Soon after Washington arrived in New York he sought Hamilton’s aid in the management of the national finances.  There was the rock on which the government of the Confederation had foundered.  There the most skillful pilotage was required if the new government was to make a safe voyage.  Washington’s first thought had been to get Robert Morris to take charge again of the department that he had formerly managed with conspicuous ability, and while stopping in Philadelphia on his way to New York, he had approached Morris on the subject.  Morris, who was now engaged in grand projects which were eventually to bring him to a debtor’s prison, declined the position but strongly recommended Hamilton.  This suggestion proved very acceptable to Washington, who was well aware of Hamilton’s capacity.

The thorny question of etiquette was the next matter to receive Washington’s attention.  Personally he favored the easy hospitality to which he was accustomed in Virginia, but he knew quite well that his own taste ought not to be decisive.  The forms that he might adopt would become precedents, and hence action should be taken cautiously.  Washington was a methodical man.  He had a well-balanced nature which was never disturbed by timidity of any kind and rarely by anxiety.  His anger was strong when it was excited, but his ordinary disposition was one of massive equanimity.  He was not imaginative, but he took things as they came, and did what the occasion demanded.  In crises that did not admit of deliberation, his instinctive courage guided his behavior, but such crises belong to military experience, and in civil life careful deliberation was his rule.  It was his practice to read important documents pen in hand to note the points.  From one of his familiar letters to General Knox we learn that on rising in the morning he would turn over in his mind the day’s work and would consider how to deal with it.  His new circumstances soon apprised him that the first thing to be settled was his deportment as President.  Under any form of government the man who is head of the state is forced, as part of his public service, to submit to public exhibition and to be exact in social observance; but, unless precautions are taken, engagements will consume his time and strength.  Writing to a friend about the situation in which he found himself, Washington declared:  “By the time I had done breakfast, and thence till dinner, and afterwards till bed-time, I could not get relieved from the ceremony of one visit, before I had to attend to another.  In a word, I had no leisure to read or answer the dispatches that were pouring in upon me from all quarters.”