Sublime

Congress needed to discuss with Washington military arrangements for the postwar period. Doubtless with Yorktown in mind, when only the French possessed the requisite skills for a siege, he endorsed the creation of a military academy to train engineers as well as artillery officers. Following up on his “Circular to State Governments,” he outlined p

The unanimous consent agreements were a culmination of all the powers that Lyndon Johnson had created over scheduling, over the content of bills, over the managing of bills, over committee assignments. The agreements were made possible—senators had no choice but to accept them—because of the combining of these internal powers with the powers he bro

In early July 1799 he summoned up the courage, in the seclusion of his study, to draft a remarkable new will. He did not use a lawyer and laboriously wrote out the twenty-nine pages in his own handwriting, disclosing his plans to nobody. In the text, he mentioned that “no professional character has been consulted,” observed that it had taken many “

The government had no real executive branch, just an endless multiplicity of committees. The few executive departments were adjuncts of a chaotic, ramshackle Congress, which Washington condemned as “wretchedly managed.”17 This legislative body required a quorum of nine states to do business; operated on a one-state, one-vote basis; and could pass m

By February 10, when the civil rights bill arrived in the Senate, the most valuable hostage, the tax cut bill, was out of the South’s clutches, “locked and key” in the storm cellar of completed legislation, and so were the appropriations bills. And Johnson made sure that no other bills would wander onto the battlefield to be captured and held hosta

In June 1789 some congressmen wanted Washington to have to gain senatorial approval to fire as well as hire executive officers—the Constitution was silent on the subject; the House duly approved that crippling encroachment on executive authority. When the Senate vote ended in a tie, Vice President Adams cast the deciding vote to defeat the measure,

The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country,

In March 1794 Congress approved a proposal, backed by Washington and Knox, to build six frigates “adequate for the protection of the commerce of the U.S. against Algerian corsairs.”16 This action officially inaugurated the U.S. Navy, although it would take four more years before a separate Navy Department was born. While the six frigates represente