Chapter 23

THE FIRST PRESIDENT.

It now became the duty of the new republic to seek out the man to preside over it, and George Washington seems to have had no rivals. He rather reluctantly left his home at Mount Vernon, where he was engaged in trying the rotation of crops, and solemnly took the oath to support the Constitution of the United States, which had been adopted September 17, 1787. His trip in April, 1789, from Mount Vernon to the seat of government in New York was a simple but beautiful ovation.

Everybody tried to make it pleasant for him. He was asked at all the towns to build there, and 'most everybody wanted him "to come and make their house his home." When he got to the ferry he was not pushed off into the water by commuters, but lived to reach the Old Federal Hall, where he was sworn in.

In 1791 the seat of government was removed to Philadelphia, where it remained for ten years, after which the United States took advantage of the Homestead Act and located on a tract of land ten miles square, known as the District of Columbia. In 1846 that part of the District lying on the Virginia side of the Potomac was ceded back to the State.

President Washington did not have to escape from the capital to avoid office-seekers. He could get on a horse at his door and in five minutes be out of sight. He could remain in the forest back of his house until Martha blew the horn signifying that the man who wanted the post-office at Pigback had gone, and then he could return.

How times have changed with the growth of the republic! Now Pigback has grown so that the name has been changed to Hogback, and the President avails himself of every funeral that he can possibly feel an interest in, to leave the swarm of jobless applicants who come to pester him to death for appointments.

The historian begs leave to say here that the usefulness of the President for the good of his country and the consideration of greater questions will some day be reduced to very little unless he may be able to avoid this effort to please voters who overestimate their greatness.

It is said that Washington had no library, which accounted for his originality. He was a vestryman in the Episcopal Church; and to see his tall and graceful form as he moved about from pew to pew collecting pence for Home Missions, was a lovely sight.

As a boy he was well behaved and a careful student.

At one time he was given a hatchet by his father, which----

But what has the historian to do with this morbid wandering in search of truth?

Things were very much unsettled. England had not sent a minister to this country, and had arranged no commercial treaty with us.

Washington's Cabinet consisted of three portfolios and a rack in which he kept his flute-music.

The three ministers were the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Treasury. There was no Attorney-General, or Postmaster-General, or Secretary of the Interior, or of the Navy, or Seed Catalogue Secretary.

Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, advised that Congress at the earliest moment provide itself with a national debt, which was done, the war debt being assumed by the Congressional representatives of the thirteen Colonies.

A tax was levied on spirits, and a mint started, combining the two, and making the mint encourage the consumption of spirits, and thus the increase of the tax, very likely.

A Whiskey Rebellion broke out in 1794. Pennsylvania especially rebelled at the tax on this grocery, but it was put down. (Those wishing to know which was put down will find out by consulting the Appendix, which will be issued a year from this winter.)

A few Indian wars now kept the people interested, and a large number of the red brothers, under Little Turtle, soon found themselves in the soup, as Washington put it so tersely in his message the following year. Twenty-five thousand square miles north of the Ohio were obtained by treaty from the Indians.

England claimed that traffic with America was not desirable, as the Americans did not pay their debts. Possibly that was true, for muskrat pelts were low at that time, and England refused to take cord-wood and saw-logs piled on the New York landing as cash.

Chief-Justice Jay was sent to London to confer with the king, which he