George Washington, our first National Hero

Today, 2/19/07, being Presidents' Day, is a good time to look at some of our first president's, George Washington's, writings. I am using for that purpose selections from fifteen of his addresses and letters contained in A Library of American Literature, Charles Webster & Co, New York, 1892, vol. 3 (pp. 146-174). His actual birthday, of course, is February 22nd (in 1732) and, until 1970, used to be celebrated on that day; but, beginning in 1971, it has been joined with the celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday (February 12th) as Presidents' Day (on the third Monday of February).

George could be self-effacing at times. In an address to the Continental Congress on June 16, 1775, in response to his appointment as commander-in-chief of the Continental American army at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, he declares:

I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.

In a letter to his wife Martha (whom he calls "Patsy") dated just two days later (June 18, 1775), he contends that:

I have used every endeavor to avoid it (his appointment), not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity...

Even in his "Farewell Address to the People of the United States of America" at the end of his presidency in 1797, he speaks of "the inferiority of my qualifications."

In a letter dated February 10, 1776 to a friend, Washington bemoans the condition of his army. He is particularly despondent over the loss of the American forces--which he did not command--to the British at the Battle of Bunker Hill, fought on June 17,1775, which the British won but at a heavy loss of their men killed.

I know the unhappy predicament I stand in; I know that much is expected of me; I know that without men, without arms, without ammunition, without anything fit for the accommodation of a soldier, little is to be done; and, what is mortifying, I know that I cannot stand justified to the world without exposing my own weakness and injuring the cause, by declaring my wants, which I am determined not to do...

Making him even more despondent is the shabby condition of his army.

So far from my having an army of twenty thousand men well armed, I have been here with less than one-half that number, including sick, furloughed, and on command, and those neither armed nor clothed, as they should be. In short, my situation has been such, that I have been obliged to use art to conceal it from my own officers.

Two years later, things have not gotten better. In a letter from Valley Forge, where he and his ragtag army have spent a miserable winter, he writes on April 21, 1778 of officers deserting:

The spirit of resigning commissions has long been at an alarming height, and increases daily...Not less than ninety have resigned to me.

In another book (The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison) it is told that he wrote to another friend, just prior to his inauguration as the first president of the new United States on April 30, 1789, of:

...an ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skills, abilities, and inclinations which is necessary to manage the helm.

Some seven months after the British were defeated at Yorktown, a colonel in the Continental army during the war, one Lewis Nicola, "acting on behalf of a group of like-minded Continental army officers, Nicola supposedly proposed to Washington that he use the army to effect a coup d'état against Congress and set himself up as a king of the United States" ("The Nicola Affair," by Robert F. Haggard, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, June 2002). Washington's response is scathing:

I must review (your proposal) with abhorrence and reprehend with severity...you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable...Let me conjure then, if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish those thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of a like nature.

In a letter dated April 4, 1784 to the wife of Lafayette, the French general who came to the aid of the Continental forces during the Revolution, Washington writes:

Freed from the clangor of arms and the bustle of a camp, from the cares of public employment and the responsibility of office, I am now enjoying domestic ease under the shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree; and in a small villa, with the implements of husbandry and lambkins around me, I expect to glide gently down the stream of life, till I am entombed in the mansion of my fathers.

However, he was not going to "glide gently down the stream of life." Four years later, he was nominated to be his country's first president. In a letter dated September 22, 1788 he writes:

Notwithstanding my advanced season of life, my increasing fondness for agricultural amusements, and my growing love of retirement (and) my decided predilection for the character of a private citizen...

he says that he will serve in that office.

In his "Farewell" address cited above, he states that:

The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism...With slight shades of difference, you have the same Religion, Manners, Habits, and political Principles.

Given the partisan politics of today, we can only smile at Washington's aversion to political parties. Further in the "Farewell" address, he says:

Let me...warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party...It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.

Still further, he states that:

Religion and morality are indispensable supports (to "political prosperity")...(They are the) great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.

Another of his exhortations which makes us smile today is that against foreign entanglements.

Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful (he likes that word) foes of Republican Government.

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little Political connections as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

After this farewell address, Washington did retire to Mount Vernon and "enjoy domestic ease under the shadow of his own vine." But for only two years. It is unfortunate that this great man was cheated out of seeing his country move into the 19th Century--he died just 18 days before that event on December 14, 1799.