Mr. President Read online

  This was a tall order, to create an effective executive office that did not repeat past excesses. Was it even possible?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Revolution and the

  Retreat from Executive Authority

  In the beginning there were committees. When rebellious colonists first exchanged British rule for homegrown governance, they entrusted executive tasks to nobody but themselves.

  Nascent patriots started to use committees as agents of executive authority in the late 1760s. Hoping to force the repeal of taxes on paper, glass, lead, paint, and tea, merchants in several seaports mutually pledged not to import any nonessential items from Britain, and to enforce these agreements, they formed committees. In Philadelphia, for example, a special Committee of Merchants was charged with determining who had violated the nonimportation agreement of March 10, 1769. Miscreants were to be dragged to the London Coffee House, where they had to confess their sins and promise to mend their ways.

  In Charleston, patriots gathering under the city’s Liberty Tree elected thirteen merchants, thirteen planters, and thirteen mechanics (whom we today call artisans) to a committee with similar enforcement powers.

  In Boston, the enforcement committee morphed from a merchants-only affair, the Boston Society for Encouraging Trade and Commerce, into the Body of the Trade, known simply as the Body, which welcomed virtually every citizen in town. Since “the Town itself subsists by trade,” explained The Boston Gazette, “every inhabitant may be considered as connected with it.” The people themselves, all of them, would enforce the nonimportation agreement in an orderly but forceful manner. In numbers sometimes upwards of one thousand, they visited merchants accused of selling banned items and frightened them into compliance. These Bostonians raised the concept of “committee of the whole” to a new level.

  Starting in 1774, in the wake of the Boston Tea Party and in response to the punishing Coercive Acts, committees not only challenged British authority but also replaced it. The committees varied in name and function—Committees of Correspondence, Committees of Observation and Inspection, Committees of Safety—but they all assumed some sort of executive function.

  Tracking the various committees requires a scorecard. In 1774, Philadelphia patriots formed the Committee of Nineteen. A few months later, to deal with the heightening tensions created by the closing of Boston’s harbor, a mass meeting of several thousand citizens selected the Committee of Forty-Three, and that in turn led to the Committee of Sixty-Six, charged with local enforcement of a pan-colonial nonimportation agreement called the Continental Association. Continuing in numerical ascension, the Sixty-Six evolved into the First Committee of One Hundred, formed in response to the bloodbath at Lexington and Concord, and finally the Second Committee of One Hundred, which pushed for independence. All these committees, created by popular elections, were instructed to execute the will of the people, as determined at mass open-air meetings in the State House Yard.

  The Continental Association, the supreme achievement of the First Continental Congress, called for enforcement committees not just in the major cities but in communities throughout the colonies:

  That a committee be chosen in every county, city, and town, by those who are qualified to vote for representatives in their legislature, whose business it shall be attentively to observe the conduct of all persons touching this association; and when it shall be made to appear, to the satisfaction of a majority of any such committee, that any person … has violated this association, that such majority do forthwith cause the truth of the case to be published in the gazette; to the end, that all such foes to the rights of British-America may be publicly known, and universally condemned as the enemies of American liberty; and thenceforth we respectively will break off all dealings with him or her.1

  These local committees, the voice and force of Revolutionary America, exerted their authority in an ancient manner—community ostracism—that combined judicial and executive functions. Without this committee structure, the Association would have been no more than an idle plea, lacking any enforcement procedures.

  The First Continental Congress, which initiated the Association, was itself an outgrowth of local committees and conventions. In eight of the twelve colonies that sent delegates, congressmen were selected by special conventions of delegates chosen at the county level. Massachusetts was one of only four colonies to select its representatives in the legislature, but that body had just been officially dissolved by the governor, and the real authority in the province resided in the town committees of correspondence, the county conventions they created, and eventually the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. The entire edifice, particularly in Massachusetts but also elsewhere, was heavily weighted at the bottom. Local committees came together in county conventions, which organized province-wide conventions and congresses, and these, in turn, created the Continental Congress, conceived at the time not as a governing body per se but as “a meeting of Committees from the several Colonies on this Continent” or as a “congress, or convention of commissioners or committees of the several colonies.”2

  When delegates from twelve colonies convened in Philadelphia’s Carpenters’ Hall in early September 1774, one of their first tasks was to select a presiding officer. The choice was not in the least contentious:

  Mr. Lynch arose, and said there was a gentleman present who had presided with great dignity over a very respectable society, greatly to the advantage of America, and he therefore proposed that the Hon. Peyton Randolph Esqr., one of the delegates from Virginia, and the late Speaker of their House of Burgesses, should be appointed Chairman and he doubted not it would be unanimous. The question was put and he was unanimously chosen. Mr. Randolph then took the Chair.3

  There followed a brief discussion as to “what shoud be the stile [title] of Mr. Randolph & it was agreed that he should be called the President.” There was no debate, nor even any talk, concerning Randolph’s job description, for it did not differ from that of hundreds upon hundreds of presiding officers—called variously presidents, chairmen, or moderators—of myriad meetings, conventions, and congresses held throughout the colonies during the previous decade. His tasks, like theirs, were to keep order, facilitate the flow of deliberations, and funnel communications. Letters to Congress were addressed to him, and letters from Congress bore his name. Beyond these basic functions, he had no power or authority. He was to initiate no program, favor no position, and indeed not even speak his mind. When debates heated up, he was to mediate between rival factions. In today’s parlance, we might call him a facilitator.

  Peyton Randolph was well suited to perform his circumscribed role. His personal aspect, like Washington’s, commanded respect. John Adams described him as “a large, well looking man.” Silas Deane, another delegate, wrote, “Mr. Randolph our worthy President may be rising of sixty, of noble appearance, & presides with dignity.” (He would in fact turn fifty-three on his fifth day in office.) Politically, the first president was a moderate. Back in 1765, he had opposed the most radical measures in Patrick Henry’s Stamp Act Resolutions. In his personal communications, but not on the floor of Congress, he favored “the gentlest methods” in enforcing the Continental Association. When patriots mobilized for a military assault on Williamsburg the following spring, he warned that “violent measures may produce effects, which God only know the consequences of.” Yet he was certainly a resolute patriot. In both 1769 and 1774, when the royal governor dissolved the House of Burgesses, Randolph, the Speaker of that body, presided over an extralegal convention that met in its stead. Virginia, the largest of the colonies, was the most vociferous opponent of British imperial policies south of New England—“These Gentlemen from Virginia appear to be the most spirited and consistent of any,” John Adams wrote in his diary—and Randolph, a former attorney general, agent for the colony in London, and twenty-five-year veteran of the House of Burgesses, was that colony’s most esteemed elder statesman. He was the natural choice, the only one considered.4<
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  Most significantly, Peyton Randolph understood when to hold his tongue, even though he might favor this side or that. For all the respect he enjoyed from other delegates, Randolph did nothing in his capacity as president to affect the outcome of any debate, and that’s exactly what the delegates wanted from him. While Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Christopher Gadsden, John Adams, and Samuel Adams pushed Congress toward radical actions, and Joseph Galloway, John Jay, and James Duane argued for more conciliatory measures, Randolph played no special card. As delegates debated the several hot topics before them—the question of representation, what items to include and exclude in the Continental Association, Joseph Galloway’s controversial plan for reconciliation (he wanted two Parliaments, one in London and the other in America), whether to recompense the East India Company for the tea destroyed in Boston Harbor, and whether to urge the colonies to prepare for a military conflict with the mother country—they did not want an advocate of any particular position to sit in the chair. That’s why they liked Randolph: their honored leader knew his place, which was not to “lead” in the sense we think of today but to serve as a steadying influence, lest the debates get out of hand.

  Given the rhetorical training and large egos of the men who spent the better part of two months in Carpenters’ Hall wagging their tongues, this in itself was no easy task. As John Adams noted famously to his wife, Abigail, on October 9:

  I am wearied to death with the life I lead. The business of the Congress is tedious, beyond expression. This assembly is like no other that ever existed. Every man in it is a great man—an orator, a critick, a statesman, and therefore every man upon every question must shew his oratory, his criticism and his political abilities. The consequence of this is, that business is drawn and spun out to an immeasurable length. I believe if it was moved and seconded that we should come to a resolution that three and two make five we should be entertained with logick and rhetorick, law, history, politicks and mathematicks, concerning the subject for two whole days, and then we should pass the resolution unanimously in the affirmative.5

  It might be argued, perhaps, that President Randolph should have been more aggressive in moving the debates along, but delegates would no doubt have balked if he had applied too heavy a hand. To cut off debate was not within his authority. He could convene the body or adjourn it, that was all.

  On October 24, as Congress was wrapping up its business so delegates could return home for the winter, Randolph suddenly left his post to preside over Virginia’s House of Burgesses, which had been called back into session. Nobody doubted that the House of Burgesses, an official governing body, took precedence over this ad hoc convention, which had run its course in any case. Two days later Congress dissolved itself. Although it resolved that another Congress should convene the following May “unless the redress of grievances, which we have desired, be obtained before that time,” it did not provide for a central executive body to deal with the crises over the ensuing six months. The First Continental Congress was not a government but just a convention, and its job was over.6

  By contrast, the First Provincial Congress in Massachusetts, meeting simultaneously in October 1774, did attempt to establish executive authority. It had to. Unlike the convention in Philadelphia, this body was facing an imminent military invasion from British regulars. In the previous two months, patriots from all of Massachusetts outside Boston had overthrown British authority, both politically and militarily. In the “shiretown” of Worcester, for instance, 4,622 militiamen from thirty-seven townships—half the adult male population of the entire county—had lined both sides of Main Street on September 6 and forced two dozen British-appointed officials, hats in hand, to walk the gauntlet, reciting their recantations thirty times apiece so all the militiamen could hear. Everyone knew that British leaders, sooner or later, would send an army into the countryside to reassert control, so the Provincial Congress needed to raise, train, arm, and supply a military force of its own. That was a far tougher task than passing resolutions and writing letters. It required execution.

  Fearful of ceding any authority, however, delegates formed themselves into committee after committee to perform these executive functions; they even formed committees to appoint other committees. Only one job required a single individual to serve in an executive capacity, and that’s how Receiver General Henry Gardiner, tax collector for the Province of Massachusetts, became the first executive officer in the future United States to be empowered separately from, and in opposition to, British authority. Whereas President Randolph, like the moderators of countless town meetings, county conventions, and provincial congresses, possessed no powers beyond the meetings he led, Henry Gardiner was instructed to solicit and receive tax moneys from every town in Massachusetts, a delegated executive task.

  A new Continental Congress did in fact convene on May 10, 1775. The “redress of grievances” had not been “obtained”; instead, British soldiers had marched on Lexington and Concord, and blood had flowed. Delegates to the Congress in Philadelphia, like those in Massachusetts, found themselves with a war on their hands. Upon the request of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, the Continental Congress assumed “the regulation and general direction” of the army gathering around Boston.7

  Now in the business of managing an army, the Second Continental Congress had no choice but to assume executive functions, and like their fellow patriots in Massachusetts members insisted on performing all these by themselves. They formed new committees, a host of them, almost daily. Anytime delegates faced a problem, they appointed an ad hoc committee to address it. On one day alone, June 3, Congress created seven new committees: one to prepare a response to Massachusetts, one to borrow £6,000 for the purchase of gunpowder, one to provide an estimate of further sums that needed to be raised, one to write a petition to the king, and three distinct committees to write separate letters to the people of Great Britain, Ireland, and Jamaica. Once each committee had performed its isolate task, it automatically dissolved.8

  Congress had a new president this time, John Hancock, the wealthy Boston merchant who had funded many of the revolutionary activities there. On May 10, delegates had reelected Peyton Randolph, but two weeks later President Randolph left once again to head the House of Burgesses. Hancock, his ambitious substitute, became attached to his prestigious position, and when Randolph returned to Congress in September, Hancock refused to step down. Yet despite the new president’s ambitions, Congress gave him no more powers than it had given Randolph. He couldn’t issue orders of any sort, make purchases, borrow money, or even contact foreign emissaries without the express consent of Congress. When not presiding on the floor, he sent, received, and transmitted countless communications. While the president inscribed his fabled “John Hancock” on letter after letter, regular delegates, in their floating committees, ground out the work of coordinating and supplying a fledgling army.

  Slowly, the hodgepodge array of ad hoc committees evolved into a lesser and more manageable number of standing committees, each one dealing with all matters within its specified field: the Maritime Committee, Treasury Committee, Board of War and Ordnance (actually a committee), Medical Committee, Committee of Secret Correspondence, and the Secret Committee of Commerce, charged with keeping the supply train flowing. The surfeit of committees reflected Congress’s continuing rebellion against the abuses made possible by the concentration of executive authority. For a century and more, British officials, often holding multiple offices, had profited at the colonists’ expense. Now the people themselves vowed to control their own government, and this meant distributing executive tasks as widely as possible.

  That was the idea, at any rate. In reality, a few men did more than their share, and these ardent delegates emerged with disproportionate power. Most prominent was a merchant-prince from Philadelphia, Robert Morris, who had amassed a fortune during the French and Indian War by supplying military wares to the army, profiting from wartime shortages of consumer goods, and
privateering. As chairman of the Secret Committee of Commerce, he issued contracts for the procurement of supplies, often to his own firm. Other contracts went to his trading partners. If this sounds corrupt, it was not universally treated that way at the time. Morris chaired the Secret Committee of Commerce precisely because he possessed the contacts, credit, ships, and merchandise to keep the Continental Army in the field. He could access the goods, and that’s what counted.

  With Benjamin Franklin, Morris also anchored the Committee of Secret Correspondence, which communicated, sometimes using invisible ink, with foreign merchants and diplomats. He served too on the Marine Committee, charged with creating an American navy and distributing the goods obtained by American privateers. This committee dovetailed with both secret committees, for all three had as their primary goal the procurement of necessary goods from abroad. The entire matrix centered on Robert Morris. In October 1776, when members of Congress wondered why they were not better informed about certain business of the Committee of Secret Correspondence, the committee, in the persons of Franklin and Morris, replied: “We are … of opinion that it is unnecessary to inform Congress of this intelligence at present because Mr. Morris belongs to all the committees that can properly be employed in receiving & importing the expected supplys.”9

  When Congress fled to Baltimore on December 12, 1776, fearing that advancing British forces might soon invade the city, three members stayed behind to carry on critical transactions: George Clymer, George Walton, and Robert Morris. When Clymer and Walton vanished into their private lives, Morris was left on his own to perform all the tasks required to keep an army in the field and the nation solvent: requisitioning supplies and paying bills, keeping the books, dispatching vessels, arranging deliveries, and so on. To Silas Deane he wrote: “It is well I staid as I am obliged to set many things right that would otherways be in the greatest confusion. Indeed I find my presence so very necessary that I shall remain here untill the enemy drive me away.” Morris kept wagons loaded with his valuable possessions, ready for an emergency escape in the event of a surprise attack.10