Federalist #67 is the first of several essays dealing with the office of the president. Hamilton found it necessary to devote the beginning of the essay to defending the honor of the president from scurrilous slander!

“He has been decorated with attributes superior in dignity and splendor to those of a king of Great Britain. He has been shown to us with the diadem sparkling on his brow and the imperial purple flowing in his train. He has been seated on a throne surrounded with minions and mistresses, giving audience to the envoys of foreign potentates, in all the supercilious pomp of majesty. The images of Asiatic despotism and voluptuousness have scarcely been wanting to crown the exaggerated scene. We have been taught to tremble at the terrific visages of murdering janizaries, and to blush at the unveiled mysteries of a future seraglio.”

 The presidency didn’t even exist yet, but opponents had already described him as a wasteful, lazy, murderous pervert. (Jannissaries were bloodthirsty professional soldiers in Turkey. A seraglio was a whorehouse.)

It truly was ridiculous that opponents of the Constitutional presidency would make up such unfair criticisms. But they did, and they still do today. Indeed, we might consider this the main point of Federalist 67: far too much time is spent in public deliberations on stupid issues.

Bear in mind that, in 1787, it was very obvious to most Americans that the office of the president was cut out with one man in mind. That man was George Washington. The former general of the continental army was tremendously respected then as he is now. Apart from owning slaves, his life manifested nothing objectionable. And even there, Washington rises above his contemporaries. Some of his slaves came into his responsibility when his father died. A hundred more came into his care when he married Martha. At the end of his life, Washington became the only founding father to set all his slaves free.

But Washington had incurred some suspicious on himself since the revolution by getting involved with a group of former army officers called the Society of the Cincinnati. The organization was named for Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a Roman general who famously defeated an enemy, then returned to his farm rather than holding onto power. You would think that by naming their club after Cincinnatus, the old American army officers were signaling their intention to retire peaceably. But their enemies thought the opposite, and Historian Frank E. Grizzard Jr. explains why post-war Americans disliked military associations:

“[T]he American public still retained its old fears of a standing army, and the legitimacy of the Cincinnati’s claims for existence was not adequate in the public’s eye to make it feel comfortable about an organized national society of former army officers, many of whom were disgruntled at their treatment by the government. There was more than one aspect of the Cincinnati that caused some consternation among the public when its existence became known in the months after the end of the war. Clauses in the Society’s Institution (its constitution) permitting frequent meetings, the raising of large sums of money, and the enrolling of foreign and honorary members could be construed as means to disguise more sinister intentions.”

Washington had a hard time deciding whether to associate himself with the Society of the Cincinnati. Eventually, his loyalty and friendship with the men he’d fought beside prevailed. As soon as Washington agreed to be a member, the society naturally made Washington its figurehead leader. And that meant that even though Washington asked them to remove some of the more objectionable aspects of the club, he was suspected of joining in their most extreme plans.

The Society of the Cincinnati still exists. They never did the harm their enemies suspected them capable of. The American Legion is a far more considerable organization, with something like two million members and a post in every town of moderate size throughout the country.

 The Constitutional details of the presidency are fully developed in later numbers of the Federalist Papers. It is worthwhile to remember in #67 just how easily we get distracted by side issues, and just how unfairly people can judge the intention of others.

Discuss:

• When is it reasonable or prudent to be suspicious of other people’s actions?

• Do you think Washington was as great as history makes him out to be?

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