Jefferson had recovered from his earlier disgrace and, after being cleared by the legislature, was now over in France with Franklin and Adams. The General was not sure Jefferson was fit for this role. “He understands and admires the French. Whether he really understands Americans who live outside his own Virginia circles is another question.”
John Adams described how Jefferson seemed “to appear meek with his stooped, lounging manner, but he is as ambitious as Oliver Cromwell.” In the General’s mind, ambition was a good thing, but he could not understand why Jefferson would hide his ambition behind apparent meekness. Of course, as I well knew, the General hid his own ambition behind not meekness but the appearance of patriotic disinterestedness.
When the General became president later, I am told that Jefferson would criticize the General behind his back. When he talked openly with the General during the latter’s presidency, however, I’m sure he was very deferential and careful, such as when he reportedly urged the General to run for a second term, telling him, “The states will hang together as long as they have you to hang on.”
I do think Jefferson, like so many others, was jealous of the General. I cannot understand why he wouldn’t participate in any of the public memorials after the General’s death, but maybe he was busy plotting his own presidential campaign. By the 1800s, sensing the overwhelming public sentiment, Jefferson had resumed calling the General a “great man.”
Of Benjamin Franklin, the General had no doubts. “There is a man who understands America and the French too.” The General’s respect for Franklin dated back to the French and Indian War. He told me that Franklin had come through with horses and supplies in western Pennsylvania when all others had failed him and said he was not surprised at Franklin’s ability to outfit privateers such as John Paul Jones to raid the English coast from France. “That man has extraordinary abilities.”
I suspected that the General, who had come from what we now call the middle class and had made himself into a surveyor—the wealth from his wife, as I’ve noted, came much later—admired the way Franklin had come from middling origins and had started out by teaching himself the trade of printing and then gone on from there.
The General’s praise of Franklin may have had something to do with Franklin keeping the General well informed on what he was doing in Paris. He flattered the General by putting a bust of him in his Paris office and letting the General know he had done so. Then again, Franklin probably thought this was good politics with the French. I learned after the war that the French idolized Washington as much as they admired Franklin and that Franklin obtained the last French loan by promising the proceeds would go to the General rather than the Congress. Some of Franklin’s letters on military strategy amused us, as, when hearing of the shortages of arms and powder, he recommended the use of pikes, bows, and arrows.
While the General would have denied it, I always thought he was as susceptible to effusive praise as any man. And Franklin, either genuinely or not, was quick to supply such praise. He reported to the General that the French considered him “one of the greatest captains of the age,” and, after Yorktown, a letter arrived from Franklin telling the General that our triumph there would “brighten the glory that surrounds your name and that must accompany it to our latest posterity.” With such letters from a man as celebrated as Franklin, that week I could not help but wonder if the celebration of the General’s deeds might tempt him to take power.
John Adams puzzled the General. Adams had nominated the General to be commander of the American army, but according to the General, he constantly talked about the General having too much power and fought giving him the power to appoint his own subordinates. “Josiah, he seems to want to command the army from the halls of Congress.” During that week in Newburgh, more than once I began to suspect that Adams might be right about the General wanting too much power.
In many ways they were opposites. The General was tall, muscular, and athletic; Adams was short, rotund, and ungraceful. It must have been hard for Adams, a scion of austere New England Puritans, to be easy friends with one whom he perceived to be the descendant of an opulent Virginia planting family. The General respected Adams’s learning but was made uneasy by the way he tried to show it. While Adams spoke of the General as “the exemplification of the American character,” when word got back to the General that Adams regarded the General as “unread and unlearned,” the General was not surprised.
Perhaps because Adams was concerned with his reputation almost as much as the General was with his, the General was suspicious of Adams—after all, it is easy to cast as a flaw in others a trait you yourself possess. But the General must have felt empathy over the one infirmity they both faced: trouble with their teeth.
Sometimes the General’s virtue, or show of virtue, offended Adams. Adams resented the General’s not taking a salary during the war, fearing the General was putting the country in his debt as a way to gather more power. I believe that, while the General cared about Adams’s opinion, he cared more about the opinion of his countrymen. The General calculated every action, including the refusal of salary, in terms of what his countrymen might think. Since the war and the General’s death, I have heard that Adams bemoaned the pain of seeing someone “wear the laurels I [Adams] have sown,” and I have also heard that Adams privately denounced the celebration of the General’s birthday as “idolatry.”
Adams, like the General, cared about his place in history. My friend Benjamin Rush told me that Adams wrote him that “the history of our Revolution will be . . . that Dr. Franklin’s electric rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington . . . and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiations, . . . and war.” Maybe this feeling of jealousy is understandable. The General eclipsed everyone—after all, before the war was even over, towns, colleges, counties, and mountains were being named after the General, coins were being minted with his image, and his birthday was being celebrated. Of one thing I am certain, however: while the General expected his due—why, he resigned as an officer in the French and Indian War because he felt the British were not showing him proper deference—jealousy of others was not one of his flaws. Maybe that was because he overshadowed all those around him and never needed to feel jealous.