do to have such a thing happen in the case of George Washington, no
matter what office he might hold. A little after noon on Sunday,
October 26, therefore, the governor wrote a note to the President,
apologizing for not calling before, and asking if he might call
in half an hour, even though it was at the hazard of his health.
Washington answered at once, expressing his pleasure at the prospect
of seeing his excellency, but begging him, with a touch of irony, not
to do anything to endanger his health. So in half an hour Hancock
appeared. Picturesque, even if defeated, he was borne up-stairs on
men's shoulders, swathed in flannels, and then and there made his
call. The old house in Boston where this happened has had since then a
series of successors, but the ground on which it stood has been duly
remembered and commemorated. It is a more important spot than we are
wont to think; for there it was settled, on that autumn Sunday, that
the idea that the States were able to own and to bully the Union they
had formed was dead, and that the President of the new United States
was henceforth to be regarded as the official superior of every
governor in the land. It was a mere question of etiquette, nothing
more. But how the general government would have sunk in popular
estimation if the President had not asserted, with perfect dignity and
yet entire firmness, its position! Men are governed very largely by
impressions, and Washington knew it. Hence his settling at once and
forever the question of precedence between the Union and the States.
Everywhere and at all times, according to his doctrine, the nation was
to be first.[1]

[Footnote 1: The most lately published contemporary account of
this affair with Hancock can be found in the _Magazine of American
History_, June, 1888, p. 508, entitled "Incidents in the Life of John
Hancock, as related by Dorothy Quincy Hancock Scott (from the Diary of
Gen. W.H. Sumner)."]

So the President traveled on to the North, and then back by another
road to New York, and that excellent bit of work in familiarizing the
people with their federal government was accomplished. Meantime the
wheels had started, the machine was in motion, and the chief officers
were at their places. The preliminary work had been done, and the next
step was to determine what policies should be adopted, and to find out
if the new system could really perform the task for which it had been
created.

CHAPTER III

DOM