George Washington and Executive Power

Abstract

A singular factor influenced the ratification of the Constitution's article on the Presidency: All understood that George Washington would be elected the first President. It is impossible to understate the standing of the "Father of his Country" among his fellow Americans. He had established America's fundamental constitutional principle-civilian control of the military-before there was even a Constitution. Throughout his command of the Continental Army, General Washington scrupulously observed civilian orders and restrained himself when a Congress on the run granted him dictatorial powers. He had even quelled, by his mere presence, a potential coup d'6tat by his officers in 1783.' Washington cannot be quantified as an element of constitutional law, but he was probably more important than any other factor. The Revolutionary War had revealed Congress to be feeble, and the states to be unreliable. Washington had exercised broad executive and administrative authorities that went well beyond battlefield command to keep the army supplied. This experience made Washington a firm nationalist who supported a more effectively organized and vigorous national government. Though he barely spoke at the Constitutional Convention, Washington placed his considerable prestige behind the enterprise. During ratification, he launched a one-man letter-writing campaign to encourage Federalists throughout the country, and particularly in his critical home state of Virginia, to win the Constitution's approval. Washington remains the only President to be elected by a unanimous vote of the Electoral College. Because the American Republic grew so successfully, we tend to treat Washington's decisions with an air of inevitability, but the constitutional