The character of George Washington

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 2007 by Richard Brookhiser

THERE IS A LINE in the song "America the Beautiful" of some significance: "Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears." It means that the cities of the U.S., unlike those of Europe, have not been torn and destroyed by war. That is not quite right. The city I live in, New York, has been attacked twice in American history.

The first was in the summer of 1776, and George Washington, commander in chief of the Continental Army, was responsible for the city's defense. The Declaration of Independence had been read for the first time in New York on July 9. That very week, residents of Long Island saw a British fleet moving toward New York Harbor. The British, who made camp on Staten Island, had at their command 10 ships-of-the-line, dozens of other vessels, and 32,000 professional soldiers--including Hessians. To oppose this force, Washington had no navy nor ships and a mere 19,000 soldiers, most of them untrained militia. Over the next few months, he and his men fought two battles: the Battle of Long Island, in what now is Brooklyn, and the Battle of White Plains, north of the city. They lost both.

The second attack on New York was on Sept. 11, 2001. New York lost almost 3,000 men and women on 9/11, far more than the several hundred American soldiers who were killed in the battles of 1776. However, for the rest of the Revolutionary War, the British kept all their American prisoners on ships in the East River, where they were not well fed, had no good air, and were given barely any water, Every morning the British would say, "Rebels, throw out your dead," and corpses would be pitched overboard. Eleven thousand men died on those ships and, for years, people in Brooklyn found skeletons on the waterfront.

We lost the two World Trade Center towers on 9/11, along with several smaller buildings. George Washington lost the entire city, which the British occupied for the remainder of the war. The British also could be said to have used weapons of mass destruction, as they encouraged slaves to run away from their American masters with the promise of freedom, but any slave who had smallpox was sent back in the hope that he would infect his fellow slaves and rebel masters.

The American Revolution lasted eight-and-a-half years. It was this nation's longest conflict--longer than the Civil War and our part in World War II put together--before Vietnam. So, we have our problems--especially in Iraq--but Washington had his as well. In many ways, his were worse: America was much weaker then, and the enemy it faced was much stronger. Washington's persistence through the Revolutionary War was remarkable. It did not end there, though. When the war was over and Washington retired to private life, he was called upon to serve again. He presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787, was inaugurated as the first president in 1789, and served as the nation's leader for two terms. So, the full time of his service--including the war, the Constitutional Convention and his eight years as president--was 17 years. Washington's mother is supposed to have said, when told of one of his Revolutionary War victories, "George generally completes what he undertakes." He certainly did, and he did so through a lifetime of public service.

After persistence, the second quality of Washington's character worth exploring is the ability to let go and knowing when to let go. This quality, in a way, contradicted Washington's persistence and, largely for that reason, it is even more remarkable since it was a new thing at the time. Nowadays, we know that, in a republic, the military power serves the civilian power; elected officials serve for set terms and, that, if they fail to win reelection, they have to go home. This is part of our life today. It is what we expect. Yet, in Washington's lifetime, these were new ideas. Most of the rulers in the world were kings or monarchs of some sort. Holland and the Swiss Cantons were exceptions, but all of the major countries and most of the small ones were ruled by people who ruled them for life.

Washington lived in a time when royal rule began to be shaken. During his lifetime, the king of France was deposed and executed, and other monarchs would follow that path, but the new rulers who took their places did not, generally speaking, believe in letting go. Napoleon Bonaparte was a Corsican artillery officer who became first consul of France, then first consul for life, then emperor. His career as emperor eventually was ended, but it took a world war to do so--and that pattern has been repeated over and over again around the world.

Thus, at the end of the Revolutionary War, when Washington returned his commission to Congress, it was something very new. It similarly was new when, at the end of his second presidential term, he announced that he would not run a third time. These actions touch on a paradox of republican leadership: If you are a leader, there are times when you simply must take charge and be superior to the people you lead. This is most common in military situations, but it happens in peacetime as well. A leader must use his charisma or some other transrational force to get his way and, if he does not, things will fall apart. Every leader understands this. Yet, leaders in a republic also must understand that those times are temporary, that the term of leadership will pass, and that they then must pass from the scene. The reason is that the people they are leading are, in fact, their equals.