Essays on the Founders: George Washington

Posted by Eric F. Langborgh on April 5, 2007

This essay was published in the April 2001 issue (Volume I, Issue 3) of the “Bill of Rights Institute eNewsletter” and at www.BillofRightsInstitute.org.  It is no longer available online, so is republished here by the author.

George Washington’s contributions as Revolutionary War hero and as America’s first president have been well documented. What is less understood is his indispensable contribution to the American understanding of individual rights and the successful ratification of the United States Constitution as the vehicle to protect those rights.

Washington rejoiced in the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary cause as a beacon of hope to the “dark corners of the earth.” In 1769, Washington had written to George Mason about the importance of “maintain[ing] the liberty which we have derived from our Ancestors.” The War for Independence, he was convinced, was the only way to retain the rights the British crown had in recent years deprived the colonies.

In the years following the War, however, Washington was concerned that the current state of affairs placed in jeopardy the lofty ideals of the Revolution. “[W]ithout some alteration in our political creed,” he predicted, “the superstructure we had been seven years raising at the expense of so much blood and treasure must fall.”

He warned in his Circular Address to the Thirteen Governors (1783) that unless the Articles of Confederation were revised, the states would fall into anarchy and “the sport of European politicks” would pit states against one another. National and state debts, Shay’s Rebellion (1787), disunity, and the impotence of the Continental Congress alarmed Washington.

Washington was among the leaders in calling for a Constitutional Convention in 1787. He received and thoroughly read plans for a new government submitted by John Jay, Henry Knox, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, copying with his own hand those points he found essential. “[M]y wish,” Washington wrote Madison, “is the convention may adapt no temporizing expedients but probe the defects of the constitution [i.e. Articles of Confederation] to the bottom, and provide radical cures; whether they are agreed to or not; a conduct like this, will stamp wisdom and dignity on the proceedings, and be looked to as luminary, which sooner or later will shed its influence.”

His fellow delegates at the Convention in Philadelphia unanimously elected Washington presiding officer. Madison expressed his amazement that he would risk his reputation at a convention that might accomplish nothing. Yet, Washington’s prestige and support was needed to bring credibility to the proceedings. His presence added an air of civility and dignity to the Convention that would have perhaps been absent in a room full of individuals hoping to secure their own agendas.

Washington was pleased with the resulting Constitution. He wrote his friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, “[The Constitution] … is provided with more checks and barriers against the introduction of tyranny, and those of a nature less liable to be surmounted, than any government hitherto instituted among mortals hath possessed.”

Although not a writer for the Federalist, Washington was a key supporting figure in the ratification debate. From fall 1787 to summer 1788, he read everything he could get on the controversy, pro and con. He arranged for the Federalist Papers to be reprinted in Richmond, to help the Constitution pass in Virginia. In April 1788, when it looked like Maryland’s legislature might adjourn without ratifying, Washington wrote former governor Thomas Johnson to keep the assembly in session, thereby giving the Federalists more time to make the case for ratification. As James Monroe remarked to Thomas Jefferson: “Be assured, [Washington's] influence carried this government.”

Many prominent patriots — notable among them Patrick Henry, George Mason, and Richard Henry Lee — opposed the Constitution. They saw a more powerful central government as a threat to the rights of individuals and the power of state governments. Among the objections of the anti-federalists was the lack of a bill of rights in the Constitution.

A bill of rights, though, would be redundant to the protections already offered under the proposed Constitution, Washington held. “[T]here was not a member of the convention,” wrote Washington to Lafayette, “I believe, who had the least objection to what is contended for by the Advocates for a Bill of Rights.” To add a bill of rights to the Constitution, he continued, “where the people evidently retained every thing which they did not in express terms give up, was considered nugatory [i.e. of no real value]….”

Washington’s point was that he and the other delegates to the Convention understood the national government would be given only enumerated powers, limited to act within the range of powers delegated by the states and the people to the national government. Meanwhile, all powers not “in express terms give[n] up,” that is, agreed to be transferred from the people to the Federal government, were therefore retained by the states, or the people thereof.

Ultimately, Washington and Madison agreed to a bill of rights as a condition to ratifying the Constitution. Even with the Bill of Rights, many people were concerned about the increased power of the Federal government. They feared that a majority could arise and oppress minorities. In particular, a large number of Americans were concerned about freedom of conscience and religion under the new Constitution.

Washington, however, considered religious freedom a main reason for the Revolution. In his General Orders given on April 18, 1783, he thanked his soldiers for their assistance “in protecting the rights of human nature and establishing an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions” in America.

Following the ratification of the Constitution, Washington spent much of his time assuring various religious minorities of his sincerity in supporting “real Equality,” and not “mere toleration,” for citizens of every faith in the young republic. Thirteen of his twenty-two responses to religious congregations made direct references to religious liberty and his support for their equal protection under the law.

To the Synod of the Dutch Reformed church, Washington said he “agreed” with their statement that “just government protects all in their religious rights.”

To Catholics and Father Charles Carroll in Carrollton, Maryland, he maintained that “all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community, are equally entitled to the protection of civil government.”

Nevertheless, Baptists in Virginia, long champions of religious freedom and victims of persecution, had their doubts. They asked Washington in March of 1788, “Does the new Federal Constitution, which has now lately made its appearance in public, make sufficient provision for the secure enjoyment of religious liberty?” Washington responded by praising his “firm friends to civil liberty,” and declared, “If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the convention … might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical Society, certainly I would have never placed my signature to it.”

His expressions of support for religious freedom were just as clear for non-Christians. “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights,” Washington affirmed in his famous address to Hebrews in Newport, at a time when there were less than three thousand Jews in the United States. “For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

While Washington opposed the establishment of religion, he saw religion as the engine of virtue and morality, and a virtuous people would be needed to assure the success of the new government. “[T]he preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered,” Washington pronounced in his First Inaugural Address in 1789, “as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people.”

He charged the raising of a moral people to the free exercise of religion in society, and to a government that would foster religious expression. “It will be your care,” he wrote the first Presbytery of Eastward in New England, “to instruct the ignorant, to reclaim the devious” and foster “the advancement of true religion and the completion of happiness.”

As President, Washington proclaimed two national days of Thanksgiving to “the Almighty being who rules over the universe.” He also initially supported Patrick Henry’s Assessment Bill in 1785, which would have taxed citizens of Virginia to fund the Christian ministry of their choice. Later, he decided it “impolitic” to enact the bill when a “respectable minority” stood adamantly opposed, but still backed it in principle as a way for non-Episcopalians to escape funding the established, taxpayer-financed Episcopalian Church of Virginia.

Washington was proud of the Constitution he helped frame. Regardless of religious belief — or disbelief — all American citizens would enjoy the same rights and privileges. “In this enlightened age & in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast,” said Washington to Swedenborgians in Maryland, “that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining & holding the highest offices that are known in the United States.”