Washington had enjoyed the pleasures of retirement on his estate for four years when his country again claimed his services for the general good and he was unanimously elected President of the United States. He had misgivings as to his ability to fulfil the duties of the highest office in the government. His success in the military field, he argued, did not guarantee that he was capable of becoming a wise administrator. The people, however, thought otherwise. In the countless decrees and orders which Washington had issued during the long period of the war, the great statesman had been apparent as well as the great general. And especially at the moment when the constitution, which had been amended in the meanwhile, was to receive its first trial, every one felt that no hand could hold the rudder of State so securely as Washington’s. His friends urged him to sacrifice his love of private life once more for his country. He hesitatingly accepted. “To-day,” he writes in his diary on April 16, 1789, “I bade farewell to private life and domestic felicity. I am so overwhelmed with care and painful emotion that words fail me to express it. I have set out on the journey to New York to obey the call of my country with the best intentions to serve her in every possible way, but with poor prospect of fulfilling her expectations.”  
136
His journey resembled a triumphal procession. The inhabitants of Trenton paid him particular honors, in remembrance of his memorable crossing of the Delaware twelve years previously. Triumphal arches were erected on the bridge, bearing appropriate inscriptions, and little girls in white dresses strewed the path which the “choice of the people” was to tread with flowers. A gayly decorated vessel, guided by thirteen pilots in the name of the thirteen States, brought him into New York Harbor. The love of the people touched and encouraged him, but did not suffice to quite banish the burden of care which the contemplation of all the difficulties which were awaiting him had laid upon him. It was to be read in his face and in his whole bearing. He said in his inaugural address:
 
137
“It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States, a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments, not less than my own, nor those of my fellow citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States.” The close says: “There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of the public prosperity and felicity. Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained, and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
 
138
He wrote to his friend Lafayette: “Harmony, honesty, industry, and temperance are the qualities to make us a great and happy people. This path to the attainment of the people’s happiness is as plain and straight as a ray of light.” He would not accept a salary even as President. He considered it a great boon to be in a position to render services to the State without remuneration. With grave earnestness he took up the labors of his position, in order to master the difficulties that awaited him on all sides. A heavy load of debt was hanging over the country, commerce and trade needed encouragement, and the frontiers suffered much from the depredations of Indian tribes. With the outbreak of the French revolution new difficulties arose. Washington considered the events in Paris a natural consequence of previous misgovernment, but in spite of his esteem for certain Frenchmen, he soon felt that the moral earnestness essential for the attainm............