At the time when Washington was inaugurated both North Carolina and Rhode Island were outside the Union.  The national government was a new and doubtful enterprise, remote from and unfamiliar to the mass of the people.  To turn their thoughts toward the new Administration it seemed to be good policy for Washington to make tours.  The notes made by Washington in his diary indicate that the project was his own notion, but both Hamilton and Knox cordially approved it and Madison “saw no impropriety” in it.  Therefore, shortly after the recess of the first session of Congress, Washington started on a trip through the Northern States, pointedly avoiding Rhode Island, then a foreign country.  It was during this tour that a question of etiquette occurred about which there was a great stir at the time.  John Hancock, then Governor of Massachusetts, did not call upon Washington but wrote inviting Washington to stay at his house, and when this invitation was declined, he wrote again inviting the President to dinner en famille.  Washington again declined, and this time the failure of the Governor to pay his respects to the President of the United States was the talk of the town.  Some of Hancock’s aides now called with excuses on the score of his illness.  Washington noted in his diary, “I informed them in explicit terms that I should not see the Governor unless it was at my own lodgings.”  This incident occurred on Saturday evening, and the effect was such that Governor Hancock called in person on Sunday.  The affair was the subject of much comment not to Governor Hancock’s advantage.  Washington’s church-going habits on this trip afford no small evidence of the patient consideration which he paid to every point of duty.  In New York, he attended Episcopal church service regularly once every Sunday.  On his northern tour he went to the Episcopal church in the morning, and then showed his respect for the dominant religious system of New England by attending the Congregational church in the afternoon.  His northern tour lasted from October 15 to November 13, 1789, and was attended by popular manifestations that must have promoted the spread of national sentiment.  On November 21, 1789, North Carolina came into the Union, and Rhode Island followed on May 29, 1790.  Washington started on a tour of the Southern States on March 21,1791, in which he covered more than seventeen hundred miles in sixty-six days, and was received with grand demonstrations at all the towns he visited.

While he was making these tours, which in the days before the railroad and the telegraph were practically the only efficacious means of establishing the new government in the thoughts and feelings of the people, he was much concerned about frontier troubles, and with good reason, as he well knew the deficiency of the means that Congress had allowed.  The tiny army of the United States was under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Josiah Harmar, with the brevet rank of general.  In October, 1790, Harmar led