Washington: The Man Who Made Independence Happen
NewsMax.com Wires Thursday, July 4, 2002
WASHINGTON For all their Yankee Doodle dandyism, Americans tend to take their country for granted, as if it just "happened" or was "meant to be." They forget that the United States was invented by a remarkable group of Founders, the foremost of whom "invented" himself by dint of will and devotion to the principles of republican Rome.
This is at least one conclusion a viewer can draw from Manifold Productions' 90-minute documentary "Rediscovering George Washington," which premieres on PBS at 9:30 tonight.
Richard Brookhiser, a senior editor at National Review, is host and writer. For 25 years, the historian has studied Washington as warrior, charismatic leader and politician. Brookhiser pieces together a fascinating portrait of the man who is justly called the father of his country.
Someone the Blame-America-First Left Cannot Debunk
At a time when "debunking" national icons is sport among intellectuals, it's a relief to learn that Washington deserves even more honor than he has been accorded. Most revolutions descend into despotism. But unlike Fidel Castro or Stalin or Napoleon or Julius Caesar, Washington modeled himself after the citizen-soldier Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.
According to tradition, Cincinnatus was called from his farm in 458 B.C. to rescue a Roman army besieged by an Italian tribe. After holding dictatorial power for the 16-day emergency, he relinquished it and returned to his plowing. His rejection of autocratic rule made him a symbol of traditional Roman values.
When Washington was commander of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, the office of the president did not exist, so he was in effect the chief executive. At the end of 1783, Washington resigned his commission and returned to farming at Mount Vernon, Va. "For 2,000 years, no other great leader had voluntarily surrendered power," Brookhiser says.
"They wanted me to be another Washington," Napoleon groused after his downfall.
Washington's favorite play was Joseph Addison's five-act tragedy "Cato," about the stoic enemy of Caesar who committed suicide in 46 B.C. rather than yield to military dictatorship. Brookhiser says Washington's knowledge of the play helped him defuse a near mutiny of his long-unpaid officers in March 1783 at Newburgh, N.Y.
Washington knew that to have acceded to the demands of the disgruntled officers would have been the first step toward military dictatorship, Brookhiser says. If Washington had failed, America might have gone down the road to military rule, as was the case in other revolutions.
Washington led the Virginia delegation to, and then presided over, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. All debate was addressed to him. The 40-odd delegates created the greatest constitution in history under his eyes.
The presidency, which Washington assumed on April 30, 1789, was a huge experiment. By transferring power peacefully after his second term in 1797, he set an example that we should not take for granted.
Brookhiser says that unlike Alexander or Caesar, Washington was not a natural military genius. In fact, he lost more battles than he won. Nor did he prevail by training his men to skirmish from concealment like Indians. In fact, the Continental Army became more effective as it learned to fight like the British: delivering musket fire in volleys followed by massed bayonet attack.
In August of 1776, Washington allowed his army to be outflanked, and it suffered a crushing defeat on Long Island. Brookhiser notes that he was able to evacuate from Brooklyn Heights to Manhattan only because of the heroic counterattacks of 400 Marylanders, only 10 of whom remained standing.
On a sweltering June 28, 1778, Washington rallied retreating troops at Monmouth, N.J., preventing a rout and winning a psychological, if not tactical, victory that saw the debut of the Continental Army as a professionally trained force.
Like Fabius, the Roman republican general who harried the superior Carthaginian force under Hannibal during the Second Punic War, Washington knew he had to outlast the British. As Brookhiser points out, he figured out what was necessary to win his war, and he did it.
Genius for Leadership
Washington did have a genius for leadership. Part of his charisma came from his commanding physical presence, his size and outstanding strength. Thomas Jefferson described him as the best horseman of his age.
With the help of five high school pitchers, Brookhiser tests the story that Washington was able to throw a rock across the Rappahannock River as a boy.
Washington had a fierce temper, which he took pains to hold in check. He took dance lessons, and learned showmanship from plays and theatrical performances.
Washington studied politics all his life, Brookhiser says. Elections were public spectacles in Virginia, and voters expected to be treated to drinks.
Washington served 14 years in Virginia's House of Burgesses (1759-1774) and two years in the Continental Congress (1774-1775).
As army commander, he would not confiscate food at gunpoint, and he halted the celebration of Pope Day, on which an effigy of the pontiff was burned.
As president, in 1794, Washington used his prestige to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. He met with local leaders and with crowds to convince people in western Pennsylvania that he, not the rebels, was the guardian of the revolution.
Washington's education was incomplete. But, Brookhiser says, he grasped the best ideas of his time, made them real and lived up to them. Unlike Castro or Stalin or Napoleon or even the superstitious Caesar, he trusted in a higher power, which he generally called "Providence."
He was a man of great civility who defined manners not on birth but on behavior. As a teen-ager, Washington copied into his notebook the English translation of the "[59]Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation," compiled by French Jesuits in 1595.
Free to Be ... Free of Character
A discussion of this among contemporary adolescents interviewed on the show was frightening. All rejected adherence to any such external code. To do as Washington did would be unauthentic, they said. People should be free to "be themselves."
But Washington created his character by such efforts, and he invented America as we have come to know it. He stood at the center of events for 24 years, Brookhiser says, and stayed true to his principles.
But Washington's constancy to principle broke down over slavery. He freed the slaves he controlled directly in his will, but he would have been a greater statesman if he had set the example and freed his slaves during his lifetime. Nevertheless, Brookhiser says of the nine presidents who held slaves, Washington was the only one to free them at his death.
America's first president, the historian says, used the charisma of a warrior and a politician to serve the ends of right ideas, mutual respect and freedom.
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