As George Washington—military hero, federal advocate, and Virginia aristocrat—prepared to travel north to New York to take up the presidency, he made a decision. In letter after letter throughout 1789, he politely laid out two policies: He would not accept personal petitions for government office, and he would not, when traveling, stay in any private home to which he was invited.

Although Washington framed the former decision in terms of politics, the latter was expressed more in terms of etiquette; he did not wish to “incommode any private family” with his necessary retinue. In fact, however, these two decisions were intrinsically linked. Both stemmed from Washington’s preoccupation with determining what a president should be.

The Constitution lays out the responsibilities of the president; what their role is in the government and what it is not. What the Constitution did not determine is the etiquette of the presidency; not what a president should do, but how they should live their lives. Washington, already the greatest celebrity in the early United States, was used to living his life in public, but he was about to start doing so on an unprecedented level. Washington gave himself the task of setting that precedent, of deciding on and living out proper presidential behavior.

In letters from his early presidency, Washington repeatedly asks confidantes—John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay in particular—for advice on the minutest details of presidential life. At what times of day should his wife entertain visitors? Where should he deliver addresses to the legislature, and they to him? In his diary entry for his first annual address to Congress he notes not only who was present but in what order they entered, when they rose and sat. Washington even notes that he had chosen his matching white horses and a suit made at Hartford. These precise details of daily life, Washington realized, were as important to building the new nation as the content of his speech.