A Presidential Primer

NARRATOR: There are many firsts in Washington's presidency. The first inauguration, the first cabinet, and in 1790, Washington gave the first State of the Union address. The Constitution established “the president shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the State of the Union.”

The State of the Union address may be an annual tradition now, but when Washington prepared to give his address in 1790, the expectations weighed heavily upon him. To prepare for this momentous occasion, Washington turned, pen in hand, back to the Constitution itself. In this episode of The Secrets of Washington's Archives, we're exploring Washington's own copy of the Constitution contained within a volume of the first acts of Congress. Within this extraordinary text, we see Washington's own handwritten notes on what it meant to be president.

And now your host, Dr. Anne Fertig. 

ANNE FERTIG: Welcome to the Secrets of Washington's Archives. In this podcast and video series, we're celebrating the 10th anniversary of the George Washington Presidential Library by exploring the life of George Washington through his books. Today, we are looking at the crown jewel of the collection. Washington's own personal copy of the Acts of Congress. Not only does this book contain Washington's personal copy of the Constitution, but it also has annotations he made on what it means to be president. And joining us here today to talk about George Washington, his presidency and the Constitution is Dr. Douglas Bradburn, the president and CEO of Mount Vernon, as well as the founding director of the George Washington Presidential Library. Welcome back, Doug. 

DOUGLAS BRADBURN: Thank you, Anne. I'm excited to talk about the greatest book in the collection, one of the coolest things we have. 

FERTIG: Yeah, so this is what we call the Acts of Congress. And to start us off, can you just tell us what is the Acts of Congress? 

BRADBURN: Yes, well, it's the name on the binding of the book, which if you look at the title page, is a slightly different, longer name. But essentially, it was a book created by Congress. It saw the laws passed by the first session of the first Congress under the Constitution and a copy of the Constitution as well, right at the beginning of it. It was given to George Washington by the Congress. He arranged to have multiples of them for each of his executive officers. And this one we own is his own copy. It is beautifully bound in leather. It is as inlaid in the leather President of the United States. The other copies of things like Secretary of State and Chief Justice, and other things. So it's special because it's his own book. And really it's a great marker of this wonderful moment in time when he and the Congress have to take the Constitution and turn it into a system of government.

FERTIG: What I really love about this book is that, yes, he received the Acts of Congress, but he went out and he had it bound himself, one with his own title, but he also ordered many copies for his secretaries and some of the judges at the time, which I think is really cool. Washington recognizing the long-term significance of these Acts and working to preserve them for posterity. 

BRADBURN: Yeah, it's an incredible effort he makes to assure that everybody knows what was accomplished in that first session. Remember at the time, the Constitution, when it was ratified, was very controversial. There were a lot of critics of it. It wasn't clear that those anti-federalists, the people who were opposed to ratification of the Constitution, that they would abide by any of the results of this first Congress. So it's a critical time where he's trying to manage a lot of different doubts and constituencies and make sure, of course, that everybody knew what was happening and what to do. Because also, he took very seriously his role as President of the United States, who had a certain responsibility to these laws that were passed. He had to execute them. 

FERTIG: So why don't we talk then about Washington as President? What were the roles and challenges Washington faced as first President of the United States? 

BRADBURN: Essentially, it's a new office. There had never been a power that could effectively exercise across the span of what the United States had become, executing laws passed by a legislative body. The parliament had tried this, it had failed and led to rebellion. And so you essentially have a new effort at linking all these disparate places together in an organized way where you'd have a tax scheme that worked and where you'd have uniform laws of naturalization, uniformity, and lots of things that the Congress would have to create, and the president would have to figure out a way to execute them. In the early days, of course, there is no civil service. He has to appoint every officer of state. He has to work with Congress and manage his cabinet. In the first year, he doesn't even have a cabinet in place. It's really just him and working closely with James Madison in the Congress to set up the government, to take what was a piece of paper, or vellum, and turn it into actual laws and actual functioning government. It's a difficult, difficult time. 

FERTIG: It really strikes me because as monumental as the role of president is in and of itself, everything he was doing was so unprecedented. And so every action he took carried a certain weight with it.

BRADBURN: Absolutely. I mean, one of the things about the book that’s so critical is, as you point out in your introduction, in the Constitution, he marks up in the margins the different areas of presidential powers. He'd been president for 10 months when he does that. He'd already been president. So he's re-reading the Constitution. His markers are really, I think, best interpreted like a highlighter pen. He's focusing in. You can see his mind in focus. You can see him reading with purpose at a moment in time when the second session of Congress is about to begin. So that's when he's re-reading this Constitution. That's when he reads what they achieved in the first session. And it's a part of his preparation for the effort that they're gonna have to put forward.

FERTIG: Well, writing in books was a very common practice at the time. It wasn't for Washington. We have very, very few examples of him annotating books. So this is even more remarkable. It's a rare case of him really applying that specific type of study to the text. 

BRADBURN: Extremely rare for him. And so whenever you find anything, it's kind of like, wow, look at that. He wrote in the book. Those of us who study early American history, it's very common. People like John Adams were constantly in dialogue with their books. There's only a couple like that in Washington's case. One of them is a pamphlet that James Monroe wrote to justify his behavior as an American ambassador to Paris. Let's just say Washington didn't think his behavior was justified. And so he constantly is in the margins, basically rebutting almost everything that Monroe is writing, and using a lot of sarcasm actually at the time. But in this case, it's a very different thing, and a very rare thing to see, and it helps elevate the book as an artifact of history, because if it was just the book itself and it was Washington's book and because he's the first president, all that would make it an important relic of the time. But the fact that he's interacting with the text gives it the power that we feel here at Mount Vernon and that the reason we wanted to get it to be at the heart of the presidential library. 

FERTIG: Can you walk us through these annotations? 

BRADBURN: Absolutely. Yes. So, dear listener, think of the Constitution of the United States. Article I, is all about the Congress, the legislative branch. It lays out the powers that Congress has. And also, of course, in the first example of the American system, which of course has its branches, but they are mixed. The powers are mixed and mingled together as a way to create checks and balances. And so in the places where the executive branch has a role in the creation of law, like the veto power or the description of the treaty-making power, in those sections, George Washington draws these little, beautiful brackets with no ruler. Fairhand, he's an old surveyor, and he writes, “President”.

So he does that twice in Article I, veto power, treaty-making power. Then Article II of the Constitution is all about the executive power, and it says, the executive power of the United States shall be vested in the president of the United States. So this is the good stuff. So right next to that, right at the beginning, Washington begins his bracket, which is gonna run the length of the thing, and he writes, “President”. And then it gets down later on, it says the president shall have power. Washington writes, “President, powers”. And then in the next clause, the Take Care clause, where it says, ye shall take care of the laws be faithfully executed, Washington writes, “required”.

So it's not a lot, but it's a critical vision into his mind at work. In that moment, he's reading carefully, delineating his responsibilities in the legislative process, and then also focusing in on the executive branch itself, his font of power, his font of authority, and then that word required right by the Take Care clause, which is so important to him. I mean, he very much understands that his role is to execute the laws. And so that's fundamentally required. You know, in that list of things, also required to give a State of the Union occasionally to Congress. And it really is on the eve of the first State of the Union address, I believe, that he is focusing in, or in the lead up to that, where he's focusing in doing this writing in the Constitution. 

And to a point you were making earlier, he writes a letter that evening to Catherine McCauley Graham, January 9, 1790, who is an incredible English historian. She had visited Mount Vernon in the 1780s to some no small scandal because she was married to a man much younger than herself. But she became friendly with George and Martha Washington. Of course, celebrated George Washington as this embodiment of the great English Whig liberty tradition. And so they hit it off and he writes an incredible letter to her. This is the letter in which he writes, “I walk on untrodden ground”. And he says, “everything I do is subject to interpretations”. Everything I do is making a precedent. He has the long view in mind. He's thinking about the precedents. But he also is experiencing that phenomenon of all politicians, which is that their motives can be interpreted in multiple ways. And he's receiving that. And he goes on to talk about the challenges that they've been through to get to this point, 10 months into this new system. No one will understand how difficult it was. “It was to be a government of laws as well as accommodation, much was to be done by firmness, much by conciliation, much by prudence”. That statement there is the art of leadership. You know, the question is when are you firm, when are you prudent, when do you conciliate? 

But the reality is Washington is trying to get to a place, trying to establish this thing so that it's functioning, and he's gonna do it in whatever way it takes to get it done. And so I think the acts of Congress then is this incredible window into the greatest political leader the United States has had, an incredible executive, and really a man in the full height of his powers at that moment in time. 

FERTIG: That is a spectacular answer. And I think it speaks to so many different parts of who Washington was as a leader, but also as we've discussed in other episodes as somebody who is, one, very, very aware of his own social and political role, and as somebody who is self-educated and is constantly trying to improve his own education, which this is a remarkable testimony of because he's writing in it. 

BRADBURN: Yeah, that's right. He's constantly focused, trying to make sure he's doing the right thing. I mean, he's binding himself to the rule of law in a fundamental way here, but he's justly proud too. I mean, in that letter to Graham that I mentioned, he says, The last great experiment in human happiness under civil society. I mean the latest. The latest great experiment in human happiness under civil society. How can you create a self-governing system over this expanse of territory? They say it can't be done in Europe. He regularly calls the American system an experiment. Jefferson mentions this, that Washington is often talking about, this is an experimental effort to try to achieve something. He's very much a part of the enlightenment. He's trying to figure out a way that's better, a more improved way to seek out what? To seek out human happiness on a broad scale. And he sees that manifested in good governance and fair governance and knows the Constitution is made up of compromises, but also recognizes that human beings need to have a mix of interests and passion and patriotism and virtue together to function.

FERTIG: And that brings up so many good points as well because as easy put it this is rooted in compromise and this is after all the Acts of Congress and in here he's marking out his own powers. What was his relationship to Congress at this time? 

BRADBURN: I think James Madison gets a lot of credit for a lot of the success of that first year. So Congress comes into place in March of 1789. In fact, the title of the book is Acts Passed in a Congress Held Between March of 1789 and September of 1789 in Philadelphia, on and on and on. So it's called the Acts of Congress on the binding. You can't put all that on there. Washington's inaugurated a month after Congress sits. And that initial Congress inaugurates the president. And then they start passing all the bills that set up the government. They create the judiciary. They create the executive branches. Washington has to get his cabinet picks approved by the Senate. That's gonna happen slowly over the next couple years, actually, he doesn't get a secretary of state until 1791, so Jefferson doesn't even show up on the scene for a while. So he's working closely with Madison, who's basically running things in the house.

The House is wrangling about stuff like, what should we call the president? There's the title controversy. They passed the first lighthouse bill. A lot of this stuff has passed quite well. And what people thought would be the things people were gonna fight over quickly fall away. The new system really is different from the articles. And so the old alignments, small states and large states, really don't make as much sense. And so it's an interesting time. It's a time before parties, unlike any other Congress that we'll ever have.

And Washington's in the center of everything. Obviously he says to sign every bill, so everything they're doing he's a part of. But it's less contentious in many ways than any other session of Congress in history, which is kind of surprising when you think of the huge things they were trying to accomplish. He's a very close working relationship with Madison still at this time. 

FERTIG: Since he was studying this, as you say, in the lead up to that first state of the Union. What was going on in that first state of the Union that you think might have necessitated the study of the Constitution? 

BRADBURN: I think the first part of it is his celebration of their accomplishment. These are the things we did, we accomplished these things, but there's other things we need to turn to. Washington regularly was advocating for a national university. This was something they would never accomplish. So Washington would use his State of the Union addresses to encourage them to act on certain things that he felt were left undone, and report on things that had happened between the end of the first session and their coming back. He had visited New England. One of his strong political instincts was his understanding about the American system, it was based on public opinion fundamentally. And its success would come down to public opinion. And this is a broad sense of the public. It's the opinion of everybody sort of manifesting itself in the vox populi of the newspapers, in the streets, in the attitude of wealthy men, in the opinions of wealthy women. They were all part of his political orbit. 

So he travels to New England to basically see what people think of the government. And a big chunk of that letter to Catherine McCully Graham is talking about how much people love the government and how it's great to see New England finally recovering from the war. New England was really hurt economically from the end of the American Revolutionary War, one of their old trade routes and credit had been destroyed, and it had taken a long time for it to come back. And so, like all governments, you get to take credit when there's a good harvest, whether or not you've done anything about it, and all presidents are doing that. And he's very candid about that. There's a really positive sense in New England. It could be because there was a really good harvest, but nevertheless, that's great news. And there also is this new government. So he's been on this fact-finding mission. He comes back, he tells Congress, the people are happy with what we've done, but we have more to do, and let's go get it.

FERTIG: And he’s listed out all these presidential powers in this book, were there any powers not listed here that he would eventually assume or that defined his role in the presidency? 

BRADBURN: That's a great question. You know, Article I of the Constitution limits what Congress can do. It enumerates certain powers they have. It retains powers for the states in certain ways. Article III is all about the judiciary branch, and the federal law is very tightly constricted. The federal judiciary will only have cognizance over certain things related to all the states and not anything internal to the states, so very restricted. Article II is much more capacious. The powers granted to the president are large and vague in many ways. And this is somewhat surprising because the Americans had fought a revolution against the monarchy, and perhaps they just recreated a monarchy.

Pierce Butler, who was one of the framers from South Carolina, was asked about the powers of the presidency and why they were so large. And he said famously, well, if we didn't have our eye on George Washington as the first president, we probably would have been more concerned about it. They actually didn't spend a lot of time debating the executive branch. So yes, there's lots in the Constitution then that had to be sort of figured out. And this is why Washington is creating precedence in almost everything he does, from what his title will be, to how he interacts with the cabinet, to what do you do when the executive branch does something that the Congress doesn't like, or what powers does Congress have to call on the executive to explain their actions, to the treaty-making power. The Senate is supposed to give advice and consent, but what does that mean? How does it manifest itself? How much advice is enough advice? And we see this in Washington's own presidency, working these things out in a practical way, what can we accomplish that's in the Constitution? What do we need to innovate on to make this thing function better? 

So a good example is the cabinet. The way Washington works with the cabinet is something he has to get to after many years in office. An effective way to work with those heads of departments and the executive branch collectively we think of now is sort of obvious when you bring your cabinet together, sit around a table and you, you hash it out, you get it done, but that really doesn't happen until a crisis in Washington's administration. So there's innovations there, the treaty-making power seizing control of foreign affairs. Nowadays, I mean, the executive branch sets foreign affairs the country. Congress has its foreign affairs committees, et cetera. But really, the executive branch is naming all the diplomats. They're driving the bus. The framers, the Constitution, I think it's gonna be the Senate that's going to be doing that in consultation with the chief executive. 

And very clearly it becomes something that is not secret enough to do it that way. It's not effective enough. And the great thing about the presidency from an efficiency standpoint, the president is always there 365 days a year. The executive branch is always functioning. Congress is not in session all the time. So these things have to be built out over time. And it's a fascinating study to look at the way Washington actually sets up the government, how he gets it to function, how he gets it to work well within the bounds of the Constitution and not alienate everybody. We have a lot of wonderful things here for sure, but as a book it just speaks so well, I think, to that moment of imagination and leadership that it took to create what has now become the most important strategic office in the world. You know, when we think of our presidents and we moan and groan and say, boy, they're not being very presidential, or I wish they would behave more presidential. We have something in our mind and our imagining that goes all the way back to the character that Washington established in that role. 

FERTIG: And it should be stated every time that Congress convened and they put out an acts of Congress, Washington had them bound. But the copy that we have is that very first one. And it's the only one that has his annotations in it. 

BRADBURN: That's right. It's clear that every time the Congress came back, he wanted to have a list of all the things that he was supposed to have executed on and make sure that he was doing his job. He was very conscientious about that and the great way to do that is to keep a great collection of these books. I wish we had all of them. 

FERTIG: So then how did Mount Vernon acquire the Acts of Congress? 

BRADBURN: It came up for auction in 2012. It was our regent, Mrs. Bookout, from the great state of Texas, who was in the room doing the bidding on the book. Before I arrived at Mount Vernon, an interesting transitional time when the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association were in the process of raising money to build this incredible library, that this book would happen to come up, and they felt like they had to get it. And they did, and it was incredibly expensive. At the time, it was the most expensive book of Americana purchased at auction, sold for $9.8 million. Now in auctions of this kind, it takes two to tango, so there was one other bidder going back and forth with Mrs. Bookout. The other thing that's cool about it, I think from a quirky, fun thing, the auction panel that Mrs. Bookout got, which is also in our collection, had the number 222 on it, which of course is George Washington's birthday. And so that was a serendipitous omen. 

FERTIG: Definitely a lucky panel for us.

BRADBURN: Yeah, now incredible panel. It's a great story. And then, of course, the library wasn't built. And so what the Mount Vernon ladies did was sent the book around to other presidential libraries. So it sort of toured the country in the year before the opening of our presidential library and then until it finally came home to rest in our beautiful vault. 

FERTIG: 136 years after it left, I believe, it came back.

BRADBURN: The amazing thing about Mount Vernon, and you've probably talked about this in the context of other books in the library, but they were all here when Washington died, and then they weren't. They traveled. They've been all over the place, and some of the greatest books in his collection are at other wonderful institutions. Some of them are still in private hands. We just tried to purchase a book at auction two weeks ago that we failed to get because it went for $400,000. 

FERTIG: Extraordinary.

BRADBURN: And we weren't able to swing it. So Washington is a very challenging person to collect around.

FERTIG: But it's part of our mission to do so. And obviously, we wouldn't do this if we didn't think it was so important. And so thinking of Mount Vernon, not just as the library, but as the wider estate, its historic collections, its working farms. How does this object fit into Mount Vernon's wider message? 

BRADBURN: The mission here at Mount Vernon is to restore Washington's estate to the highest level and to educate people all over the world about his life and leadership so that his legacy will be an inspiration and informative for future generations. The library fits so perfectly into that mission because it allows us to be a center for research and debate, a place where you can continue to try to improve the way that you teach the history of the founding.

And the more that we have a robust collection, the more we have the dynamism of the stories that can be told as you bring in new materials, as you bring in scholars to study the collection, as you bring in teachers to help them use these resources in classrooms. So the library's efforts recreate the life and mind of Washington through his books is central to a mission that has been going on since 1860. The Ladies Association saved this place because they believed that the United States as a self-governing nation needs to have an educated citizenry who know about their founding. Our decisions that we made in this country to establish the nation when it happened are stories that need to be told. If you don't value a legacy, if you don't understand a legacy, you're not going to take care of it. And if this democracy, which Washington always understood as a great experiment, an experiment that may or may not succeed… I think he would say, well, the jury's still out. And we want it to continue on and get better and better. And with that spirit of experimentation, try to improve upon it. So the library really helps us be dynamic, helps us be an engine for telling these stories as effectively as possible. And that's why this podcast is so wonderful as well. We can reach a different audience, a broader audience with the mission. 

FERTIG: And so as we close this series, which is of course celebrating the 10th anniversary of the library. Where do you see the George Washington Presidential Library in the next 10 years? 

BRADBURN: Well, the sky's the limit. That's exciting. The library is just getting started. We've done some incredible things over the last nine years leading into our 10th year. Multiple conferences, incredible discoveries, many publications, all our great digital work, our education work reaches millions of people and has reached millions of people over the last 10 years. And that's really exciting to see. We've had an incredible impact on the field of early American history. We've helped so many teachers and countless students understand the past better. And like I said, we're just getting started with it. The smallest things can lead to great conclusions, and this library has big ambitions. So I'm excited to see where it goes. 

FERTIG: Excellent. And we remind the viewers, of course, that if they want to actually see the Acts of Congress for themselves, they just need to check out the video companion to this podcast where we get up close and personal with those annotations that Washington made in the text. And we're also going to be talking later on, speaking of the presidency, our next podcast project, Inventing the Presidency. So stay tuned to the George Washington Podcast Network and the Center for Digital History at the George Washington Presidential Library.

NARRATOR: Did you know Mount Vernon members get new episodes of Secrets of Washington's Archives two weeks early? And that's not the only benefit. Members can enjoy other exclusive bonuses, including bonus episodes, members-only events, and a subscription to Mount Vernon Magazine, full of articles about George Washington and early American history. To learn more, go to georgewashingtonpodcast.com and click Members.

The book featured in this podcast was Acts passed at a Congress of the United States of America. The purchase of this book was made possible by an anonymous benefactor, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Borthwick, the Alfred Taubman Fund, Mr. Terry S. Kohler, and the Mount Vernon Ladies Association in 2012. The Secrets of Washington's Archives is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association and CD Squared.

Hosted by Dr. Anne Fertig, researched by Dr. Douglas Bradburn, narration and audio production by Curt Dahl at CD Squared. The music featured in this podcast is from the album No Kissing Allowed in School, produced by the Colonial Music Institute. You can listen to more from this album and other productions of the Colonial Music Institute on Spotify.