“Apprehensive, that the Government of these States, may in future times, end in a Monarchy”

Last month the Journal of the American Revolution published Ray Raphael’s article “A Kingly Government?: Benjamin Franklin’s Great Fear.”

Franklin and James Madison were among the most vocal of the men at the Constitutional Convention wary of assigning too much power to the executive branch, or investing too much of that power in one man.

Ray Raphael writes:

Madison opened the bidding. Wouldn’t it be “proper,” he asked, “before a choice should be made between a unity and plurality in the Executive, to fix the extent of the Executive authority?” Madison proposed minimal powers: “to carry into execution the national laws” and “to appoint offices in cases not otherwise provided for.” With little dissent, state delegations agreed. Executive authority was subservient to legislative demands, save only for some lesser appointments. Most significantly, he/they would not possess the “powers of war and peace.”

Later the debate turned to whether there would be a single executive and how long one man would hold that office:

Franklin stewed over the prospect of a single executive serving for seven years. “Being very sensible of the effect of age on his memory,” he told the Convention the next morning, he carefully wrote down his objections. Saddled with a weakened voice and failing eyes, he would find it difficult to read aloud what he had just penned, so James Wilson offered to read it for him:

It will be said, that we don’t propose to establish Kings. I know it. But there is a natural inclination in mankind to Kingly Government. It sometimes relieves them from Aristocratic domination. They had rather have one tyrant than five hundred. It gives more of the appearance of equality among Citizens, and that they like. I am apprehensive therefore, perhaps too apprehensive, that the Government of these States, may in future times, end in a Monarchy.

I’d like to refute Franklin’s belief in “a natural inclination in mankind to Kingly Government.” However, too many people speak of U.S. Presidents as solely responsible for laws, court decrees, wars, and other actions that the Constitution explicitly assigns to other branches. And a smaller but still too large number of people are attracted to obvious strongmen.

Back in 1787, as the convention went on, however, most delegates seem to have let those worries subside a bit. The example of George Washington in the chair probably had an influence. No better solutions presented themselves.

We know that Franklin and Mason opposed a single executive, fearing the extent of his powers. They had sounded the alarm at the outset of the convention, and [George] Mason’s opposition to ratification would highlight the dangers of a single executive as well as the absence of a bill of rights. But Madison’s concern has received scant attention. A chief architect of the Constitution’s checks and balances, he failed to gain traction for this protection against an executive who put himself over country. Convention fatigue might well have played a role.

The Constitution did explicitly reserve “powers of war and peace” for the legislature, and limited the single executive to a four-year term. While the British Crown could veto legislation, a U.S. President’s veto could be overridden. Still, the fear of a President taking on monarchical powers and the rest of the government being unable or unwilling to stop it remained.

Ray Raphael’s article ends with Franklin’s exchange with Elizabeth Powel, as recorded by James McHenry:

Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.

(I’ve discussed that anecdote at length since 2017.)

The Case of the Adapted Anecdote

Today is Constitution Day, declared to commemorate the date on which the delegates at the Constitutional Convention signed off on their work.

Not the day on which that proposed constitution for the new U.S. of A. was ratified by a supermajority of the people’s representatives, nor the day on which it went into effect. But that’s another story.

Speaking of stories, I’m continuing to investigate the anecdote that James McHenry wrote and then rewrote about Benjamin Franklin telling Elizabeth Powel that the convention provided for a “a republic—if you can keep it.”

Two Supreme Court justices have written books using that phrase as their title. The more recent is by Neil Gorsuch, who alluded to the story only in passing.

The earlier was by Earl Warren in 1972, after he had retired from the bench. It offers this page at the start:

After a detailed description of Franklin encountering a woman outside the meeting hall, Warren cited the “Notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of the delegates,” adding, “Adapted from Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States, Government Printing Office, 1927.”

When I looked up that government publication, however, I found only the transcription of what McHenry wrote at the end of his convention notes, as published in Max Farrand’s The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 in 1911.

A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.

The lady here aluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.

Warren accurately quoted Elizabeth Powel’s question about “a republic or a monarchy.” He didn’t insert the word “Madam” into Franklin’s response as some authors did.

However, none of the emotional detail in Warren’s anecdote—how the “delegates trudged out,” the “anxious woman in the crowd waiting at the entrance”—came from the source he cited. The phrase “Adapted from” shows that Warren must have realized how his telling differed from the original. Most likely, he had been influenced by other detailed retellings and imagined the scene that way.

American authors had been setting this exchange on the street for at least thirty years by then. (McHenry wrote that it happened indoors, and Powel insisted that it had happened in her salon if it had happened at all.)

Previous writers had described the questioner as “eager,” “concerned,” and “inquisitive.” This is the earliest version that I’ve found using the word “anxious,” an adjective repeated in reviews of this book and in later narrations. (Powel would have hated that characterization.)

This version of the anecdote appeared in a book by a former Chief Justice of the United States, with what appears to be a citation to a highly authoritative source. But tracing back that citation shows how many details of this tale were spun out of nothing.

How I Spent My Spring Vacation

For the past week I was on a road trip to visit family for the first time in more than two years.

Of course, I also squeezed in some visits to historical archives—my first in-person visits to those archives in even longer.

I was working again on how James McHenry recorded what’s become a famous exchange between Elizabeth Powel and Benjamin Franklin at the end of the Constitutional Convention:

[Powel:] Well, Doctor what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?

[Franklin:] A republic, if you can keep it.

And how McHenry used that memory in essays during the early 1800s in a way that changed the story’s implications to fit his political fears. And finally how Powel responded to having her name invoked.

The first question I had to answer on this trip was whether the essays signed “The Mirror” in the Baltimore Republican in 1803 which I attributed to McHenry were indeed his work. I was 95% sure, but I sought certainty in the McHenry Papers at the Library of Congress.

Indeed, those papers contain two drafts of the essays that later appeared in print, complete with the footnotes (which few other newspaper essayists used).

Reading McHenry’s drafts told me little that I didn’t already know from the printed texts. He didn’t, for example, write down the anecdote exactly as he had in 1787 and then cross out crucial words to make it confirm his interpretation.

After the Philadelphia Aurora newspaper dismissed the Franklin anecdote as false, McHenry tried to invoke Powel’s authority as a participant without divulging her name because she was female. He wrestled with how to explain that half-disclosure to readers, as shown by some crossed-out text. But McHenry’s handwriting was sketchy enough that I could make out only the phrase “motives of delicacy.” There’s no indication he wrote out Powel’s name and then removed it.

In 1811 McHenry finally did name Powel as the woman in the anecdote in a pamphlet titled The Three Patriots, Or, the Cause and Cure of Present Evils. I didn’t find a draft of that essay, but an 1876 biography identified it as McHenry’s.

I also visited the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to look at the correspondence of Elizabeth Powel and her family.

In 1814, that family reacted to what McHenry had said about Elizabeth Powel. Her favorite nephew, John Hare Powel (shown above), wrote to her wondering if the story was true. Powel asked a niece to review that letter with her because the man’s casual handwriting was so bad she wanted to be sure she read it properly. (There are multiple John Hare Powel letters in the archive on which someone has penciled in words that are hard to decipher.) The niece then took down Aunt Elizabeth’s reply, and finally there was a response from John Hare Powel.

I’d already examined Elizabeth Powel’s dictated letter and her nephew’s response, but I wanted to find John Hare Powel’s initial letter about the anecdote—if it survived. That would tell us exactly what story Mrs. Powel was responding to.

I also looked for any document showing James McHenry and John Hare Powel interacting. Powel worked in Baltimore for the Philadelphia militia and U.S. army during the War of 1812, so the two men could well have met, but did they exchange letters? Mention each other? Anything?

Those quests turned up nothing. I wasn’t surprised since David W. Maxey and others have already examined the Powel papers and no doubt looked for the same documents. Nonetheless, I needed to turn over those stones. That meant paging or cranking through the folders of undated and unidentified correspondence in both the McHenry and the Powel Family Papers. I can report that Elizabeth Powel’s handwriting was clear and regular, and that she corresponded with an awful lot of nephews.

Also, I enjoyed John Hare Powel’s carefully written response to another man’s demand:

The voice of your creditors whom you have not paid—the Bills of the Grand jury by whom you were indicted—the books of the Commissioners by whom you were employed—the docket of the Office whence you have been expelled—the facts shown to the Legislature before whom you were arraigned are better evidence of “your standing” than any proofs you could bring if I had either leisure or disposition to engage in the discussion which you have the insolence to propose

Elizabeth Powel and James McHenry Revisited

I’ve gotten some messages about this, so I might as well address it for posterity.

Back in March 2017, I wrote a series of postings about the anecdote of Benjamin Franklin telling a woman we the Constitutional Convention had established “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Some authors have been skeptical about that anecdote, but it appears at the end of the diary of convention delegate James McHenry, and he left enough notes to let us identify the woman as Elizabeth Powel. In his 2006 article “A Portrait of Elizabeth Willing Powell (1743-1830),” David W. Maxey quoted a letter Powel wrote about the anecdote in 1814.

That’s where I came in. By looking at newspapers, I identified why Powel was addressing the story—because McHenry had published it in the early 1800s during his political disputes with the Jeffersonian press. In fact, I discovered, McHenry had reshaped the anecdote for publication so that it reflected his Federalist fears about the republic falling to democracy rather than to monarchy.

Since then, I’ve gone to Philadelphia to look at Powel’s letter in full and determined that she was responding (in a roundabout way) to an inquiry from her nephew John. I didn’t find John Powel’s initial letter, which would show exactly what tale he was presenting to his aunt for her reaction. I hope to take another look.

In the meantime, McHenry’s use of the anecdote got some attention. In November, as I noted back here, Prof. Zara Anishanslin of the University of Delaware published an essay in the Washington Post citing the anecdote as an example of women participating in the American political discussion from the start. She couldn’t convince the Post editors to cite Boston 1775 by name, but she did include a link back to this posting. She alerted me by email and tweeted the original links.

Then the impeachment process heated up. Lots more people started quoting Frankin’s “A republic, if you can keep it.” On 18 December, the Post published a “factcheck” article by Gillian Brockell, staff writer for the paper’s history blog. It addressed the question, “Did Ben Franklin really say Impeachment Day’s favorite quote?” (Here’s a syndicated version in case the original is behind a paywall.)

In that article, Brockell cited what Zara Anishanslin wrote in her essay about McHenry’s publications. But the link back to my postings didn’t make the transition, leaving no way for readers to see the sources. Or, some observers noted, who had uncovered them.

Just last week I was wrestling with this same problem in newspapers from 1841, pondering whether Philadelphia’s Public Ledger was the first to publish a couple of anecdotes about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. One printer after another published those paragraphs without reporting where they’d come from. I found the Public Ledger only by using a newspaper database. And perhaps this posting will help someone track back the story of McHenry’s anecdote.

The Story Behind “a familiar anecdote”

This past week, historian Zara Anishanslin published an op-ed essay in the Washington Post headlined “What we get wrong about Ben Franklin’s ‘a republic, if you can keep it’.”

It begins:

Last month, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump, she used a familiar anecdote to back her arguments. As Pelosi told it, “On the final day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when our Constitution was adopted, Americans gathered on the steps of Independence Hall to await the news of the government our founders had crafted. They asked Benjamin Franklin, ‘What do we have, a republic or a monarchy?’ Franklin replied, ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’ Our responsibility is to keep it.”

Franklin’s “a republic, if you can keep it” line is as memorable as it is catchy. It is a story that appeals across partisan lines. The same month Pelosi referenced it, Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch released a book titled “A Republic, If You Can Keep It.” It’s a recognizable national origin story with broad appeal; Pelosi was savvy to use it.

But she got the story wrong. So did Gorsuch.

Pelosi did something many other people telling this story don’t, correctly quoting the question that political hostess Elizabeth Powel asked Franklin about “a republic or a monarchy.” After all, we’re facing that choice today. However, Pelosi didn’t give Powel individual credit for the question.

As Anishanslin acknowledged by link and tweet, she based her analysis on the series of Boston 1775 posts about the original exchange between Franklin and Powel, and about how James McHenry recorded and used that anecdote. You can read the whole twisting story, from 1787 to today, starting here.

Meeting George Washington’s Indispensable Men

Back when I was researching Gen. George Washington’s life and work in Cambridge for the National Park Service, one of the books I drew on heavily was Arthur S. Lefkowitz’s George Washington’s Indispensable Men.

This is a study of the commander’s military secretaries and aides de camp throughout the Revolutionary War. It starts with a useful definition of its subject because descendants and local histories seem to have named almost any officer who was ever in a council with Washington as an aide. Lefkowitz focused on the men whom Washington officially appointed in his daily orders. Then he added Caleb Gibbs of the headquarters guard and Martha Washington, both of whom can be identified as helping with the headquarters paperwork.

And that paperwork is a major theme of the book. Early on Washington learned that he didn’t need young men to dash messages around battlefields.  (See George Baylor.) Instead, he needed penmen to help keep up with a vast correspondence directing an army spread out over thirteen governments. Washington quickly came to prefer professional men: lawyers (e.g., Robert Hanson Harrison), experienced merchants (William Palfrey), and even doctors (James McHenry).

One result of that preference is that it’s a mistake to think of Washington’s most famous aide, Alexander Hamilton, as a typical staff officer. He was younger and less established than most of his colleagues. Each of those men gets a thorough biographical profile in this book as Lefkowitz moves through the war, discussing how the work at headquarters developed in response to changing needs.

And speaking of Hamilton, I got to meet Arthur Lefkowitz last year. I suggested that Hamilton’s new Broadway hotness might help the book. He took that message back to folks at the publisher, Stackpole, and I’m pleased to report that George Washington’s Indispensable Men is now coming out in paperback—with the new subtitle Alexander Hamilton, Tench Tilghman, and the Aides-De-Camp Who Helped Win American Independence. I recommend it for anyone wanting to know about how Gen. Washington learned to manage the war.

“The story is told…”

As I’ve been discussing, James McHenry recorded in his diary an anecdote about Benjamin Franklin, Elizabeth Powel, and the results of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. And then he changed that story when he published it over a decade later.

McHenry wasn’t the last author to reshape the anecdote. His original notes were published in 1906 and reprinted in 1911, both times in authoritative publications. The tale those notes told was stark and simple:

A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it. [Footnote:] The lady here aluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.

But when authors retold that story in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, they added unsubstantiated details which gave new coloring to the exchange. Here’s a sampling of reteilings culled from Google.

The University of Chicago Magazine in 1940:

When the delegates were going out onto the cobble streets of Philadelphia, prepared to celebrate on “capon and wine,” as the record reads, Ben Franklin walked ahead. A window opened and a lady put her head out and said, “Dr. Franklin, what is it—a monarchy or a republic?” He stopped and said, “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

At the 1940 Republican Convention:

As soon therefore as the sage appeared upon the steps of this historic building a woman stepped out of the watching crowd, approached him eagerly and asked “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?”

[In 1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to run for a third term raised the specter of monarchy again. Ironically, Powel was the person who had convinced George Washington to serve more than one term as President in 1792.]

Sarah Watson Emery, Blood on the Old Well (1963):

When a lady asked Benjamin Franklin as he left the Convention, “What have you given us, Mr. Franklin?” he replied, “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it!”

At the 1968 Republican National Convention:

When they got ready to go home, Benjamin Franklin, over eighty years old, was the first to leave Constitution Hall. A concerned citizen was there and said to him, “Dr. Franklin, what have we got—a monarchy or a Republic?” Without hesitation that venerable old sage said, “A Republic—if you can keep it.”

Michael P. Riccards, A Republic, If You Can Keep It (1987):

Legend has it that as the aged statesman shuffled down the streets of Philadelphia, an inquisitive woman stopped him and asked, "What have you given us?” And Franklin is supposed to have responded, “A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

Richard Labunski, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights (2006):

The story is told that when Franklin left the Assembly Room, a woman approached him and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” To which Franklin replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003):

According to a tale recorded by James McHenry of Maryland, he [Franklin] made his point in a pithier way to an anxious lady named Mrs. Powel, who accosted him outside the hall. What type of government, she asked, have you delegates given us? To which he replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Eric Metaxas, If You Can Keep It (2016):

McHenry wrote that when Benjamin Franklin emerged from the building that day, he was accosted by a certain Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia. Whether she was a young women or a dowager we don’t know. He was then eighty-one years old, the oldest delegate. . . . for all we know, he knew this now-mythical and otherwise forgotten Mrs. Powell, who has come to stand for all of America since the day when she spoke to Franklin in a tone that seems to bespeak some degree of familiarity.

According to McHenry, Mrs. Powell put her question to Franklin directly: “Well, doctor,” she asked him, “what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?“

Franklin, who was rarely short of words or wit, shot back: “A republic, madam—if you can keep it.”

What are the major trends in these retellings?

• Powel’s position as wife of a Philadelphia politician, host of important political discussions, and trusted advisor to Washington is erased. She instead appears as a “concerned citizen,” “inquisitive woman,” or “anxious lady”—plus “now-mythical.”
• The exchange, rather than happening in Powel’s salon, takes place out in the street, sometimes with a crowd watching. The woman’s role is often transgressive. In one case, she calls out her window. In two others she “accosted” the elderly Franklin with her question.
• In a couple of versions, Powel doesn’t ask, “What have we got?” but “What have you given us?” That suggests a top-down grant to the nation from the delegates rather than a milestone in an ongoing political process.
• Powel’s original worry about “a republic or a monarchy” is dropped, as in McHenry’s own retellings, in favor of worry about the fragility of republics.

All in all, I’m inclined to believe that the exchange between Powel and Franklin happened as McHenry first recorded it, with the additional detail he published in 1811 that it happened on Franklin “entering the room”—most likely a room where Powel was hosting a political conversation. I think Elizabeth Powel deserves to be remembered a bit more. And I think we have to be careful about all the other things we’ve probably read about this oft-told story.

“The all important Subject was frequently discussed at our House”

On 21 May 1814, Elizabeth Powel wrote to a relative named Martha Hare, commenting about an exchange with Benjamin Franklin from twenty-seven years before.

I haven’t seen this letter in full, only the phrases that David W. Maxey quoted in his article “A Portrait of Elizabeth Willing Powell (1743-1830),” published in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society in 2006. So I don’t know what Powel was responding to—what question or version of the story.

Maxey wrote:

Elizabeth Powel admitted embarrassment in denying “a conversation supposed to have passed between Dr. Franklin and myself respecting the goodness, and probable permanence of the constitution of these United States.” A similar version of the tale had been published to her knowledge “in Poulson’s Paper, I forget of what date,” while another she traced to “the late secretary of War.”

Powel was right in linking the story to a “late secretary of War”—that was James McHenry’s role in the Adams administration, and he was the author of The Three Patriots, an 1811 political pamphlet that featured the anecdote. I haven’t found the story reprinted in Zachariah Poulson’s Daily Advertiser, but it did appear in at least one other Philadelphia newspaper eleven years before Powel wrote, so she might easily have misremembered.

Maxey’s summary resumed:

Though she had no memory of accosting Franklin in this manner or of his memorable rejoinder, if indeed he delivered it, she retained a clear recollection of having “associated with the most respectable, influential Members of the Convention that framed the Constitution, and that the all important Subject was frequently discussed at our House.” If so, a hostess always intrigued by political matters may have been complicit in a breach of the rule of strict secrecy that bound the delegates in their deliberations. And if such indiscreet disclosures had occurred in her drawing room, what need would there have been to descend in the public street on “the justly venerated patriotic, philanthropist Dr. Franklin” for information already obtained at home?

I’m not sure whether Powel was really addressing the idea of a conversation “in the public street” or if that was Maxey responding to how the story was told in the 1900s. Likewise, Maxey appears to have been more concerned with the Convention’s “rule of strict secrecy” than Powel.

McHenry’s 1811 telling of the story said the exchange started with Franklin “entering the room.” (His 1803 version specified no setting.) That fits just fine with Powel’s recall of conversations “at our House.” McHenry set the anecdote after the Framers had voted to publish their proposal for a new Constitution at the Convention’s close. Secrecy was therefore no longer an issue.

All in all, Maxey’s presentation suggests the exchange with Franklin never happened. Maybe there are sentences in Powel’s letter to confirm that point. But the quoted lines say simply that she didn’t remember that conversation because she had been part of so many discussions with so many delegates.

It’s also possible that Powel didn’t recall the exchange because the version she had been presented with was so different from the conversation that actually took place in 1787. As I’ve noted, McHenry originally recorded a question of whether the new Constitution would turn the American republic into a monarchy; that had morphed into a question of whether the American people could withstand the temptations of a democracy.

Another possible factor in Powel’s response was her own political positioning. She had been a close friend and advisor of President George Washington. McHenry probably knew that, and may therefore have expected her to share his Federalist understanding of the exchange with Franklin. But Powel tried to keep the President above the sniping between the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian factions of the 1790s. And in the way McHenry had published the story, he was pulling her onto one side.

Because Powel’s letter wasn’t published until Maxey’s article in 2006, it probably didn’t affect discussion of the anecdote in the preceding century. But Powel would indeed have been displeased by how authors have portrayed her.

TOMORROW: The anxious lady.

“Dr. Franklin…met with Mrs. Powel”

In 1811, an anonymous pamphlet appeared in Baltimore titled The Three Patriots, Or, the Cause and Cure of Present Evils: Addressed to the Voters of Maryland. It was an attack on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe.

Sixty-five years later, Frederick J. Brown’s Sketch of the Life of Dr. James McHenry identified the author of The Three Patriots as James McHenry, Secretary of War in the Federalist administration of John Adams. As I’ve discussed in the past few days, McHenry also appears to have written a series of newspaper essays in 1803 titled “The Mirror.”

And, just as in “The Mirror,” in The Three Patriots McHenry pulled out the anecdote he’d written in his 1787 journal about Benjamin Franklin commenting on the Constitution. And the story had changed yet again:

The day the convention finished their labours, and before the constitution was promulgated, Dr. Franklin, who was a member of that body, met with Mrs. Powel, of Philadelphia, a lady remarkable for her understanding and wit.

“Well, Doctor,” said the lady on his entering the room, “We are happy to see you abroad again: pray what have we got?”

“A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

“And why not keep a good thing,” said the lady, “when we have got it?”

“Because madam,” replied the Doctor, “there is in all republics a certain ingredient, of which the people having once tasted, think they can never get enough.”

The twenty-six-word anecdote that McHenry had written into his journal of the Constitutional Convention had, after nearly a quarter-century, grown into a firmly spelled out warning against popular democracy. This version gave more words to both Franklin and the lady from Philadelphia.

Most striking, The Three Patriots publicly named “Mrs. Powel” as a figure in this exchange for the first time, and politically savvy readers would have immediately recognized that to mean Elizabeth Powel, widow of a Philadelphia mayor.

What’s more, that story didn’t just stay in The Three Patriots. The 1 Nov 1811 Salem Gazette reprinted the anecdote (with slightly different wording and punctuation, and the name spelled “Mrs. Powell”). Other newspapers might also have picked it up. Which meant Elizabeth Powel could not ignore it.

TOMORROW: The lady from Philadelphia responds.

“We pronounce it to be an impudent forgery”

Two days ago I quoted an article signed “The Mirror” from the 15 July 1803 Republican newspaper of Baltimore.

Over the next month the same essay was reprinted in other Federalist periodicals:

• Middlebury (Vermont) Mercury, 3 Aug 1803.
• Spectator (New York), 7 Aug 1803.
• Alexandria Advertiser, 8 Aug 1803.
• Newburyport Herald, 9 Aug 1803.

(Five years later, on 18 Aug 1808, the piece reappeared in Baltimore’s North American and Mercantile Daily Advertiser, possibly pulled out of a leftover copy of the original newspaper.)

The target of the essay, the Aurora of Philadelphia, was not so positive about it, of course. On 18 August it published the third in the series titled “A Vindication of the Democratic Constitutions of America.” This was probably the work of the newspaper’s editor, William Duane (1760-1835, shown here). The essay’s main point was, “there is no disagreement on the fact that a democracy is a republic.” [And indeed, even today people have difficulty defining the difference between a republic and any form of democracy that’s not a pure democracy.]

The “Mirror” essayist had foolishly claimed those were different, the Aurora stated, and:

The writer who could be capable of such disingenuity and fraudulent misquotation, is open to the reasonable suspicion of every other fraud which would tend to serve his purpose. Of this character we consider an anecdote, which the Anti Democrat gives in the paper of the 15th June [sic], and which we shall copy here at once to protest against it as spurious and to show that its hostility is aimed at republican government, and, at the reputation of the man above all others least likely to belie the principles and political pursuits of his whole life.

The Aurora then quoted the Republican’s anecdote about Benjamin Franklin and the lady at the end of the Constitutional Convention before responding:

The republic here alluded to is the constitution of the U. States now existing. It is well known that Dr. Franklin tho he approved of the constitution altogether, would have preferred a variation in its parts. He held that the president should be elected directly by the people, in the same mode as members of congress are elected; and that the senate should have been chosen not by the filtration of the state legislature, but that an extra number of members, from each state should be chosen to the house and representatives and that the senate should be elected out of that house.

Any man who refers to the former constitution of Pennsylvania, will find that Dr. Franklin did not think a free people could have too much or more than would do them good of republicanism. The anecdote has no foundation, we pronounce it to be an impudent forgery. But it shews that the Anti Democrat is as hostile to American republicanism under one name as under another.

The Aurora had some claim to know what Franklin would have said since it had been founded by his grandson and protégé, Benjamin Franklin Bache. Duane himself wasn’t a Franklin descendant, but he had married Bache’s widow.

The Aurora’s attack on “The Mirror” essay, and the anecdote about Franklin in particular, produced this defense in the 9 December Republican:

This anecdote “The Editor” pronounces to be “without foundation, and an impudent forgery;” though no more than a mere concurrence with the universally received opinion, that men are more inclined to extend than to shorten the line of the liberty.

Who is this “Editor”? and how did he come by this information? The Doctor [Franklin] is dead, but the lady who related the anecdote is yet living, and of unsullied veracity. We should mention her name were it proper for us, to bring it into collision with his. We feel, however, assured, that she will, of her own free motion, confirm the anecdote, should accident at any time, bring to her knowledge that it had been questioned.

It is foreign to the nature of our subject to discuss the merits or demerits of Doctor Franklin’s politics. We shall only observe, that the Doctor was often happy in the adaptation of short and pithy sayings to passing events; and that the one in question, was not the only good thing the constitution drew from him. We still remember his story with the French lady, related in the convention, who, like “the Editor”, was, some how or other, always in the right.

That response was clearly from the same author as the 15 July article—Dr. James McHenry. Like the original essay, it carried the headline “The Mirror” and was festooned with classical footnotes.

Furthermore, McHenry came close to dropping the façade of pseudonymity to invoke personal authority. By writing, “We still remember his story with the French lady, related in the convention,” he hinted that he had been at the Convention himself. And he was publicly inviting Elizabeth Powel to “of her own free motion, confirm the anecdote.” But at this point, the argument was a draw.

TOMORROW: The story evolves again.

How Dr. McHenry Operated on His Anecdote

As Dr. James McHenry first recorded the story of Elizabeth Powel, Benjamin Franklin, and the new Constitution in his journal, it was only twenty-six words. This was the entire exchange he wrote down (exact words, different formatting):

Powel: Well, Doctor what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?

Franklin: A republic, if you can keep it.

However, when McHenry made the story public in the 15 July 1803 Republican, or Anti-Democrat newspaper, it had evolved. Now the exchange was:

Powel: Well, Doctor, what have we got?

Franklin: A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.

Powel: And why not keep it?

Franklin: Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.

In 1787, Powel was concerned that the new Constitution, with its new national executive, would produce a “monarchy” instead of a republic. But by 1803 the word “monarchy,” which critics had thrown at the Washington and Adams administrations in the 1790s, had vanished from McHenry’s story.

The new version also added a lot more words: an explicit warning that “the people” could ruin the republic if they “eat more of it than does them good.” Again, that reflects Federalist thinking. A story of Powel worrying about monarchy had become a story about Franklin (now conveniently dead) worrying about democracy.

Now it’s true that eighteenth-century political thinkers, especially those who favored more aristocratic government, perceived a slippery path from democracy to monarchy. With too much power, they warned, the people would become prey to a demagogue who would then become a dictator and eventually set up a new dynasty. They saw examples of that danger in classical republics.

But in this case, it looks like McHenry was projecting his anti-Jefferson worries onto the story he remembered from up to sixteen busy years before. I suspect he was working off memory instead of digging out his old journal. But he may have knowingly reshaped the anecdote to what he thought it should say.

Either way, that story was now out in the political arena.

TOMORROW: Pushback in the press.

“This prophetic answer of the Doctor”

Yesterday I quoted a short anecdote from Dr. James McHenry’s diary of the Constitutional Convention. That diary was first published in 1906, becoming part of the twentieth century’s understanding of the Constitution. But it doesn’t appear in any books before then.

I recently found, however, that the story also appeared in significantly different form in the short-lived Baltimore newspaper called The Republic; or Anti-Democrat.

In June 1803 George L. Gray became that newspaper’s owner and publisher. From the begining this paper opposed President Thomas Jefferson’s administration and politics—a little confusing since Jefferson’s party was also claiming the mantle of “republican.”

Gray’s 15 July issue included a long essay headlined “Thoughts on the essential qualities of a Democracy recommended to the serious consideration of the sober and thinking part of the community.” A subhead said “For the Republican, or Anti-Democrat,” showing that this was the first publication of that essay. That in turns suggests the writer probably came from Maryland.

At the end of the essay was the label “The Mirror,” which looks like a signature. However, later essays from the same author were headed “The Mirror,” so that was probably meant to be the name of the whole series.

At the end came twenty-five endnotes—a rare sight in newspapers then or now. Most of those notes cited classical sources: Aristotle, Xenophon, Demosthenes, and so on. One pointed to the target of the essay: the Jeffersonian newspaper in Philadelphia called the Aurora. Another cited the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. So the pseudonymous author was educated and wanted readers to know it.

The essay began:

The deepest thinker of all antiquity, after examining and comparing the theory and practice of upwards of two hundred commonwealths, the justly celebrated Aristotle, whom the great [John] Locke acknowledged “a master in politics,” speaking of the different kinds of government, observes, of the republic, that it is “prone to degenerate into democracy.”

Doctor [Benjamin] Franklin, our countryman, who was certainly well read in human nature, held on this point the same opinion as the Stagirite [i.e., Aristotle]. Being asked by a lady of Philadelphia remarkable for wit and good sense, on the dissolution of the convention which frames the constitution—“well Doctor what have we got?”

“A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

“And why not keep it?“ rejoined the Lady.

“Because,” replied the Doctor, “the people on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.”

Sixteen years have not elapsed since this prophetic answer of the Doctor, and what do we behold! Men openly and voluntarily affirming the name of Democrat, and loudly proclaiming “the constitution of the United States is a Democracy, the American governments are in every respect completely and perfectly Democracies,” and those who will not so consider them, “fools, despicable knaves, or imposters.”

Such is the dogma and language of the Aurora.

The author of this essay was almost certainly James McHenry. In 1803 he was living in Baltimore, retired from active politics after a contentious stint as John Adams’s Federalist Secretary of War. He is the only person we can be sure already knew the anecdote about Franklin. And his papers at the Library of Congress include a file labeled as “Drafts of articles for The Mirror, undated.”

TOMORROW: How the anecdote had changed.

“A republic…if you can keep it.”

This is the launch of a deep dive into one of the most popular and portentous anecdotes from the Constitutional Convention of 1787. I wrote about that story before, but a prodding tweet from Zara Anishanslin sent me further into the depths.

The earliest appearance of the anecdote is on the last page of Dr. James McHenry’s journal of his experience as a convention delegate. Here’s the text, as transcribed at Yale Law School’s Avalon Project:

A lady asked Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.

To which McHenry added this footnote:

The lady here aluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.

As I wrote back here, that meant Elizabeth Powel, host of a political salon and wife of the city’s once and future mayor.

We can even see the story in McHenry’s own writing courtesy of the Library of Congress (from which I cribbed the image above).

This is the last entry in McHenry’s journal. The Convention had broken up on 17 Sept 1787, and delegates were heading home. If the story had appeared in the journal between two dated entries, we could be sure of when McHenry wrote it down. But as it is, all we know is that he wrote it down after 17 September—perhaps the next day, perhaps when he got home to Maryland and put his papers away, perhaps years later.

And then at some further moment in time, McHenry went back into this document and added the footnote naming Powel. His writing was a little larger then. The reference to her as “Mrs. Powel of Philade.” suggests he had left that city.

I suspect that McHenry wrote down the anecdote in 1787, soon after the Convention ended. There’s no clue as to whether he witnessed the exchange himself or simply heard about it from Franklin or Powel or another direct witness. It seems unlikely that McHenry wrote down a story that lots of people were circulating because there don’t seem to be any other tellings.

As for the footnote, that might well date from years later when the anecdote and its source were being questioned.

McHenry’s diary was published in the American Historical Review in 1906. Five years later, Max Farrand quoted his stories in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. That made the anecdote close to canonical in our national history of the Convention, and many authors have quoted it since—though often with some unexplained doubt that it really took place.

There are some interesting points to consider about how authors retold and used the story in the 1900s, but first I want to discuss the preceding century. Google Book turned up no versions of the story from book published in the 1800s, leading me to think it was buried in McHenry’s papers until 1906.

But I found it was actually deployed—almost certainly by McHenry himself—in political debate during the Jefferson and Madison administrations.

TOMORROW: The anecdote resurfaces.

John Barker Church: “the mere man of business”?

So was the marriage of Angelica Schuyler (shown here) and John Carter/John Barker Church happy? We don’t have a body of correspondence between them as we have for, say, John and Abigail Adams. But their marriage lasted until their deaths, and they certainly enjoyed good circumstances.

In 1780 Carter became partners with former Continental Army commissary general Jeremiah Wadsworth (1743-1804) of Connecticut as the main supplier for Gen. Rochambeau’s troops in North America. The French needed food and supplies for thousands of men.

Unlike the Continental Congress, whose paper money was rapidly losing value, France could pay in specie. Wadsworth and Carter got a cut of everything they supplied. They also gained excellent credit they could use for their other ventures, and money they could lend other businessmen. As a result, by the end of the war, Wadsworth and Carter were very rich.

In August 1782 James McHenry wrote to Alexander Hamilton from Baltimore:

Mr. Carter is the mere man of business, and I am informed has riches enough, with common management, to make the longest life very comfortable. Mrs. Carter is a fine woman. She charms in all companies. No one has seen her, of either sex, who has not been pleased with her, and she has pleased every one, chiefly by means of those qualities which make you the husband of her Sister.

The next July, the Carters and Wadsworth headed to France to collect their final payments. Sometime in 1783, Carter revealed his real name: John Barker Church. There’s no evidence of when he told his wife about that part of his past. By that fall, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay knew about it, though the couple still went by “Carter” for a few months longer.

Finally, the family headed to Britain, and at that point they came out permanently as the Churches. At the end of 1784, Abigail Adams wrote to a sister from London, “Mr. and Mrs. Church are here too, alias Cartar. Mrs. Church is a delicate little woman. As to him, his character is enough known in America.”

Back in Britain, Church quickly paid off the debts that he had left behind in 1774 and reestablished himself in business. He bought a house on Sackville Street in London. He bought a country house near Windsor. The couple entertained widely, not just among the American community—one of John Barker Church’s gambling friends was the Prince of Wales.

We might think that a rather boring, aristocratic life compared to the drama of nation-building that brother-in-law Hamilton threw himself into in America, but John Barker Church was also interested in politics. He was part of the radical Whig faction, causing George III to call his principles “avowedly enemical.” In 1787 he ran for Parliament and lost. The following year, Church took another approach: he bought a rural estate which came with a parliamentary seat, and put himself up for that seat in 1790.

By then the French Revolution was roiling Europe, and Church was decidedly on the side of reform. He opposed Britain’s war measures and hosted French exiles at the height of the Terror. In addition, he:

• financed Charles James Fox, leader of the Whig left, with big loans he was never able to collect on.
• bankrolled an attempt to break Lafayette out of a Prussian prison on 1792. (One of these days I’ll tell that story.)
• helped Talleyrand sail to America in 1794 after Britain suddenly expelled him.

After six years in Parliament, Church gave up his seat, sold his estate, and headed back to the U.S. of A.

In 1797 Robert Morris went bankrupt. Church was one of his creditors, and to settle the debts he took over a great many of Morris’s western land claims. A few years later, the Churches’ oldest son Philip went to a tract in western New York and founded the town of Angelica, named after his mother. John Barker Church himself commissioned a mansion in Belmont called Belvidere.

Meanwhile, Church kept busy in the New York business world. He underwrote loans and was a director of the Manhattan Company and the Bank of North America. The Churches had eight children between 1778 and 1800, most of them living a long time. And still their life was full of drama. John Barker Church fought a duel with Aaron Burr five years before Hamilton did. In fact, Church was the family expert on affairs of honor, supplying the pair of pistols that his nephew Philip Hamilton and his brother-in-law used in their fatal confrontations.

Angelica Church died in 1814. John Barker Church returned to his native Britain and died four years later. He wasn’t a brilliant writer or political theorist, but he certainly wasn’t boring.

TOMORROW: A last word, and comma, from Hamilton.

Mr. Jefferson’s Respects on the President’s Birthday

Amid the controversy over the birthday ball for George Washington in Philadelphia in 1798, Abigail Adams wrote home to a relative:

I have heard that there is a design to shift this matter off upon the Vice President, but in Justice to him, he had no hand in it further than to subscribe to it, being told that the President would certainly attend. when he found that he would not go, he refused also, this I am sure of so that let no more be laid upon him than he deserves.

Thomas Jefferson had indeed bought a ticket to support the ball on 2 February. That suggests the Vice President had early word of the event. The organizers didn’t send an invitation to President John Adams for another ten days.

Furthermore, on 15 February Jefferson wrote to his friend James Madison from Philadelphia about the celebration and its political implications:

A great ball is to be given here on the 22d. and in other great towns of the Union. This is at least very indelicate, & probably excites uneasy sensations in some. I see in it however this useful deduction, that the birthdays which have been kept have been, not those of the President, but of the General.

As a republican, Jefferson viewed balls honoring officeholders on their birthdays as monarchical. But he was ready to make an exception for one that tweaked his rival.

By the day of the ball, it had blown up into a big controversy of both politics and politesse. Jefferson ducked out of attending with a note to one of the organizers:

Th: Jefferson presents his respects to mr Willing, and other gentlemen managers of the ball of this evening. he hopes his non-attendance will not be misconstrued. he has not been at a ball these twenty years, nor for a long time permitted himself to go to any entertainments of the evening, from motives of attention to health. on these grounds he excused to Genl. Washington when living in the city his not going to his birthnights, to mrs Washington not attending her evenings, to mrs Adams the same, and to all his friends who have been so good as to invite him to tea- & card parties, the declining to go to them. it is an indulgence which his age and habits will he hopes obtain and continue to him. he has always testified his homage to the occasion by his subscription to it.

From his safe distance, Jefferson seems to have rather enjoyed the turmoil. He wrote again to Madison on 2 March:

The late birthnight has certainly sown tares among the exclusive federals. It has winnowed the grain from the chaff. The sincerely Adamites did not go. The Washingtonians went religiously, & took the secession of the others in high dudgeon. The one sex threaten to desert the levees, the other the evening-parties. The whigs went in number, to encourage the idea that the birthnights hitherto kept had been for the General & not the President, and of course that time would bring an end to them. [Benjamin] Goodhue, [Nathaniel?] Tracy, [Theodore] Sedgwick &c did not attend: but the three Secretaries & Attorney General [Charles Lee] did.

Abigail Adams’s assessment of the event was based on the small number of ladies she heard had attended. Jefferson gave more attention to how President Adams’s Cabinet—which included Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, Secretary of War James McHenry, and Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Jr.—was acting more loyal to Washington than to him. Which was indeed a problem.

President Adams’s Birthday Celebrated—in Lisbon

Though there was no public observation of President John Adams’s birthday in Philadelphia in 1797, one branch of the small U.S. government definitely celebrated it.

William Loughton Smith was a fervent Federalist from Charleston, South Carolina. I was going to say he was one of the few men named William Smith in early America not related to Abigail Adams, but then I found that they were distant cousins; Abigail’s first patrilineal ancestor in America was William Loughton Smith’s great-great-grandfather.

During the election of 1796, Smith wrote (or perhaps collaborated with Oliver Wolcott, Jr., in writing) an attack on Thomas Jefferson signed “Phocion.” (Lately that has been ascribed to Alexander Hamilton, but contemporaries seem largely agreed that Smith was responsible; Jefferson and his circle even referred to him as “Phocion Smith.”)

As a reward for Smith, President Adams made him the U.S. minister to Portugal. On 21 Oct 1797 Smith wrote back from his new posting to James McHenry, the Secretary of War:

I wrote you since my return to Lisbon, & have therefore nothing to communicate but the account of the Dinner I gave on the 19th. to the Americans here to celebrate the President’s birth-day: I was not perfectly prepared for such an occasion having been only a fortnight in my house; thinking however that it was best to do the thing even imperfectly than to let the Day pass unnoticed, I exerted myself, & made out tolerably well. I enclose you an account of the Celebration which Fenno will publish I am sure with pleasure; the Toasts are on a Separate paper for your information; you will think them not worth publishing.

Among my Guests was a Captain Israel who informed me that he was the Son of the famous Israel Israel:—we were the best friends in the world; I have been told that there were two or three Jacobins [Democratic-Republicans?] present, but they all behaved extremely well; they joined in the Toasts with great zeal & we sang & were very merry; at first they were bashful, but when I set them the example of singing, they threw aside reserve & were very convivial.

The item that Smith wanted McHenry to give to John Fenno, the Boston-born editor of the Federalist Gazette of the United States, reported:

Thursday the 19th. October being the Anniversary of the President’s Birth, was celebrated at Lisbon by Mr. Smith, the Minister of the United States at that Court, who gave on the Occasion an Entertainment at his Hotel at Buenos-Ayres to a numerous and respectable Company of American Captains & Citizens. After sixteen patriotic Toasts intermixed with convivial songs, the Company, having spent the day with great good humor and festivity, broke up at nine o’clock, much pleased with the occasion, which had collected together so many Americans at such a distance from home. All the American vessels in the Harbour were gayly decorated during the day & at twelve o’clock a federal salute of sixteen guns was fired by some of them in honor of the day, and at five in the afternoon was repeated. This Anniversary occurring on a day, highly distinguished in the Annals of the American Revolution by the Surrender of York-town, the recollection of so auspicious an event could not fail to increase the happiness of the Company.

Of course, Smith was celebrating the 19th of October while Adams had long before adopted 30 October as his Gregorian-calendar birthday.

(Smith’s letter was undated when published in the Sewanee Review, but he must have written it in 1797 because that’s the only year in Adams’s administration when “the 19th. October” was a Thursday.)

“He would produce a better one”

In investigating the anecdote about George Washington’s whisper at the Constitutional Convention, I started to wonder about the political views of Maryland delegate John Francis Mercer.

Mercer arrived at the Philadelphia convention on 6 Aug 1787. On that day he told his fellow Marylanders that he didn’t think the government set up by the Articles of Confederation “was susceptable of a revision which would sufficiently invigorate it for the exigencies of the times.”

But a couple of days later Mercer told James McHenry “that he did not like the [newly proposed] system, that it was weak—That he would produce a better one since the convention had undertaken to go radically to work, that perhaps he would not be supported by any one, but if he was not, he would go with the stream.”

Remember that Mercer was only twenty-eight years old, younger than all but one delegate, and he had arrived after the other men had been working out issues and compromises for months. I can’t imagine his brand-new proposals were welcomed with any enthusiasm.

Mercer is often grouped with the Anti-Federalists who preferred to keep more power with the states, such as his Maryland colleague Luther Martin. But at the convention, Mercer’s big complaints had to do with the relationship between the branches of the federal government. At times he argued for strict separation of powers, speaking out against Senate approval of treaties (an executive function, he said) and judicial review of laws (a legislative function).

On 14 August, the debate focused on what might seem like a quaint question: whether the President could appoint legislators to positions in the government. On that question, Mercer didn’t want to maintain the separation between executive and legislative. He delivered his longest argument to get into James Madison’s notes, revealing his political philosophy:

It is a first principle in political science, that whenever the rights of property are secured, an aristocracy will grow out of it. Elective governments also necessarily become aristocratic, because the rulers being few can and will draw emoluments for themselves from the many. The governments of America will become aristocracies. They are so already. The public measures are calculated for the benefit of the governors, not of the people. The people are dissatisfied, and complain. They change their rulers, and the public measures are changed, but it is only a change of one scheme of emolument to the rulers, for another. The people gain nothing by it, but an addition of instability and uncertainty to their other evils.

Governments can only be maintained by force or influence. The Executive has not force,—deprive him of influence, by rendering the members of the Legislature ineligible to Executive offices, and he becomes a mere phantom of authority. The aristocratic part will not even let him in for a share of the plunder.

The Legislature must and will be composed of wealth and abilities, and the people will be governed by a junto. The Executive ought to have a Council, being members of both Houses. Without such an influence, the war will be between the aristocracy and the people. He wished it to be between the aristocracy and the Executive. Nothing else can protect the people against those speculating Legislatures, which are now plundering them throughout the United States. . . .

Mr. MERCER was extremely anxious on this point. What led to the appointment of this Convention? The corruption and mutability of the legislative councils of the States. If the plan does not remedy these, it will not recommend itself; and we shall not be able in our private capacities, to support and enforce it: nor will the best part of our citizens exert themselves for the purpose.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the paper we are to propose will govern the United States. It is the men whom it will bring into the Government, and interest in maintaining it, that are to govern them. The paper will only mark out the mode and the form. Men are the substance, and must do the business.

All government must be by force or influence. It is not the King of France, but 200,000 janissaries of power, that govern that kingdom. There will be no such force here; influence, then, must be substituted; and he would ask, whether this could be done, if the members of the Legislature should be ineligible to offices of State; whether such a disqualification would not determine all the most influential men to stay at home, and prefer appointments within their respective States.

Madison added, “On these points he was opposed by Elbridge Gerry.” Gerry was another of the convention’s champions of keeping more power in the states and of limiting the executive power.

Mercer left the convention early and opposed ratification of the Constitution. When the nation ratified the plan anyway, he served some terms in the U.S. Congress, allying himself with the Jeffersonian party that included Martin and Gerry. But I don’t think Mercer was with them during the convention.

“The army shall not consist of more than — thousand men”

When John Francis Mercer arrived late at the Constitutional Convention on 6 Aug 1787, he was only twenty-eight years old—the second youngest man there. But he wasn’t shy about speaking up.

The day after Mercer signed in, James Madison’s notes portray the young Maryland delegate as saying, “The Constitution is objectionable in many points, but in none more than the present” issue. The next day: “Mr. MERCER expressed his dislike of the whole plan, and his opinion that it never could succeed.”

This Teaching American History profile says Mercer attended the convention until 16 August, but Madison recorded him speaking the following day as well. That was his last documented contribution to the debate. But did he stick around silently (or silently enough for Madison not to quote him)?

On Saturday, 18 August, George Mason and Elbridge Gerry (shown above) spoke at length about the danger of a standing (permanent) army and the value of a militia system. Madison’s notes say:

Mr. MASON introduced the subject of regulating the militia. He thought such a power necessary to be given to the General Government. He hoped there would be no standing army in time of peace, unless it might be for a few garrisons. The militia ought, therefore, to be the more effectually prepared for the public defence. . . .

Mr. GERRY took notice that there was no check here against standing armies in time of peace. The existing Congress is so constructed that it cannot of itself maintain an army. This would not be the case under the new system. The people were jealous on this head, and great opposition to the plan would spring from such an omission. He suspected that preparations of force were now making against it. [He seemed to allude to the activity of the Governor of New York at this crisis in disciplining the militia of that State.] He thought an army dangerous in time of peace, and could never consent to a power to keep up an indefinite number. He proposed that there should not be kept up in time of peace more than — thousand troops. His idea was, that the blank should be filled with two or three thousand.

That seem to be the basis of the anecdote about George Washington that I quoted yesterday: “A member made a motion that congress should be restricted to a standing army not exceeding five thousand, at any one time.” Supposedly Washington, chairing the convention, whispered to a Maryland delegate “to amend the motion, by providing that no foreign enemy should invade the United States, at any one time, with more than three thousand troops.”

Mercer, uncle of the Virginia legislator who told that story in 1817, seems the most likely candidate to have been that Maryland delegate. However, Madison’s notes make no mention of Mercer in the discussion that followed:

Mr. L[uther]. MARTIN and Mr. GERRY now regularly moved, “provided that in time of peace the army shall not consist of more than — thousand men.”

General [Charles Cotesworth] PINCKNEY asked, whether no troops were ever to be raised until an attack should be made on us?

Mr. GERRY. If there be no restriction, a few States may establish a military government.

Mr. [Hugh] WILLIAMSON reminded him of Mr. MASON’S motion for limiting the appropriation of revenue as the best guard in this case.

Mr. [John] LANGDON saw no room for Mr. GERRY’S distrust of the representatives of the people.

Mr. [Jonathan] DAYTON. Preparations for war are generally made in time of peace; and a standing force of some sort may, for aught we know, become unavoidable. He should object to no restrictions consistent with these ideas.

The motion of Mr. MARTIN and Mr. GERRY was disagreed to, nem. con.

“Nem. con.” meant that motion to limit the army was voted down unanimously.

Was John F. Mercer even present that day? As I said above, Mercer doesn’t appear in Madison’s notes after 17 August, and he left the convention sometime before its end because he disagreed with its goal. But the anecdote about Washington’s whisper, if we believe it, hints that Mercer was still present on 18 August.

Dr. James McHenry, another Maryland delegate Washington may have addressed so frankly, definitely was present on 18 August. He wrote brief notes on the discussion. McHenry didn’t record anything about the size of the standing army, however. That might have been because he mostly wrote down when the convention agreed to amend its draft, not when it decided not to.

Either way, there was a moment when the Constitutional Convention discussed the possibility of a numerical limit on the size of the U.S. Army. And the anecdote about Washington’s whisper described that moment almost two decades before Madison’s notes were published.

TOMORROW: John F. Mercer’s objections.

[Who was the youngest delegate to the convention? Jonathan Dayton, who had the last word in that debate over the size of the U.S. army.]

“What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

Yesterday I had a Twitter discussion about a well-known anecdote about the Constitution—whether it was equally well-founded in documents, less well-founded in reminiscences, or most likely myth.

In this, case, the story falls into the first category. James McHenry, who started the Revolutionary War as an army surgeon and ended up as one of Gen. George Washington’s aides, represented Maryland at the Constitutional Convention. He kept a diary during those weeks, and in 1906 the American Historical Review published that document. Yale’s Avalon Project put the transcript online.

Here is McHenry’s entry for 18 Sept 1787, the day after the convention’s sent its work to the Continental Congress and lifted its secrecy rule:

A lady asked Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.

In a footnote McHenry added, “The lady here aluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.”

That almost certainly meant Elizabeth Powel (1743-1830), wife of the once and future mayor of Philadelphia, Samuel Powel. She was an active political hostess. Mount Vernon gives her credit for helping to convince Washington he should run for a second term as President. In 1808 a friend wrote that Powel

will animate and give a brilliancy to the whole Conversation, you know the uncommon command she has of Language and her ideas flow with rapidity . . . I sometimes think her Patriotism causes too much Anxiety. Female politicians are always ridiculed by the other Sex.

Above is Powel’s portrait, subject of a 2006 article/booklet by David W. Maxey, published by the American Philosophical Society.

“The General’s usual mode” of Correspondence

What was it like to work as one of Gen. George Washington’s aides de camp? Dr. James McHenry was a hospital surgeon during the siege of Boston, but later in the war he became an aide to the commander-in-chief.

On one manuscript McHenry wrote a description of how the headquarters worked then:

The General’s usual mode [was] of giving notes to his secretaries or aids for letters of business. Having made out a letter from such notes, it was submitted to the General for his approbation and correction—afterwards copied fair, when it was again copied and signed by him.

And another copy had to be made for the files. The general thus needed aides who could understand his priorities and express what he wanted to say. While he worked on major reports himself, there was simply too much correspondence for him to do all the first drafts.

Washington probably developed that system during the first year of the war, when he was mostly headquartered as what is now Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge. I’ll be speaking there tonight at 6:00 on how the new commander-in-chief set up his system of military administration, making some missteps along the way. Earlier in the day the National Park Service staff will offer tours of the mansion focused on Washington’s time there.