Cato V, Part XVII: Great Power Connected With Ambition, contd.

            No one, it would hardly seem an exaggeration to affirm, was more loved by Americans in the late 1780s than George Washington. Regardless of the contributions of his various subordinates in the Continental Army, the various state militia forces, the Continental Navy, the various state governments, and America’s French allies, he was unequivocally the popular face of the victory of the United States over Great Britain in 1783. From a shaky beginning in 1775, 1776, and 1777 – during which victory in Boston turned into a rout in New York – to a period of rebuilding and retrenchment in 1778 and 1779 – defeat at Brandywine, winter a Valley Forge, a stalemate at Monmouth – to a rendezvous with French reinforcements in 1780 and a climactic victory at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781, the story of Washington’s leadership of the Continental Army was very easily transformed in the popular imagination into a hero’s journey of self-sacrifice, humility, perseverance, and hard-fought triumph. He was also a very self-effacing person, which made his successes that much more impressive, and a cut a very impressive figure in uniform and saddle. True, he had spent his younger days angling for a commission in the British Army, was personally one of the wealthiest men in the Thirteen Colonies, and was not above indulging in the factionalism and infighting which plagued the officer corps of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, but such minutiae had entirely ceased to matter by the end of the 1780s. As far as the majority of his countrymen were concerned, Washington was a humble farmer who accepted a grave responsibility at a time of severe crisis, performed ably and well under very difficult circumstances, and then foreswore the power he had accrued out of love for his country and respect for his fellow citizens. In this sense, without having to promise anything or to level any threats, the master of Mount Vernon had become an effective Caesar-in-waiting.

           

            This, no doubt, is precisely what caused George Clinton to attempt to warn his countrymen in the text of Cato V that the American people could yet produce a homegrown tyrant. George Washington never demonstrated any intention to leverage his popularity for the purpose of raising himself to a position tantamount to monarchy, it was true. But it was also all too evident in the years following his resignation in 1783 that far too many of his countrymen would not have objected if he made the attempt. His decision to voluntarily relinquish his station at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War was thus, symbolically, both gratifying and troubling. On one hand he had effectively prevented the emergence of a potentially disastrous civil conflict between Congress and the Continental Army. On the other hand, by doing so he had also further burnished his already sparkling reputation and likely increased the degree to which the American people would follow his lead under almost any conditions.  Not only that, but it would surely have been a troubling thing to realize that perhaps the only circumstance which ultimately prevented the United States of America from becoming a military dictatorship following the final realization of its independence was not the virtue and forbearance of its inhabitants but rather the desire of one man to retire to his farm. Washington could have made himself the Caesar of American in 1783. That he did not was likely due more to Washington than to anyone else.

            And the danger had not yet abated, of course, simply because the great hero of the Revolution had made a point of beating his sword into a plowshare. It was widely known at the time that the proposed constitution was being considered by the various state conventions, provided the document in question was adopted, that George Washington was almost certainly going to be elected as the first President of the United States of America. Indeed, the likelihood of Washington ascending to the office of chief executive was made into something of a selling point by many advocates for the new plan of government. Alarming though the concept of a powerful head-of-state may have been, these partisans argued, surely the man who had made himself a modern Cincinnatus could be trusted, not only to exercise the associated prerogatives in a responsible manner, but also to set a desirable example for any and all who would later succeed him. Convincing though this claim doubtless was for many Americans who were as yet unconvinced, however, the scenario that it described also arguably reintroduced the same potential for danger that Washington’s 1783 resignation had notably avoided. The master of Mount Vernon certainly appeared to be a man of great probity and forbearance. While his countrymen heaped praise upon him for his leadership during the Revolutionary War, and had even begun referring to him as the “Father of His Nation” by the early 1780s, he continually demurred, downplayed his abilities, and claimed to want nothing more than to retire in peaceful anonymity. But what if this was all a put-on? What if, appearances notwithstanding, Washington was actually as ambitious as the next man?

            Again, there was never any evidence to suggest that the former Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army was more conniving than he appeared. Excepting his youthful determination to gain an officer’s commission in the British Army, he had never seemed to be an overly ambitious person, and by the late 1780s showed all the signs of being eminently satisfied with his personal accomplishments. But who could say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, whether this was truly the case or not? The possibility certainly existed that George Washington wasn’t nearly as self-effacing as he seemed. Perhaps he had only resigned his commission in 1783 because he believed it would be better in the long run to be acclaimed by the people than to become their ruler by force. Perhaps he was only biding his time until his countrymen saw fit to hand him the power he sought of their own accord. Certainly this would have appeared terribly unlikely at the time – and subsequent events would go onto prove that Washington could, in fact, be trusted – but the entire point that George Clinton was trying to communicate to his fellow citizens in the text of Cato V was that the preservation of American liberty required absolute vigilance. There was no place for sentimentality in government, no room for trust in the law. If it was possible, however unlikely, for George Washington to use his unparalleled popularity to make himself the undisputed lord and master of America – and it almost certainly was possible – then measures absolutely needed to be taken to prevent such an outcome from coming anywhere near to fruition.

            The problem wasn’t just with Washington, of course, any more than the fall of the Roman Republic was entirely the product of Caesar’s machinations. Caesar was successful in his attempt to overturn the conventions of Roman politics and law because his soldiers were loyal to him, because the masses had faith in him, and because the Senate gave in to him. If any one of these groups had decided to withhold their cooperation at key moments in Caesar’s rise to power, it would seem something of an open question whether he would ever have ascended to the office of dictator perpetuo – i.e. dictator for life. The fall of the Roman Republic should thus properly be thought of as a failure of the Roman people and Roman institutions as much as the product of one man’s unstoppable ambition. Just so, if George Washington – or someone like him – were to ever successfully transform the United States of America into an instrument of personal tyranny, it could only be the result of the acquiescence of the American people. The masses would need to express their support, the military to follow his orders, and the Senate to give in to his grab for power. Was this an unlikely outcome? Quite possibly it was. But it was George Clinton’s belief than any American who believed it impossible did so at their peril. Washington, after all, was the most popular man in the nation, and he stood poised – circa 1787 – to become the first chief executive of the newly re-constituted American republic. He had the love of the people on his side. He had the loyalty and affection of what remained of the downsized American military and thousands of veterans of the Continental Army. Was it so hard to believe that he could have gained the cooperation of Congress as well? Maybe it was true that Washington himself would never make the attempt, being truly too humble and too restrained as a personality. But if that was the only thing keeping the United States from tilting towards dictatorial rule at such an early period in its history – the inclination of one man – there was little reason to believe that public virtue alone would sustain the nation indefinitely.

            Clinton’s invocation of Caesar, then, in the cited text of Cato V would seem to have been intended as both a portent of the future and a reminder of the present. If the American republic, he seemed to be saying, was going to model itself on the example of the Roman Republic – an intention to which the pseudonyms of so many American polemicists and the widespread popularity of works like Joseph Addison’s Cato, a Tragedy (1712) would appear to attest – then it was essential that the American people not think themselves immune to the shortcomings that had ultimately led to the collapse of the latter. The Romans had also prided themselves on their virtue and invested a great deal of effort into erecting a system of government which they believed would be immune to abuse or corruption. They were wrong, of course, for a great many reasons which there isn’t space to get into here. But far from the least of them was that the version of Roman society from which the basic tenets of the Republic emerged essentially ceased to exist almost as soon as those tenets were codified into law. Citizenship was expanded to larger and larger groups outside of the traditional population, new industries and new sources of wealth emerged, the army was reformed in response to challenges faced during military campaigns, and new political offices were created to try to stabilize the domestic political situation amidst demographic shifts brought about by a growing population. These were all organic changes, of course, and each was innocuous enough in its own right. But the cumulative effect was that, as time went by, the Romans who lived in the Republic had less and less in common with the Romans who had created the institutions that still governed it. The result, at length, was dislocation. People began to behave in ways for which their system of government was never designed to account. At length, conventions were overturned, laws were disregarded, and one man succeeded in seizing absolute power.

             As of 1787, the American people were yet in the early period of their history as a nation. They were still bright-eyed and optimistic, buoyed by their recent victory over Great Britain and confident in their ability to build a society on just principles. But time was bound to change them. Regardless of what they told themselves, their opinions and manners were as mutable as anyone’s. Liberty, at the time that the proposed constitution was being considered in the states in 1787 and 1788, may well have been their fondest possession, and the cornerstone of whatever system of government they eventually saw fit to erect. But they would have been foolish to believe it impossible that future generations might find other things to cherish. The ancient Romans, recall, had also once been great lovers of virtue. Indeed, the unwritten but widely understood social code of Roman culture – the Mos Maiorum or “ancestral custom” – notably prized such values as honesty, self-control, faithfulness, and prudence. But in time, as the lower social orders gained political power closer in proportion to their numbers, and as the military became a reliable vehicle for individual political advancement, popular personalities emerged for whom adherence to the mos was less important in practice than simply having the power to do whatever they wanted. In consequence, while in the early years of the Republic it may have been the case that the reigning social order would not have tolerated magistrates or military authorities who claimed to speak for the Roman people while plainly pursuing their own narrow interests, by era of the late Republic political and social realities had changed so much that a whole succession of strongmen were able to successfully bend the institutions of Roman political life to their will while claiming to be acting in the best interests of the state.

Granted, these efforts did not meet entirely without resistance. The popular reformer Gaius Marius (157-86 BC), for example, who transformed the Roman army from a citizen militia into a professional military, was famously opposed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78) in a pair of civil wars that effectively split the Republic asunder in the 80s BC. While Sulla was an ardent traditionalist, however, whose stated aim was to restore the accustomed preeminence of the Senate amidst the erosion of its authority brought about by the reforms of Marius and the rising political power of the plebs, his efforts had almost the exact opposite effect. Following Sulla’s final march on Rome in November, 82 BC, he was appointed dictator by the Senate – a temporary office intended to allow a single individual to take complete control of the Republic in times of acute crisis – and proceeded to oversee the execution of almost ten thousand “enemies of Rome” while pursuing a substantial overhaul of the Roman constitution. His intention, as stated, was to return the Republic to an earlier era when the Senate was dominant and the plebs – through their exclusive possession of the office of tribunus plebis – exercised only minimal political power, as well as to prevent future military strongmen like Marius (or himself) from using their authority to seize power in Rome. The result, in point of fact, was that ambitious generals like Pompey and Caesar – whose independence had been guaranteed by the reforms wrought by Marius and left intact by Sulla – saw that it was possible to basically bully the Senate into giving them whatever they desired. And though Pompey ultimately sided with the Senate during Caesar’s own march on Rome in 49 BC – leading to another civil war – both men were very much the products of the same trend in Roman history away from stability and conservatism and towards militarism and populism.

Notwithstanding the fact that the inhabitants of the United States in the late 1780s enjoyed the benefit of hindsight when compared to their Roman forebears, there was still no reason for the former to ever think of themselves as being somehow morally superior to the latter. People change, George Clinton attempted to remind his countrymen. Their values change, their priorities change, and so do the things they think of as being permissible and forbidden. How long had it been, at the time that Cato V was published in 1787, since the only acceptable toast in the whole of America was “God Save the King?” Twenty years? Twenty-five? How many of the Founding Generation’s shining lights had begun their public careers in dutiful service to the Crown? No less than George Washington himself had once desperately yearned for a commission in the British Army, while John Adams had famously defended the British soldiers accused of firing on a crowd of demonstrators in Boston in March, 1770. The fact that such things had become, by the late 1780s, more or less unthinkable would seem to testify to what Clinton was arguing. In a remarkably short span of time, the Thirteen Colonies had become the United States of America. A great deal had gone into this transformation, to be sure, but it was still frankly stunning thing to contemplate. So how, then, given the changes that millions of people living and working in the American republic in the late 1780s had either witnessed or partaken in over the previous two decades, could anyone had believed that the American people would thereafter remain exactly as they were? A people who had stretched their imaginations to the extent that they almost completely altered their socio-political situation were afterwards going to maintain themselves in a state of static equilibrium? Clinton’s invocation of the name “Caesar” in the text of Cato V was a dread reminder that such thinking was utter foolishness. The American people were capable of great things, clearly. But they were also capable of a great deal else besides.