The Greatness of George Washington
Editor's Note
As America navigates an ongoing political crisis, it is more important than ever to look to the man who saw our nation through its first and, in many ways, most critical war. On the occasion of George Washington’s 293rd birthday, Christopher Flannery looks to the father of our nation as a model for all who hope to see America made great once again.
To Make America Great Again has proven the perfect mission for a political movement in our time. It is founded on the theoretical truth that there is such a thing in reality as human and political greatness; the historical truth that America has indeed been great, and that this greatness had been thrown away by the American ruling class; and the political truth that American citizens should once again aspire to that greatness.
MAGA calls upon Americans to consider what greatness is, and what the particular greatness of their nation was and can be again. It honors this and future generations of Americans by holding them responsible for rising to greatness themselves. One necessary condition of American greatness is the proper honoring of American heroes, among whom George Washington is pre-eminent.
Father of our Country
George Washington lived sixty-seven years, from 1732 to 1799. During his last twenty-four years — more than a third of his life — he was the foremost man in America, the man on whom the fate of his country depended more than on any other. And these were fateful years.
From 1775 to 1783 — the years of the American War of Independence — Washington was commander–in–chief of the Continental Army whose victory would secure the thirteen colonies’ separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. In the summer of 1787, he presided over America’s Constitutional Convention. His presence lent decisive significance to the document drafted there, which continues in force in the twenty-first century as the oldest written constitution in the world. From 1789 to 1796, he held the highest office in the land as the first president of the United States of America under this constitution. The office of president had in fact been designed with his virtues in mind.
In each of these capacities, and as a private citizen between and after his several public offices, Washington, more than any American contemporary, was the necessary condition, the sine qua non, of the independence and enduring union of the American states. It was in mere honest recognition of this that time bestowed upon him the epithet “Father of our Country” and that upon his death, the memorial address presented on behalf of the Congress of the United States named him “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
The preeminent positions that he held, the unrivalled honors he received, can only hint at the greatness of the man. When Washington was a mere twenty-two years old, he had already been appointed commander of the armies of Virginia, such as they were. His actions in the field had already won him notoriety in Europe and fame at home.
By the time he retired from military service at the age of twenty-six and returned to private life, his commanding presence, courage, resolution, incorruptible justice, and firm sense of duty were widely known throughout his colony. Already, his destiny seemed to fellow citizens to be tied to the destiny of his “country” (Virginia).
Twenty-seven of the officers who served under the young Washington presented an Address to him (December 31, 1758) upon his retirement, expressing their gratitude for his leadership.
Their youthful tribute to the youthful Washington anticipates the man whose destiny would become inseparable from the destiny of a greater country, when it called him from his private station some seventeen years later:
In our earliest infancy, you took us under your tuition, trained us up in the practice of that discipline which alone can constitute good troops. … Your steady adherence to impartial justice, your quick discernment and invariable regard to merit, wisely intended to inculcate those genuine sentiments of true honor and passion for glory, … first heightened our natural emulation and our desire to excel. How much we improved by those regulations and your own example, with what cheerfulness we have encountered the several toils, especially while under your particular direction, we submit to yourself. … In you we place the most implicit confidence. Your presence only will cause a steady firmness and vigor to actuate in every breast, despising the greatest dangers and thinking light of toils and hardships, while led on by the man we know and love.
Such were the impressions and the sentiments of men who knew and served under Washington in his early twenties. They would be echoed by thousands and immeasurably deepened and magnified in Washington’s maturity. When George Washington died, on December 14, 1799, there was throughout America a profound outpouring of grief at the country’s loss, gratitude for his life, and deep reverence for his memory.
According to one standard biography,
For two months after Washington’s burial at Mount Vernon, his countrymen continuously expressed their bereavement in private correspondence, in resolutions of Congress and of State legislatures, in town meetings, in the pages of newspapers and, most singularly, in hundreds of funeral processions and solemn eulogies in every corner of the nation.
America’s greatest orators vied with one another to do justice to the greatness of their fellow citizen. But Abigail Adams was right in saying of Washington: “Simple truth is his best, his greatest eulogy. She alone can render his fame immortal.” The trouble is that, where Washington’s greatness is concerned, the simple truth almost surpasses belief.
Appearance and Reality
Recorded impressions of his contemporaries make very clear that Washington’s physical appearance — his stature, bearing, and countenance — reflected to a remarkable degree the distinctive qualities of his mind and character. As the Marquis de Chastellux records in his notes,
The strongest characteristic of this respectable man is the perfect harmony which reigns between the physical and moral qualities which compose his personality. … It is not my intention to exaggerate. I wish only to express the impression General Washington has left on my mind, the idea of a perfect whole.
Washington’s sheer personal presence was a significant and characteristic part of his greatness and of his influence on the world. In battle and in counsel, he often exerted a powerful impact on those around him just by being there. As his officers testified of their young leader back in 1758, “Your presence only will cause a steady firmness and vigor to actuate in every breast, despising the greatest dangers and thinking light of toils and hardships.” Twenty years later, the young Lafayette observed the same effect at the Battle of Monmouth, where Washington’s appearance on the scene stopped a confused and panicked retreat: “General Washington seemed to arrest fortune with one glance.”
In 1789, when Washington was 57, Jedidiah Morse described him as:
tall, upright, and well made; in his manner easy and unaffected. His eyes were of a bluish cast, not prominent, indicative of deep thoughtfulness, and when in action, on great occasions remarkably lively. His features strong, manly, and commanding; his temper reserved and serious; his countenance grave, composed, sensible. There was in his whole appearance an unusual dignity and gracefulness which at once secured him profound respect, and cordial esteem. He seemed born to command his fellow men.
However astonishing Washington’s particular qualities of mind and character might be, the sum was even greater than the parts: The whole man somehow magnified the individual virtues of which he was composed. His courage, energy, high principles, and steadfastness; his impartial justice and utter trustworthiness; that he was calm in the face of danger and dauntless in adversity; that he would sacrifice repose for fame and fame for duty; his thoroughness in deliberation and mastery over his strong passions — these and his other distinguishing traits, laudable in themselves, are elevated still further as they are harmonized in the mind and character of Washington. And this commanding harmony of virtue was vividly manifest to those around him.
In the course of his life, Washington’s fate became inseparable from the fate of his country. By the time of his death, he was identified in the eyes of the world with America and the cause of liberty for which America stood. His greatness was a testament to America’s promise. It proclaimed to the world, in effect: “Such is the father and so shall be the sons and daughters of American liberty.”
The significance of that testament has not diminished with time. To the contrary, for anyone who wants to understand this country and help Make America Great Again, it is, if anything, more necessary today than at any time in the past to recall the greatness of George Washington. It is even more abundantly true today than it was when it was first said over 200 years ago, that “Our history is but a transcript of his claims on our gratitude.”