. Like, should he shake hands with common American citizens? Yes or no? He debated everything.

BRIAN: What was the answer to that?

JOANNE FREEMAN: Actually, the answer to that was no.

BRIAN: No. Uh huh.

JOANNE FREEMAN: And that was commented on. Oh, I see, well, in that case, what does that mean? Is he acting monarchical? Is he sort of acting like a king?

And that was really the big underlying stakes for Washington as president as the default in the late 18th century in the world at large was king. And there wasn’t such a thing as a president. No one knew what that was.

They sort of invented this new, interesting kind of national executive with the Constitution. But they were making it up, except for the basics in the Constitution, as far as what the office really was and what it felt like and the sort of tone of the thing. They really had to make it up as they went along.

ED: Now when Barack Obama puts his hand on a Bible and repeats after the Chief Justice this week, he will be reenacting a rite performed by 43 presidents before him. And it’s easy to understand how, for many people, these presidential inaugurations just seem like another tired piece of political theatre, created and played for maximum effect. But the story we heard a moment ago reminds us that there have been times in American history when inaugurations were anything but tired, times when the incredibly high stakes of a presidential transition were played out in the inauguration itself.

PETER: And so today on the show we’re going to zero in on a few of these high stakes inaugurations. We have got stories that just may change your thinking about this quadrennial event.

BRIAN: We’ll begin in New York City, the nation’s very first capital. The man of the hour, of course, was George Washington. Here’s historian Joanne Freeman again.

JOANNE FREEMAN: You can see that he decided very carefully what he was going to wear to his inauguration. He wore homespun American cloth made in Connecticut. It was apparently beautiful homespun cloth so that you wouldn’t have known from looking at it that that’s what it was.

But symbolically speaking, he was trying to be sort of plain, straightforward guy. I’m not a king, not me. But he had diamond buckles on his shoes. So that was like, you know, a great Washington compromise. It was like, well, yes, I’m dressed in homespun like any other American, except for those diamonds.

He also made a decision, in the afternoons very often he would take these walks around the block, very ostentatiously around 2:00, 3:00 in the afternoon. He would leave and walk around the block and stop and look up at a church clock and then set his watch and then go back to his office. And that was a very explicit political statement that I don’t always ride in a carriage. Look at me, I’m walking in the street.

And not only was that the message, but people got the message. And he got fan mail. Great thing, George, the walks. We love it.

BRIAN: So to go back to the inauguration, take us through the inauguration as though you were commenting on– you were doing the color for a football game. Comment on how he’s doing on toeing this thin line between veering towards monarchy or simply being an unimportant plebeian.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Well, certainly the American people were not treating him like a plebeian on his way up. He came up from Virginia from Mount Vernon up to New York, which was the first capital. And there were Hosannas being sung the entire way up and flowers strewn in his path and women sort of with banners. And there was a whole celebration all the way through his path.

BRIAN: Now, help me out. I’m certain he wasn’t in a limousine. So how was he processing?

JOANNE FREEMAN: No. For the most part he was in a carriage.

BRIAN: Wasn’t that a little dangerous, a little monarchist, perhaps?

JOANNE FREEMAN: Well, yeah. And as a matter of fact, he got some criticism, not inaugural criticism, but generally speaking. He had a very fancy carriage and he had a lot of white horses. And people who were prone to worry about a monarchy, that was one of the things they looked at was, oh, we know he’s president and everything. But that’s an awfully fancy carriage and a lot of fancy horses.

So the inauguration, I think America was in yippee mode. And so I don’t think that they were yet at that moment, sort of coming down on his head for being monarchical. And there were barges in Manhattan harbor and he was sort of conducted on this sort of ceremonial barge that he embarked from and was taken to Federal Hall where he could take the oath of office. But the sort of wonderful part about this is what was going on at Federal Hall, which is where Congress was meeting, before this.

Because Congress, and in particular the Senate, was debating what the heck should happen during an inauguration because nobody knew. First of all, what is a president? And, secondly, how do you inaugurate one?

BRIAN: Right.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Like what’s supposed to happen? So there are these really anxious debates about what should happen. And they were sort of inanely detailed debates like should the Senate stand when the president enters the room? Because that’s treating him kind of like a monarch, but on the other hand, if they don’t stand, that’s kind of being disrespectful.

They sort of agonized over it. I mean, in the end I think they stood and then sat and then Washington went out on the balcony of Federal Hall to take the oath of office. And then he came back into the Senate chamber and he gave a very brief address to both houses of Congress, which is the equivalent of the first inaugural address.

Indeed, the first thing he says is that on the one hand, he’s really honored and on the other hand, he’s really scared because he knows all of the many ways in which he’s not qualified to do this job. And he also knows that as president, everyone will be watching him not know how to do it. So it’s sort of this wonderful, poignant kind of honest moment on the part of Washington.

But what’s also wonderful about the moment is Washington was so nervous and so scared that he was literally shaking. He was holding a speech and his hands were shaking and his voice was trembling. He was honestly terrified about what was happening at that moment and the sort of big bundle of nothingness that he was walking into as the first president of the United States. He said, not long after that, I walk on untrodden ground. He just didn’t know what was coming.

BRIAN: Now, of course, that inaugural, as important as it was, is really just a point and not a line. And we can’t begin to get a line on the inaugural until we have a few more. So take us through Adams’s inaugural and Jefferson’s, if you would.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Sure. In a way, Adams’s inaugural is not that different from Washington’s.

BRIAN: Right. Another Federalist.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Another Federalist. And in a lot of ways, his inaugural, he says the same sorts of things. I hope I’m up to the job. I’m not precisely sure what Adams wore to his inauguration. But generally speaking, when he dressed formally, he did wear a ceremonial sword, which considering that he had never had any military service of any kind was just a real borrowing from Washington. Well, if he wears one, then I guess I’ll do that too. That’s part of the presidency suit.

But it’s really Jefferson’s inaugural address that has a very strong political statement in it for the first time. And that’s because his election is so contested and took a long time for them to figure out who actually was the president. When he finally is the president and gives that inaugural address, he’s very firm about trying to smooth over party differences that made that election so fierce and so bitter.

So he actually does come out and say, we are all Federalists. We are all Republicans. Really, we should put some of those differences behind us and move ahead as a nation.

BRIAN: Joanne, thanks so much for joining us today.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Oh, thanks. It’s been great being here.

BRIAN: Joanne Freeman is a professor of history at Yale University.