Quotes from Edward J. Larson

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, HOWEVER, Washington did not want the presidency.

He described the statesman—a role he boasted of avoiding—as someone "whose watchful days & sleepless Nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own—perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if the Globe was insufficient for us all.

Franklin, "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."18

inhibited development in the South and

By the end of 1787, with final results having reached Mount Vernon from three states and favorable reports from many others, Washington exuded optimism about the Constitution. "New England (with the exception of Rhode Island, which seems itself, politically speaking, to be an exception from all that is good) it is believed will chearfully and fully accept it," Washington wrote to Lafayette in early January.

THE MEMBERS DEBATED the executive at length three separate times during the Convention: early June, mid-July, and early September.

For Washington, at age fifty-five, health was an ongoing issue and one reason he repeatedly gave for his retirement from public life. He had suffered from dysentery, pleurisy, quinsy, severe headaches, fevers, and a mild case of smallpox in the past, and the quinsy and headaches periodically returned.

As recently as 1785, he had complained to Knox that "heavy, & painful oppressions in the head, and other disagreeable sensations, often trouble me."56

Washington's eyesight and hearing were also failing, and his teeth posed persistent and painful problems.